One of my long-standing headaches with Twilight: 2000 v2.2 is the life path character creation system. While it does help build the character biography, I more often find it constraining when I have a concept that doesn’t fit neatly within the limited number of boxes it offers. The random elements also tend to generate parties with widely-varying levels of competence, which means some PCs are more capable than others of making meaningful contributions to party success – both in and out of combat.
My solution to this, which has been kicking around my core rpol.net play-by-post group for several years now, is a point-buy system. Mathematically, this works out to roughly what you’d get out of a well-optimized four- to five-term life path PC with good rolls. This has gone through a few different iterations; this is, I think, the one with which I’m happiest.
Attributes
Distribute 36 points across the six attributes. Maximum value for each is 10, minimum value is 1.
Skills
You have 160 XP with which to purchase skills. Maximum value for each skill is 10. XP cost is as follows:
| Skill Value | XP Cost |
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 10 |
| 5 | 15 |
| 6 | 21 |
| 7 | 28 |
| 8 | 36 |
| 9 | 45 |
| 10 | 55 |
You get your native Language skill at 10 for free. You can buy a second native Language skill at 10 for a flat price of 10 XP. Non-native Language skills cost half (rounded down) if the tongue is in the same linguistic family as one of your native Languages.
The Medical, Ground Vehicle, Pilot, and Small Arms skills are cascade skills. At character creation, your highest sub-skill in each cascade is your primary sub-skill. You get free points in each other sub-skill equal to half your primary, rounded down. For example, if you buy Small Arms (Rifle) 7, you get Small Arms (Pistol) 3 for free. You can spend additional XP to raise your secondary sub-skills above these default values.
(During play, skill improvement follows the existing rules in the Big Yellow Book.)
Contacts
For each contact, choose a general category (your choice, but should make sense within the framework of your character history):
You get a number of contacts equal to the higher of your Charisma or Education.
- Academic
- Blue-Collar
- Criminal
- Entertainment
- Government
- Intelligence
- Journalist
- Law Enforcement
- Military
- White-Collar
Then roll 1d10. 1-7 indicates that the contact is of the same nationality as you. 8-9 indicates an allied nationality (e.g., if you’re from a NATO nation, the contact is from any other NATO nation). 10 indicates a neutral or opposed nationality (e.g., if you’re from a NATO nation, the contact is from a non-NATO nation).
At the beginning of play, these are potential contacts. Once per session, you can make a potential contact into an actual contact by generating a plausible reason to encounter that individual in the current scene. You then name that contact and provide a few key details on your relationship and that individual’s capabilities. For example, if you’re in a marketplace and are about to be in a confrontation with a group of Polish cavalrymen, you might activate a foreign white-collar contact. Suddenly, you recognize one of the cavalry troopers as Aleksandr Bukowski, a hard-drinking exchange student and lousy poet with whom you attended medical school in London.
Initiative
Select an Initiative value appropriate to your character history. Generally, draftees and conscripts who didn’t experience personal violence before the war should be around a 2. Career support arms troops will be around a 3, with career combat arms soldiers being at a 4. Operators from elite units will likely be around 5.
Rads
Roll percentile (1d100) and multiply by your Initiative. The result is your starting cumulative radiation dosage.
Rank
Assign a rank that makes sense for your character’s history. Generally speaking, this will only be important as a story element.
Equipment
This varies by campaign, but I generally hew to the Twilight: 2013 rule of starting with personal equipment of total weight equal to or less than what you can carry. This is a hard limit of ([STR + CON] x 6), but recall that if you’re carrying more than your standard load – ([STR + CON] x 3), you are burdened.
Vehicles and Team Equipment
Strict referee fiat applies here. You get what the story requires.