Selecting Characteristics

Characteristics are specializations that a character has spent their lives studying or practicing, or in some cases which have come naturally to them, and so have better capabilities than most others who try to use them. Not having an ability doesn't mean that you can't perform the ability at all, but rather that you simply have no special skill in that area. For example, everyone can pick up driving fairly easily, considering most 16 year old kids can do so, but someone who has specifically trained in driving a vehicle, such as a race car driver, will *always* be successful over someone who has not barring some unforeseen consequences. In some cases, the Game Wizard may even make someone without the characteristic roll to do something someone who does have it wouldn't have to. For example, an experienced pilot may not have to roll to take off and land unless the situation calls for it, but the Wizard may have someone who has never flown before roll to do so since their chances of failure are so much higher.

Each character gets to select a number of Categories equal to the number of Characteristic Slots they are allowed at that level. For example, an Inexperienced character may have 4, per the table above. Each one of these major categories costs 5 points and opens up the ability to take any of the Positive Characteristics inside that category. The Positive categories are as follows:

* Artist
* Athlete
* Brutish
* Charismatic
* Clever
* Craftsman
* Cybernetic
* Demolitionist
* Devotee
* Educated
* Engineer
* Entrepreneur
* Fighter
* Flexible
* Gearhead
* Healer
* Magician
* Marksman
* Metahuman
* Naturalist
* Nerd
* Nonhuman Species
* Occultist
* Organization
* Parapsychologist
* Perceptive
* Pet
* Psion
* Religious
* Rich
* Scientist
* Sensitive
* Street Rat
* Supernatural Entity
* Super Science
* Survivalist
* Trainer
* Traveled
* Willful

Each one of these categories indicates either that a period of the character's life has been spent in the pursuit of that ability or it's something that comes naturally to the character.

### Specializations

Specializations are those Positive Characteristics which you have specifically trained yourself in during your life up to this point, or again, things that come naturally to you. Go through the lists under each category of characteristics you chose and write down all the items you feel would apply to the character you have in your head on your character sheet. Just writing them down doesn't cost any points, so write down as many as you feel apply to your character regardless of how much you think it may cost.

### Negative Characteristics

Once you've done this, you can select Negative Characteristics the same way, choosing a category to receive 5 points back and then writing down all the Negative Specializations you want.

Just like the Positive Characteristics that make your character better, stronger, and more skillful, there are Negative Characteristics you may obtain that cause you a bit of difficulty but offer more points to spend and a chance to gain more Development Points through play. These are the only way to earn DP, so make sure you give your character at least one!

Just like Positive Characteristics, these categories are worth five points each, but in this case, you GET five DP to spend on positives! Any character may only have a total of two Negative Categories regardless of Development Level, but the Wizard may apply Negatives during play without the character having to have the category they fall under.

The Negative Categories are:

* Addicted
* Crazy
* Failing Sense
* Outsider
* Permanent Injury
* Sickly
* Troubled
* Unlucky
* Victim
* Wide-Eyed

### Assigning Points to Specializations

Now that you have all of your Positive and Negative Specializations down, you can start using your Development Points to raise your Positives and getting points back by raising your Negatives. Remember that for each Positive Category you purchase, it costs 5 DP, and for each Negative Category you take, you get 5 extra DP to spend.

With whatever points you have left, you can purchase ranks of Positive Characteristics, and if you take ranks in any Negative Characteristic, you get the amount of DP you would have spent if it were positive back to be spent elsewhere. Each rank costs as much as the rank you are trying to raise it to (rank one costs 1 DP, rank 5 costs 5 DP) and you must purchase all the ranks before the one you are trying to obtain. The following table shows how much each rank costs and how many total DP it would cost to raise a Positive Characteristic to that rank. The table may also be used to show how many DP you can earn by taking negative characteristics.