okay, so I'm really enjoying the card game. Like, a super lot. Being the (fairly) creative person that I am, I decided to try my hand at converting one of my pathfinder society characters into the game. (A little background on the character: He's a monster hunting Barbarian/Ranger/Fighter/Horizon Walker who initially believed that anything with a tail was a monster. but I digress)
That being said, I'll work my way through the design process so you guys can see what I was thinking when I put it together. looking at the guidelines in the rulebook, it states that I have to have/meet the following things (on page 19, in the rules sidebar):
*15 cards on her Card List
*no more than 1 d4 and 1 d12 in her skills
*no more than 5 skill bonuses
*should have 15 skill feat checkboxes
*10 card feat checkboxes
*4 power feat checkboxes on her character card
*12 on her role card
After looking at these guidelines, and thinking about the character (Kargoth), I'll start with the Skills section:
Strength d10 (□+1) (□+2) (□+3)
Strength: Melee +3
Dexterity d6 (□+1 (□+2) (□+3)
Constitution d10 (□+1) (□+2) (□+3)
Intelligence d4 (□+1 (□+2)
Intelligence: Knowledge +2
Wisdom d6 (□+1) (□+2)
Charisma d6 (□+1) (□+2)
statistic wise, he is about as strong as he is tough, so I thought that having the d10 in both strength and constitution was appropriate. I chose Intelligence as his low stat mainly due to the fact that he's not very educated, (I briefly considered, then discarded, charisma, as he is fairly likeable in that "interesting guy you talk to at a bar" sort of way).
A note about skills: as he is a primary melee combatant, I thought that melee 3 was appropriate. I gave his Knowledge as his secondary skill due to the fact that he has committed multiple resources into knowledge skills for creature identification purposes (2 feats and a trait at level 7).
now on to the hard part to quantify: Powers. Here is what I have for him:
Hand Size 4 Favored Card Type: Weapon
Weapons ■
You gain +1d8 to checks against a bane with the Aberration (□ or Dragon) Trait.
When you receive combat (□or any) damage, you may reduce it by 1 (□2).
You may move at the end of your turn (□and/or move another character to the location where you end your turn).
I know that initially, these seem rather strong, but bear with me. I started him off with a hand size of 4 mainly because that is what all of the melee characters start with (amiri, valeros, and sajan). As I only had 4 power feat check boxes to work with, I felt that having no had size increase would: A) be different from every other character, and B) help control damage intake, which increases survivability.
As with hand size, I chose to limit proficiencies to just weapons for a couple of reasons: A) it fits with the idea for the character that I have in my head, and B) it's a balancing factor for the abilities below. Speaking of:
As I contemplated converting Kargoth, I realized that I really wanted him to have different powers than Amiri, even though they both share the same class (both are mostly barbarian, but I am diverging from barbarian to be more well-rounded). At the same time, however, I wanted him to have some part of the barbarian list of abilities: ultimately, I chose to take fast movement, which is represented by the move power that Amiri has, and which I copied that whole cloth.
Instead of Rage, however, I thought it was more thematically appropriate to the character to have an ability similar to Kyra (and Lini's role card): the ability to add damage vs. a specific type of creature. Finally, as Kargoth has taken an archetype in the RPG that allows him to have damage reduction earlier, I thought that he should have something the represent that in the game, which gelled handily with my mental picture of the character.
Now to his card list:
Weapon 4 (□5) (□6) (□7) (□8)
Spell X
Armor X (□1)
Item 4 (□5) (□6)
Ally 4 (□5) (□6)
Blessing 3 (□4)
Thoughts on this: Weapons were easy, as they are is bread and butter. knowing the total deck size he's supposed to have, as well as weapon being his favored card type, made 4 a decent amt. in my mind. No spells makes tons of sense for the character as he dislikes and is superstitious of magic in general, and arcane magic specifically.
Initially, I had toyed with the idea of not allowing him armor at all, but after looking at things, I realized that I should allow someone else playing him to have the ability to grab the odd piece of armor/shield. Items and allies were fairly straight forward, and blessings make sense in that he is (as I mentioned previously) not that trusting of magic.
Well, that's my thought processes on trying to build a character. If I had an idea of the total lists of skills and creature types, I would probably refine him a bit more to make him more in line with his RPG version, but I feel pretty good about having made him close enough. My only concern is that he might not have a ton of options for additional exploration (as this is me just building him off the top of my head, I haven't had the chance to actually sit down and play him yet). I would, of course, welcome constructive ideas that people think I might be missing or haven't thought of yet.