Character Foundations

This document defines the first-pass structure of a player character for the Resonance Cosmos TTRPG.

Characters in this setting should feel shaped by more than combat role alone. A useful character frame needs to carry bodily capability, social standing, training, metaphysical risk, local knowledge, obligations, and the way a person is recognized by the world around them.

The first draft therefore favors a layered character model instead of a class-only or attribute-based model. Later versions may still introduce archetypes or vocation packages, but the baseline should begin from identity, history, practiced capability, and specific Talents rather than from rigid fantasy job labels.

Each player character should currently be built from five major pillars.

This structure keeps the setting visible during character creation. A character is not a bundle of attributes. They are a person from somewhere, recognized by some communities, mistrusted by others, and marked by what they have learned or survived.

The current draft assumes no attributes and no universal trait ratings. Character capability is expressed through Talents, tags, permissions, and fiction-facing character facts.

Talents are the primary mechanical identity pieces. A Talent should define when it helps build a dice pool, what fictional permissions it grants, and what extra effects it can create on high matches. Talents may represent training, species gifts, social authority, ritual practice, survival discipline, magical reach, institutional standing, mythic traits, or hard-earned personal methods. The first-pass Talent structure is defined in Talents.

Permissions answer whether a character is allowed to attempt something cleanly in the fiction. They may come from rank, oath, office, species capacity, local recognition, ritual sanction, lawful access, tools, or hard-won trust. A character can be capable but still lack the permission needed to act without extra pressure.

Tags are short descriptors that shape interpretation. They can mark , social role, species features, threat qualities, magical contamination, terrain familiarity, or other traits that matter without becoming ratings.

This structure keeps character difference specific. Two characters may both be persuasive, but a treaty witness, a caravan negotiator, a returning heir, and a shrine advocate should gain dice and high-match effects from different fictional authorities.

The first draft should treat species, background, and training as separate sources of character identity.

Species should provide bodily tendencies, inherited constraints, and culture-adjacent hooks without forcing every member of a people into one personality or profession. In rules terms, species should provide access to a small set of Species Talents rather than a universal package that makes all members identical.

Background should locate the character in the world. A person from the Confluence Marches, the Ironspine Holds, the Floodkeeper Houses, or the Returning Concord should enter play with different assumptions, contacts, and legitimacy patterns. Background should provide Background Talents tied to regional custom, law, routes, obligations, institutions, or local survival.

Training should answer what the character does well under pressure. Early examples might include escort, witness, speaker, record-keeper, delver, scout, warder, ritualist, navigator, or forge-worker. Training is likely to provide starting Talents rather than an abstract rating.

This three-part split lets the game support strong setting flavor without trapping players in one-to-one identity packages. A starting character should normally have Talents from all three sources: at least one Species Talent, at least one Background Talent, and at least one Training Talent. Mythic Trait Talents should remain rare exceptions tied to the setting’s Mythic Traits and Demigods framework.

Characters should also carry a small number of sharper hooks that push play outward.

Conditions are active states that affect what the character can safely do. They may represent injury, exhaustion, fear, social exposure, contamination, oath pressure, resonance burn, lifeforce drain, public disgrace, pursuit, or isolation. Conditions can remove dice, restrict permissions, create vulnerability, or shape the consequences available in a scene. The first-pass structure is defined in Conditions.

Burdens are meaningful liabilities such as debt, oath-duty, public suspicion, injury history, unstable magical exposure, dependent kin obligations, or unresolved faction entanglement. The first-pass structure is defined in Burdens and Bonds.

Bonds tie the character to people, institutions, lineages, shrines, settlements, patrols, houses, or returning routes. These are important because the setting becomes much more playable when relationships create both aid and demand. The first-pass structure is defined in Burdens and Bonds.

Together these elements help the characters feel like they already belong to the world before the first session starts.

Lifeforce should have a visible rules role without becoming simple mana.

Some magic, harm, healing, necromantic pressure, sacrificial work, and metaphysical contact can threaten or draw on lifeforce. The first pass should treat lifeforce as an intimate reserve tied to vitality, continuity, and metaphysical exposure. Spending or damaging it should create risk, Conditions, obligations, or lasting traces rather than merely reducing a point total.

Later rules should define how lifeforce strain appears at the table, but the foundation is clear: lifeforce is not a generic spell fuel. It is a dangerous part of the self and the living pattern.

Advancement should increase breadth, depth, and authority more than it increases raw numeric scale.

Characters should gradually gain stronger Talents, wider access, hardened resilience, deeper legitimacy with specific communities or institutions, and more dangerous reach. Advancement is primarily handled through Talent Points spent to learn new Talents or improve existing ones.

This direction also keeps room for later campaign play in which advancement can involve earned titles, ritual permissions, sanctuary access, charter rights, faction trust, or dangerous magical reach rather than only larger damage numbers.