Let's Burn Up a Character

Horncaller
Bannerman
Arbalester

Horn
Banner
Arbale

Horncaller it is! Our dwarf joins the army, but is put in charge of battlefield communication. After seven years of this, he's pretty well-versed in the dwarven Links system for transmitting messages between camps.

Stats:

SpoilerShow

Lifepaths:
Born Artificer
lead to Clansman
Tinkerer
lead to Guilder
Wordbearer
lead to Dwarven Host
Horncaller

Age: 80 Years
Resources: 49 pts
Stat Bonuses: +1 M +2 P
Skill Points: 16 (+3 General) Trait Points: 4

Skill List:
*Dwarven Rune Script
*Stuff-wise
*Hold-wise
*Links
Mending
Scavenging
Rumor-wise
Oratory
Clan History
Conspicuous
Cadence-wise
Suicidal Bravery-wise

Trait List:
(Dwarven Common Traits)
*Curious
*Quirky
Tinkerer
Iron Memory
Quick-Step

After all this, he is a fresh young dwarf of 80 years. This combined with the stat points earned through his lifepaths gives him stat pools of 9 Mental, 18 Physical points to divide between his mental and physical stats, respectively.
Mental Stats:
Will is the social intelligence and emotional stat.
Perception is the awareness and mental acuity stat.
Physical Stats:
Power is the strength stat.
Forte ("fort") is the character's stamina/constitution.
Speed is acrobatic dexterity - how good you are at dodging and tumbling.
Agility is manual dexterity - how good you are with your hands.

An even spread would require 5s and 4s in everything. So, for Mental, pick which of Per and Will is more important, and for the physical stats, pick which two should get the 5s.

Or, if you don't think the spread should be even, mention what should get 6 points and what should only get 3 points to preserve the balance. (6 and 3 are the max and min for character creation.) Or I guess for the physical stats, one thing could get 6 and everything else get 4. That's an option, too.

Oh, and just to make this a little bit more complicated, dwarves get the Stout trait, which means that their Speed stat must always be lower than whichever of Power or Forte is highest.

7 in will and 2 in perception.
if that's not allowed, then 6 and 3 then.

Power and Speed 5 and the rest 4

Even spread for Mental, meaning 5 Perception and 4 Will.
For Physical traits, as a communications officer I'd assume he has good constitution and manual dexterity, so 5 in both of those. Therefore, 4 in Speed and Power.

Our Dwarf seem like he'd have good Perception from Horncalling, Tinkering, and his educated upbringing. His Will wouldn't be too bad from his years of Wordbearing, though.

He doesn't seem particularly strong. He hasn't really done any hard, physical labor - the travel from Wordbearing would give him Speed and Forte rather than Power. He spent nearly half his life tinkering, so he's gotta have some good Agility, too. Let's say...

5 Perception
4 Will

5 Forte
5 Agility
5 Speed
3 Power

He's not so good at direct combat, but he can outrun and outlast his kin in most situations. Good for cutting through enemy forces to deliver a message to besieged allies, perhaps.

Shift a point into Forte (or out of Speed, if you must) to account for Stout as necessary.

I'll second NTA. He knows his way around these character-types.

Crowstone: Lots of Will, favor Power and Speed
AgentBlue: Favor Perception, favor Forte and Agility
NTA: Favor Perception, everything but Power
btp: What NTA said
Rules: Speed has to be less than max(Forte, Power).
I'm calling it this:

Will: 4
Per: 5
Pow: 4
Forte: 5
Agi: 5
Spd: 4

This works out nicely because it simplifies skill opening exponents - absolutely everything will open at B2.
Speaking of such things, we have reached the Skills section of the process!

Skill List:
*Dwarven Rune Script
*Stuff-wise
*Hold-wise
*Links
Mending
Scavenging
Rumor-wise
Oratory
Clan History
Conspicuous
Cadence-wise
Suicidal Bravery-wise

This is the list of skills that the dwarf has access to via his lifepaths, but he doesn't necessarily know all of them. The starred items on the list are lifepath requirements, so he has to at least know those. The first 4 of the 16 skill points must be spent to open them - I'll consider that done.

The remaining 12 points can be spent on any of these skills, either to learn them or to improve the ones that have already been learned. It costs one point to learn a skill, which as I said will open at B2. After that, they can be improved on a 1-for-1 basis. So, one point to open at B2, one more to go to B3, one more to reach B4, and so on.
B4 or so is reasonably competent. B6 is the upper limit of what can be bought during character creation, and it is quite good. Anything that gets left at B2 is something he'll be able to do, but not particularly well - but on the other hand, B2 skills grow quickly during play!
There will be a chance after this to buy some skills not on this list, also.

Here's how we'll do this: The first 6 posters get to each pick 2 skills to spend points on. If nobody's posting and all the points aren't used up, I'll open a second round with the remaining points.

Scavenging, Rumor-wise.

Am I supposed to not know what any of these are? I'm fine with it, but there's always this little munchkin in the back of my head...

*pffffblurt*

conspicuous and cadence-wise

NTA: Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, right? Links is the horncaller message sending/interpreting skill, and anything that's -wise is a knowledge skill. In this system, those can be used to gain advantages when rolling skills when the knowledge is relevant ("I make a speech to inspire the men with Oratory, and I also say the right things to encourage them to take brave and selfless risks - so that's an extra die from my Suicidal Bravery-wise") or to create facts in the game ("I'm going to roll my Rumor-wise to know that there's a rumor going around that Baron Antagonist is cheating on the Baroness - with the Prince!")
The rest seem pretty straightforward to me, but I'll explain them if they aren't.

btp: I said pick two! :P

No, no, most of them are pretty self-explanatory.

Most of them. What's the incentive to boost Conspicuous? I was strongly tempted to, but felt the other two fit better.

mending and scavenging

I think Conspicuous is good if, say, you want to make yourself heard in the middle of a crowd. That sort of thing. It's kind of an odd one, I agree.

btp: I said pick two! :P

That's what I get for not reading!

Oratory and Oratory

Rumor-wise
Suicidal-wise

Scavenging and mending?

Dwarven Rune Script: B2
Stuff-wise: B2
Hold-wise: B2
Links: B2
Scavenging: B4
Rumor-wise: B3
Conspicuous: B2
Cadence-wise: B2
Mending: B3
Oratory: B3
Suicidal Bravery-wise: B2

Our dwarf has a wide range of skills, but the only thing he's really good at is scavenging. He keeps his ears open for rumors and knows how to fix things up a bit. He can also give a decent speech. The rest of his skills could use some work, but at least he knows the basics!

But wait - we're not quite done with skills yet. He has 3 general skill points that can be spent on any skill whatsoever! If you want, you can use them to improve the existing skills or open other skills on his list, but you aren't limited to that.
The next three people to post get to spend one skill point each. If you don't know what the skills in this game are - and most of you don't, with Boyd being a possible exception? - then just say something that makes some kind of sense, and I'll translate it into whatever is closest. Also, you can always make up new wises, so if you want him to know about, say, underwater basket weaving, underwater basket weaving-wise is totally legitimate. (Though, knowing about it is different from being able to do it. And please try to be reasonably genre-appropriate and so forth.)

Intestinal Fortitude

Does alchemy even exist?

Alchemy is apparently limited to humans for reasons unknown to me*. The closest dwarves get, unless I'm missing something, is Brewer, for beer, or Nogger, which is a special Dwarven Art skill for brewing the renowned alcoholic beverage known as Dwarven Nog. Dwarven Art skills cost 2 points to open, so two of you guys will have to team up if you want that one.

Intestinal Fortitude sounds like a Forte test to me - that's a stat, not a skill. I think there are traits that cover the concept, too, but no skills that come close.

*Upon closer inspection, it's a Sorcery-based skill. Dwarves get Dwarven Arts instead of Sorcery.

What other Dwarven Arts are available? This interests me greatly.

Yeah some sort of Dwarven Art sounds p cool

Okay-doke. They are:

Black Metal Artifice, for blacksmithing
Coarse Persuasion, for persuading people by slapping them on the back and grinning
Drunking, for getting really drunk
Excavation, for excavation
Forge Artifice, for building forges
Gem Artifice, for cutting gems
Hallmaster, for building the structures of great halls
Lithography, for inscribing runes into stone
Nogger, for brewing dwarven nog
Reason of Old Stone, for extracting knowledge from the rocks
Rune Casting, for predicting the fates of others
Shrewd Appraisal, "...is the art of noting every single flaw in an item - thereby reducing its price"
Stentorious Debate, for boisterous argument ("Tools: A big Dwarvy mouth")
Stentorious Singing, for singing loudly and obnoxiously
Stone Artifice, for stone shaping
War Art, for creating weapons and armor
War Engineer, for creating siege engines and sapping fortifications
White Metal Artifice, for gold/silversmithing

They all cost 2 points to open. What makes them better than regular skills, other than the scope of what they can do (there's no other way to create dwarven nog or dwarven-quality armor for instance,) is that every die rolled for them that comes up a six earns another die. So without delving too deeply into the game's actual rolling mechanics, there's a chance that you can achieve success far beyond your regular skill level.

You guys will have to agree on which one to open if you want to do that, I guess. Whatever gets two votes first wins, as far as I'm concerned. Or you can opt to spend the points on regular skills, too.

(Right now, this guy has no combat ability - Brawling, Hammer, Axe, Knives - or ability to be sneaky - Stealthy, Inconspicuous - so those are worth considering. Or wilderness survival - Fire Building, Foraging, Orienteering, Hunting - or first-aid capability - Field Dressing, Herbalism, Surgery(or Khirurgy for the dwarf-only surgery skill) - and Oratory is very good to have on the social skills front, but it wouldn't hurt to complement it with something like Falsehood for lying. Also, Observation is good for spotting hidden things. Obviously, that's far more than 3, I just thought I'd throw that out there, maybe spark some ideas about what skills might be good, either from a practical point of view or from a character concept point of view. Anything he really ought to be able to do or it would just be wrong?)