Creating Characters

Age of Ashes begins in the small town of Breachill near the eastern border of Isger. As Age of Ashes begins, your characters should be in the town—as either citizens or visitors—and should have no immediate plans or goals to move on to another location. At the same time, though, keep in mind that while your group will come to see Breachill as their hometown, you’ll be traveling across the continents of Avistan and Garund during the course of the campaign to come, so you should be ready to spend time away from home.

Age of Ashes features a wide range of traditional adventuring elements: the PCs will negotiate deadly dungeons, interact with colorful NPCs in stressful social encounters, acquire legendary treasures, explore wilderness regions, and navigate urban sprawls. But between adventures, you’ll be returning home to Breachill, where your group is likely to have earned the right to dwell in and rebuild the abandoned castle atop Hellknight Hill—provided you can survive the initial adventures set within those walls in the campaign’s first adventure, of course! When concepting and creating your character, work with the other players and your GM to ensure you’re building a character that’ll work well with the other PCs and the overall plotline of Age of Ashes. The following advice should help you stay on course while generating your character.

Alignment

There isn’t any restriction on PC alignments in the Age of Ashes Adventure Path, although the fight against an impending doom and the push against a mysterious organization of slavers works best for non-evil PCs. As long as your PCs can get along and aren’t the type who want to raze and ruin the towns they visit instead of help the locals out (whether this is out of a sense of altruism and kindness or in the pursuit of fame and fortune), your PCs should fit in fine.

Ancestries

As Age of Ashes features a number of traditional adventuring plots and locations, all of the core ancestries work well in this campaign. Indeed, themes closely associated with goblins, elves, halflings, dwarves, gnomes, and humans play major roles in the six parts of Age of Ashes. Other ancestries should have little problem fitting in, but choosing one of the six core ancestries for this first Second Edition Pathfinder Adventure Path should be the most rewarding from the story’s point of view.

Classes

Members of any class will have plenty of moments to shine in the Age of Ashes Adventure Path. A well- rounded selection of skills, feats, and class options will serve your party well, as there are a wide range of challenges to face. Note that there will be ample opportunities between adventures (and sometimes even during them) to pursue downtime activities, and indeed part of this campaign involves renovating and running a castle of your very own, so having a few characters who are skilled at Crafting is a wise choice.

Lore Skills

If you’re thinking of choosing a Lore skill for your character, consider choosing one of the following: Architecture, Breachill, Dahak, Darklands, Desert, Dragon, Dwarf, Elf, Engineering, Gnome, Goblin, Guild, Halfling, Jungle, Kintargo, or Politics. If you’re the GM of Age of Ashes, make sure you keep track of what Lore skills your PCs choose; keep them in mind when calling for checks to Recall Knowledge, and make a point of including Lore skills as options in such cases!

Languages

Common is certainly the most important language to know in this Adventure Path, along with Dwarven, Elven, Gnomish, Goblin, and Halfling. Draconic is a key language in many parts of the campaign as well. Other languages will have their moments to shine, but in most cases key lines of communication should function if the above languages are represented in the group.

Religion

Any of the religions detailed in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook will work fine for characters in Age of Ashes. Note that while this campaign features dragons as a repeating theme, worshipping a draconic god isn’t well-suited for this campaign. Draconic deities either are not particularly involved or are involved to an extent that PC worshippers of them could be problematic. Speak to your GM if you want your character to worship a deity like Dahak to see if they’re willing to make certain adjustments to the Age of Ashes plotline as needed to accommodate such a choice, but when all is said and done, you might be better served setting aside such a character concept for another campaign entirely. After all, Age of Ashes is more about opposing draconic influence than bolstering it!

Backgrounds

When it comes time to choose a background for your PC, you should strongly consider selecting one of the Age of Ashes backgrounds. These backgrounds will help align your character’s themes to those of the Adventure Path, and also include a built-in explanation of why your PC might attend the Call for Heroes that starts the first adventure, giving you a reason right out of the gate to want to join up with the other PCs and go on your first adventure. You are, of course, free to choose a background from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. If you do so, the following choices make the most sense for Age of Ashes: Acolyte, Artisan, Artist, Bounty Hunter, Detective, Emissary, Entertainer, Gladiator, Guard, Hunter, Laborer, Martial Disciple, Merchant, Nomad, Scholar, Scout, Tinker, or Warrior.