Creating a Character

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While it can be amazing fun to play with established Marvel characters, lots of players like to come up with original characters that can fit into the Marvel Multiverse. Even Narrators can join in the fun by coming up with original villains for the heroes to face.

Here are the seven simple steps to create a Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game character all your own.

1. Determine the character’s rank.
2. Create the character’s concept.
3. Pick an archetype.
4. Pick ability scores.
5. Pick backstory elements (origin and profession) and traits.
6. Pick power sets and powers.
7. Calculate other scores (Action Modifiers, Defense Scores, Health, Focus, Karma, Initiative Modifier, Speed, Fight Damage, Ranged Damage, Size).

You don’t have to do things in this exact order. Jump around to whatever sections you like. Just make sure you cover all the steps.

## RANK

If you’re creating a character for a game that you’re going to play with others, you should chat with the other players before you begin. If you’re just coming up with a character for fun, that’s fine too, but if you want to be able to play the character in a particular game, you can save yourself some time by making sure that it’s going to fit well with the rest of the game.

There are (at least) two things your group should agree on before you start: ranks and roles.

### Rank Caps

The first thing to consider is what kind of game do you want to play. Do you want to haunt the rooftops and alleys of Hell’s Kitchen? Or would you rather soar through the galaxy and prevent a galactic war? Or maybe there’s something you’d rather tackle in between.

The kind of game you want to play determines the range of ranks you want to play within. That includes your character’s starting rank and their rank cap.

Start by figuring out the rank cap. That determines how powerful the heroes will be when they reach their peak. For instance, if you want your hero to max out at the same rank as Spider-Man, you would set a rank cap of 10. If you’d rather have Thor’s kind of adventures, the rank cap should be 20 instead.

If your group doesn’t want any preset limits, that’s fine. Just make your rank cap 25.

### Starting Rank

Once the group figures out where it wants to wind up, you can determine where you should start. Some players like to just start at their rank cap and play a hero who’s already at their peak. Others prefer to start from scratch, at Rank 1, and work their way up to that point. This is a fine way to develop a hero all the way from an average person to a legend.

It’s perfectly fine to skip over a number of lower ranks, though, and start off a bit shy of the character’s rank cap. Many players like to start 5 ranks lower than where they plan to wind up, which gives them a strong starting point but also plenty of room to develop and grow. If you’re shooting for Rank 10, for instance, you would start play at Rank 5 and work your way up.

## CHARACTER CONCEPT

Once you have a rank and a role in mind, you can come up with a firmer concept for your character. For that, just sit down and fill in the blanks at the top of the character sheet. This includes details like:

* Codename
* Real Name
* Gender
* Height
* Weight
* Eyes
* Hair
* Distinguishing Features
* Occupation
* Teams
* Base
* History
* Personality

If you like, you don’t have to come up with all this information right now. It’s perfectly fine to come back to this part and fill in the blanks once you’re done with the rest of the character’s creation. Or you can change the details around as you go. It’s all up to you.

## ARCHETYPE

Now it’s time to make one of the most important choices for your character: their archetype. This helps determine many details about them, including their action modifiers, ability defenses, Health, Focus, and power sets.

That’s too much to cover here, so turn to the “Archetypes” chapter for all the details. Then come back to your character sheet and fill in that one vital word on the character’s sheet.

### Part of a Team

If your hero is going to be a part of a team, it’s a good idea to think a bit about how that character might help round out the team. For instance, a team that’s all bruisers might be great at brawling but could fall short in other areas.

If that’s the kind of game you want to play, go for it. If you want your team to be ready for anything, though, you should consider trying to fill out a better-balanced team instead.

If there are enough characters on the team, you could have one of each archetype. Just discuss with your fellow players about who wants to play what kinds of characters and then try to spread out the archetypes as best you can.

It’s okay, though, if you’re missing some of the archetypes on your team, or if you double up on others. Your team is what you make of it, and your Narrator can usually adjust to come up with adventures that fit your team well.

## ABILITY SCORES

##### Ability Score Points

The next step is to determine your character’s ability scores. Remember, their first initials spell MARVEL: Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic.

The average score for any ability is 0. Standard human-level abilities range from –4 to +4, but your character’s rank, archetype, and powers can lift those limits much higher.

### Selecting Ability Scores

When creating a character from scratch, you determine a character’s ability scores by allocating points among the six abilities. The number of points you have available to allocate to your ability scores is determined by the character’s rank, as shown on the Ability Score Points Table.

You can spend the points however you like. In addition, if you lower a score below 0, you can use those points to increase other scores. For instance, lowering a character’s Ego to –2 would give you 2 points to use on other scores. You cannot voluntarily lower any score below –4.

The default cap for any score is 4, but a character’s archetype and powers can raise caps for individual scores.

### Action Modifiers

To figure a character’s action modifier for each ability, take the rank ability modifier from the character’s archetype and add the character’s ability to that. That’s the modifier you apply to all action checks the character makes with that ability.

### Ability Defenses

To figure a character’s defense score for each ability, take the rank ability defense number from the character’s archetype and add the character’s ability to that. That’s their defense score for any attacks against that ability.

## BACKSTORY AND TRAITS

A character’s backstory involves their origin and their profession. Each of these gives the character a package of related traits that are common to people who have that origin or backstory.

A character can also have traits unrelated to their origin and profession. Their rank determines how many of those traits you can pick for them. Some negative traits grant them the ability to choose other traits too.

See the “Backstories and Traits” chapter for more details. Fill out that part of the character’s sheet and come back here.

## POWERS

Your character’s rank determines how many power sets they have access to and how many powers they can pick from those sets. All characters can also freely pick powers from the utility powers.

Powers are complex enough that they have a whole chapter dedicated to them. Go read the “Powers” chapter to learn all about them, and fill out the powers section of your character’s sheet when you’re done.

## OTHER SCORES

Now that you’ve made most of the big decisions for the character, it’s time to do some quick and easy math to figure out the rest of the scores on their character sheet.

### Health

The character’s archetype determines the base amount of Health they have at each level. Multiply their Resilience by their rank and add that to the base number to get their total Health.

### Focus

The character’s archetype determines the base amount of Focus they have at each level. Multiply their Vigilance by their rank and add that to the base number to get their total Focus.

### Karma

The character’s base Karma is equal to half their rank, rounded up. They can gain and lose this throughout their adventures, but it resets to this base number every time they get a full night’s sleep.

### Initiative Modifier

The character’s Initiative Modifier is the higher of their Agility or Vigilance. Add that to their initiative checks.

### Speed

An Average-sized character’s base running Speed is 25 feet per round. To that, add their Agility and a modifier for their Size, if it’s something other than Average.

### Fight Damage

The character’s archetype and rank determine their base Fight Damage. To that, add the ability they used in the attack.

### Ranged Damage

The character’s archetype and rank determine their base Ranged Damage. To that, add the ability they used in the attack.

### Size

Most characters are Average size. Some powers and traits can change that. List the character’s standard size here.

## BUILDING AN EXAMPLE CHARACTER

For this example, we’re going to build a brand-new character. You can skip over this for now if you like and come back later after you read the rest of the book, which explains each step in detail.

### Rank

First we talk with the Narrator and decide that we’re going to create a rank-5 character to fit well with the game and the rest of the team.

### Character Concept

We want to play a college student who attends Empire State University in Manhattan. Late one night, the character is studying at the New York Public Library’s main branch (the Schwarzman Building) when robbers break into the place, looking for a magic book. While hiding from the robbers, the character discovers that ancient book, and it magically transforms them into Young Lion, a defender of public knowledge.

We’re going to leave the other details like hair color, gender, and personality blank for now. If you like, you can fill them in on your own and make a version of Young Lion of your own.

### Archetype

We talk with the Narrator and decide that the team we’re going to play with could use a Striker, which is perfect for a hero like Young Lion.

That increases Young Lion’s ability score caps for Might and Agility. At rank 5, those caps rise to 6 each.

Looking at the Striker Rank Action Modifiers and Defense Scores table, we find Young Lion’s base numbers. The first number under each ability is their action modifier, and the second is their defense score. For instance, they currently have a Might action modifier of +6 and a Might defense score of 15.

### Ability Scores

Since Young Lion is rank 5, they have 18 ability score points to spread among the six abilities. Each is currently capped at a maximum of 4, with the exception of Might and Agility, which are capped at 6.

We put 5 points in Might and Agility, making Young Lion better in both abilities than an Olympic athlete. We spread the remaining points around, giving Young Lion 1 in Resilience and Ego, 2 in Vigilance, and 4 in Logic.

We then figure out Young Lion’s action modifiers and defense scores. To determine the action modifiers, we add Young Lion’s ability scores to the rank-5 striker action modifiers for each ability, as shown on the table below.

##### Ability Scores & Modifiers

In much the same way, we figure Young Lion’s defense scores by adding their ability scores to the rank-5 striker defense scores for each ability, as show on the following table.

##### Ability & Defense Scores

In the character profiles throughout this book, we’ve already done all this math for you. Those profiles only show the final numbers, like this.

### Backstory and Traits

Now it’s time to pick Young Lion’s origin and profession, along with any extra traits. Since the book they got their powers from is arcane in nature, we pick the Magic origin. That gives them the trait Supernatural.

For a profession, we pick Student. That gives them the traits Mentor, Quick Learner, and Obligation: School.

At rank 5, Young Lion gets to choose two extra traits. Looking over the list, we decide that Young Lion has a temper, so we choose Berserker.

We also decide that Young Lion is a terrible liar, so we choose Honest as their other extra trait. This trait doesn’t help them directly, but their player can use it to earn Karma for Young Lion whenever it affects them in the game.

In all, Young Lion has six traits: Berserker, Mentor, Obligation: School, Quick Learner, Honest, and Supernatural.

### Powers

Finally it’s time to pick Young Lion’s powers. As a 5th-rank character, they can have up to 5 powers from 2 power sets. Or we can decide to concentrate on a single power set and choose 6 powers from it.

We decide to start with the power set Blades, which represents Young Lion’s razor-sharp claws.

Blades increases Young Lion’s maximum Might and Agility scores by 6. That brings them up from their previous cap of 6 to a new cap of 12 each. It also gives them a set of claws, and they get to add either their Might or their Agility to their Fight Damage when using blades.

Since we didn’t pick the Extreme Appearance trait, the claws can be retractable.

We look through the powers and decide to pick the following Blades powers:

* Fast Slashes
* Slice and Dice
* Vicious Slash
* Whirling Frenzy

We also pick the following utility powers:

* Healing Factor
* Heightened Senses

Utility powers don’t count as a power set, so we only used the Blades power set. That means we can pick 6 powers in total, which we did.

### Other Scores

To wrap it all up, we calculate Young Lion’s other scores. These are the base numbers for a rank-5 Striker:

**Health:** Young Lion’s Resilience is 1. We multiply that by their rank (5) to get 5 and then add that to their archetype rank’s health (30) to get 35.

**Focus:** Young Lion’s Vigilance is 2. We multiply that by their rank (5) to get 10 and then add that to their archetype rank’s health (30) to get 40.

**Karma:** Half of Young Lion’s rank of 5, rounded up, is 3.

**Initiative Modifier:** Young Lion’s Agility (5) is higher than their Vigilance (1), so we use their Agility here. Their initiative modifier is +5.

**Speed:** The base speed is 25. Add Young Lion’s Agility (5) to that for a speed of 30.

**Fight Damage:** The base Fight Damage is 3d6+7. Fight attacks usually use Might for attacks, so add Young Lion’s Might (5) to the base Fight Damage to get 3d6+12.

**Ranged Damage:** The base Ranged Damage is 3d6. Ranged attacks usually use Agility for attacks, so add Young Lion’s Agility (5) to the base Ranged Damage to get 3d6+5.

**Size:** Since none of Young Lion’s traits or powers affected their size, they are Average.

## CHARACTER DATA

A character’s data includes all the details about their life that generally doesn’t affect how they work in the game but reveals personal details about themselves and their story. These can have even bigger impacts upon their development than their powers.

Remember that none of these details are carved in stone. That’s why you use a pencil to write them down—or why there’s a backspace key on your keyboard. Nothing about your character is permanent until you play that character in a game, and even then things can change.

Feel free to write down your first ideas for your character. If you get a better idea as you go along, you can always come back to this part and change the details so they fit the rest of the character like a glove—or maybe a mask.

### High Concept

When you start to create a character, it’s often easiest to start out with a high concept: a one-sentence description of the character that tells you what’s most special about them. This can focus on their personal history, the origin of their powers, the kinds of powers they have, or all of the above.

For instance, for Spider-Man (Peter Parker), the high concept might read like this:

*Orphaned and bullied high-school student Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider, giving him amazing strength, speed, and agility—as well as a danger sense—which he uses in pursuit of helping others out of a sense of great responsibility.*

That single sentence tells you much of what you need to know about Peter, and as you fill out the data section of the character sheet, you can flesh the details out from there.

### Codename

This is the name the character is known by publicly—assuming it’s different from their real name. If it’s not, you can skip this bit.

The codename usually says something about the character’s powers or their position in the world. Sometimes both. For instance, characters with the name Spider-Man are male and have spider-related powers.

However, it’s entirely up to you. Captain America’s name, for example, doesn’t say anything about his powers. It’s more about who he is to the world.

Sometimes a character’s codename is a thinly veiled play on their real name. Professor X, for instance, is not just a nickname for Professor Charles Xavier. The X also refers to the X-gene that all mutants carry.

### Real Name

This is the character’s given name—or at least the one they’re known to most people by. Names can be complicated things, often encapsulating details about the character’s ancestry and the things or people their parents valued.

If you like, you can write down alternate names here too. These might include married names, well-used aliases, and nicknames. Anything the character might answer to.

If the character has a secret identity, they usually keep this name private from those they encounter in their work as a super hero. They might share it with a few trusted friends and family, but the more people who know their secret the likelier it is that it won’t remain a secret for long.

Sometimes the character doesn’t even know their given name anymore, much like the original Wolverine didn’t for many years.

### Gender

This is entirely your call, as the character prefers to define it. Some characters with shape-shifting powers can actually change genders at will. In such cases, make a note of that, but put down here what their standard or preferred gender might be.

### Height

Put down whatever height you’d like here. A character does not need to tower over others to be a super hero. Just ask the famously short Wolverine (Logan).

If you want the character to be particularly tall or short, they might also need to have a trait or power that accounts for that. If you’re playing a young character, they might be naturally shorter than an adult, of course.

### Weight

Put down whatever weight you’d like here. Super heroes tend to be physically fit, but their weight can vary a lot due to powers and other traits.

In this game, a character’s size is determined by their weight. Average size ranges from 100–400 pounds. If the character is smaller or bigger than that, they should have a trait or power that accounts for the difference.

### Eyes

Put down the color of the character’s eyes here. If there’s anything unusual about them, describe it here as well.

### Hair

Describe the character’s hair. What color is it? Is it long or short? Straight, kinky, spiky, curly? Are they bald?

This can, of course, change throughout the game. Storm, for instance, is known for having worn her hair in many different ways.

### Skin

Describe the character’s skin. Is it dark or light? Rough or smooth?

Some alien races have very different skin colors from the standard human hues. Skrulls, for example, default to green skin, while Kree have skin that’s either white or blue.

### Distinguishing Features

Here’s where you write down anything out of the ordinary about the character’s physique. This includes things like scars, tattoos, and missing (or extra!) parts.

Each distinguishing feature is like a teaser for a story. How did they get that scar? What does that tattoo mean to them?

You don’t have to answer all those questions straightaway, but you should keep them in mind as you develop the character further.

### Occupation

What does the character do for a living? How do they spend their days?

Are they a student? Maybe they’re independently wealthy? Or a runaway? Or perhaps they sell their superhuman abilities to the highest bidder?

Many super heroes list their occupation as “adventurer.” This is a catch-all for people who spend most of their time wandering about and having adventures of different kinds.

You can list more than one occupation here, and it can change over time. For instance, Spider-Man (Peter Parker) has been a high-school student, college student, researcher, inventor, industrialist, photographer, journalist, and more.

### Teams

Is the character a member of any team or organization? Are they part of the Avengers? The Defenders? The Fantastic Four? The X-Men? S.H.I.E.L.D.? Maybe even an unwitting pawn of Hydra?

Note that some heroes are or have been members of many different teams, lots of which have rosters that change frequently.

You might want to ask your Narrator about this to see what sorts of possibilities might be open to you. With their permission, the character could be part of just about anything. The character could even be part of an all-new team that you and your fellow players concoct.

### Base

This is where the character hangs up their costume at the end of the day. In most cases, you can just list a city, but you can be as particular or general as you like. Maybe they don’t have a permanent place they call home, in which case you can list their base as “mobile.”

Many Marvel heroes reside in New York City, but a character can live anywhere you like—and can be from anywhere too. Some characters have multiple bases they can crash at on any given day. Others have homes they go back to only infrequently, sometimes on other planets or in other dimensions.

This information can, of course, change, often throughout play. If the character’s home is destroyed, they’re going to have to find a new one after all.

### History

This is a biography for the character, something that summarizes the story of their lives until the game begins. The amount of space on the sheet is enough for a good start, but if you need more, feel free to add a blank sheet and keep going.

Some people like to fill in as much about their history as possible, going generations back into their character’s ancestry. Others prefer to work with minimal details and make it up as they go. There’s no right way to handle this. Just do what you prefer.

If you like, you can add to this part of the character as you go, developing their history more and keeping track of what happens during their adventures. Or you can play it loose and trust to your memory.

A good history concentrates on details that are intriguing or could become important during play. Feel free to ignore everything else.

If you like, you can write this part up as if it was the inside cover of your favorite comic book. Give just enough detail about the character to catch everyone up and let them know where they are now.

### Personality

The character profiles feature this section as a means of giving the player hints on how to play the character. Are they gruff or kind? Or do they have an interesting accent or a particular attitude? These help players keep in tune with established characters that other players might already have extensive experience with.

When creating your own character, you can use this section for notes on how you expect the character to act. Remember that you can change things around to what you think works best. The words written here aren’t meant to restrict but to inspire.