Once you have selected the race of your character, the next step is to decide his Background. A character’s specific Background can influence the character’s personality and outlook, among other things. More importantly, the Background also tells you the sort of skills that he learned as a child.
This childhood and adolescent development is represented by the Background giving the character free ranks in a number of skills. Each Background lists the skills along with the number of free ranks in parenthesis after the skill’s name.
If the free ranks are given in a skill that needs to be specialized, and the Background does not list the actual specialization, then you, the player, must place those ranks into individual, specialized versions of the listed skill. However, no individual skill is allowed to have more than 3 ranks placed into it in this manner.
Example: A given Background is allowed to give 3 ranks to the Stealth skill because that skill is specialized. However, if a Background gives 4 ranks in Combat Skills, then the player may only place a maximum of 3 ranks in one Combat Skill, and the remaining rank in a second Combat Skill, or split the 4 ranks evenly between 2 skills, or any other viable combination.
Once you have chosen a Background for your character, you should record the number of skill ranks you received in the BG column of the Skills section of the Character Sheet.
Anwyn
