Ascendant Character Creation Guide

Introduction
So, you’re interested in upholding truth and justice with an ascendant or two, eh? Or heck, maybe it’s
time to put your dreams of world domination into effect. Well, dreams are all well and good, but if
you’re going to play Ascendant you’ll need more than just dreams. The great thing about Ascendant
is that it allows for a virtually infinite array of characters, with a far larger scope than anything
permitted in most other roleplaying games, which are typically limited by things like class, race,
archetype, and so on. The downside to Ascendant’s system however is that it is more complex,
requiring you to put in more work to create a suitable character than you might be used to. On the
plus side, the hard work of making a character planner has already been done for you. On the other
hand, if you open it up and see this, it could be rather intimidating at first:

That’s where this guide comes in. By the time we’re done, you’ll have a solid understanding of how
character creation works in Ascendant, and can then strike out confidently on your own.

To start with, we’re going to create a character using 800 Character Points (CP). This puts them at the
upper edge of Power Limit (PL) 24, which lets us showcase a variety of design choices without being
too restricted by the number of CP we have to spend. It’s also a nice round number.

The spreadsheet will automatically calculate how many CP you’ve spent and thus what your Power
Limit is (see the Power Limit and Character Pts labels). So long as we don’t have more than 800 CP
when we’ve finished our character, we’ll be just fine.

Incidentally, don’t forget that the character planner has a worksheet detailing the basic instructions
and colour codes used. For example, you should never need to edit any box with a gold background,
and should only edit one with an orange or blue background if you know what you’re doing. A link to
the character planner can be found at the end of this guide, in the Resources section.

Finally, before we begin putting fingers to keyboard, we need to figure out what kind of a character
we’re going to create. For the sake of this being a useful guide that covers some of the more complex
topics, we’re going to make a ranged attacker, someone capable of blasting apart their enemies from
afar.
Layout

If we look again at the character planner, we can get a feel for the layout. In the top left are the fields
for Name, Real Identity, and Concept. The first two can be done at any time, and it’s often best to
leave them until later, as the finished character design might not match the name you had planned
for him.

Below these three fields are the Primary Stats – the character’s MIG, AGI, VAL, RES, INS and CHA
scores, along with their cost in CP below. Just to the right of these is the HP total, showing the
maximum number of Hero Points the character has.

To the right of all of this are the Secondary Stats – attributes such as Height, Running, Passive Spotting,
and so on. Character Sheet 1 also has pale yellow cells here showcasing these values in real world
units, which can be useful for getting an idea of how good your character is at something in more
concrete and less abstract terms.

Below all of this we get your Health and Determination values, and their respective Recovery values.
The Recovery values are always one-fifth your maximum Health or Determination value.

Below your Health & Determination figures are the key figures for your character. Power Limit shows
your Power Limit, Character Points displays how many CP you’ve spent on a character so far, and the
final 4 fields tell you how many CP you’ve spent on Powers, Skills, and Perks, and how many CP you
have been refunded due to Drawbacks.

Going down further, next are two near-identical tables for you to list your character’s Powers and
Skills in. Finally, there’s a small box for you to note useful titbits of information down, from appearance
to known languages.
On the second page, we start with copies of the character’s Name and Real Identity. These fields
automatically update when you alter them on the first page, so we don’t need to worry about them
any further.

Below these fields, we first have six key Difficulty Values (DV) for your character. This provides a handy
reference point, but will require filling out manually. This will be one of the last tasks done when
building our character.

Below the list of DVs is a small table for your list of Perks, and to the right a larger table for your list of
Drawbacks. As Drawbacks can be quite complicated creatures (particularly the Vulnerable State
Drawback), more space was given to them. Note also that you are limited in the number of Drawbacks
you can take to 15% of your Character Points total. As we’re creating a character with 800 CP, that
means the maximum refund we can get from Drawbacks is 120 CP.

Note that you should not enter the cost of Drawbacks into the table as negative values, or else they
will not be considered as refunds, but as expenses.

Below the Perks and Drawbacks tables is a large table for listing all of the attacks our character can
perform. Again, these must be entered manually, and will be one of the last things we do.

Below the attacks table is a small table for Protection, meaning Powers such as Invulnerability or
Forcefield, as well as equipment like Ballistic Vests, and another table listing all the items in a
character’s inventory, be they handcuffs or sniper rifles. Whilst characters can buy these with CP, we
highly recommend that you instead buy them with money, and save your CP for more valuable
Powers, Skills and such.

There is also a third page on the character planner, but except for the “Other Notes” section for you
to add details that wouldn’t fit into the section at the bottom of the first page, it is there purely as a
reference, and can be ignored.
First Steps

To start with, we’re going to ignore the Name & Real Identity – they can come much later. The Concept
is as noted above – a ranged attacker, colloquially known as a blaster. This isn’t important, but it’s
nonetheless useful for keeping track of a character design, especially if you have to come back to them
later.

The second thing we’re going to do is to set all of our Primary Stats to 5, except for RES. 5 can be
considered “peak human”, so this gives us a minimum to work from. We are changing RES to 12
however for four reasons.

First, because it improves our Determination – as you can see, our Determination is now 640, and our
Determination Recovery is 128, or 20% of 640. This lets our character withstand psychic attacks and
the like better.

Second, it makes our character better able to shrug off psychic effects like mind control, as all such
powers work against the target’s RES.

Third, because it lets us spend more Hero Points on various abilities during a game. The maximum
number of Hero Points you can spend on most tasks is limited to one third of your RES score. With 12
RES, we can therefore spend up to 12/3 = 4 Hero Points at once.
Fourth, because we cannot get more than 12 RES. Our Power Limit means that two Restricted
Attributes cannot together exceed 24, and because RES is added to itself by default, this puts a hard
cap on what we can do here.

Note that you should not feel compelled by any means to do this with your RES score – however, it is
a sensible thing to do, if only because of the increase in Hero Point expenditure that is permitted.
Were we making a character a PL23 rather than PL24 then I would have recommended having at least
9 RES (for Hero Points purposes), but would have considered 10 or 11 RES as less valuable because
they don’t increase your Hero Point expenditure.

Finally, we have added a small formula to the bottom of the Powers table: =800-X11. This simple
formula tells us how many CP we have left in our budget. We’ll delete it when we’re done with
designing our character, but especially early on it’s quite useful.
Commence Primary Ignition
As we said early on, our character is going to be a blaster, and so we’re going to give them a powerful
ranged attack. Blast is an offensive Power that can be used to model everything from handguns to
death rays, and so we’re going to go with that. The cost of Blast, before anything else comes into play,
is 15 for the Base Cost, and 1 for the Variable Cost. However, Blast needs a damage type and can also
have various modifiers.

For this character, given that this is their main Power and as we’ve got lots of CP to spend, we’re going
to add quite a bit to Blast. First off, we will use the Annihilating damage type – a rare damage type
that increases the Base Cost by 10.

This is going to look something like a laser beam rather than a discrete bolt of energy, so we’ll add the
Continuous modifier. This increases the Base Cost by 15 and the Variable Cost by 1. We’ll also throw
in the Rapid Fire modifier (which increases the Base Cost by 10) as well, because it’ll increase our
chance of outright disintegrating our targets.
Next, we have to decide how many Supermetric Points (SP) of Blast we want. As we are working with
a Power Limit of 24, the easiest starting point is simply to have half of that – 12. It also means the
maximum score for accurately targeting people (using either our AGI Primary Attribute or the
Marksmanship skill) is 12, so that’s a nice balanced approach.

All looking good, right? Not so fast – unfortunately there’s a problem. You see, Blast has special rules
regarding its Variable Cost – namely that if you have more SPs of Blast than your MIG value, the
Variable Cost increases from 1 to 5. And the Continuous modifier increases this to 6! Now we could
get around this by purchasing an additional 7 SPs of MIG, or get SPs of Super-Strength, but we don’t
want a physically super-strong character, so we will have to adjust the Final Cost for Blast ourselves.

Simply add “+28” to the very end of the Final Cost formula for Blast, and we’re all set:
But… why? Well, this being a guide to character building, I suppose I’d better show you.
1. Subtract our MIG value from the SPs of Blast: 12 – 5 = 7.
2. Multiply 7 by 4.

The reason we multiply the difference by 4 instead of by 5 or 6 is simple: the Final Cost formula has
already baked in the original Variable Cost of Blast (1), and the +1 from the Continuous modifier (as
shown in the screenshot, where it says “2” under Variable Cost). Thus, all we are doing is manually
adding the difference between 2 and 6, which is 4.

Anyway, with that little bit of maths out of the way, we’ve finished adding our first Power to the
character. As to what I think it looks like… well just look at what I called this section.
Taking it on the Chin
With our key offensive Power taken care of, it’s time to look to our character’s defences. For all
characters who do not have very high MIG scores, Super-Stamina is a must-have Power. Its Base Cost
is 0 and its Variable Cost is 4, but unlike Blast it also has a Base Score – which in this case is MIG. Think
of the Base Score as giving you free SPs of a Power or Skill. We’re going to give our character 12 SPs
of Super-Stamina, so we can enter this into the spreadsheet like so:

Note that “=$K$6” does two things: first, it refers to the MIG score, and second, because the dollar
sign is used before letter and number, it locks those into place. If we were to copy this line onto a
different one (perhaps you wish to spread out your Powers, or arrange them alphabetically), the
formula will not stop referring to cell K6. On the other hand, if we just typed “=K6” then copying and
pasting this line elsewhere would also alter which cell the formula refers to.

Regardless of the ins and outs of Excel formatting however, once we have a number in our Base Score
column, the Final Cost of Super-Stamina will be reduced. In this case, it would normally cost 48 CP to
purchase 12 SPs of Super-Stamina, but in reality it only costs 28, because the first 5 SPs are free. As
each SP costs 4 CP, 5x4 = 20, so the Final Cost formula automatically reflects this change.
Next, we must change the Health field. The formula for calculating the Health of a character is normally
as follows:

=VLOOKUP(K6,Data!$N$2:$P$31,2,TRUE)

This tells Excel to compare cell K6 (our MIG score) to a table elsewhere, and return the appropriate
value. We’re going to edit this, so that it reads as follows:

=VLOOKUP(BI16,Data!$N$2:$P$31,2,TRUE)

This will tell the formula to compare cell BI16 – our SPs of Super-Stamina – to the table instead. Voila,
our Health has increased from a mere 60 to 640.

Now, although we could leave it at that, it’s usually best to rely on more than just Health when it
comes to defence. There are many options out there, but for simplicity’s sake we’re going to go with
Invulnerability. With the better part of 800 CP to spend after all, we can afford to get something a bit
more expensive. Note by the way that my rule of thumb is not to pick something like Invulnerability
unless I can get enough SPs of it to double the Base Cost.

In this case, 12 SPs of Invulnerability costs us a fair bit, but it makes us incredibly tough. You may as
well update the Protection table now by the way:

So, from every single attack (except Mental ones!), you reduce all incoming damage by 128.
Congratulations, your character is now bulletproof!

At the moment, there isn’t much else we can add to our defences right now. Super-Stamina and
Invulnerability are each at half the Power Limit, and it’s generally not good to over the halfway mark
unless you’re willing to weaken something else. Note by the way that due to the scaling used in
Ascendant, it’s better to have fewer defences: dropping 2 SPs of Invulnerability to get 2 SPs of
Forcefield for example would cause you to lose 64 damage reduction from Invulnerability, but gain
only 4 damage reduction from Forcefield!

Instead, we’ll be looking at other ways to improve our defences, for example through increasing our
chances to dodge attacks or fend off melee attackers.
Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines
We’ve covered the most fundamental aspect of our ascendant – ie dealing and taking damage– so
before we look again at things like dodging attacks and such, let’s consider how our character is going
to get from A to B. Currently they can cover 5 SPs of distance in one Panel (ie turn) of combat, which
is equal to about 160ft. That’s fast, but without the aid of Powers, it’s also the maximum movement
speed we can hope to achieve. Besides, running is rather limited – whilst you can run on water in
Ascendant, flight offers much more potential.

As our character is not going to weigh a huge amount more or less than normal, we can skip worrying
about working out the cost of Flight – the Base Cost is 15, and the Variable Cost is 4. Personally, I’m
always a fan of the Hover modifier, so let’s pick that up as well, increasing the Base Cost by 5 CP to 20.
10 SPs of Hover Flight lets us fly roughly 1 mile per Panel, and because of the Hover modifier we can
remain in place in mid-air without spending a Movement Action. This may seem odd, but it’s very
useful if we wish to Reserve our Movement Action, for example.

Anyway, 10 SPs of Hover Flight costs us 60 CP, and we can now think again about our defences.
Missed Again
Our AGI score is extremely useful for our character, as it determines his accuracy and his ability to
dodge ranged attacks made against him. We’re going to bump it all the way up to 12 as a result – we
can’t go higher, however, because we have 12 SPs of Invulnerability, Super-Stamina and Blast, and all
three of these restrict us to the Power Limit. Chapter 3 of the rulebook has all the details, but very
briefly, Invulnerability + AGI are combined to create the character’s Physical Protection Limit, AGI and
MIG (or Super-Stamina) are combined to create the character’s Ranged Defence Limit, and AGI and
Blast are combined to create our Ranged Attack Limit. As our Power Limit is 24, none of those limits
can exceed 24.

By way of example, we could have taken up to 15 AGI, but only at the cost of reducing our
Invulnerability, Blast and Super-Stamina to 9 each – a substantial decrease to all three Powers.

What about against melee attacks? Well our VAL score is the main used for that, but at this point we
have only 38 CP left, so we’d better start thinking about other ways to avoid melee attacks. Luckily we
have a Perk that can do just that – Mobile Defence Expertise. It costs 5 CP, and provided our character
moved at least 5 SPs of distance in their last turn, melee attackers are going to find it pretty hard to
clobber us, because we get to use our AGI instead of VAL. Not bad for 5 CP!

That’s probably it as far as our defences go – let’s look now at filling in the odds and sods and making
sure our character is better able to blast his enemies from afar.
Bushidon’t
There are a handful of Drawbacks that I regularly resort to when building a character that come in
very handy, so we’re going to throw a few of them onto our character to free up a few CP.

The first of these is Code of Honour (with a “u”). 2 CP of this can represent a code of chivalry or similar,
which is ideal for our character. Even villains can have such a code, remember – indeed, this can often
make them a more interesting character.

Next up we have Compulsion. This is a lovely little drawback as you can take it many times, but for
now, we’ll settle for just a simple 1 CP Compulsion.

Dependents is another handy Drawback. 2 CP here represents a family that hasn’t made any real effort
to hide themselves – ie, if I can find out your secret identity, I can find out where you live.

My next go-to Drawback is Duty. Ascendants (usually) need to eat too, and so a 2 CP Duty drawback
can represent their 9-5 day job. The members of the Star-Spangled Squadron usually have a 10 CP
Duty Drawback given that they are effectively active duty soldiers in the US Coast Guard.

Finally, there is Hunted. Our character is at PL24, of which fewer than 300 such individuals are
estimated to exist. As such, 2 CP into this seems a reasonable penalty, as someone as powerful as our
character would surely have drawn the attention of villains like Exodus.

With that, we’ve gained an additional 9 CP we can use for other things, and that’s after having only
just skimmed the surface of the Drawbacks available to us.
You Can’t Run, You Can’t Hide
It’s all well and good being able to disintegrate people from miles away, but what if you can’t see
them? Well, we happen to have 42 CP left over, so we’re going to put them into Telescopic Vision and
Dark Vision. 9 SP of Dark Vision lets us completely negate any and all Obscurity of a target provided
by darkness*, so we’ll get that, which leaves us just enough for 7 SPs of Telescopic Vision. The latter
acts to reduce the Effective Range to the target, making it easier for us to drop all our SPs of Blast on
them.

*Unless the target is covered by the Darkening Fog Power with more than 10 SPs invested in it. But
other than that you’re good to go, and you’ll still negate 9 SPs of the Fog.

And there we go! With no CPs left over, we’ve spent our entire budget and…

… What’s that? You want to get something else for our character? An extra Perk or two perhaps? We
can do that, sure. Just come over here and meet the most powerful Drawback around.

Meet the Vulnerable State.

Our Vulnerable State is going to be based on the “Damaged” option, but we’re going to go with
Determination rather than Health – mechanically it’s the same though. So, we can see that if our
character loses 50% or more of their Determination, then they get a 30% refund on whatever it is that
the Vulnerable State effects.

What should it effect? Well, we could start by having it affect our Blast & Invulnerability – they’re our
two most expensive Powers, so we’d get the most bang for our buck if we can affect them. Now, we
don’t need to lose ALL our SPs of Blast or Invulnerability – so let’s start by saying it costs us 2 SPs of
Invulnerability, and 4 SPs of Blast.

The Variable Cost of Invulnerability is 6, so 2 SPs cost 12. The Variable Cost of Blast is 6 (it’d be more
complicated it our Vulnerable State affected more than 7 SPs of Blast, but it doesn’t luckily), so again,
4 SPs costs 24.

12 + 24 is 36, and 30% of that is 10.8, rounded to 11. So, thus far our Vulnerable State nets us a 11 CP
refund. Let’s bump it up just a little bit more though by throwing in 2 SPs of Telescopic Vision to round
it up to a nice 12 CP refund (30% of 40 is exactly 12), which is enough for a few useful Perks.
Perks of the Job
We’ll finish things up then by picking the Sex Appeal and Tireless Perks. The former lets us reduce our
Weight by 1 (just add “-1” to the end of the Weight formula), and helps us in conversations and such
with characters attracted to us. Tireless means that our character simply won’t get tired by performing
hard work over long periods of time.

That leaves us with 2 CP, which we’re going to put into Multilingual. Which languages though? Well
for starters, what about English? Perhaps our character has only recently acquired citizenship in an
English-speaking country. If the country in question is the USA, then Spanish is also a useful language
to have, so we’ll add that too. Even if they’re not in the USA, Spanish is still one of the most widely
spoken languages on the planet, so it’s bound to come in useful at some point.

As for our character’s country of origin, let’s make it Russia. The Russian Federation in Ascendant has
created its own elite team of ascendants, so having a character from Russia could provide a useful plot
device for involving Avangard and the rest of the Spetsikhotron. Alternatively, perhaps it’s a reason
for other characters to mistrust our ascendant.
I Kill You!
Before we wrap up, it’s time to fill out the Attacks table. This lets us very quickly and easily see how
much damage any of the main attacks our character has will deal.

Every character can do what are called Fast and Power attacks – the former sacrifice damage for
accuracy, and the latter sacrifice accuracy for damage. Note for example that whilst the basic Blast
has an AV of 12 and does 128 damage on a Green attack, a Fast Blast has +1 AV (meaning +1 to its
accuracy) but less damage (-1 EV), and the Power Blast has -1 AV (meaning -1 to its accuracy) and
more damage (+1 EV).

The AV of your character’s melee attacks is by default your VAL score – here it is 5. Similarly, the AV
of your character’s ranged attacks is by default your AGI score – here it is 12. Certain Powers, Skills
and modifiers can alter this behaviour (eg Marksmanship for ranged attacks, or Power Aptitude for
mental or emotional ones) but for this character we don’t need to worry about that.

The EV of your character’s melee attacks is by default your MIG score – here it is 5. Similarly, the EV
of your character’s ranged attacks is by default the SPs of the Power – in this case it is our SPs of Blast,
so 12. Much like an attack’s AV, certain Powers, Skills and modifiers can alter this, but we don’t need
to worry about that for this character.

Now, if you want to make sure you get the maths right for the damage values, simply use Excel
formulas. The Yellow values are double the Green values, the Orange values are double the Yellow
values, and the Red values are double the Orange values. Thus. For the basic Blast, you need to enter
“128” into the appropriate Green cell, but then in the yellow cell you can enter “=DL29*2”, in the
Orange cell you can enter “=DR29*2”, and in the Red cell you can enter “=DX29*2”. You can then copy
the Yellow, Orange and Red cells, and if using a modern version of Excel, paste the formulas (the
clipboard icon with “fx” in the bottom right corner) into other rows. The character builder already has
the yellow, orange and red cells filled in with the correct formula.

Finally, note the “Special” column. This details the Special Effects of an attack or group of attacks. For
example, your basic melee attacks are Bludgeoning attacks, which mean they knock back the target a
number of SPs equal to SEV – 2 – target’s Weight. The SEV is equal to the strength of the attack -1, so
our character with 5 MIG would have an SEV of 4. To trigger the SEV, we must roll equal to or under
the AV of the attack when rolling to hit the target (eg 5 for a basic melee attack).
For our Blast however, the chance of triggering our SEV is effectively 24: the basic value is 12 SPs of
AGI, but because we have the Rapid Fire modifier, we add an our SPs of Blast (in this case 12) to the
total. Thus if we roll 24 or lower, the target must make an SEV vs MIG Challenge Check, and is
completely disintegrated if they achieve a White result!
Tidying Up
Just a few minor things to do now and we’re all sorted. First off, let’s get our character a name or two.
What with the Sex Appeal Perk and the reduced weight, making the character a woman would
certainly work. So say hello to Anastasia Petrova, the… hmm. The Avenging Angel!

Say… angels have wings, right? Ooh.

One quick edit later, and we’ve freed up another 5 CP by taking the Winged modifier for our Flight
Power. With that, we can bump up our Telescopic Vision from 7 to 9 SPs, and have 1 CP left over.
We’re going to put that into the Wealthy Perk, because money’s such a useful thing to have.

Note the Wealthy Perk scales with your character’s Power Limit, such that the higher your Power Limit,
the fewer CP you need to spend on Wealthy to get the same income. With 1 CP of Wealth, the formula
for the Avenging Angel’s income is (PL/2)-7. So 12-7 is 5, and thus she has 5 SPs of income, or $329.14
every 3.5 seconds. You’ll need to edit the Income value yourself, so use this formula: =(J11/2)-7. This
works out at an annual income of about $671,000.
You can work out your rough annual income by simply adding 21 SPs of income to whatever your
Income score is. With 0 SPs of Income, you will make about $21k a year. With the Avenging Angel’s
high income, perhaps she’s found herself a job as a lawyer, doctor, or similarly well-compensated role.
The “town hall bureaucrat” we started out with probably won’t do for this, so we’ll go back and change
it.

Before we finish, we mustn’t forget to work out our 6 DVs for the second page of the character
planner. Our Melee DV Is simple – it’s our VAL score, or 5. Our Ranged DV is similar – it’s our AGI, or
12. Our Wresting DV is more complex: it could be our VAL, our MIG, or a combination of our Weight
and Speed. As our MIG and VAL scores are much lower than our Weight plus our maximum speed (10,
from Flight), we should go with the Weight+Speed option, for a Wrestling DV of 12. Meanwhile, our
Ramming DV is our Speed or AGI, whichever is greater. Our AGI is 12 and our max Speed is 10, so we
use 12. Finally, our Emotion and Mental DVs are both equal to our RES score, or 12.

Finally, our ascendant’s abilities and stats will likely have some influence on how we might create the
backstory for her, or roleplay her in a game. With MIG and VAL scores of 5 she’s “only” as good in
melee combat as a member of Seal Team Six or the SAS, but with 12 AGI she’s superhumanly nimble
and dexterous, and will cut an amazing figure on the dance floor. With 12 RES she is probably
extremely psychologically resilient and strong-willed, the kind of person who simply doesn’t know
when or even how to give up. With 5 INS she could expect to graduate from a good university with a
degree in law, mathematics or something similarly rigorous, and with both 5 CHA and Sex Appeal she
not only looks great but also knows how to be charming and persuasive, although not superhumanly
so.

With that done, our work here is complete. The rest of the roleplaying elements of the character – her
background, appearance, costume and so on – I leave as an exercise to the reader. In the meantime,
I hope you enjoyed the process of creating a character in Ascendant and feel confident in your ability
to create your own from now on.
General Tips
Before you set about making your own characters, here are some more useful tips I’ve found when
creating characters.

• Make sure your character has at least one attack with a good AV and EV. This could be as
simple as making a character with high MIG and VAL scores, or as complex as using Mind Blast,
with Power Aptitude in place of your INS score, and Perks such as Resolute and Signature
Move to improve its maximum potential. Even if your goal is to make an incredibly tough
character, it’s better to have one who can, for example, reliably grapple and immobilise
enemies via wrestling than it is to have one who can’t do much except take a beating.

• The Alternate Form Perk is an excellent way of utilising a wide variety of non-combat Powers
and Skills – particularly expensive ones. For example, try building a character who can use
Invisibility and Incorporeality to infiltrate a building, then switch into an Alternate Form that
uses Technology Control to hack into the computer systems.

• If a Power looks like it costs too much for what it does, ask yourself whether it could be used
to do Power Stunts. Telepathy for example could plausibly be used as a substitute for any of
the offensive Mental Powers, be it Emotion Adjustment, Mind Blast, or Mind Domination.
Cosmic Control is similarly designed with Power Stunts in mind.

• Remember that your character can expect to be placed in a wide range of environments. As
such, investing in Powers like Air Supply, Pressure Protection, and Underwater Adaptation can
let a character complete missions or survive attacks that would kill theoretically tougher
characters.

• Special Powers like Power Pool are great ways of creating more versatile characters. With a
Power Pool you could for example switch from a Cryogenic Blast designed to slow the enemy
down and give you and your allies an advantage, to a Thermal Blast designed to deal heavy
damage to the target.

• Keep an eye on what kind of Actions your character needs to use, particularly Automatic
Actions. You can get an extra Automatic Action for a mere 15 CP with the Multitask Perk, which
has fantastic synergies with everything from Power Pools to Invisibility.

• Whenever possible, you want to avoid purchasing most Objects with CP. Instead, it’s usually
more efficient to spend the CP on the Wealthy Perk, and buy the Objects using money instead.
Plus, if you need to replace damaged equipment or bribe an uncooperative witness, the
money will probably prove a lot more useful.

• Speaking of Objects, be sure to take a look through the list included in the rules, particularly
if you’re playing a low-level ascendant. Even fairly high-level characters can be blinded by the
humble Flashbang Grenade, and a Sniper Rifle can deal up to 512 damage on a Red result.

• In general, it’s best to try and create specialised characters, on the assumption that they will
be joining a team of fellow ascendants and going on missions together.
Resources
Here you can find links to various useful tools and documents for Ascendant.

Character Builder
Clicking on this link will take you directly to the latest version of the character builder spreadsheet
used in this guide.

Character Sheet
This link will take you to a PDF of the official character sheet, designed specifically for gameplay use.
Whilst the character builder spreadsheet can be used in this manner, it lacks many of the quality of
life features that players will want for regular gameplay.

GM Sheet
This link will take you to a PDF designed to act as a GM screen and handy reference guide all in one.
Many of the most common tables and rules have been included on it, along with an index of key rules.