Character Creation

Character sheet Drifter Record

This chapter builds a Void Drifters character in six steps. A starting character is a competent professional with a history, a skill set, and a reason to be on a crew. You will choose one of five species, one of eight backgrounds, and one of eight careers, then spend a starting budget of experience points (110 XP for humans; less for other species) on characteristics, skills, and talents.

Character Creation in 6 Steps

1. Choose Species — Select one of the five playable species and apply its package. Your species determines your biological starting point, any ability modifiers, and your starting XP budget.
2. Assign Starting Characteristics — All six characteristics begin at 2. Before spending XP, you may raise one characteristic by +1 and lower a different characteristic by -1. No characteristic may begin below 1 or above 4.
3. Choose Background and Career — Your Background reflects where you came from. Your Career reflects what you do on a crew. Together they determine your profession skills, which cost less to purchase.
4. Spend Starting XP — Spend your starting XP on characteristic increases, skill ranks, and talents.
5. Calculate Derived Values and Starting Gear — Fill in Resistance, Wound Points, Strain Points, Defense, Initiative, and equipment.
6. Name and Personal Details — Choose your character's name, appearance, age, motivation, and ties to the crew and the setting.

Step 1: Choose Species

Void Drifters has five playable species. Each species provides an ability package that shapes what your character does naturally well and what costs them. Non-human species packages are more mechanically distinct than the human baseline and start with reduced XP to offset those advantages.

Full species descriptions, lore, and cultural detail appear in Chapter Five. The packages below are the mechanical rules.

Human

Humans are the baseline generalist species of Void Drifters: adaptable, politically widespread, and impossible to reduce to one tradition. Infrastructure across known space was largely built around human body plans. That is an accident of history, not a sign of superiority, but it gives humans quiet advantages in emergencies.

Starting XP: 110

• Familiar Infrastructure: Human characters rarely need special accommodations for common civilian gear, standard ship stations, public seating, medical scanners, or pressure suits designed for the mass market.
• Cultural Adaptability: Once per session, when entering a port, institution, ship, or bureaucracy where humans are the majority, the character may add 1 Boon Die to one social, legal, or logistical check. They must be able to explain which shared custom, dialect, credential, or habit they are drawing on.

Play a human if you want broad cultural range and a character whose identity comes from history, profession, politics, or ideology rather than biology.

Ilyari

Ilyari are small, light-framed humanoids built for precision: long fingers, large dark eyes, strong pattern memory, and low caloric needs.

Starting XP: 95

• Analytical Memory: Add 1 Boon Die to checks made to recall technical details, compare records, reconstruct timelines, identify contradictions, or recognize a pattern previously observed.
• Fine Manipulation: Add 1 Boon Die to delicate repair, medical, forensic, or interface work where careful hands matter more than strength.
• Interface Discipline: Once per scene, when coordinating with a directive intelligence, expert system, archive, or ship computer within its intended purpose, remove 1 Bane Die from the check or add 1 Boon Die if no Bane Dice apply.
• Light Frame: Add 1 Bane Die to checks that rely primarily on raw lifting, resisting crushing force, absorbing blunt impact, or prolonged heavy labor without proper equipment.
• Fitted Gear: In poorly fitted heavy gear, armor, or pressure suits, add 1 Bane Die to prolonged physical checks.

Play an Ilyari if you want to be the analyst, navigator, doctor, systems architect, or investigator who sees the structure everyone else missed.

Ssarathi

Ssarathi are legless serpentine people: long muscular torsos, scaled skin, slit pupils, powerful tails, and two arms built for tool use. They move by controlled undulation and brace with their coils.

Starting XP: 100

• Coil Body: Add 1 Boon Die to climbing, balance, bracing, squeezing through suitable tight spaces, resisting being knocked prone, or holding a position with the tail.
• Constricting Strength: Add 1 Boon Die to grapples, restraints, and controlled holds when the Ssarathi can bring their full body into play.
• Thermal Sense: Add 1 Boon Die to Perception, Survival, medical triage, or tracking checks where heat traces, body warmth, active machinery, or temperature differences are meaningful.
• Unsuitable Terrain: Add 1 Bane Die to fast movement across abrasive, jagged, freezing, or poorly textured surfaces without appropriate gear.
• Adapted Stations: In vehicles, ships, armor, or workstations built only for legged humanoids, add 1 Bane Die to prolonged operation until the station is adapted or the character has specifically trained around the limitation.

Play a Ssarathi if you want physical distinctness, vertical movement, thermal awareness, and a character whose relationship to built environments is never assumed.

Felina

Felina are lean digitigrade bipeds: dense fur, retractable claws, forward-facing eyes, and heavy balancing tails. Their bodies are built for ambush timing, sudden movement, and low-light work.

Starting XP: 90

• Low-Light Eyes: Remove 1 Bane Die from Perception, navigation, or combat checks caused by dim light, shadowed interiors, or low-visibility exterior conditions.
• Predator Reflexes: Add 1 Boon Die to Readiness, Perception, or initiative-adjacent checks made to detect ambushes, track sudden movement, read stalking threats, or register imminent violence.
• Balanced Motion: Add 1 Boon Die to climbing, leaping, narrow footing, silent movement, or recovering from slips where tail balance and digitigrade stance matter.
• Burst Movement: Once per encounter, suffer 1 Strain to add 1 Boon Die to a movement, chase, or positioning check, or to justify a sudden repositioning Maneuver when the path is physically possible.
• High Metabolism: During food shortage, exhaustion, poor sleep, or extended deprivation, add 1 Bane Die to endurance, recovery, or patience checks until the need is addressed.

Play a Felina if you want speed, threat awareness, low-light competence, and the social complexity of being visibly dangerous without being automatically violent.

Dhoran

Dhoran are heavyworld humanoids: broad torsos, compact limbs, thick hands, short necks, and frames built for leverage, endurance, and sustained force.

Starting XP: 95

• Dense Frame: Add 1 Boon Die to lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, bracing, resisting forced movement, or holding a physical position under sustained effort.
• Impact Tolerance: Once per encounter, after Resistance is applied, reduce Wounds suffered from falling, collision, blunt impact, or forced movement by 1.
• Hard to Shift: Add 1 Boon Die to opposed checks made to resist being knocked prone, dragged, shoved, or physically displaced.
• Slow Acceleration: Add 1 Bane Die to checks requiring sudden acceleration, delicate footwork, tight-space agility, or quick changes of direction.
• Heavy Requirements: Dhoran suits, seats, ladders, beds, and support gear must be properly rated for their mass. Improvised or under-rated equipment may add 1 Bane Die to relevant checks or fail under stress at the GM's discretion.

Play a Dhoran if you want physical presence, durability, and the social friction of being treated as muscle when your character is something else entirely.

Step 2: Assign Starting Characteristics

All six core characteristics begin at 2, regardless of species.

Before spending XP, you may raise one characteristic by +1 and lower a different characteristic by -1. No characteristic may begin below 1 or above 4. Apply this adjustment before spending any XP.

Characteristics affect your dice pools, your derived values, and what you can accomplish without specialized training. They are harder to raise after play begins; spending XP on characteristics during character creation is almost always worth it.

Step 3: Choose Background and Career

Your Background reflects where you came from and how you were shaped before you joined a crew. Your Career reflects what you do now, the role you fill when the ship needs something done.

Together, your Background and Career define your profession skills: the skills that cost less to purchase during character creation and advancement. Any skill that appears on either list is a profession skill. Skills not on either list are out-of-profession skills and cost more.

Neither list grants free skill ranks by default. They only determine which skills are cheaper to buy.

Backgrounds

Coreworlder: Raised inside major power infrastructure: law offices, federal academies, religious institutions, industrial firms, or state bureaucracies. You know how authority operates from the inside.

Frontier-Born: Raised where central authority is thin and local survival matters more than paperwork. You learned to read terrain, people, and opportunity before you learned to trust institutions.

Shipborn: Raised in transit communities: crew families, convoy workers, migratory fleets, or station-to-station drifters. You grew up treating ships as home rather than transportation.

Military: Served in a power's armed forces, a planetary defense force, or a licensed mercenary company. You know discipline, formations, chain of command, and what it costs when those break down.

Academic: Trained in a university, research station, medical institute, technical archive, or specialized school. You think in systems and reference points.

Criminal: Made a living outside legal channels: smugglers, syndicate workers, black market brokers, grifters, or professional thieves. You understand how the informal economy moves.

Corporate: Employed by one of the interstellar corporations: logistics, private security, extraction, trade, or financial services. You learned to navigate complex organizations and protect your employer's interests, or your own.

Pilgrim: Raised in or shaped by a religious or traditional community: Jaziri faithful, route-shrine cults, ancestral coil-hall traditions, or secular pilgrimage networks. You carry the habits of a people with long memory and strong obligation.

Careers

Pilot: You put ships where they need to go. You read corridors, manage atmospheric entries, dock in tight berths, and keep the ship moving when everything else is on fire.

Engineer: You keep the ship alive. Repairs under fire, salvage integration, crisis bypasses, and the creative use of components that were never meant to go together.

Gunner: You operate ship-scale weapons, manage fire control systems, maintain munitions, and run point defense. Combat is a technical problem as much as a reflex one.

Medic: Field surgery, pharmaceutical improvisation, recovery management, and keeping the crew functional between jobs. You are the reason people survive things they should not.

Operator: Sensors, comms, electronic warfare, signals intelligence, countermeasures, and the ship's eye on the outside world. You know what is out there before anyone else does.

Face: Negotiation, diplomatic pressure, social intelligence, and the ability to turn a hostile room into a workable situation. The crew's voice in places where shooting is expensive.

Scout: Infiltration, reconnaissance, boarding actions, extraction, and moving through places undetected. You find things out before the crew commits.

Muscle: Combat, security, heavy lifting, and threat management. You are what stands between the crew and violence they were not ready for.

Step 4: Spend Starting XP

Spend your starting XP on characteristic increases, skill ranks, and talents. The XP budget depends on your species.

Unspent XP carries forward into play.

Characteristic XP Costs

Characteristics may only be increased with XP during character creation.

No characteristic may begin above 4 during character creation. After play begins, characteristics increase only through talents such as Growth or Greater Growth.

Example: Raising a characteristic from 2 to 4 costs 70 XP total: 30 XP to reach 3, then 40 XP to reach 4.

Skill Ranks

Skills are rated from 0 to 5. A skill at rank 0 may still be attempted; the dice pool uses the linked characteristic alone, with no upgrade from skill ranks. Untrained is not incapable.

During character creation, no skill may be purchased above rank 2. No starting character may begin with any skill at rank 4 or 5.

Profession Skill Costs

Out-of-Profession Skill Costs

Example: Buying a profession skill from rank 0 to rank 2 costs 15 XP total: 5 XP for rank 1, then 10 XP for rank 2.

Talents

Starting characters gain one free Tier 1 talent. This talent must meet any normal prerequisites.

During character creation, you may purchase additional Tier 1 and Tier 2 talents with XP. Talents are described in Chapter Eight.

Step 5: Calculate Derived Values

Resistance = half Might (rounded up) + armor or equipment bonus

Wound Points = 10 + Might

Strain Points = 10 + Willpower

Melee Defense and Ranged Defense both begin at 0 and increase through equipment and talents.

Initiative uses two checks. Record both on your character sheet:

• On Watch / Prepared — Savvy + Perception
• Surprised / Under Sudden Pressure — Willpower + Readiness

The GM declares which applies. On Watch applies when characters were watching for danger or had time to prepare. Surprised applies when a peaceful situation turns violent without warning.

Starting Gear

Every starting character begins with the following:

• Personal clothing appropriate to their background and species
• A personal communicator (short and medium range; standard encryption)
• Emergency rations for three days
• A profession kit containing tools appropriate to their career (see the Equipment Guide for full listings; assume you have the basics to do your job)
• 900 credits in accessible funds. Coreworlder and Corporate backgrounds begin with 1,800 credits; Frontier-Born and Pilgrim backgrounds begin with 400 credits; every other background uses the base figure.

Starting credits buy a pressure suit, a sidearm, and a week of modest living; they do not buy anything on the ship.

Species-specific gear needs (fitted suits, adapted stations, dietary supplies) are a practical concern from the first session. The Equipment Guide covers costs and availability. For session one, assume your character arrived with what they need to function.

Languages

Every starting character speaks and reads Standard: the common trade tongue of the Meridian Verge and most interstellar commerce. Standard is not a power's official language; it is the working language of ports, relay networks, and mixed crews.

Each of the five major powers maintains an official language used in formal institutions, religious observance, and state communications. Characters with Academic or Coreworlder backgrounds, or with a relevant Lore rank, may know one additional language. The GM may grant others based on background.

Step 6: Name and Personal Details

The mechanical character is built. This step makes the character a person.

Choose a name. Note an appearance: something that would be visible across a crowded docking bay. Write a brief motivation: one or two sentences about what the character wants, fears, or owes. Note any ties to other player characters, to factions, or to the setting.

The Void Drifters Skill List

Void Drifters uses 25 skills. Three skills have been added to the Exodus NDS core list and one has been renamed to better fit the genre. The full list and skill boundaries are in Chapter Seven. This reference table is for character creation.

Combat Skills

Physical Skills

Awareness and Field Skills

Knowledge and Technical Skills

Social Skills

Operation Skills

Post-Creation Advancement

After each session, the GM awards XP (typically 10–25 XP). Skills and talents purchase with the same cost tables. Characteristics may only increase through the Growth or Greater Growth talents.

Worked Example: Davan Kel

Davan Kel is a human engineer. He grew up on a shipyard station (Background: Shipborn) and spent years doing field repairs for a corporate logistics firm before the company downsized its fringe operations and left him holding a debt he did not incur (Career: Engineer).

Species: Human. Starting XP: 110.

Characteristics: Davan starts with all characteristics at 2. He applies the free adjustment: Intellect rises to 3, Charisma drops to 1. His starting characteristics:

Profession Skills: Shipborn gives Pilot, Craft, Perception, Streetwise. Engineer gives Craft, Science, Electronics, Athletics, Fortitude. Combined profession skills: Pilot, Craft, Perception, Streetwise, Science, Electronics, Athletics, Fortitude.

Free Talent: Davan takes Tinkerer (Tier 1), letting him attempt improvised repairs with scavenged components without the normal difficulty increase.

XP Spending:

Davan carries 20 XP forward.

Derived Values:

Initiative checks: On Watch: Savvy 2 + Perception 0. Surprised: Willpower 2 + Readiness 0.

Starting Gear: Standard kit, profession kit (engineering tools, diagnostic scanner, spare components), 900 credits, and the ghost of a corporate work order that someone important wants him not to talk about.

Personal Details: Davan is a broad-shouldered human in his early forties with grease-stained hands and the permanent squint of someone who spent years staring into engine bays under bad lighting. He works because the alternative is owing people he cannot pay. He is not particularly warm, but he is reliable, and on a ship in the Meridian Verge, reliable is close enough to loyalty.