In the Call of Cthulhu game there are eight main characteristics that appear at the top of your character sheets. Here are what they are and what they mean. Note that some of these attributes have direct correlations to other parts on your character sheet.

STR= Strength is the physical power your character has and the “muscle” ability.

CON= Constitution regards to the health of your character and how durable they are in a fight.

SIZ= Size is just that, the height and weight of the player. This comes into play if there are small holes to crawl through or how big you are vs. the things you are hiding behind.

DEX= Dexterity is the physical agility and speed. Can your character dodge the incoming vehicle, or the tentacle that just came up from the well.

APP= Appearance is based on how well your player looks in their physical appearance.

EDU (know)= Education in the sense of knowledge you have gathered through schooling, formal education, hands on training, etc.

INT (idea)= Intelligence as in logic, intuition and ideas. This for me is does the lightbulb turn on above your players head.

POW= Power is three things combined: your character's strength of will, their spirit and how mentally stable your character is. The amount of sanity points that your player has to start with is equal to your POW statistic. Your magic points available to your investigator is ⅕ your POW value.

Move Rate is also under the characteristics box. Depending on how your keeper works, “All human characters have a move rate of 8” is stated on pg. 7 of the Introductory Rule booklet or you can go to page 49 of the Investigators Handbook to look at that chart. Movement rate is in yards (or meters) and tells you how far your investigator can move in a round (which is up to five times your MOV value in one round). The difference in using the chart for MOV is if your age is above 40 you get penalized and deduct points from your MOV score, otherwise depending on your STR, DEX, and SIZ the investigator has a MOV score between 7 and 9. At my tables I like to make it where my players have that movement rate of 8, as I personally do not like to penalize players based on the age they feel is appropriate for their investigator.

The way that this fox prefers to allocate numbers is through the rolling of dice. However if the dice are not rolling in your favor you can also allocate the following numbers into the eight characteristics: 40, 50, 50, 50, 60, 60, 70, 80.

Remember, in Call of Cthulhu the numbers that you roll on your dice to see if your action or skill check is a success needs to be equal or lower than the numbers in each of the skill boxes. Higher numbers are more favorable to players as there is less of a chance of failure. I personally let my players roll the dice, and if they roll terribly I still allow them to use these fixed numbers to be used instead.

In call of Cthulhu the percentile dice are king. When you are rolling dice you will want to roll a percentile that is equal to or lower than the number that is in your skill or characteristic boxes. The higher the numbers the easier it is for your investigator to succeed, the lower numbers make it more difficult to succeed. Keep this in mind when going through character building.

Though player characters are referred to as “investigators” there are so many jobs, occupations and tropes that you can have your character become a part of. Each occupation has a variety of skills that are attached to that occupation. Examples of this are professor gets library use, other language, own language, psychology and four other skills as an academic/personal study; whereas private investigator has skills in art/craft (photography), disguise, low, library use, one interpersonal skill (charm, fast talk, intimidate or persuade), psychology, spot hidden and any one other skill (such as locksmith, fire arms, etc.). The beauty of Call of Cthulhu vs. other ttrpgs is you are not limited to just a selection of a few classes. Any occupation available during your C.O.C scenario setting is available to you. Looking through the list of occupations and not finding something you like, you can create a new occupation or a more specified occupation with your keeper! In the Investigator's Handbook you can find over 110 occupation options in pages 68-93; anything from accountant to zoo keeper.

When looking at each of the different occupations you will find the credit rating, suggestion contacts and eight skills attributed with that occupation. The last bit of important information that is given with each occupation is how many skill points you get. Different occupations have a different way of figuring how many skill points you will get to use. An example of this is an Acrobat gets skill points equal to (Edu x 2) + (Dex x 2) but a Hacker gets points equal to four times their Edu. You use these points to increase the base numbers in parenthesis for your occupation skills and credit rating. You then get a second pool of points to spend of personal skills which is calculated by Int x2, to give you a pool of skill points that you can put into other skills that you want to increase to round out your character or give them flavor.

“Auto Buy”

If you do not want to do point allocations here is the quick and easy list of numbers that you put into your skills list. These numbers you put into the larger of the three boxes next to the skills that you pick in relation to your occupation skills (and credit rating): 70%, 60%, 60%, 50%, 50%, 50%, 40%, 40%, and 40%. These numbers go into the biggest square and does not add the numbers in parenthesis behind the skill names.

Next you then also get to pick four non-occupational skills and boost the base values of the skills (the percentages behind each of the skills) and get to increase the base values for them by 20%. An example of this would be picking jump would put it up to 40% as it has a base value of 20% or picking locksmith could boost it to 21%.

Any skills that you do not put points into you still have the base number that is in parenthesis behind the skill name. This makes many skills hard to be successful completing but it still allows everyone a chance in game to attempt, try and possibly succeed in skills that are not your occupation or personal interest based. Remember that you need to roll your percentile dice to be equal or lower than the number required. Some of the standard percentiles is 1% if you don't add any points to it. Not all investigators have to be good at all skill checks, pick the things that make the most sense for your investigator.

The Fox's Rules on Credit Rating

Credit Rating is something that deems how much money a player has available to them. Rules as written state that a player starts with a Credit Rating of 0 (penniless) and then is determined by the character's chosen profession (for example Gangster Boss has a Credit Rating (CR) of 60-95). Occupational skill points can then be used to build up their characters CR into that range. I personally have a homebrew rule where a player at my table can start with a CR equal to half of their Intelligence Score as a free boost. I am not a fan of making players use a chunk of their precious skill points to boost credit rating out of penniless (unless that is the type of character the player is looking for). After that half Intelligence Score boost, players can then decide whether or not they want to put more points into their CR to boost it farther. Why half their intelligence score? In Call of Cthulhu the "Average" CR is in the range of 10-49. Many of player's intelligence scores will put them into that range to start and in my experience that is good enough for them (only once has players boosted themselves up to wealthy). If using the "Auto-buy" system I do not allow the half-intelligence as they can put a base 40% in that slot instead.

If you would like to read more about skill descriptions you can reference pgs. 10-12 in the Introductory Rules, or pages 96-121 in the Investigators Handbook and pages 56-79 on the Keeper Rulebook. Occupation lists and descriptions can be found in the Investigator Handbook pgs. 68-93. Sample Occupations can also be found in the Keeper Rulebook pgs 40 &41.

There are a lot of spaces on your character sheet that goes beyond the rolling of dice. Call of Cthulhu is very role-play based as a game and there are many ways that you can make your investigator unique to you. From describing what your person looks like, their ideologies and who is "significant" to them are all things that you the player get to write on your character sheet. If you are at a loss you can roll on some of the many tables for inspiration or things to write down on your character list. There are even percentile charts (pgs. 54 & 55 of the investigator handbook) to help you create period styled names. Backstory things can be completely from your imagination or can also be done in collaboration with your Keeper to give you advantages/ knowledge of the locations of your scenario if you are a local.

Remember, that there are also a ton of pre-made characters in the scenarios as well. If you are looking to see what the scenario thinks is important for a player in that scenario specifically you can look at these for inspiration. Again, there is also no reason for you to not use a pre-made character if that is what feels best for you. Other backstory pieces could be done in a session zero if you are trying to get all of your players connected (as either family members, members of the same society/university or even investigators that survived other scenarios together). Motivation and secret goals can also be fun to give to your investigators to help guide their game play.

While creating your characters it is also important to figure out whether you are playing in a Call of Cthulhu Campaign that will take many hours and many sessions or if your are playing in a shorter scenario (one / two shot). If you are playing in a long term campaign having intricate backstories that are more tied to the game could be more important. You can work with your keeper to see if there are any people specifically in the campaign that you can add to your "Important People" list that you may have interacted with before. I personally am more careful in my game play if I know my player needs to last numerous sessions. If I'm playing in a scenario where my character will be done at the end of a few hours of game play, I am usually more of a risk taker with pushes and luck rolls because if I die or go insane there is less of a consequence.