Auditing Character Sheets: Not As Easy As It Sounds

Because the character creation process in A Time of War is such a math-intensive activity, and its easy to end up double-counting costs or bonuses, I set up a spreadsheet to audit my players. I based it on the principle of double-entry accounting, which I was already familiar with from other parts of my life. That was a mistake, and wildly overcomplicated, and I want to take a moment to touch on what I did wrong and how I'm doing it correctly now to prevent others from falling into this particular trap.

My issue was I presumed that the cost of a Life Path was equal to the number of XP it gave out. I spot checked the major affiliations we were using and a few Life Paths in Stages 1-4, and that seemed to be correct. The major glitch was Fields -- a Field adds six points per skill to the player's XP pool when they take it, so it is critical that you add those points to the player's XP budget when you audit them.

The second tripping point is the optimization, and accounting for the points that drop off of skills, traits, and attributes and get returned to the XP pool. You need to be very careful how to handle these points. They've already been counted in the budget by the original XP allocation and the field discounts. There are two ways to handle these points, but I found by far the easiest way is to just add them back into the available XP pool, which doesn't change the XP budget by double-adding and double-subtracting them at audit-time (although you'll need to do that during character creation.)

To properly calculate a character's Total XP Pool, you need to know two pieces of information:

1) How old that character is (represented as Age below.)

2) How many skills were in fields that characters has taken (represented as Fieldskills below.)

The total XP pool, and therefore budget, of a character is:

XP Pool = 5000 + (100 * (Age - 21)) + (6 * Fieldskills)

Unless that character is Clan, in which case:

XP Pool = 5000 + (100 * (Age - 18)) + (6 * Fieldskills)

NOTE: This is the XP Pool before Aging XP is applied (from the Aging Table on AToW p. 333.) If the character has already applied the Aging effects before you audit the sheet, add the appropriate XP modifier to their XP Pool.

Now, you have the character's true XP budget. Simply add up all the XP applied to all traits, skills, and attributes, and make sure the value equals the budget. Remember that in A Time of War, characters are not allowed to bank XP, or carry it in an abstract pool, so every XP must be accounted for somewhere in the skills, traits, or attributes of the player, even if that places one of those values between levels.

To help the auditing process, you can also have your players report the following values during their character creation process that allows you to make sure they're still on track. This helps immensely if you're managing a half-dozen players simultaneously creating characters at the same table at the same time:

At character concept, have them give an age. This might not stick, but it gives them an initial pool to work with, and as long as they land near it, it shouldn't be an issue. It also gives them some idea of how many life paths they have time for. Their starting XP Pool should be 5000 + (100 * (Age-21)) (Non-Clan) or 5000 + (100 * (Age-18)) (Clan).

Next, have them check in at the end of Stage 3. This is where they should have taken all the fields they're going to take. Get them to count up all the skills that were affected by fields (remember if the same skill is found in two different fields, it counts twice!), and add six times that number to their XP pool.

When they've finished all Life Paths and come to the Optimization step of character creation, have them report the combined cost of their life paths and the number of fall-off points that they've been rebated. This is important, because those points are getting credited back to the XP pool, along with all the other left over points, to be spent on changing skills, traits, and attributes. Note that this is when the Fast Learner and Slow Learner traits make optimization math complicated, but that's a whole different blog entry.

If you subtract the cost of all their life paths (including the field costs) from the budget you had at the end of Stage 3, the add back the number of points rebated by Optimization, you get the total number of discretionary points the player has to work with. If they make sure that they subtract from this pool all their elective skills, traits, and attributes, then when they are done, they should have zero points left, and the character should pass audit.

When you're done, you just need to get from each player the list of skills, traits, and attributes with their associated age and how many times each skill was included in a field, and simply make sure the XP Available equals the XP Spent. If so, the character is good to go.

Assuming the attributes are in the legal range, and the vehicle choices are valid for the character's affiliation and traits, the Enemies and Connected traits are lined up, Wealth has been spent or entered onto the sheet, Extra Income has a source that's reasonable, and a laundry list of other things, but I'm already up to 947 words...