Crusader Kings 2 Character Creator

[Anthony]

The Ruler Designer is a free feature added with Patch 1.2. It allows the player to replace a ruler in either start date (867 or 1066) with a customized starting character, allowing attributes, traits , dynasty, and physical appearance to be tweaked, altered and tailored to one's design, within certain limits. To access it, the player must select a historical (or otherwise pre-existing) ruler on the world map to replace when starting a game and choose the Create your own Ruler option, which replaces the character by a custom one and opens up the Ruler Designer to create that custom character.

The left panel allows you to set the basic characteristics that define the ruler. None of the options described here cost customization points (see the Attributes section below) as they are mandatory for every character.

The right panel allows you to choose some of the character attributes of your ruler. These options can significantly provide benefits; as such, each is assigned a cost in customization points. This cost can be either positive (costing points) or negative (refunding points). Your customization points total is displayed in the upper part of the panel. While there is no hard limit, exceeding 400 points will disallow achievements, even if Ironman is enabled.

Beneficial ages to a ruler cost more customization points. The range between 24 and 28 is considered a ruler's prime and thus costs the most, while 0-16 and 70 (or older) are the ages that cost the least. Starting age determines starting health, with younger rulers being more robust and growing more frail with age. That being said, older rulers do receive free lifestyle perk points and traits; this is a fixed amount based on age shown on the table below, without Education or intelligence traits affecting this.

By contrast, weight doesn't cost anything despite having a significant impact on your ruler's health (being malnourised (below -50) or obese (over 50) will cause a penalty of -1 health). Because noble characters have a tendency to easily gain weight over time (especially so if they have certain traits or lifestyles), a simple strategy is to start somewhat underweight but not too much to incur the aforementioned penalty. This corresponds to placing the slider in the second quartile, between 0 and -50.

For every 9 perk points a ruler receives, he or she also gets a bonus lifestyle trait, so a free lifestyle perk at age 42 and a second at 69. These are chosen at random from any of the three Lifestyle perk trees that match your Education, without you having to invest in the usual per-requisite perks.

You can choose the traits for your character, classified into education, personality and other traits. Most of the usual restrictions for traits don't apply here. For example, you can start with any number of personality traits (instead of three for adults) or get the lifestyle traits for the various perk trees without having to complete said tree. The Traits page include the customization point cost of each trait that can be purchased; if a trait has no cost it's not available in the Ruler Designer. If a trait has congenital and non-congenital versions, only the former can be purchased.

Note that a trait's cost isn't affected by it being considered a virtue or sin under the ruler's faith, so in case you are unsure which traits to select, virtues allow you to eke out more benefit than their cost would imply.

You can choose a value for each of the ruler's six skills, between 0 and 100. The customization point cost to increase a stat by +1 depends on the threshold of the skill ("terrible", "poor", etc) after the increase, but before traits are applies. For example, to increase diplomacy from 3 to 4 (a skill of 4 is "terrible") costs 2 points, but from 4 to 5 (a skill of 5 is "poor") costs 4.

Because the way costs increase when changing threshold, the most cost-effective skills are 1 point below a threshold change; these are listed in the Skills page. It's recommended that the base skill of your ruler be one of these values; you can then use traits to further increase it.

You can use these settings to have the game randomly generate family members for your adult ruler. You can choose to start married (no customization point cost) with a randomly generated spouse of matching faith and culture. You can also choose to start with sons and daughters, also of matching faith and culture. They inherit your DNA and congenital traits, but everything else is randomly determined. Each child of either gender costs 10 customization points, unaffected by your faith's view on gender. Male or female, a ruler is limited to a number of children equal to one for each year since they turned 16. For example, a 50-year-old character can start with at most 34 children.

The Ruler Designer features a robust character creator that permits tweaking the physical appearance of the character, including ethnicity, skin tone, height, and facial features. It can be roughly divided into two parts.

The first screen allows for a quick generation of the ruler's appearance. You can select one of the game's predefined ethniticies and randomly generate an appearance. This can be useful as a starting point before your further refine the character.

This screen also allows access to the ruler's DNA, a string of text corresponding to the current values of your ruler's genes. You can copy the DNA to your computer's clipboard and share it with others or retain it for later use. You can then paste text from said clipboard and, if it corresponds to a valid genetic code, the game will process it and generate a character with the corresponding appearance. Note that the DNA string only applies to a characters physical appearance. Skills, attributes, lifestyle and education must be applied separately.

The second screen allows you to manipulate the value of most of your character's genes through a graphical user interface, similar to conventional character creators in various other games, so that you can fine-tune your ruler's appearance. None of these affect game mechanics in any way (e.g., raising height to the maximum doesn't confer the effects of the Giant trait, only the trait will provide those).

A few genes can't be manipulated this way: body shape, body hair (for men), bust shape (for women), style of aging and eyebrow wrinkles. These genes still exist and all characters have them; they are merely hidden in the Ruler Designer interface. You can however tamper with them by copying the character's DNA to a text editor, changing the corresponding values directly and then pasting the DNA back in the game.

The latest update for Crusader Kings III reintroduces an old fan favourite from Crusader Kings II in the shape of the Ruler Designer. This character creator not only lets you customize your monarch's appearance, with sliders for age, weight, hair, and so on, but also the various traits and skills that will help shape your playthrough.

Developer Paradox Interactive has shared a video with content creator Roll1D2 showing off some of the tools at your disposal when it comes to creating your own ruler. There's a clear emphasis on the amount of freedom you have, with the option to play as either a man or woman with any in-game culture, sexual orientation, and religion.

Achievements are disabled if you decide to stack your king or queen with too many skills, but these can be counterbalanced with negative traits that deduct from your limited pool of customization points. You're free to go wild and give yourself as many advantages as possible, but creating a multi-faceted character is the way to go in an emergent grand strategy game like Crusader Kings III.

Paradox's latest earned a score of 8/10 in GameSpot's Crusader Kings III review, with critic David Wildgoose saying, "It doesn't always work perfectly, and at times it really makes you work for it, but there's something amazing in that any of it works at all. Strategy games can tell interesting stories as their empires rise and fall, but their procedural narratives are rarely as affecting and poignant as they are here."

Crusader Kings III has a vibrant and expansive modding scene, which is endorsed by Paradox Interactive itself and hosted on Paradox Plaza. These mods range from flavor-enhancing to map-modifying, and there are several that are incredibly popular to the point of being considered essential for the game.

Certain CK3 mods are so good that they're practically staples of every mod playset. Many within the community have even pushed for Paradox to hire the creators of these mods, although that has yet to happen. Regardless, these mods are basically synonymous with CK3 and are essential additions to any playthrough, whether that be in the Canary Islands, the Holy Roman Empire, or the Steppes.

As much as Crusader Kings III impresses with its cultural breadth, it still has some gaps. Thankfully, the Community Flavor Pack helps with that. It adds much-needed depth to CK3's clothing and hairstyles with hundreds of items for nearly all cultures within the game. Its assets are historically accurate and sometimes even character or title-specific. One of the most well-known items within the mod is the Aragonese Crown, which features an accurately-modeled Cimera de Jaime I, which is a golden dragon featured on Aragonese regalia.

CFP also adds some new items and courtrooms for the Royal Court expansion, and it's fully compatible with it. All of the models fit in seamlessly with the actual game, which is a huge plus. Overall, it greatly increases the immersion of the game and gives players a lot more control over characters' appearances.

Ethnicities and Portraits Expanded is similar to the Community Flavor Pack, but it mostly focuses on the physical attributes of different cultures. It adds hundreds of ethnicity options from central African cultures to those in Scandinavia. It makes different cultures more distinct in appearance and adds some clothing options. Some cultures even have items customized for specific time periods and religions. For example, the Iranian culture has clothing options for both Muslim and non-Muslim rulers, and the Chinese have custom headwear.

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