Call of Cthuthlu 4th edition

I’ll be frank. I detest Call of Cthuthlu (CoC), it’s one of the games I refuse to play. Why this hatred?

The premise of CoC is that your hapless characters investigate the Cthuthulu mythos, go insane and die. Maybe not in that adventure, but they will. And they never ever have even the slightest glimmer of hope that their lives and deaths will have meant something or had a positive impact on the world. Worst of all, they don’t even make the choice to doom themselves as characters in other games may – their doom is inevitable.

Real life is depressing enough, thank you.

So, this one is going to be quick and dirty.

First, roll attributes. Most of these are rolled on 3d6, with the exceptions of Education, which is rolled on 3d6+3, and Size and Intelligence, which are on 2d6+6.

I roll and get:

Strength: 16
Constitution: 10
Size: 10
Intelligence: 10
Power: 14
Dexterity: 10
Appearance: 9
Education: 16

From these I work out a few extra attributes:

Idea: 50
Luck: 70
Know: 80

My character starts with a starting Sanity of 70; pretty good.

His STR and SIZ combined give him a +1d4 damage bonus, and the average of his CON and SIZ give him 10 hitpoints.

I now have to choose my character’s occupation. His two main traits are his education and strength. The listed occupations learn towards the academic, exceptions being the Private investigator and Dilettante. I decide to make Humphrey Winter a Professor.

I get EDU*15 or 240 points to spend on skills from his Profession.

I pick the following skills from the Professor list, raise Library use and History to 50 from their base values and split the rest of my points evenly between the others.

Archaeology 37
Anthropology 37
History 50
Library use 50
Linguist 37
Read/Write Greek 37
Read/Write Latin 37

Humphrey now gets INT*5 or 50 points to spend on any skills. I decide to top up his current skills rather than give him any new ones – many skills in CoC have default values that should carry him through any non-critical use of the skill.

Archaeology 50
Anthropology 50
History 50
Library use 50
Linguist 40
Read/Write Greek 45
Read/Write Latin 50


And there we are. Poor doomed Humphrey Winter.

Next, Night Life from Stellar Games.