2025 Character Creation Challenge, Day 2: Sara Rosewood, Human Fighter

Day two and the second of my characters for the 2025 Character Creation Challenge. This time, I'm harkening back to a simpler time and a slightly less complicated TTRPG - Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome. Specifically, I'm using the Advanced Fantasy version with options inspired by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Let's begin with that quintessential starting player character - a human fighter. I'll only be covering significant decision points rather than offering a step by step description of the process.

Sara Rosewood, Human Fighter, page one of two

All OSE characters generated for this challenge use the Advanced Fantasy rules and the Advanced Method of character creation. "Expanded Equipment" by Gavin Norman, presented in Carcass Crawler Issue #3 is also used.

Optional rules include:

• Separate races and classes.
• Ascending Armor Class.
• Demihuman class and level restrictions are lifted.
• Humans are granted Racial Abilities.
• Weapon Proficiencies and Specializations.
• Rerolling 1s and 2s while rolling hit points.
• Secondary Skills.
• Individual initiative.

I'll also be using a house rule. OSE uses the "roll 3d6 for each ability score, in order" method. Gary Gygax comments that this method can result in marginal characters on page 11 of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. He describes various alternatives on the same page. I'm using Method I: "All scores are recorded and arranged in the order the player desires. 4d6 are rolled, and the lowest die (or one of the lowest) is discarded." This is purely a matter of personal taste.

Sara Rosewood, Human Fighter, page two of two

My dice rolls were okay. Using one of the 14s for STR was obvious. Putting the other 14 in CON is debatable - there's an argument to be made for sticking it in DEX. All of the other numbers result in no modifiers at this point, so I dumped an 11 into INT, the 12 in WIS, and DEX got a 10.

As humans +1 CHA and +1 CON with their optional Racial Abilities, CHA raises to 13 and CON to 15.

The OSE rules allow for raising a character's prime requisite by 1 point for every 2 points that another ability score is lowered. I lowered INT from 11 to 9 and WIS from 12 to 10. This improved STR from 14 to 16, increasing the modifier from +1 to +2 without lowering other modifiers.

I choose to specialize in the sword and take proficiencies in the short bow and dagger.

The entire 100 gold pieces I rolled up were spent on weapons, armor, and equipment. I wasn't able to afford a shield, so that will have to wait.

And then I came up with a name and backstory...

Sara Rosewood wasn't raised to be a murder hobo, but found herself with little choice after her village was raided by an adventuring party of chaotic NPCs. Filled with resolve to avenge her lost home, she spent years of her life doing anything but that. Instead, she trained in the sword and spent her life savings on a weapon, armor, and equipment. She recently joined a motley party of fresh-faced adventurers and will soon brave her first delve into the underground. If she meets with a grim fate, she will be quickly replaced by her hitherto unmentioned identical twin sister - Lara Rosewood. If she survives, hopefully the gamemaster will remember to include her backstory in an adventure so she can confront the destroyers of her quaint village.

The character sheet I used is by William Braidis Lee and is available on itch.io. It has some quirks, but I like it so far.