To create a character, you compose the career using templates. There are no ready-made character classes or profiles, instead the character is constructed freely.
A Phase Six character always has a lineage. For all humans (and thus for most adventures), this is the "human" lineage, but there may also be elves, dwarves, androids, or robots in other settings.
The ancestry determines the starting values of the following aspects of the character:
The values in parentheses indicate a human's starting values.
With the career points, templates can be composed during character creation, which make up the career and thus all the values of the character.
At the beginning of a Phase Six campaign or adventure, the game master determines the era in which the adventure is set. Phase Six has several earthly eras to choose from:
In addition to the templates, the eras also define the equipment that characters can obtain. Medieval, Viking and Crusades can thus naturally be used for a fantasy setting that is not set on Earth.
In addition, there are freely selectable expansions, which can be chosen for a scenario or an adventure by the game master. These add special rules, items and templates to the game. The special expansions are:
A template is a specific station in the character's life. Each template is assigned to one of Education, Occupation, Talent, Interests, Character or Environment.
A special template is the lineage template. It is given by the chosen lineage and does not cost any career points. A human thus always receives the "Human" template, which gives the character a bonus die and a reroll.
Each template changes a small number of the character's traits and skills for the better or worse, and can bring knowledge or shadow. In addition, templates can contain their own rules, which the character then adopts. The template Blood Magic from the Magic expansion, for example, also brings the rule to use wounds instead of arcana for casting spells.
One template can also depend on another, for example, the template Military Academy requires the occupation Soldier.
Each template is worth a certain number of career points. This is the number of points that must be spent to adopt the template into your own career.
To create a character, you choose templates from the chosen era and any expansions until there are no more career points left, or you are satisfied with the character. These templates can be composed arbitrarily from all categories. So you can also choose several occupations, these are in the character's career all the occupations he once practiced, or even still practicing in parallel.
The attributes, skills, shadows and knowledge of the templates are added together and added to the starting value of the ancestry in the character sheet. In this process, all values can also become negative (see "Throws and checks").
If you are satisfied with the composition of the templates, you can simply declare the character finished. If there are any development points left and not spent, they will be added to the character's reputation (see Advancement). So no points are lost.