Character Overview
Attributes
Attributes represent who your character is on a fundamental level. It is represented by three categories: physical attributes (

Body Attributes
Strength – Raw muscular power and physical prowess. Strength is composed of pure Body. Strength affects how much physical damage you can inflict, how many items you can carry, and affects the Athletics and Fighting skills.
Agility – Ability to nimbly flex and move the body quickly. Agility is composed of the Mind interacting with the Body. Agility affects your Reflexes resistance as well as the Athletics, Parry, and Subterfuge skills.
Endurance – Ability to push one’s physical limitations and endure. Endurance is composed of the Spirit interacting with the Body. Endurance affects how many items you can carry, your maximum Stamina, your Resilience resistance, and the Block and Survival skills.
Mind Attributes
Coordination – Ability for manual dexterity and precise timing. Coordination is composed of the Body interacting with the Mind. Coordination affects the Fighting, Block, Parry, Crafting, Perform, and Shooting skills.
Intelligence – Ability for learning, reasoning, and understanding. Intelligence is composed of pure Mind. Intelligence affects how much mental damage you can inflict, and affects the Craft, Lore, Persuade, Investigate, Medicine, Subterfuge, and Survival skills.
Willpower – Ability to maintain focus despite pain, stress, or fear. Willpower is composed of the Spirit interacting with the Mind. Willpower affects your maximum Focus, both the Resilience and Resolve resistances, and the Awe skill.
Spirit Attributes
Charisma – Personal magnetism, charm, and the ability to influence others. Charisma is composed of the Body interacting with the Spirit. Charisma affects how much spiritual damage you can inflict, and affects the Awe, Deceive, Inspire, Perform, and Persuade skills.
Perception – Ability for intuition, recognition, and insight. Perception is composed of the Mind interacting with the Spirit. Perception affects the Reflexes resistance, and affects the Deceive, Investigate, and Shooting skills.
Empathy – Ability to connect, understand, and communicate with others. Empathy is composed of pure Spirit. Empathy affects your maximum Courage, the Resolve resistance, and affects the Inspire and Medicine skills.
A character’s attributes represent who they are on a fundamental level. It is what they will have to work with during their adventuring career. Any further improvements to a character are done by increasing their Skills, Resistances, and Reserves. These are discussed later in this chapter.
Rank | |
4 | Bad |
5 | |
6 | Poor |
7 | |
8 | Average |
9 | |
10 | Good |
11 | |
12 | Great |
Each Attribute has a Rank which ranges from 4 to 12. It is a measure of a character’s capacity for that ability. Rank 8 is an average value for a typical human.
For example, a character with a Rank of 6 in Strength would be considered physically weak. A character with Rank 10 would be considered to be quite strong. With a Rank of 12, a character would be considered one of the strongest people in the town.
During gameplay, most actions will be resolved by making a Test using a Skill (discussed below). However, sometimes it is appropriate to make a Test using an Attribute if there is no Skill Action or Skill that best represents what a character is attempting to accomplish. If the action a character is attempting is based purely on a character’s natural talent without regard for experience, then an Attribute Test may be appropriate. For instance, if your character is in an arm-wrestling match, the GM might have you roll an Opposed Test using Strength to determine who wins the contest.
Skills
Skills are how characters typically interact with the world. From investigating a murder to swinging a sword, there is a Skill associated with most actions in the game. Each character has a Rank for each Skill in the game. This is a measure of how capable a character is with the activities associated with that Skill. A Skill Rank is a combination of a character’s natural talent, represented by their Attributes, combined with any experience and training the character has accumulated. Each Skill has two attributes that are related to it.
Skill Ranks are calculated by taking the lowest of the two associated Attributes and then adding their
Skill Rank = (lowest of the associated Attributes) + Training Rank
For example, if your character had a Strength of 10 and an Agility of 8, your character would add 8 to their Training Rank to calculate their Skill Rank in Athletics. In this case, the character is quite strong, but has only average swiftness. It is their swiftness that is limiting their athletic ability. However, the limitations of your character’s natural ability can be overcome by training and experience, represented by Training Ranks.

Each character varies in their level of training and experience in a Skill. These are represented by a
Training Rank | Descriptor |
0 | Untrained |
1 | Novice |
2 | Trained |
3 | Proficient |
4 | Expert |
5 | Adept |
6 | Master |
7 | Grand Master |
8 | Legendary |
Resistances
A
, Perception
) – A measure of a character’s ability to react to sudden events. Reflexes tests are often used to dodge physical damage and for avoiding area of effect events, like a cave-in, trap, or explosion. A character’s Reflexes rank is also added to their combat initiative roll.
, Willpower
) – A measure of a character’s ability to resist physical harm. Resilience tests are used for resisting poisons, diseases, and even death. Resilience also determines how easily a character can recover their stamina and energy.
, Willpower
) – A measure of a character’s ability to overcome stress and hardship. Resolve tests are used for resisting mental and spiritual damage as well as recovering concentration and hope.
Reserves
) – Measure of a character’s physical energy and vitality. Stamina determines how much physical damage a character can withstand before being wounded or injured. Stamina is also used as a currency for special
) – Measure of a character’s mental energy and attention. Focus determines how much mental damage a character can tolerate before losing their concentration. Focus is also used as a currency for special
) – Measure of a character’s spiritual fortitude and the ability to push themselves and their allies forward through hardship. Courage determines how much spiritual damage a character can endure before they begin to lose hope. Courage is also used as a currency for special
Creating Characters
Now that we have discussed the components of a character in World Saga, let’s go through the process of making your own character. As discussed in the previous chapter, it might be helpful to talk to your GM before going through this process. Knowing about the setting and the type of adventures you are playing will have a large impact on the type of character you may want to create.
Session Zero. Before everyone jumps into the process of creating a character, it’s helpful for all the players and the GM to talk about the details of the game’s setting and style. Many groups get together and have a “session zero”, where they create characters together as a group with the GM. They all go over how those characters fit into the world and the game’s setting, and how those characters might be connected or know each other in the game world.
Examples. Throughout this section you will find examples demonstrating each step as a fictional player named Olive creates her character for an upcoming game.
Olive has already talked to her GM and she knows their group will be playing an adventure on the high seas during the Age of Sail. She decides she wants to play a daring swashbuckler with a dashing smile and quick reflexes.
Ancestry
In most games of World Saga, a character’s ancestry is assumed to be human. However, some fantasy games have elves, dwarves, and goblins as playable characters. In a science fiction setting, there might be alien species in the game world that your character can belong. In World Saga, there is no specific distinction between various ancestries. The process of creating your character is the same, regardless of the biological and cultural origins of your character. It is up to the player if they want to alter the Attributes of their character to fit within ancestral expectations. Characters that choose to break these expectations are often quite interesting as well.
If your character does belong to a specific ancestry that is important to your game’s setting, talk with your GM about any special traits or abilities they might have that might affect what that character can do. The GM might allow for some of these abilities to grant mechanical benefits in specific situations. For example, in a fantasy setting, the GM might rule that elves and dwarves are able to see in dim light, and characters of those ancestries can reduce the illumination penalties for attacks in dimly lit environments.
Since Olive’s game is set in Earth during the time of sailing ships and pirates, Olive writes down that her character is an everyday Human.

Attributes
The first step to creating a new character, is choosing the character’s Attributes. When creating a new character, all nine Attributes are first set to a Rank of 4. You may then distribute 36 points to your character’s Attributes, increasing the associated Rank on a one-for-one basis. However, the total number of points may vary depending on the type of game you and your GM decided to play.
- For standard gameplay, players will have 36 Attribute points to spend.
- For a dark and deadly game, players will have 32 Attribute points to spend.
- For high fantasy gameplay, players will have 40 Attribute points to spend.
Players are encouraged to give their characters strengths and flaws by adjusting their attributes accordingly. Lower Attributes add depth and interest to your character. Few people are perfectly average at everything.

Olive’s GM informed the players that they would use the standard 36 Attribute points to create their characters. Olive sets all of her character’s Attributes to 8 (distributing the 36 points evenly between the nine scores). She then decides that her character should be quite agile and charismatic, to fit with her vision of a dashing and agile swashbuckler. So, she increases her character’s Agility and Charisma to 10 each. To compensate for these increases, Olive decides to decrease her character’s Willpower and Perception each to 6. She decides that her character has little tolerance for pain and his inflated ego often keeps him from paying attention to his surroundings. She then lowers his Strength to 7 and increases his Intelligence to 9, since she imagines him as somewhat thin and lithe with a slightly sharper wit.
Background
Who is your character? Where did they come from? A character’s Background is a story of how they came to be where they are now. During their life so far, they might have picked up a few skills and knowledge along the way. There are two ways to create your character’s background: the Custom Path and the Backstory Path.
Custom Path. You might have a specific vision and story for your character’s background. If that is the case, then you can skip this section and add 20 XP for developing your character in the next section.
Backstory Path. If you are uncertain about your character’s Background, the following tables can help you generate their background randomly. Roll the indicated die on each table below, for each stage of life for your character, and look at the description for that result. These descriptions are starting points for creating an explanation and story surrounding the inflection points of your character’s story. Envision the circumstances of that result and elaborate on it.
After elaborating on the story around each life event, make note of the benefits listed, as you will be adding these to your character’s statistics as free Training Ranks for the listed Skill, Resistance, or Reserve. Feel free to choose an option on the table instead of rolling if it better fits the emerging vision of your character as you generate their story. However, try not to focus on the listed benefits of a given option. If you want to build your character strictly based on mechanical benefits, use the Custom Path option instead.
Olive goes through the Life Path option for her character’s background. She writes down all of her results from the tables in her notes and makes a list of all the benefits as well. She formulates a story for her character based on the results from the Life Path. She decides her character was born to a poor and struggling family (+1 Courage) and spent his youth running around the streets of a port city (+1 Reflexes). He started running around with a bad crowd and began to rely on lies and deception (+2 Deceive, +1 Perform). Running around the streets kept him fit and agile (+1 Athletics, +1 Block). He then began performing comedy and simple magic tricks in the street to distract townsfolk as his criminal friends would pick their pockets (+2 Perform, +2 Lore (Culture), +1 Athletics). He eventually longed for the sea, to prove to himself that he could be a capable sailor (+1 Stamina).
Olive writes down all of these free training ranks on her character sheet.

Development
The next stage of character creation is to decide on your character’s training and experience since becoming an adventurer. This is done by spending XP on whatever Skills, Reserves, and Resistances you like. Each character receives 20 XP to spend on immediate Advancement (see the following section). If you took the Custom Path for your Background, then you will have an additional 20 XP to spend. If you took the Life Path for your Background, that XP is incorporated into the benefits you received at each Life Path stage. Unlike normal Advancement, characters can increase their Training Ranks by more than 1 rank at a time during the development stage of character creation.
The number of XP received for development might vary depending on the type of game your GM is running. 20 XP is the typically amount for a standard novice adventurer. If you are playing as a regular person, a true neophyte, you might not receive any XP for development. On the other hand, if you are playing as a veteran adventurer, you might receive 40 XP. Talk with your GM to see how much XP you will receive for the development stage of character creation.
- Neophyte – 0 XP – Unskilled regular people.
- Novice – 20 XP (Standard) – Novice adventurers.
- Veteran – 40 XP – Seasoned adventurers.
Some players may want to adjust their Attributes as they begin to see how their character’s Attributes affect their Skills.
Olive now gets to spend 20 XP to further develop her character. She wants her character to be a decent swordfighter, so she increases his Fighting to Rank 3, costing 6 XP; and she increases his Parry to Rank 2, costing 3 XP. To improve her character’s social skills, Olive adds 1 Rank each to Inspire and Persuade, costing 2 XP total. To round out her character’s skills, Olive increases his Investigate and Survival each to Rank 2, costing 6 XP total. With her last 3 XP, she increases his Athletics to Rank 3.
Olive then fills in the attributes section of each Skill and Resistance, adding her Training Ranks and her lowest attribute to calculate her final Rank for each Skill and Resistance.

Starting Gear
Every new adventurer begins play with some basic camping gear and survival supplies. This includes a backpack, a bedroll, a blanket, a waterskin, and a fire kit for lighting fires. They also begin with 5 dry rations and a coil of rope. Players can also spend any remaining coins on other basic supplies.
Starting Coin: Each new character starts with 100 silver pieces to purchase any additional starting gear. Characters typically purchase at least one weapon, and perhaps a set of armor or a shield. There are also many useful items in the Gear section.
Olive wants her swashbuckler to wield a Rapier, so she adds that to her character sheet and deducts 20 sp from her starting coin. Olive adds the Rapier’s item bonus to her Parry rank. She then adds the Rapier’s statistics to the Weapons section of her character sheet.

Olive then picks out a Padded armor for her character, deciding that he wears a puffy doublet with quilted padding. She adds the armor’s information to her character sheet’s Armaments section.

She also outfits him with a Buckler to help him with his Parry skill. She adds the information to the Armaments section of her character sheet. Since a Buckler adds a situation bonus to Parry rolls, Olive makes an extra note on her character sheet and updates her Parry skill again.

Derived Statistics
After filling in the derived statistics, you can fill in every Skill, Resistance, and Tolerance by adding the appropriate bonuses and penalties for the final Rank.
Olive fills in her character’s Hardiness Rank. She notes that her character’s low Willpower makes his Hardiness a bit low. But she is glad his armor helps a little.

Olive fills in her character’s Speed. She is glad that her character is quite fast, it should help him run from trouble.

Olive then fills in each of her Reserves. She is regretting her character’s low Willpower as she sees the effect on his Focus. But she accepts this flaw as part of the challenge and is at least reassured by his strong Courage.

Finishing Touches
Now that the statistics of your character are complete, be sure to fill in their final details. Give them a name, a physical description, and perhaps even a short description of their personality and mannerisms. What are their strengths and their weaknesses? How are they connected to the larger community and world? These types of details can really help a character come to life. You can work with your GM to help fill in the details about your character’s place in the world. Also, talk to your fellow players and see who their characters are. Do your characters know each other and to what capacity? Or is the meeting of these characters going to be part of the opening scene?
Olive names her swashbuckler, Talidor Raven. She writes down a physical description, describing his tall and lithe appearance and flowing dark hair. Olive and her GM decide together that Talidor has spent a couple years as a sailor and has recently found a better crew position on a new merchant vessel. The vessel’s maiden voyage will be how they begin their story during their first session of gameplay.
Olive’s character sheet is all filled out and she is eager to play.
Advancement
After your character has gone on an adventure or two, they might take some time during Sojourn mode to go through
To increase a Skill, it costs a number of XP equal to the new desired Rank of the Skill. For instance, if your Training Rank in Healing was 3 (Proficient) and you wanted to increase it to 4 (Expert), it would cost you 4 XP to increase it.
It costs twice as much XP to increase a Reserve or Resistance. The following tables can be used to quickly discern how much XP is required to increase your Training Ranks. The Total column lists the total amount of XP required for the desired rank (starting from Rank 0) and can be quite useful for the development phase of character creation.

Normally, during an Advancement, you can only increase the Training Rank for any Skill, Resistance or Reserve by one Rank. The exception to this rule is during the development stage of character creation. The GM might also allow increasing by more than one Rank if your game is using the optional training rules and your character is spending a particularly long time working with a trainer or mentor.