Pros & Cons of a Mid-Campaign Character Rebuild

Drawing the sword from the stone... again.

We’ve all been there: you build a character with dreams of glory waiving your sword around and slaying dragons, gathering hordes of treasure. Then you realize the entire party is made up of tanks and strikers, and you’re in constant battle with incorporeal creatures who are immune to Armor damage. Luckily the RISE system allows you a few opportunities to alter your destiny mid-campaign, albeit with a few pros and cons.

Scenario 1 – Adapter Class: "Never too late to shift course!"

When creating your character, if you happened to choose the “Adapter” Class, you have the ability built into your character to “Re-Train” one point each level. This means that the point you invested into the “Sailing” competency can be retrained into “Riding” if you find yourself land locked, and 10 hard days’ ride from the closest body of water. The coolest part about this option is the role-playing implications. Advancing a level shows the progression of time and the real-world experiences you’ve gained while adventuring. Retraining an “Adapter” character is a practical example of how a person who has been away from the sea for a time and has been forced to travel by horseback may become better at the latter than the former. The downside is the potential for your GM to decide you’ve gotten too familiar with the land, so he tosses you into a 3-month journey across the sea, and you find yourself woefully unequipped to handle the rigors of the ocean.

Scenario 2 – Reputation Point Investment: “I’m not who you think I am!”

In the RISE system, if you’ve done something extremely noteworthy, such as slaying a dragon, or saving a member of the royal family from certain doom, you may gain a Reputation Point, demonstrating your fame and glory among the peoples of your world. There are many ways to spend your reputation, one of which is to choose a complete and total character makeover. You begin at the very beginning, re-investing your Foundation Score points into base Attributes, as well as choosing a new Class, Focus, Themes and Features. It truly is building a new character. This can allow you a once-in-a-lifetime chance to tailor a character that fits like a glove within your party makeup, and is ideally suited to the challenges you expect to face later in the adventure. However, your character will lose some of his/her former self in this process. Roleplaying may be difficult if you’ve spent a lot of time getting familiar with your character, then finding that everything works just a bit different than it did before.

Scenario 3 – Achieve Master-level Actor Competency: "And the Curtain Rises!"

Once you’ve invested 8 points into any Competency, you are considered a “Master”, which comes with considerable advantages for each Competency. Once you’ve reached this level in “Actor” you are considered the most skilled of the trade, able to perfectly impersonate a character, to such a level that you actually become the character. Reaching this level allows you to create a brand-new character from the ground up, equal to the current level of your character, and each day you may choose which character you will be for the day. So your 88-year-old Wisdom-based Wizard may become an Agility-focused, 23-year-old Rogue-Ranger with little to no arcane abilities at all, but able to shoot the tail off a mouse from 100 feet away. This option provides the greatest benefit and flexibility of any of the scenarios, but will likely take the longest to reach, and requires considerable investment from your character, who has likely spent the majority of their lives to this point focused on the art of acting, and will be less skilled in other areas because of it.

So you can see, there are many ways to reshape your character and experience within your game, but it you should carefully consider all of the implications of a mid-campaign rebuild and confirm that it is the right option for you and the party as a whole before going down that path. You can be certain that your GM will make sure your decisions have consequences, both favorable and challenging.