Skills, Powers and Stunts, how do you pick them?

[Roxy Rocket]

I made a character last week and got stuck on pretty much everything. Then someone gave me a given a wonderful gift, the gift of backwards. The method worked like this:

Take your character concept and build their ultimate, like, 15 refresh uncle nutsy skill tree. In my case, I built a little skyscraper, five blocks high and three blocks wide. Then I was commanded not to fill that in, instead I was to make three 'clouds' under the skill tree.

Bottom Cloud - Skills your character avoids or would not do. (Stealth for a Hawaiian shirt, deceit for a mountie, athletics for a companion cube.)
Next Cloud - Skills that have no real aptitude for or practice at. (Drive skill for an animal, contacts for a newborn, lore for non-clued-in people.)
Top Cloud - Skills you don't practice, but are reasonable to be capable of. (Anything that might have occupied your +1 skill blocks.)

While skills that aren't on your skillblock are rolled at +0, we're imagining skills that would be rolled at +0, -1 and -2 in character. Now comes the fun part, collapsing Controlled Demolition of the building.

We name R6 through R10 as reasonably as we can. We then proceed to Backwards.
R10 Pillar of the Community, 35 skillpoints.
R8 Entrepreneur, 30 skillpoints.
R7 Medical Student, 25 skillpoints
R6 Student, 20 skillpoints.

Pillar needs to drop two columns down, we keep one skill at +5, which for our Pillar is probably resources or contacts. We drop that column down and we're just a smaller version of our ultimate tree. As the tree keeps falling apart it gets more messy so you make some choices: from entrepreneur to med student presence or resources might fall off the top and drop into +0, from med student to student there's a big hit in say...discipline and scholarship.

Because the GM was fiddling with the skillpoints and insisted I have a set of skills for action (athletics, drive, guns) I had to do some serious reworking of the character by the templates I made this way were really helpful in that.

Does anyone else rely on a specific strategy for skills/stunts/powers they find really useful or opinions on those skills/stunts/powers that influence how they use them? (Gaseous Form is gamebreaking so I should never pick it, Alertness comes up too often to drop, you can't get decent lore research down without a High Quality Workspace stunt.)

[Masurao]

I usually think of a rough character concept, pick out the skills and powers I'd like him/her/it to have. Usually as I start working from the rough concept, all sorts of background stories pop into my mind and I start writing them and usually the character flows from that. I'm just lucky it works for me like that

However, the suggestion you have put up here sounds very interesting and I see how it can work very well!

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Heh, I usually build the character sheet to the character I think I want to play first.  Then I write the Background phase and name him/her.  Then I go back and rework about half of the skills/stunts/powers.  Repeat for Rising Conflict and The Story but don't change anything on the character sheet that would require a rework of anything on the phases sheet.  By the time I get to Guest Star 1/2 I forbid myself from changing anything until I play them.

It works for me because I get to let stats and story influence each other but I limit myself enough that I'm not there for days trying to get it perfect.  Most of it can be tweaked enough to suit me in a milestone or three even if it doesn't at the start of play.

[admiralducksauce]

I actually haven't been able to play, but when I GM (and when I give character-building advice to players) I like the strategy of balancing available refresh with efficient skill ranks.  I usually am dealing with vanilla mortal or cookies n' cream mortals, so stunts are usually what we spend refresh on (when it comes to powers, I tell people just take your refresh down to 1).

Basically my plans involve making the top-tier skills as broadly applicable as I can without needlessly spending refresh.  Are you best at Guns?  Then take a stunt that lets you defend with Guns in some situations and drop Athletics down to a lower tier, making room for something else.  Take Burglary or Survival instead of Stealth, and use a stunt to allow you to skulk and hide with the skills you did pick.

[TheMouse]

You're making things way, way more complicated than they need to be.

I get a concept. I do Aspects as they occur to me, which means going back and forth between this section and all the others. Sometimes I'm inspired and I get Aspects right off.

Skills are usually pretty easy; fill the ones I really want somewhere into the structure, then fill the gaps. Skill points go pretty quickly, even if you have 35. I mean, a 5 high column costs you 18 points for the 5 component Skills. If a Skill doesn't slot in somewhere, I don't remotely think about it.

Powers usually suck up Refresh pretty quickly. Want to be a wizard? Poof, most of your points are gone. Etc. If there are any Refresh points left at the end that I feel like spending, cruise through Stunts associated with highest rated Skills. For mortals, buy Stunts until I either run out or don't feel like taking more.

That's it. The idea of projecting my character's build out into the future or prioritizing Skills I know I won't take makes me want to take a nap.

[Sanctaphrax]

Nothing too complex for me.

1. Decide what the character should be capable of.
2. Make them capable of those things.

I try to keep an eye on the balance between stunts, powers, and unspent refresh. That balance is important to the feel of a character, for me.

I always feel a bit antsy about 2-box stress tracks, so I avoid them.

Is Gaseous Form really gamebreaking?

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Is Gaseous Form really gamebreaking?

Not if the baddie has a shop vac.

[EdgeOfDreams]

Is Gaseous Form really gamebreaking?

Nope.  It's great for infiltration and escape, but pretty worthless for actually harming anyone.  He who fights and runs away, lives but doesn't accomplish much else.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Nope.  It's great for infiltration and escape, but pretty worthless for actually harming anyone.  He who fights and runs away, lives but doesn't accomplish much else.

Well, he gets to say "Meep meep!" and make me spit coffee everywhere.

[sinker]

I have a similar way of character creation, Taking all of the skills I feel the character should have at the levels that s/he should have, then counting up the points and trimming as needed. Powers/stunts seem to just come to me. The character has what they have.