# Day 02: The Burning Wheel - Lord Eberhardt Krell, Grim-Faced Scholar-Necromancer
tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/
> [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]]
>
> ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]]
## Game of Choice
I know I set the rules, but damn, there are times I'm tempted to break them. The next thing in the collection dates from the years of old, mainly because Humble Bundle just put it out in a collected set, and I didn't have all the PDFs. It's *[[the Burning Wheel]]*, and if you know anything about the game, you'll know why I don't really want to go through character generation. This is a game that loves its mechanical crunch, and character generation itself is considered a form of play. That means this will not be quick, and it will not be easy. Life is hard.
![[the Burning Wheel (cover).jpg|300]]
## Acts of Creation
Creating a character is known as "burning."
In the original release of the game, the *Character Burner* was an entirely separate book. Since then, it's been combined into a single 600-page text.
So you know this is going to be a good time.
There's an entire worksheet for creating a character in the character burner, so you know this is going to be a good time.
### Concept
All right. One of the things that absolutely has to be decided up front, and which is normally done by the GM, is figuring out what kind of world this is. Low fantasy (which *The Burning Wheel* actually tends toward), high fantasy, etc. In this case, I'm going to go effectively kitchen sink low fantasy, the default setting, which is your usual D&D adjacent low fantasy world. There are wizards; they aren't popular or common. There are elves, orcs, dwarves, etc.
I'm going to try and go for a mage build, though the process of character creation may not cooperate. In fact, I'm going to try to go for a necromancy mage build just to make it that much more complicated. Good luck to me. Character burning tends to end up in places you never intended in the first place.
**Character Concept:** Grim-faced middle-aged necromancer
### Choose Lifepaths
#### Lifepath Limit
Unlike a lot of character design systems in *The Burning Wheel*, character development is done by choosing life paths, each of which essentially helps you set your stats, your skills, and leads one to another. This actually doesn't suck. A good life path system can give you a feeling of character history, and that provides a lot of hooks for you to understand what your character wants, why they can't have it, and what they're going to do about it. The number of lifepaths that you can take during character generation essentially helps set their level of experience and their age. Obviously, this concept is not a starting level character, but I don't want to make him a really potent and experienced character. I want something a little more out of the starting weeds, but not fully established.
We're going to go with a lifepath limit of five.
Our character is a veteran in the sense that he has experience of the world and is skilled in his field.
#### Character Stock
This is a particularly fancy way of saying, "What fantasy race do you want your character to be?"
On the table are dwarf, elf, orc, and human.
We're going to go hardcore into not being all that exciting because there's room enough for excitement elsewhere. So we're going to be a human necromancer, theoretically.
#### Pick 'Em
All right, put a pin in the book at page 85 because we're going to be coming back here once we go through our lifepaths.
Time to figure out where in the book these things start.
For the human lifepaths, that goes up to 163. Now I'm going to look ahead in the text and see what prerequisites any kind of magery requires, because we're going to have to work our way there.
So, time for a little tinkering.
Nothing in the peasant or villager life paths looks like it picks up the sorcery skill, so that's not going to work. Kind of annoying that you can't really start as a villager or peasant with a little bit of sorcery, though I suppose you could start as a peasant and move to a village and then on out to the city and then get training. Worth taking note of.
While looking through the possible life paths of the outcast subsetting, I see that being a cripple, a leper, a prostitute, and a whoremonger are all possibilities.
So it's worth putting those in the back of my head. Those could come in handy sometime, but not for our current purposes, I don't think.
There are life paths for *Mad Summoner*, *Rogue Wizard*, *Crazy Witch*, and *Heretic Priest* in the outcast section.
This bodes well.
I kind of like the idea of being a mad summoner. It largely fits with fun things in my mind.
So, working backwards from that, it requires being one of either a cultist, an augur, a neophyte sorcerer, or an arcane devotee.
All those are awesome.
Being an Arcane Devotee is part of the Noble setting, which does lead to some interesting implications.
I wasn't originally thinking about the character being noble-born, but let's be honest, that makes a lot of sense considering where we're going with this.
I think I might have some ideas.
| Lifepath | Time | Lead | Res | Stat | Skill | Gen | Trait |
| ------------------ | ---: | --------------------------------- | --- | ------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Noble Born | 8yr | Any | 15 | | 5pts: General | | 1pt: Mark of Privilege, Your Lordship, Your Eminence, Your Grace |
| Arcane Devotee | 6yr | City Dweller, Court, Outcast | 10 | +1 M | 6pts: Calligraphy, Write, Read, Research, Symbology | | 2pts: Base Humility, Gifted |
| LEAD: Court | 1yr | | | | | | |
| Torturer | 5yr | Outcast, Servitude, Soldier | 10 | +1 M | 5pt: Interrogation, Torture, Anatomy, Torture Devices-wise | | 1pt: Unsavory Madman |
| LEAD: Outcast | 1yr | | | | | | |
| Mad Summoner | 8yr | Pesasant, City Dweller, Seafaring | 20 | +1 M/P | 6pt: Summoning, Enchanting, Demonology, Empyrealia | | 2pts: Mad, Fear of Cheese, Fear of Wet Noises, Alarming |
| LEAD: City Dweller | 1yr | | | | | | |
| Scholar | 10yr | Villager, Outcast, Noble Court | 15 | +1 M | 11pts: Read, Research, History, Philosophy, Symbology, Intruction, Illuminations, Foreign Languages, Ancient Languages | | 1pt: Know It All, Bookworm |
That definitely went places I wasn't necessarily expecting when I started. But we have five lifepaths, and we have a really interesting character. He was born to a noble family, though not a particularly high-ranking one, and not the first son—most likely the third. And as such, went into the study of magic thanks to contacts among the nobility. It didn't take him long to work his way up and into the court, but not as a court sorcerer, but instead making use of his particular affinity for anatomy and the suffering of others. After all, while torture isn't necessarily the most respected position in court, it's certainly one of the most feared. Unfortunately, that doesn't often lead to some of the best opportunities. And when you have that many people to experiment on and an inclination to the sorceress, you probably dabble in some things which others would look down on even given your noble lineage, and he was kicked out of the capital into the wasteland to do what he wanted to do the whole time: pursue his research in demonology and cosmology, while there is access to resources available by summoning and binding your own demonic forces.
Sometimes you just want to hang out with other people. And so he moved back into a city near the capital, changed by his experiences, masquerading as a learned scholar with a background he doesn't talk about much and access to forbidden knowledge beyond the pale of mortal man. Sometimes he gives a little bit of a giggle and a weird smile, but the man has seen some shit.
### Age
8 + 6 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 8 + 1 + 10 = 40.
While I didn't exactly plan it, that works out pretty well. I can't complain. A 40-year-old sorcerer in town with a truly horrific background and a tendency to get himself in trouble. Not the usual adventurer, but damn if he's not intriguing.
### Stats
The stats in *Burning Wheel* look like they'll be simple and straightforward, but things get fiddly fairly quickly. Still, not as bad as it could be.
We have to start by looking at the age chart and cross-referencing the age of our character to get their beginning stat pools.
- **Mental:** 7
- **Physical:** 13
No longer at the height of our physical prowess, but our mind is still sharp compared to my knowledge of biology and lived experience. That checks out.
Now we have to add up how many points we get from life path choices, and that's thankfully quite easy.
We get to choose either for Mad Summoner, so I'm going with an all Mental build here. +4 Mental for a total of 11.
#### Life of the Mind
Now we get to split mental into two pools: Perception and Will. They represent exactly what you expect them to.
There is also another notation on this being the "shade" of the stat, which basically just determines what you have to roll in order for the die to be considered a success. The shades are named black, gray, and white in increasing level of ability, but they really should have simply been named Mortal, Heroic, and Supernatural, because that would have been clear and comprehensible.
Needless to say, we don't have any over-the-top stats here. This is a guy who has spent his life in the world of the mind and the abstract. He also is a little bit cracked as a result of his researches.
Let's go with:
- **Perception:** B4
- **Will:** B7
Now, are those ratings good? That's a damn fine question.
For whatever reason, *Burning Wheel* uses the term exponent to describe the number of points in or level of a trait, and there is a table for figuring out how that maps to some level of absolute understanding back on page 12 in that context.
Our character's will at exponent four is competent, and everyday stuff doesn't pose a challenge. Quite normal perception. However, his will at B7 is beyond near mastery. It is excellence. Exponent eight would be total mastery and complete understanding.
So, in terms of willpower, he's pretty indomitable. Makes sense if you go nose-to-nose with the undead and demonic on a regular basis. And make them serve your twisted desires. I feel pretty good about that.
#### Life of the Flesh
Now we have to divide those 13 physical points into four different pools: Agility, Speed, Power, and Forte.
We can dump them however we like, as long as we abide by any common trait restrictions from our character race. Basically, we probably don't want to go lower than 3 or higher than 6 on any of the physical limits.
Our ex-torturer, ex-mad summoner isn't going to be particularly good at anything. If we divide 13 points equally, we essentially get three points in everything, which is not particularly great anywhere.
We'll put the extra point into Speed just so we have the possibility of getting a shot off early, even if it's not particularly physically oriented. Snap spellcraft might be our thing.
- **Agility:** B3
- **Speed:** B4
- **Power:** B3
- **Forte:** B3
There's no way that we can really afford to increase the shade on any of this, so we're not going to.
### Skills
Now we come to one of the parts of crunchy game design that I hate the most, and that is assigning big piles of points to skills which are of varying and complicated diversity. Seriously, I hate it so much. Skill systems are the devil, but here we go.
First, total up the General skill points from lifepaths.
- **General Skills:** 5
Now, the total Skill Points earned from all of the Lifepaths except General points.
- **Skill Points:** 28
And this is where things start getting complicated, because remember all those skills that were on each of the lifepaths? Right. Those generate a master skill list of things that we can spend lifepath skill points on. But there are certain limitations. For instance, we absolutely have to spend at least one point on the first skill in each lifepath to open it up. If you already have that skill from another previous lifepath, you absolutely have to spend one point on the next skill in the list to open it up, and so on.
This actually wouldn't be too bad for a low-level classic starting character, because you're going to have a general pool for your birth path, and then a relatively small handful of skills from subsequent ones. But that's not our situation. This is what I get for being ambitious. You must be punished for wanting to achieve more.
By the way, just so you're clear, when we open a skill, the exponent starts at half of the root stat associated with that skill, rounded down. If it has two roots, half the average of the root stats, rounded down. Some of the skills are considered special and thus require two points to open in the first place. They should be marked in the lifepath as such, and since none of ours appear to be, even though some of the magic skills appear to be quite amusingly weird, that's not a problem. Unless I start looking at the description of the skills and they tell me differently, which, as you know, could happen at any moment.
Let's get that skill list on the table.
| Skill |
| -------------------- |
| Anatomy |
| Ancient Languages |
| Calligraphy* |
| Demonology |
| Empyrealia |
| Enchanting |
| Foreign Languages |
| History |
| Illumination |
| Instruction |
| Interrogration* |
| Philosophy |
| Read* |
| Research |
| Summoning* |
| Symbology |
| Torture |
| Torture Devices-wise |
| Write |
That's a pretty hefty list of things to choose from. I marked the ones that we absolutely have to open with asterisks.
Page 88 says that training skills cost two points to open and are not advanced because they have no exponent ratings. What's a training skill? No bloody idea. They haven't actually mentioned it in the book or in any of the Life Path entries either, at least for the human ones I've been flipping through.
But here we are on page 88, about to start digging through and throwing values onto the table. As a side note, we haven't even touched general skill points, but essentially you can use those to open and advance any skill your GM lets you.
Okay, let's start getting some numbers on that table. Just assume they're all black shade because there's no way we're going to pay to upgrade any of those to gray shade.
As I'm going along through the skill list and working out what the root values are, I see that all of the useful educational skills are not actually rooted in Will, but in Perception, which is absolutely the wrong way around from my expectation. In fact, the only skill on this list which is leveraging Will at all as a sole root is Interrogation. This is kind of irritating because it means that after having opened something on the order of 14 skills, I'm seriously considering reassigning Perception and Will to bring up my averages and actually get some higher base skills. Not a lot because of the way that root values are calculated, but at a certain point every little bit helps.
Though, looking at the numbers, I'm cutting my Perception in half and rounding down on a regular basis, so even upping it to 5 wouldn't make much of a difference. I'd still be rounding 2.5 down to 2.
It would have to go up to at least 6 and drop Will down to 5 to make any kind of difference at all, and that would just be one point. Is it worth it at this point to do that? Probably not.
This is one of the drawbacks of creating characters blind without knowing several hundred pages of how bits of the skill system, stat system, and calculations all work together at the same time to express how likely you are to succeed or fail at any given test.
Welcome to my January.
I'm not going to change my stats at this point, but I did want to express to you my frustration in going through this as it is. One of the reasons I really hate complicated skill systems.
So what does it look like after I've slapped a whole bunch of points around? A lot like this.
| Skill | Root | Advances | Final Exponent |
| -------------------- | ---: | -------: | -------------: |
| Calligraphy* | 1 | | 1 |
| Write | 1 | | 1 |
| Interrogration* | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Torture | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Anatomy | 2 | | 2 |
| Torture Devices-wise | | | |
| Summoning* | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Enchanting | | | |
| Demonology | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Empyrealia | 2 | | 2 |
| Read* | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Research | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| History | 2 | | 2 |
| Philosophy | 2 | | 2 |
| Symbology | 2 | | 2 |
| Instruction | | | |
| Illumination | | | |
| Foreign Languages | 2 | | 2 |
| Ancient Languages | 2 | | 2 |
Despite the fact that it looked like I had a whole bunch of points to drop into skills, remember, 4 is day-to-day competency.
It's extremely difficult to get things up to where you can probably be doing it on a regular basis and succeeding, especially when your base stat is itself just competent. That halving is brutal.
Essentially, what we have here is a character who was quite good at torturing and interrogating people, can get by with reading and writing, does a fair amount of research fairly well, and is really quite good at summoning, and a tolerable demonologist, as you would expect from a mad summoner.
Now I have five more points to drop into things, thanks to general skills. So let me figure that out.
| Skill | Root | Advances | Gen Pts | Final Exp |
| -------------------- | ---: | -------: | ------: | --------: |
| Calligraphy* | 1 | | | 1 |
| Write | 1 | | | 1 |
| Interrogration* | 3 | 1 | | 4 |
| Torture | 2 | 2 | | 4 |
| Anatomy | 2 | | | 2 |
| Torture Devices-wise | | | | |
| Summoning* | 2 | 4 | | 6 |
| Enchanting | | | | |
| Demonology | 2 | 2 | | 4 |
| Empyrealia | 2 | | | 2 |
| Read* | 2 | 3 | | 5 |
| Research | 2 | 1 | | 3 |
| History | 2 | | | 2 |
| Philosophy | 2 | | | 2 |
| Symbology | 2 | | | 2 |
| Instruction | | | | |
| Illumination | | | | |
| Foreign Languages | 2 | | | 2 |
| Ancient Languages | 2 | | | 2 |
| *Knives* | 1 | | 2 | 3 |
| *Meditation* | 3 | | 1 | 4 |
Five points really doesn't go a long way.
You can see the skills I spent them on at the end in italics because I figured this guy needed some way to defend himself, and knives seemed a perfectly reasonable approach for a mad summoner. Stabbing, whether it be in the front or the back, looked like the way to go.
Likewise, meditation seemed like a good call. Sorcerers can use it instead of sleep, which seems like a good plan if you have demons bound to your service. Plus, it's one of the few skills which is solely rooted in will, and dammit, I really wanted at least one more.
If nothing else, this has reminded me why I really hate skill systems, because all of this little fiddly point accounting is a right pain in my ass for very little gain.
It's also worth noting that the text is very clear that if you don't have a skill, you can't even try it.
Now, that's nowhere near how I would run things, but that's what the text says.
### Traits
Oh, you thought we were anywhere near done? Sweet summer child, we have an entirely additional column from the life path selections, and that's traits.
Basically, these are additional things that you can spend points on, which allow you to customize elements of your character, like skills. The first one on a given life path is required and on down the line.
Luckily, life path traits only cost one trait point to purchase, no matter what their actual cost is in the overall list. If we have points left at the end, we can spend them on special traits or on the general trait list.
Okay, time to make the list of traits we can choose from. This is going to feel familiar.
| Trait |
| ------------------ |
| Mark of Privilege* |
| Your Lordship |
| Your Eminance |
| Your Grace |
| Base Humility* |
| Gifted |
| Unsavory Madman* |
| Mad* |
| Fear of Cheese |
| Fear of Wet Noises |
| Alarming |
| Know It All* |
| Bookworm |
**Trait Points:** 7
All right, that could have been much worse. Time to do some point assignment. Along the way, I'm going to check to see if traits actually have multiple ranks rather than just being activated or not, because the section in the character burner on page 89 is unclear on that point.
All right, here we are out in the world of traits on page 310 and ongoing. While I'm flipping through these things, I see that they seem to be either chosen or not chosen. We don't care about how much they cost to open up after character burning because everything is just one point for us. Perfect. I'm fine with that. However, I noticed something both in the skill list and here in the trait list, and that's not all of the things listed have any sort of discussion, description, or real detail. And while there are some of them which are obvious (like Abnormally Long Tongue), some of them really could probably use some extra detail, like Amenable to Other Options or Alarming. Alarming is a one-point character trait with no description. And literally on the facing page, Aura of Malevolence is a six-point die trait with a pretty extensive description regarding how it gives you a +2D presence when intimidating or interrogating.
What I'm telling you is it's kind of a mess, right?
Anyway, back to the assignments.
I'm stepping back over here for a moment because it's worth noting that of the four traits that we absolutely have to take, only Mark of Privilege has any sort of description.
Basically, it means that it's harder for us to pretend to be anything but someone descended from nobility.
Base Humility? Unsavory Madman? Mad? Know-It-All? Do you know what those things actually mean in terms of the game mechanics? Not a bloody clue.
One assumes from the general philosophy of the rest of the game that they have no mechanical impact because it's all pretty clear when it does.
What does Base Humility actually mean? I have no idea. But somehow, just by being trained as an acolyte, you have it.
| Trait | |
| ------------------ | --- |
| Mark of Privilege* | - |
| Your Lordship | - |
| Your Eminance | |
| Your Grace | |
| Base Humility* | - |
| Gifted | - |
| Unsavory Madman* | - |
| Mad* | - |
| Fear of Cheese | |
| Fear of Wet Noises | |
| Alarming | |
| Know It All* | - |
| Bookworm | |
All right, what we have here is a very strange set of traits. The ones that I put points into have a mark next to them.
I absolutely had to get gifted because that's what allows us to work magic, and without it we couldn't really be a mad summoner. Luckily, that's not a problem.
The one that might come as a little bit of a surprise is *Your Lordship*.
Why did I take that one, you might ask? It amuses me to imagine this character as one who is literally a recognized member of a lower house, official court torturer, trained as an acolyte, went out in exile and went a little mad in the pursuit of diabolic control, and then came back, still recognizable as a noble lord and set up in the city as a scholar.
Come on, you've got to admit, that's pretty badass. Also, he knows how to stab people.
### Attributes
You didn't think we were done, did you? I didn't either. That would be ridiculous.
Now we have to figure out our derived attributes. Of course, there are derived attributes. There certainly aren't enough numbers floating around already, right?
As usual here, just assume everything is blackshade because there's no way we can afford to upgrade anything.
#### Mortal Wound
First thing up, *Mortal Wound*, which is how you stay alive. (Power + Forte) / 2, rounded down, + 6.
Yeah, that's not going to be our strong suit here.
- **Mortal Wound:** 9
#### Reflexes
Given that reflexes is calculated as the average of Perception, Agility, and Speed, rounded down, you would think what it's used for would be right here in the character burner, telling you why it's important. Yet that's not the case.
- **Reflexes:** 3
#### Health
Now, you would think that a character's Health, calculated as the average of Will and Forte, would be fairly obvious, right? What's it do? When is it tested? You can't figure that out from the character burner. You have to read the whole book to work that out. However, there are a list of questions that actually mechanically modify your Health.
As an example, does the character live in squalor and filth? If so, subtract one. Have they been tortured and enslaved? If so, subtract one. Is the character athletic and active? Add one.
Our character doesn't live in squalor or filth. He would consider that far beneath him. He's not frail or sickly. He's never been severely wounded—definitely never tortured or enslaved—because he does that to others, not receives that kind of treatment. He's not a dwarf, elf, or orc. He's not particularly active or athletic, being a mad summoner at heart and all. He doesn't live in a particularly clean or happy place because he's a necromantic bad-ass motherfucker. And who among those ever live in a clean or happy place? So none of these really apply.
- **Health:** 5
Finally, something that our abnormally high Will is actually good for. Not a lot, but a little, and we'll take it.
#### Steel
This one is a little strange. What does it do? Again, you won't learn it from the character burner. However, there are a list of questions which will modify it, which might give it away.
The really strange thing is that rather than being a derived attribute from the stats and skills that we have, it just starts as B3. So let's look at those questions.
Has the character ever taken a conscript, soldier, bandit, squire, or knight life path? Nope.
Has the character ever been severely wounded? No.
Has the character ever murdered or killed with his own hand? If he's done it more than once, raise Steel by one. Well, I wasn't expecting it, but here we are. A positive answer. Steel is up to B4.
Has the character been tortured, enslaved, or beaten terribly over time? No, he's a giver, not a taker.
Has the character led a sheltered life, free from violence and pain? *Mad laughter.*
Has the character been raised in a competitive but non-violent culture—sports, debate, strategy games, or courting? You know what? I'm going to consider getting professionally into diabolism as something that's competitive and not necessarily violent. In fact, violence is a failure state. We're up to B5.
Has the character given birth to a child? No.
Is the character Gifted or Faithful or an equivalent? Yes. B6. Being magically sorcerous is actually good for our Steel. Who expected that?
If Perception is 6+, raise Steel by one. Sadly, we are a long, long way from there.
If Will is 5 or higher, raise Steel by 1. If Will is 7 or higher, raise Steel by 2. Again, I didn't expect it, but here we are. Finally, that high Will is paying off somehow. B7.
If the character's Forte is 6 or higher, increase Steel by 1. Not a situation we're in.
Holy crap, we actually ended up being kind of a badass if Steel actually measures anything useful. Maybe I'll go look that up for our final closing so we know what it actually means.
- **Steel:** 7
#### Hesitation
Our hesitation is 10 minus Will. What does that mean? Not a clue.
But I do know it's finally good that that investment we made much earlier is paying off somehow. Hesitation is not something we do. That probably explains the low impulse control when it comes to demonology.
- **Hesitation:** 3
#### Emotional Attributes
I never expected that I would say the following sentence:
Being a human, we don't seem to have access to any emotional attributes.
That seems to be a thing for elves, dwarves, and orcs, not for us. Possibly, if we went a church direction, we would pick up Faith, but we didn't—which is funny, given that that neophyte acolyte path was definitely training us for the priesthood. I suppose it did pay off in a manner of speaking.
#### Stride
Look, there was no way that you were going to get out of here without at least one musical reference. And this is it.
Basically, stride is how far you move. Humans move seven. It's never rolled against or tested. It's just compared to other characters to see who can move further.
Basically, men and orcs move faster than dwarves, and elves move faster than men and orcs.
- **Stride:** 7
### Resource Points
Look, you knew it was coming. Have you ever seen a fantasy game that didn't have you spending hours in the shop picking out your fancy gear and allocating whatever your resource of choice is in order to try and min-max the best possible stuff for the highest possible return? No, you have not. Plus, we had that calling on the lifepath stuff.
You know the drill. Let's figure out how much we've got to spend.
- **Resource Points:** 70
Look, both you and I are trying to figure out how a mad summoner has more resources at his disposal as a social outcast than someone born to nobility. But that's okay. We'll take that money. Demonology really pays off, apparently. I'm cool with that.
But here's the thing. Gear is not the only thing that you can spend resource points on. Relationships? Yes, you can buy those as well.
15 points will get you a relationship with someone powerful and plays a large role in the setting.
5 points will get you somebody who is also possibly a nobody.
Immediate family gives you a discount of a couple of points. Romantic love? That's two points off. Forbidden relationships are an extra point.
Well, if that's not an invitation to horror, I don't know what is. Make a mental note of that one. Hateful relationships are cheaper.
Well, there you go. Rivalries. Always a good time.
You also can buy affiliations with social groups. This could be quite useful, frankly, given how many points we have to burn. Finally, you can also pick up reputation.
And here's where things get interesting, because they specifically call out having your own gang or crew.
Well, that's a brilliant idea. Also, apparently spells cost resources, which is kind of disappointing, but here we are.
Let me tinker with some things and we'll put together a resource point cost of what we have going on.
Also, it's worth noting that unless you really start digging, you don't realize that the rules for summoning, despite the skill and traits for doing so, are not in the core book, but instead in the *Codex*. I don't know what to tell you. I have no answers as for the organization of this.
![[the Burning Wheel - Codex(cover).jpg|200]]
Also, as an aside, I wish that I had read the entire *Codex* before I started on this, in part because it actually has an evil necromancer as an outcast lifepath, which hooks into the absolutely new, in this book, death art skill, which would have specifically focused on necromancy.
In case you think I'm slacking, the original book is 600 pages. The *Codex* adds an additional 540 pages. This is not a small game by any means. The organization is terrible. The cross-referencing hurts my soul, and I am actively in pain at this point as a writer and engineer.
I have chosen this suffering for you.
| Resource | Cost |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---: |
| First Order w/Restless Dead | 20 |
| Journeyman w/Sanctified Dead | 14 |
| PROPERTY: Small Business (Scholar's Consultancy) | 15 |
| Finery | 5 |
| AFFILIATION: Diabolist's Cabal (local) | 10 |
| RELATIONSHIP: Enforcer of the Temple of Light (brother, unfriendly) | 1 |
| MOUNT: Black Horse (Stats: Pe: B3(4), Wi: B2, Ag: B2, Sp: B6, Po: B6, Fo: B6. Attributes: He: B4, St: B3, Re: B4, MW: B12. Hesitation: 8. Skills: Rider Training, Foraging B2. Traits: Gelded, Docile, Obedient, Proud, plus Long-Limbed, Keen Hearing, Hooved, Ungulate. Stride: 12.) | 5 |
All right, after having banged my head into quite a lot of text and juggling quite a lot of points, I decided to lean into the summoner stuff in the *Codex* and just dump a bunch of points into leveling up my ability to summon and control spirits of the dead. Then I had to figure out what to do with the rest of the points, since there weren't quite enough to start my own cult, which is shockingly pricey. Instead, I decided to cover the scholars' consultancy in town that we own, get some clothing appropriate to a minor noble, and hook up a relationship with the local Diabolist cabal. I created a brother who is an enforcer at the Temple of Light, who really isn't into demon binding—what a fool. Finally, with my last five points that I couldn't otherwise figure out how to spend, I got a nice horse appropriate to a mad summoner.
### Resources and Circle Abilities
Are we done yet? No!
We have two additional attributes: resources and circles. Everybody has them.
Resources, shockingly and unrelated to the resource points that we were just spending, represent wealth, favors, and assets.
Calculating this makes my eye twitch because it's all the resource points you've spent on property, reputations, and affiliations, but not relationships, spells, or gear. Then divide that by 15 and round down.
- **Resources:** 1
At least our small business and our cabal are useful for this. Hooray! We are not completely without resources.
Circles represent our sphere of influence. Basically, how much pull we have because of what we do, who we are, and who our family is.
Take half our Will, round it down.
Thank Hades. Another opportunity for that initial investment to pay off.
- **Circles:** 3
This applies to anybody that we may have met while we were living our life, which, for this guy, is an interesting group of people. Lesser nobility, the court of the king, people that he tortured professionally in service to the court, anybody who may have treated with him in exile when he was going a little bit loony and going full bore into his diabolic researches and anybody that's contracted him as a researcher or for anything else since he's moved back to town. That is a shockingly amusing group of people.
### Physical Tolerances
Done yet? Not even close! We've got to figure out how badly hurt we'll get when we're hit with a weapon or spell. You would think there would be multiple ways that we've already touched on to calculate that, given everything we've already done, but no.
We have other things to add.
Technically, this is just working out what your wound track looks like, but it's literally referred to as your physical tolerances grayscale (PTGS).
Your mortal wound tolerance, which we've already figured out back in step 7, goes on this thing. And our superficial wound tolerance is equal to half our forte rounded down plus one. Should that have been done when we were calculating all that other stuff with our mortal wound? Absolutely. Was it? No.
- **Superficial Wound Tolerance:** 1
Then there are the other wound tolerances: light, mid, severe, and traumatic, which stick between superficial and mortal and can be separated by up to half of Forte, rounded up for the first time because one thing had to be randomly rounded up along the way, right?
I'm not doing this. This is stupid.
### Beliefs and Instincts
I can see the exit from here. I swear, there's a light over the door, and it's blinking, and it says exit.
But between here and there, we have a couple more things, which are Beliefs and Instincts. The text says these are the most important part of the character because they are how we breathe life into all the numbers and lists.
But I say they obviously aren't all that important because we literally spent over 50 pages and 10 relatively complicated steps, many of which had significant sub-steps, cranking out number after number, which are all doing different things at the same time. If it were really the most important part of the character, we would have started with beliefs and instincts, and not finally dragged up to it on page 98.
We can take up to three beliefs, but no less than one, and at least one of them needs to be an active goal.
Luckily, this kind of character design work is deeply intuitive to me because narrative gaming is all about this sort of thing.
I am absolutely down for this. Let's put together some Beliefs.
**Beliefs**
- *I'll rise to control the Circle of Black Echoes by fair means or foul.*
- *My brother will come to see the error of his misguided ways.*
- *The dead are slaves, not people.*
I think the most shocking idea here is that a character might want to control a circle of diabolists by entirely fair means, which is an interesting way to approach the problem, and it's kind of intriguing, compelling even. Plus the idea of convincing your brother who is in service to the Temple of Light that he's wrong about the universe and that he should come over to your side is also kind of fun. Finally, there's a philosophical statement that the dead are worthy only of service, and it doesn't matter who they ever were. I'm sure that could never lead to any conflict, ever, at any point.
Let's put together some instincts, which are effectively talking about how your character instinctively responds to stimuli. What will they do when they are in a given situation? These are effectively if-then-while-until statements within the context of an RPG. In a real sense, they present flags to the GM to put the character in situations which fly in the face of their instincts or trigger multiple instincts at the same time to do different things, and that's just fun.
**Instincts**
- *When there's a question, research is the first method.*
- *Rebellion is quashed early and hard.*
- *Get behind them.*
As instinctual behaviors go, this is kind of fun. You've got an absolute bookworm of a researcher who has access to summoning and commanding the spirits of the dead to tell him what he wants to know. He's willing to squash any kind of rebellion against his will up front, but he will try to never be in front of anything, but rather behind it, and probably with a knife in its spine. I like all of this. This is amazing.
### The Naming
Finally, the rock has come back to Cleveland. And by that I mean, we are done. We are out. Everything is complete. We've done it. Now all we need is a name, and we are out the door.
- **Name:** Lord Eberhardt Krell
That has a little bit of zest to it.
It sounds like a man who has worked as a court torturer and as a mad summoner. The kind of guy that you go to when you have a problem that you don't know if anyone else can solve, and it may be completely insoluble, but somehow he always comes back with an answer.
People give him answers, whether they be live or dead, the best kind of answers, probably screamed out.
## Exunt
Now it's at this point that you would probably expect that I would be putting together a copy of the actual character sheet, all nicely filled in digitally, pretty, everything presented wonderfully.
And it's at this point that I truly must say, if you think I'm going to do that for this character sheet, you are high as balls.
This thing is four pages laid out in a way which isn't actually all that helpful. The first two pages are the character index, which is basically name, species, age, and life paths, the beliefs, the instincts, the traits, and relationships, and then a tiny sliver at the bottom for gear, possessions, and property. While the second page is the Artha and Epiphanies, which we didn't talk about at all because that relates to character advancement and how skills change over time. Notes, spells, and other miscellanea, which is just a big blank spot. And then a bit on skills being learned and how many attempts have been made at them, followed by another blank spot at the bottom of the page for a practice log. That's the first two pages. On the second two pages, you finally get the stats and how many kinds of challenges they've faced individually, which goes into how close they are to advancing attributes with the same sort of layout. That physical tolerances grayscale grid with a little bit of space for wounds. I'll give them that. Then on the final last page, you have the skills and a bunch of checkmarks to show whether they have been advanced or not. And then in the bottom three-eighths of the last page, you've got your weapons and armor grid, which has locational damage for head, torso, right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg, and shield, along with the ability to calculate your clumsy weight, your stealthy rating, and a couple of other things we didn't even touch on.
No, for the love of God, I am not going to fill one of those out.
I am pained even by the consideration.
You may come away from this CCC 2026 entry thinking that I absolutely abhor every single thing about *The Burning Wheel*, but that would be wrong. I only hate most of the mechanics, and I absolutely abhor the fact that not just the 2011 update of the core text is a nightmarish clot of a lot of things thrown into a book haphazardly with no cross-linking or consideration of how it operates as a document, but that the nearly as large 2016 expansion doubles down on that lack of organization and makes it that much worse.
I'll let that sink in for a minute—that the revised edition of this core book came out in 2011. The original version was released in 2002 and saw a little bit of refinement in 2005, neither of which did particular effort to make it a more organized or more flowing text, instead throwing more things on top of it to make it squish.
I have a copy of that original 2002 print on my shelf. There is a really good reason it's in near-mint condition—it's because trying to read through the book and functionally operate the system described within is a slog uphill in the snow at night with zombie Nazi yetis coming down the mountain firing laser cannons at you.
Is there nothing good about this? Well, actually, there are several good things about this 20-year-old set of mechanics, but they almost utterly avoid touching on anything that we have talked about in the course of burning a character. For instance, the Duel of Wits mechanics that you find on page 388 often gets referred to as fascinating, interesting stuff.
You can think of the duel of wits as literally being pulled off using the same mechanics as a physical duel, but a different set of skills. Course persuasion, interrogation, oratory persuasion, poisonous platitudes, religious diatribe, rhetoric, stentorious debate, or suasion. Command, conspicuous etiquette, extortion, falsehood, intimidation, seduction, soothing platitudes, and ugly truth can all be used in support roles.
Now, having seen that, I just ran through the creation of a character with a fairly strong set of connections to his cultural milieu and reasonable opportunities to pick up skills. Other than torture, did he manage to actually pick up a single skill which would be useful in a duel of wits?
Does anyone see a problem with this? So the skill system is already in the way of resolving this in an interesting manner, which doesn't require skills that only a few people have. But then, having accepted that that's the nature of the beast, we get an interesting set of parallel mechanics, which hinge on verbal attack actions, verbal defense actions, special verbal actions, magic actions that can impact the course of the discussion, and hesitation actions.
I do like the run screaming hesitation action. Pulling those off on your opponent has got to be quite satisfying. But effectively, each side puts in their move secretly, and when you turn each volley upright, you calculate how the moves that were selected interact and figure out what the new state of affairs is. It's complicated and strange and somewhat unusual, but it might be one of the most interesting parts of the entire game. And it's buried, at least from the perspective of people creating characters at the beginning of the game. I sometimes refer to *The Burning Wheel* as a set of barely coherent mechanics looking for a problem they can pretend to solve, and I stick by that. It's just painful. But it at least has promise, freed of the dangling suckerfish of the rest of the mechanics.
I wish I could be more supportive of the design considering how pivotal it has been over the last two decades and a half in the indie scene. But I think that might mark the unhealthiness of the indie scene far more than it marks *The Burning Wheel* as a useful part of the indie scene.
Much could be clarified if Luke Crane, the author of the book, had even the slightest inkling that examples of how the game is played in a realistic way would go a long way to help show people how to play the game, but that's not what we see in the text.
It's not brutal as in *every conflict has the potential to explode into a horrible mess*. It's brutal in the sense that *it forces you to go through a lot of back and forth, a lot of fiddling and twitching before you can even get started on the actual course and reason of play*. By then, it may not be worth it anymore.
It's sad. There are so many interesting things in the book that, freed from the rest of it, would be absolutely pivotal to someone else's game design. But it's stuck here.
Could I in good conscience suggest that you pick up this game? No. There are better, crunchy, kitchen-sink, low-fantasy RPGs out there which do the same thing, only better at every level.
Hell, *[[Fantasy World]]* would be the first one I sent you off to, and I think you will have a better time across every experience with it.
Unless you are a self-proclaimed archivist of the indie RPG hobby, then you don't need a copy of this. Save yourself the trouble. That's all I can tell you.
### Post-Scriptum
After a solid night's sleep, I come back and read the last bit that I wrote, which, as usual for stuff that you write just before you go to bed, is just a little bit more scattered than it should be. But I think I'm going to let it stand, largely unedited, because it's all true.
However, I will, out of the dark goodness of my heart, actually put together a text-based sheet for you. You've earned that much. You've come that far with me.
---
**The Grim-Faced Scholar-Necromancer, Lord Eberhardt Krell**
Born to a life of privilege, Krell discovered early that his personal inclinations ran to more esoteric subjects. Third son of a fallen House, he was not set to inherit lands or servants, but was placed on the road to high position in the church by way of his cunning intellect, like his brother. Along the way, he discovered an affinity for anatomy and an interest in asking questions, which turned into placement as the court torturer for a time. But the questions he asked did not stop with those of a political bent. His questions went further into the hierarchy of angels. The pit of hell itself and the going to and from of the spirits of the dead. Not the sort of thing that goes over well when it comes to light, and thanks to the machinations of his brother, he was exiled to the hinterlands. Though Krell was little concerned by this change of venue, it provided him time to truly dive into his excesses.
Eventually, his reputation faded in the towns near the capital, and he slipped back to pursue that which he enjoyed most of all, applying his ability to understand that which is unseen to most to that most complicated spiritual engine of all: the human condition. He operates a small consultancy as a scholar for hire, keeping up his contacts with the local diabolists and trying to stay out of contact with his brother of the Temple of Light as much as he can. If you have a question, if no one else can answer it, and you can find him, perhaps you can hire Lord Eberhardt Krell.
**BELIEFS**
I'll rise to control the Circle of Black Echoes by fair means or foul. My brother will come to see the error of his misguided ways. The dead are slaves, not people.
**INSTINCTS**
When there's a question, research is the first method. Rebellion is quashed early and hard. Get behind them.
**LIFEPATHS**
Noble Born, Arcane Devotee, Torturer, Mad Summoner, Scholar
40 years old
| STAT | EXP | STAT | EXP | STAT | EXP |
| ----- | --: | ---------- | --: | ------- | --: |
| Will | B7 | Perception | B4 | Agility | B3 |
| Speed | B4 | Power | B3 | Forte | B3 |
| ATTRIBUTE | EXP | ATTRIBUTE | EXP | ATTRIBUTE | EXP |
| --------- | --: | ------------ | --: | --------- | --: |
| Health | B5 | Mortal Wound | B7 | Reflexes | B3 |
| Steel | B7 | Hesitation | B3 | Stride | 7 |
| Circles | B3 | Resources | B1 | | |
**SKILLS**
Calligraphy B1, Write B1, Interrogation B4, Torture B4, Anatomy B2, Summoning B6, Demonology B4, Empyrealia B2, Read B5, Research B3, History B2, Philosophy B2, Symbology B2, Foreign Languages B2, Ancient Languages B2, Knives B3, Meditation B4
**TRAITS**
Mark of Privilege, Your Lordship, Base Humility, Gifted, Unsavory Madman, Mad, Know It All
**GEAR**
Fine clothes suitable for Court, Small Scholarly Consultancy Shop in the City, Black Riding Horse
**AFFILIATION**
1D in the Circle of Black Echoes
**REPUTATION:**
My older brother, Valuntus Krell, an Enforcer for the Temple of Light
---