Guild of San Marcos Forum

So I grabbed the character creator spreadsheet Mark sent me, and I've been working on it. The original author didn't have much experience in coding in Excel, but he did the heavy lifting of entering all the data. For that I am very grateful.

I'm naming it SeaForge7 in honor of HeroForge, the document that performed the same task for AD&D 3.5, and from which I am shamelessly stealing. "HeroForge" would have been more appropriate for 7th Sea, but that would have just been confusing and 7thSeaForge doesn't have the right ring to it. So thanks to Ramzy for a name that both evokes 7th Sea and flows off the tongue.

Anyway, I'm going to have a lot of rules questions as I work on the thing, since I am still a novice at the game, so I'm starting this thread to get some answers.

First up: The Merchant skill.
The Character Handbook lists a number of knacks to choose from when selecting the merchant skill, all of which have been included in the original document. However, the PG doesn't contain any list that I can find. It only says "you must choose a knack with which you make your living, such as Cooking or Veterinarian." Some of the Nations of Théah books specify new knacks to add to this list, but a basic list is nowhere to be seen. Does such a list exist? I have to assume it does or the addition of new knacks by the expansion books would be kind of pointless. I have no problem with simply using the list from the handbook, but I would prefer knowing its origin first.

Also, there appears to be no limit to the number of times you can select the Merchant skill, but how many is times practical? I'm thinking three at the moment, but I'd like to draw on the experience of those in the community here. How many times can I expect a player to want to take the Merchant skill?

edit: I realized that my last question makes the assumption that you have to purchase the Merchant skill multiple times as opposed to simply buying more knacks. Is that right? Do you have to pay 2HP for the Merchant skill every time you want another knack in it? Or do you just purchase the extra knack?

at character creation, its 2hp for the merchant skill with one knack at 2, and then one HP for each additional knack in it after that, at one dot each

A) THANKS FOR TAKING THIS TASK ON. B) the merchant knack only need be purchased once and then the player may buy additional knacks within it. The odd ruling is that it starts with one knack at rank 2 instead of multiple knacks at rank 1. I would venture most players going merchant heavy would get by with 6 basic knack slots in the skill. As for a full list, the actual knack differ depending on if you want a core book list, a complete list, or an approved for Heroes of Altamira list. The player's guide gives you the core list. The crystal keep download at their site would be complete. If you want one specific to the campaign, Mark can shoot you the updated version of the crystal keep list when he gets back from Origins. Outside of that, I am happy to answer stat and build questions but not excel questions (that is wasted on my luddite mind)

What Sal means is that Mark can get back to you all once he gets back from GEN CON. I know, its not as awesome as Origins, so that's where your luddite mind slipped Sal, lol, but lets not confuse the posters, lol.

I agree completely with Dave's assessment Bob. And I promise when I have some time I will look it over and/or do a phone confab to answer any questions.

Thanks for the clarification on point two. And the fact that its just more knacks, not another skill to list makes the number a player may choose not as important. So thanks.

However, I'm still lost on point one. I'm not worried about which knacks to include. I'll be including them all and the list will be filtered by the users selection of what source books they are using, with the additional perk of a "campaign type" that will let you choose Heroes of Altamira to automatically select the correct sources. Believe it or not, that's the easy stuff.

I'm just confused as to exactly where the author of the Character Handbook found the set of Merchant knacks that didn't come from the expansions books. For instance, Apothecary, Baker and Brewer are added by Nation of Théah, Book 8 - Vendel, Vesten. But Barber, Blacksmith, and Butcher are not from any expansion book, nor can I find them in the core books. Where did he get them?

Basically, every item has a source. Using that source, I can do things like filter lists by the sources the user has selected as I remarked above. But if an item has no source, that can make things messy. I am happy enough to simply say the source for these mysterious Merchant knacks is the Character Handbook and leave it at that. I just want to know that I'm not missing something.

The Merchant Basic knacks are listed on page 113 of the Player's Guide.

Thanks. That's what I was looking for. These books remind me of AD&D 1st ed. Everything is there, but you need to know where to look.

Excel crashed on me. I didn't review the auto-saved files before dropping them (I just selected the most recent one) and it turns out I've lost a month's worth of work. It'll be awhile before I'm back to where I was before the crash. I'd like to blame Microsoft for this, but it's all my own fault.

BLAMM! wrote:Excel crashed on me. I didn't review the auto-saved files before dropping them (I just selected the most recent one) and it turns out I've lost a month's worth of work. It'll be awhile before I'm back to where I was before the crash. I'd like to blame Microsoft for this, but it's all my own fault.

Ouch... I feel your pain. Can't tell you the number of adventures I've had to re-write

Found a backup. I only lost today's work. So much better. There was some seriously tedious stuff that I didn't want to have to do again.

OK, I'm back. I put this thing aside for awhile, but the bug has caught me again. Time for a new question.

Nations. The Character Handbook has a nice listing of them. The original spreadsheet also has a nice listing of them. They don't match.

Cathay, Crescent Empire, and Midnight Archipelago. These are listed in the Handbook in the table of Nations, but I get the feeling they aren't nations, so much as they are areas of the world, just as Théah is to the original nations. Are they, or are they not actual nations?

Bryn Bresail: Also listed in the Handbook, but was not in the spread sheet. Can someone point me at a source for this?

BOB! Welcome back!

For most purposes Cathay, Crescent Empire, and Midnight Archipelago are nations from the "I want a character from XXX nation" standpoint. A more accurate description might be, demarcated areas of Theah that have a book designated just to describe them.

But remember, for the purposes of Heroes of Altamira, you don't need any of that stuff (as we won't be using any of it)

The Bryn Bresail stuff all comes from The Sidhe Book of Nightmares (again another crapfest we will not be using save for the extra Glamor Magic knacks)

I guess what I really need to know is if those three need to be in the player's list of selections for nationality.

And I know these aren't needed for HoA, but this tool will be a general purpose 7th Sea character generator. No sense in going half way.

Yes, they would need to be.

Just a little update (not necessarily about SeaForge7) but character generator related. Thistledown over on the AEG forums updated his character generator for our campaign. Haven't had a chance to check it out yet but thought I should give you all a look-see.

http://guardiansof.mrrr.net/thistledown/7th%20sea/7th%20sea%20chargen%203-29-12%20-%20altamira.xls