Skills: Climb, Jump, Listen, Navigate, one interpersonal skill (Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate or Persuade), Stealth, any two other skills. Given my Investigator’s rather bland spread of Characteristics, I decide to go for a Drifter. Since my Investigator’s STR and DEX values are each less than his SIZ score, then his Movement Rate is 7.Īn occupation shows how an investigator makes a living, and determines what kinds of skills they have access to. Movement Rate is the number of yards (or meters) up to 5x their Movement Rate value in one round. My Investigator might not be particularly strong, or fast, but they can take a bit of punishment! Hit Points are determined by adding CON+SIZ and dividing the total by 10 for an end result of 13 Hit Points. Looking up the chart, I see that my character’s STR+SIZ is a less than impressive 80, meaning that I have a Damage Bonus of -1 and a Build of -1. Here’s when we determine the Damage Bonus and Build characteristics, as well as the Hit Points and Movement Rate of the Investigator. The dice gods smile upon me and bestow my investigator a luck of 75. Luck is useful for all sorts of things, but again, we’ll go into further detail when we hit the mechanics chapter. To obtain the Luck score for the character, one rolls (3d6) x 5. I’m starting to worry as it seems that my character looks a little prone when it comes to that department. The Investigator’s Sanity score begins at the same level as their POW. I roll a 1(!?) which basically means I don’t get any increase to my rather lukewarm EDU Score. If the result of a d100 is greater than the character’s present EDU, then add 1d10 percentage points to the EDU characteristic. Improvement Checks are a special percentile roll to determine if an attribute increases. But since I’m keeping my investigator in their 20’s or 30’s, I only have to make an improvement check for EDU to see if it goes up. These values may still be altered by the choice of age for the Investigator.
While you roll (2d6+6) x 5 for SIZ, INT and EDU.Īfter a bit of rolling, this is what I’ve come up with, along with their Half and Fifth Characteristic Values (Which I’ll explain later on): To determine your scores, you roll (3d6) x 5 to get STR, CON, DEX, APP and POW. Investigators in CoC have the following Characteristics that are used to define them: Strength, Constitution, Size, Dexterity, Appearance, Intelligence, Power and Education. Minmaxing is not really a thing in CoC given how easy it is to get hurt and die. In CoC, it’s better to just go with something that fits your concept and go from there. In Call of Cthulhu, player characters come from a huge selection of possible backgrounds, from Detectives to Hobos, and while the Keeper’s Guide has a selection of about 27 different occupations to choose from, the Investigator’s Handbook has a whopping 92 different ones.ĭon’t spend too much time reading each of them though.
CALL OF CTHULHU RPG 5TH EDITION CHARACTER OPTIMIZATION SERIES
Welcome to the first part of our Let’s Study series for CoC 7th, and we begin with the creation of an Investigator.