Character 17 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge hails from the pages of Mutant: Year Zero, by Free League Publishing. Our character is Frazz, a Gearhead with a reptilian mutation that allows him to change color to blend in. Awfully handy when one is trying to avoid notice, whether in the Ark or outside in the Zone.

Frazz gets by mostly on his smarts, but he has a way with people that helps him to get what he needs to create new, handy contraptions. He’s driven to create new things that he can only imagine the Ancients would have had.

He does have a few close friends – as close as one can be when your life hangs by a delicate fiber remnant. Cheyenne goes out and gets him things while Nerilka records every one of his inventions. If anyone’s left alive in the future, he’ll live on in her pages. Pashti, on the other hand… can’t trust him as far as he can throw him, but everyone needs a fixer, and Pashti’s good at his job.

One of these days, once he’s invented some “safety” devices to keep him and his friends alive in the Zone, he’s going to find Eden. It must be out there. The Ancients were so powerful. Something of theirs must still be out there.

Waiting for him.

Mutant: Year Zero

This post-apocalyptic game uses the same chassis as Forbidden Lands, which I’ve already used for one of my character creations. That made this build much simpler.

Only four attributes, across which you can spread 14 points. You have another 10 points for skills, one of which is a role-based special skill. Your role also gives you a choice of one of three Talents, for which I picked Inventor for Frazz. Finally, as a gearhead, he’s also allowed to start with an Artifact, rolled from a random table.

The rule set uses all 6-sided dice. You can get custom dice that feature special icons in the 1 and 6 place to signify particularly bad or good outcomes, respectively. Not required to use those, however. I already have so many d6’s, I really don’t intend to buy anymore.

(maybe)

You also use different dice to represent different aspects of your check, such as your attribute score, skill score, and any gear bonuses. It is easiest to use different colored dice to make it easier to assign and track which roll falls into which category, since there are different rules across them.

All in all, a simple character creation process that makes it easy to spin something up quickly for a test run.

If you want to grab a copy yourself, you can get it from DriveThruRPG. The future survival of mankind’s remnants may depend on you.