The shape of a hero
A character is built from a handful of big choices, and each one answers a different question. Where do you come from? What did you do before the adventuring started? What are you now? Everything else — the numbers on your sheet, the things you're good at, the tricks you can pull in a fight — grows out of those answers.
You'll make three choices that define who your character is: an ancestry, a background, and a class. Then you'll shape them with attributes, skills, and feats. None of this has to be done in order, and none of it is permanent until you say so. Pick what sounds fun first, and let the rest fall into place around it.
Ancestry and heritage
Your ancestry is the kind of person you are — a dwarf, an elf, a human, a leshy, a sprite, and so on. It sets a few basics: how much starting Hit Points you have, how fast you move, how well you see in the dark, the languages you know, and a nudge or two to your attributes.
Within an ancestry you pick a heritage — a variation on the theme. Two elves can be very different people: one raised in deep caverns who sees in pitch black, another whose ancestry reaches back to something stranger. The heritage is where that shows up.
Background
Your background is the life you led before the first session — soldier, scholar, street urchin, field medic. It's a small choice with a nice payoff: it trains you in a skill or two and hands you a feat tied to that past, so your character walks in already good at something that makes sense for who they were.
A background isn't a class and it isn't destiny. It's texture — the reason your wizard knows how to haggle, or your fighter can still set a broken bone.
Class
Your class is your calling — the role you play and the way you grow. A fighter, a cleric, a rogue, a wizard; each one advances along its own path, gaining new abilities as you level.
Your class decides a lot: how hard you are to hit, what weapons and armor you're good with, your saving throws, and — most importantly — the signature things only your class can do. It also names a key attribute, the single ability score that powers your best work. A fighter's is usually Strength or Dexterity; a wizard's is Intelligence.
Your attributes
Six attributes describe raw capability: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Everything a character rolls leans on one of them.
Everyone starts even, at a +0 modifier across the board, and you raise attributes with boosts — each one lifts a modifier by +1. At creation you get four boosts from your ancestry, two from your background, one from your class's key attribute, and four free boosts to spend wherever you like. A few ancestries also take a flaw, a −1 somewhere, in exchange for their strengths. After that, you gain four more boosts at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20.
Two rules shape how they land. When several boosts arrive together, they each have to go to a different attribute — no stacking two from the same batch onto one score. And once a modifier reaches +4, it climbs slower: a boost there is a partial boost, so it takes two of them to gain the next +1. That modifier is the number you add to rolls — a +4 Strength means +4 on your attacks and Athletics.
Skills and feats
Skills are the broad competencies — Athletics, Stealth, Medicine, Diplomacy, and the rest. How good you are at one is its proficiency, and that rank sets the bonus you add: nothing while untrained, your level + 2 when trained, + 4 at expert, + 6 at master, and + 8 at legendary — on top of the governing attribute's modifier. Rank matters more than any single roll: a legendary expert beats a novice before the dice even move. Your background, class, and Intelligence decide how many skills you start trained in, and you'll train more — and push some to higher ranks — as you level.
Feats are the specific tricks. Where a skill says "you're good at sneaking," a feat says "you can hide even while someone's watching you." You gain feats of a few kinds as you level — ancestry feats, class feats, skill feats, general feats — each a small, concrete new thing your character can do.
Putting it together
Here's the good news: you make the choices, and the Forge does the arithmetic. Every boost, every proficiency, every bonus from a feat or a rune — it's all added up for you, on a sheet that updates as you build and recomputes when you level.
That frees you to think about the character instead of the character sheet. Decide who they are and what they're good at; let the tool keep the numbers honest. When you sit down to play, the only thing in front of you is a hero who's ready to roll.