Characters in Glamorous Gladiators are naturally called Gladiators. These are people that live to fight, or fight to level. They generally have immense power, and won’t hesitate to use violence.
Glam
Every Gladiator is Glamorous, though what that means will vary from person to person. Glamor isn’t something tied to a single number or stat, it’s reflected in everything a character does.
A fundamental question that for every Gladiator is: What does glam mean to you?
You can answer this before character creation and use it to inform your stats, aspects, assets, and special techniques. Or you can go through and generate those character traits first, and use them to inspire what your Gladiator might find Glam.
Some options for Glam might include:
- Pure brute strength
- Dancing around your opponents
- Outsmarting everyone and getting them to fall right into your traps
- The transformative power of radioactive mutation
- Being completely untouched by those unworthy, which includes nearly everyone
- Simple Efficiency
Stats
Characters are made up of 4 stats, that define the ways that you can approach any challenge. Choose your distribution and assign the dice to your 4 stats
| Distribution |
Dice |
| Generalist |
d8,d6,d6,d6 |
| Adept |
d8,d8,d6,d4 |
| Specialist |
d10,d6,d6,d4 |
- Force - Strength and Toughness
- Focus - Analytical Skills and Intellect
- Finesse - Fast and precise movement
- Fire - Sheer determination
Aspects
Aspects help define your character, you start with 3 aspects, one at a d8 and 2 at a d6
- Your fighting style (Aggressive Brawler, Efficient Duelist, Cocky Ranged Specialist, Cool headed Shield user)
- Background (inventive alchemist, street-wise pickpocket, disgraced knight, lovesick hunter)
- Your reason for fighting (to learn more about the world, to avenge someone you love, to find a purpose in life, to be the best there is)
Rate one aspect at a d8 and the others at a d6.
Negative aspects - A regret you have, a weakness in your technique
- An insecurity (someone you couldn’t save, someone you pushed away, a goal that slipped from your grasp, something that you left unsaid, a strange habit, your guilty pleasure, something you wish you were good at)
- A weakness in your technique (tunnel vision, overwhelmed in melee, easily distracted, an old injury slows you down)
Rate one negative aspect at a d8 and the other at a d6
Assets
- Your Signature Weapon (sword, throwing stars, frying pan, lance, ballista, dancing shoes, these hands)
- Your Signature Tool (grappling hook, spellbook, blade oils, lockpicks, tome of world history, collapsible telescope)
- various temporary assets such as potions, rations, rope, etc (pick 2 after each resupply)
Rate one of your signature assets at a d8, and the other at a d6. Temporary assets are always rated at d6.
Additional trait: Special Techniques - special fighting techniques that can be used under certain conditions OR by spending Spark.
Special techniques relate to what your fighting style is and what weapon you wield. You can start with one special technique at a d8, or with 2 special techniques rated d4 and d6.
Some things that special techniques can allow you to do:
- Move more quickly or more stealthily
- Attack from a non-optimal range
- Attack more effectively
- Apply specialized effects or damage with attacks
- Disable an opponent
- More effectively defend yourself or others
- Motivate, heal, or energize yourself or others
- Create assets like decoys, walls, or traps
All of these things take the form of adding more dice to your pool, raising a die in your pool, creating scene assets for anyone to use, dealing harm to enemies, or creating conditions on enemies.
Some conditions for activating a special technique might be:
- Spend a Spark
- Anytime, but with a limit on the number of uses
- When a harm die is above a certain threshold
- When the stat you’re using is lower than the enemies die
- When you are surrounded
- When you are in a specific environment such as standing in water or near stone
- When you are behind an enemy
- When you apply a symbol on someone
- When you eat something specific
- When a specific person you care about is in danger
- When you have a height advantage on your opponent
- When your opponent has a range advantage on you
- When your opponent has a range disadvantage on you
Be sure to tie your special techniques to your glam. If you like to use range and remain untoched, a special technique to retreat while attacking could be useful. Or if your glamor is related to strength, the ability to take a large hit and keep going would be thematic.
Types of Powers to inspire your glam or special techniques:
- Physically altered bodies
- Monstrous (Beastial form, extra limbs, spikes with psychedelic venom)
- Mechanical (gun-arm, robo-eyes, chainsaw-kicks)
- Enchanted (physically more powerful, elemental effects, glowing etc)
- Shapeshifting (stretching, squashing, growing, shrinking, etc)
- Manifestations of the soul
- Energy weapons (Ki blasts, summoned sword, cursed footprints)
- Spritual beings(Channeling ancestral spirits, summoning spirit allies, projecting your spirit outside of your body)
- Elemental control (fire, air, water, electricity, etc)
- Physics manipulation (time, space, gravity, etc)
- Manipulation of senses or emotions (Make someone to sad or empathetic to fight, Create disctrations with auditory or visual illusions)
- Magically enhancing your allies (Enhance the force of their attacks, the speed of their movement, or their natural armor)
- Copying the ablities of animals (Polar bear strength, Falcom speed, spider monkey agility)
- Strange bodily secretions (Hot wax, sticky sweat, acidic blood)
- Writing/Art that can alter reality (tattoos, paintings, blessed macrame)