2025 Character Creation Challenge, Day 5: Trasadon Faestar, Wood Elf Ranger

Welcome to the fifth day of the 2025 Character Creation Challenge. I'm circling back to Old School Essentials with another convention-defying character - a wood elf ranger. I promise I'll be more original with the next OSE character As before, I focus on the decisions I made rather than presenting a blow by blow of the process.

Trasadon Faestar, Wood Elf Ranger, page one of two

All OSE characters generated for this challenge use the Advanced Fantasy rules and the Advanced Method of character creation. The wood elf can be found in Issue #2 of Carcass Crawler. A list of optional and house rules I use are provided in my day two post.

My dice were pretty hot, except for one roll. Let's say that our wood elf ranger spends much of his time alone for a reason. My lowest roll got consigned to the traditional dump stat of CHA. Everything else was straightforward. The highest score went to STR, the prime requisite for a Ranger. Anticipating the adjustments from being a wood elf, I put a 15 in WIS.

Wood elves have minimum requirements of DEX 9 and INT 9 that this character met comfortably. The ability modifiers for a wood elf are -1 CHA and +1 WIS. This makes this guy slightly more unlikable and increases his WIS enough for a bigger modifier.

Both rangers and wood elves have a bunch of special abilities. This combines into a truckload of stuff this guy can do. The most influential to this build is the bonus that wood elves get to missile attack rolls. To nobody's surprise, he's going to be an archer.

Specializing in the long bow further maximizes his potential as an archer. The remaining weapon proficiencies go to the sword and hand axe.

Most of the results of the Secondary Skills table would be nonsensical for this character. I selected Huntsman. Although animal trainer or bowyer/fletcher might have fit as well.

Trasadon Faestar, Wood Elf Ranger, page two of two

Background:

Trasadon Faestar never set out to be a murderhobo. It was simply the most expedient way to leave his woodland home, see the world(s), and earn a living. He is beginning to regret his decision. The world(s) are more full of people than he imagined. He plans on returning to the woods once he has enough to gold to meet his modest needs for awhile.


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.