Sample Archetypes

Since Talislanta was first published in 1987, it has always had an Archetype character creation system. In that system, several dozen character archetypes were presented and players simply selected one they were attracted too, tweaked it slightly and started playing.

While that system was fast and made sure all characters fit the general overview of the way Talislanta was designed (no Thrall magician or Cymrilian Shaman archetypes for example), it also often served to stifle player creativity and was perhaps the most frequent complain received about the game. Some loved it, others hated it.

This was the primary motivating factor to the design of the character creation system in this, the 5th edition of Talislanta. That said, having character archetypes is also often useful. Some players simply don’t want to spend the time creating a character while GMs are often in need of a quick, pre-generated character when their players take their characters in unanticipated directions. To that end, we include here a number of pre-generated character Archetypes. These Archetypes present the types of characters that are most likely to take up an adventuring lifestyle in the dangerous lands of Talislanta. Each is created using the new character creation rules presented within this book. The majority use three Paths by default, while others have followed more Paths.