Roleplaying with Eclipse: The Codex Persona

Eclipse is a d20 character point buy system. The whole 'limitation' with standard d20 products was that most, if not all of them, herded players into specific classes and some had penalties for multi classing.

Eclipse, developed back in 2005 I believe, changed all this by assigning points to everything. You can now play the character you want to play without worrying that your rogue cant 'waste' a feat on that exotic weapon you want.

On my roleplaying blog I have gone through dozens of character build ideas that I wouldn't mind playing, and that is the first part of creating a successful character - have an idea or concept first, jot down different aspects of that idea before you even pick up the book.

A wizard in armour is possible, the cleric who studies his prayers via canon of their holy book or who must peform a specific ritual in order to appease his god is possible.

The toe to toe rogue, specialist in melee fighting and defense and still capable of delivering body breaking sneak attacks.

All this and more. It is all possible with Eclipse.

Now, while this all sounds too good to be true or perhaps to some of you it may even seem broken, this is not the case. If everyone, or at least, the majority of your players all use the same book - The Eclipse core book (you only need the one) - all the characters are created equal. Each character has the same number of Character Points to spend at each level - while some may be smart and take a disadvantage or a limitation (Duties is popular), it all boils down to what you intend to do.

My most recent build was the Battle Sage. Check it out - I started with a warrior-bard like idea, where he travels the kingdom and the world in search of anicent battle grounds and civilisation, in the hope of acquiring an ancient relic thought lost to time so that he can return it to its rightful heirs.

His build is loosly based on the soul knife in that he has an Ancestral Weapon (mind blade) that he can imbue with specific effects by calling on the name of an ancient warrior. He also has a few tricks - calling the Hounds of War (Wolves) or calling Ancestral Warriors (Treated as skeleton statistics but are actually constructs not undead).The character is incredibly fun to play...

Anyway, that is me, signing off.

@seowestcp