Creating Your Character: The Art of Becoming
Creating a character in Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game is like casting yourself in your own Doctor Who episode. You're not just filling out numbers on a sheet - you're breathing life into someone who will face impossible odds with nothing but wit, courage, and perhaps a really good cup of tea.
Think of it like writing a character for a novel, but instead of controlling their entire story, you're setting up their personality, skills, and background, then letting the collaborative storytelling take over. It's part autobiography, part wish fulfillment, and part creative writing exercise.
This page follows the Second Edition (2021) rules. If you have played the first edition, Adventures in Time and Space, note the big changes: there are no Traits and no trait points any more, the Fighting and Marksman skills have been folded into Conflict, a new Intuition skill has arrived, and every character now has a Focus and Experiences.
The Philosophy Behind Character Creation
In Doctor Who, the most memorable characters aren't the ones with the biggest guns or the strongest muscles - they're the ones with the biggest hearts and the cleverest minds. Sarah Jane Smith wasn't special because she could fight aliens; she was special because she cared about people and asked the right questions.
The Creation Journey: Step by Step
Second Edition builds a character in eight steps. Specialisations and Distinctions are optional; plenty of human companions skip Distinctions entirely.
Step One: Concept
Every great character starts with a simple "What if?" question. What if a school teacher accidentally got caught up in time travel? What if a brilliant scientist lost their memory? What if someone from the far future got stranded in the present?
The Two-Word Method
Your Concept is who you are, summed up in about two words - usually a describing word and a role. Keeping it short forces you to capture your character's essence without getting bogged down in details.
"Curious Curator"
Someone who spends their days surrounded by ancient mysteries and artifacts, always wondering about the stories behind them.
"Skeptical Detective"
A no-nonsense investigator who believes in facts and evidence, until they encounter something that defies explanation.
"Teenage Prodigy"
A young genius who sees patterns others miss, but still has the wonder and enthusiasm of youth.
"Retired Soldier"
A veteran seeking peace, but whose training becomes crucial in dangerous situations.
Once you have a Concept, the rest of the sheet hangs off it. The web below shows the pieces you'll add in the steps that follow.
Step Two: Choosing Your Focus
Your Focus is what drives your character - the thing they care about most, or the way they always approach a problem. It works in two directions at once. When your Focus applies to what you're doing, you roll an extra 1d6 and add it to your total (it is rolled separately, so it never counts as one of the 6s or 1s on your main 2d6). And when your Focus gets you into trouble and you play that complication, you earn a Story Point.
The core rulebook also lets you intensify a Focus for a bigger effect. The examples below are our own, written to show how a Focus cuts both ways.
Insatiably Curious
Complication: you can't leave a mystery alone, even when it's dangerous
Feels like: most of the Doctor's companions
The engine of most Doctor Who stories. You open the door everyone else is backing away from. The GM will love you, and occasionally your friends will want to strangle you.
Protective of Others
Complication: you'll walk into danger for a stranger without a second thought
Feels like: the heart of the team
You ground the more eccentric characters and often see the human side of situations that others miss. You're brave without being reckless - until someone you care about is threatened.
Never Backs Down
Complication: you rarely know when to walk away
Feels like: the soldier or bodyguard of the group
When talking fails (which it sometimes does), you're ready with action. But you're not just muscle - the best version of this character learns when NOT to fight, because in Doctor Who violence costs you.
Lives for the Work
Complication: you get so absorbed you miss what's happening around you
Feels like: the expert brought along for one job
You're the go-to person for specific knowledge. Whether it's history, medicine, technology, or xenobiology, you know your field inside and out - and you'll keep working while the walls come down.
Step Three: Experiences
Experiences are the memorable things your character has already lived through. They're optional at creation: the core rulebook offers background grids you roll on (1d6 for the row, 1d6 for the column), and your GM may be happy for you to pick or write your own instead. More Experiences are earned during play when you do something interesting.
An Experience is useful in two ways. When a past Experience is relevant, you can recall it for a bonus die on the roll. Or you can cash it in for an Experience Point, which is how characters improve over time.
Good Experiences are short and specific: "Spent a summer on a dig in the Valley of the Kings", "Talked a hostage-taker down once", "Grew up above a garage". Each one quietly explains why your character knows what they know.
Step Four: Distributing Attributes
Attributes are like the fundamental stats in a video game, but more nuanced. They represent your character's natural talents and capabilities - the raw material from which heroism is forged. There are six: Awareness, Coordination, Ingenuity, Presence, Resolve and Strength.
The Point-Buy System
You have 18 points to split among your six Attributes. Each must be at least 1, and 6 is the human maximum. Spreading them evenly gives 3 in everything, which is exactly average - so every point you push above 3 has to come from somewhere else:
- 1-2: Below Average (like me trying to fix a car)
- 3: Average Human (most people, most things)
- 4: Good (you're notably better than most)
- 5: Excellent (professional level)
- 6: Remarkable (the best a human can be)
Scores above 6 belong to non-human characters such as Time Lords and other alien species; the core rulebook handles them through Distinctions.
Interactive Attribute Calculator
All 18 points spent.
Powerful Attribute Combinations
High Awareness + High Ingenuity
The Detective: You notice things others miss AND understand what they mean. Perfect for solving mysteries.
High Presence + High Resolve
The Leader: People follow you into danger because you inspire confidence and never give up.
High Coordination + High Awareness
The Scout: You're the first through dangerous areas, quick to spot trouble and quick to react.
With only 18 points, a 5 in one Attribute means a 1 or 2 somewhere else. That's a feature: Attributes also soak up damage in this edition (physical, mental or social harm lowers the matching Attribute), so a low score is a real weak spot.
Step Five: Selecting Skills
While attributes are your natural talents, skills are what you've learned through training, education, and experience. They're like the tools in your mental toolkit - some people carry a full workshop, others prefer a few well-chosen instruments. Second Edition has twelve skills, rated from 1 to 6; a skill you leave at 0 is one you haven't trained.
Mental Skills - The Power of Knowledge
Science
Understanding how the universe works - from quantum mechanics to alien biology. Essential for techno-babble solutions.
Technology
Operating, repairing, and understanding devices from stone knives to sonic screwdrivers.
Medicine
Healing both humans and aliens, understanding biology across species.
Knowledge
History, culture, languages, law, trivia - everything you've read, studied or picked up along the way.
Physical Skills - Action and Movement
Athletics
Running, jumping, climbing, swimming - essential for escaping from Daleks and navigating alien environments.
Conflict
Fighting of every kind, from a scuffle to firing a weapon. (The first edition split this into Fighting and Marksman.) In Doctor Who it's often about subduing rather than killing - and killing will cost you.
Craft
Making and mending things with your hands - carpentry, cooking, art, building a barricade out of museum display cases.
Survival
Staying alive in hostile places: finding water, shelter and a way out of the wilderness, on Earth or off it.
Transport
Driving, riding, piloting - anything with wheels, hooves, wings or engines.
Social Skills - The Human Connection
Convince
Persuading others through logic, passion, or simply being right.
Intuition
Reading people and situations - sensing a lie, a hidden motive, or that something about this village is just wrong. New in Second Edition.
Subterfuge
Stealth, disguise, and misdirection - sometimes avoiding trouble is better than facing it.
Skill Point Distribution
You get 18 skill points to spend - a separate budget from your 18 Attribute points. With twelve skills and 18 points, you can't be good at everything, so you either specialize deeply or spread your knowledge wide:
The Specialist Build
Science 6, Technology 5, Medicine 4, three more skills at 1 (18 points)
You're the go-to expert, but might struggle outside your field.
The Generalist Build
Six skills at 3, the other six untrained (18 points)
You're competent at many things, master of none.
The Balanced Build
Two skills at 5, two at 3, two at 1 (18 points)
Strong in key areas, competent elsewhere, with interesting limitations.
Interactive Skill Calculator
18 points left to spend.
Step Six: Specialisations
Specialisations are optional. A Specialisation marks out a narrow area within one of your skills where your character is especially good - Knowledge (Ancient History) rather than all of Knowledge, or Transport (Helicopters) rather than every vehicle. Pick ones that match your Concept and Experiences; the core rulebook sets how many you can take and exactly what they add to a roll.
Step Seven: Distinctions
Distinctions are what make a character more than an ordinary human: a species, a power, a strange piece of history. They replace the first edition's Traits entirely - there are no Good or Bad Traits, no Minor or Major Traits and no trait points in Second Edition. Distinctions are optional, they can carry drawbacks as well as benefits, and each one is paid for out of your starting Story Points.
Distinctions - What Makes You More Than Human
Time Lord
The Doctor's people: long-lived, brilliant, and carrying a great deal of baggage. An experienced Time Lord character starts play with 8 Story Points instead of 12.
Alien Species
Playing a Sontaran, a Silurian or another non-human means taking that species as a Distinction. A Sontaran, like an experienced Time Lord, starts with 8 Story Points.
Telepathy
A mental power that lets you sense or touch other minds. Spending Story Points activates many Distinctions like this one in play.
Cybernetic
Part machine, whether by choice or by something done to you. It opens doors (and closes some) depending on who's looking.
Gadgets such as a sonic screwdriver or a vortex manipulator work the same way: they also reduce your starting Story Points. The core rulebook gives the cost of each Distinction and Gadget.
Where Complications Come From Now
In the first edition, Bad Traits were your source of trouble. In Second Edition that job belongs mostly to your Focus, and Story Points flow back to you through play:
Playing Your Focus Flaw
When your Focus lands you in trouble and you lean into it, you gain a Story Point.
Heroics and Capture
Acting heroically earns Story Points, and so does getting captured - a staple of every Doctor Who story.
Terrible Acts
Story Points can also be lost. Killing, and other acts the Doctor would never stand for, can cost you.
Step Eight: Goals and Background
Finish by giving your character a short-term Goal (something they want this adventure or soon) and a long-term Goal (what they want from life, or from travelling in time and space). Goals tell the GM what kinds of stories to aim at you.
Your background is the story of how you became who you are. It's not just a job description - it's the collection of experiences that shaped your skills, Focus, and worldview. These questions help, and the answers often suggest Experiences and Goals.
The Five Questions Method
Where did you grow up?
This shapes your basic worldview and cultural references.
What was your education or training?
This explains your skills and knowledge areas.
What was your job or role in society?
This gives you a place in the world and specific expertise.
What's the most significant thing that ever happened to you?
This defining moment shapes your personality and motivations - and makes a fine Experience.
How did you meet the Doctor or get involved in time travel?
This is your origin story - the moment your ordinary life became extraordinary.
Finishing the Sheet: Story Points and What Isn't There
Second Edition keeps the arithmetic short. There's only one number left to work out, and a few things first-edition players may go looking for that simply don't exist.
Story Points
Start: 12, minus the cost of any Distinctions and Gadgets
Your pool of narrative power. One Story Point raises a roll's result by one level (a failed roll can be raised no higher than a bare success); you can also spend them for a hint from the GM, to gain Advantage, or to activate a Distinction.
No Health Points
Instead: damage lowers your Attributes
Physical, mental and social harm each reduce the matching Attribute. An Attribute at 0 gives you a Condition; three Conditions and you're Defeated.
Experience Points
Earned: by cashing in Experiences during play
This is how your character improves. The core rulebook sets what each improvement costs.
No Initiative Score
Instead: Talkers, then Movers, then Doers, then Fighters
Who acts first depends on what you're trying to do, not on a stat or a roll.
Putting It All Together: Sarah Mitchell
Let's create a complete character to see how all these pieces fit together. Every total below adds up, so you can check it against the calculators above.
Sarah Mitchell - Curious Curator
Concept and Focus
Concept: Curious Curator. A museum curator who specializes in ancient artifacts and mythology. She's always wondered if the legends might be based on real events - and then she met the Doctor.
Focus: Ancient Mysteries. She gets the bonus die when she studies artifacts, inscriptions or old legends. The complication: she can't walk away from an unexplained object, and she earns a Story Point every time that drags the group into trouble.
Experiences: "Spent a summer on a dig in the Valley of the Kings"; "Locked in the museum overnight during a power cut".
Attributes (18 points)
- Awareness: 4 (notices details in artifacts)
- Coordination: 2 (all thumbs outside the lab)
- Ingenuity: 4 (academic researcher)
- Presence: 3 (average)
- Resolve: 3 (average)
- Strength: 2 (more books than gym)
4 + 2 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 2 = 18
Skills (18 points)
- Knowledge: 4
- Intuition: 3
- Convince: 2
- Science: 2
- Athletics, Craft, Medicine, Subterfuge, Survival, Technology, Transport: 1 each (7 points)
- Conflict: 0 (untrained)
4 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 7 = 18
Specialisations and Distinctions
Specialisation: Knowledge (Ancient History)
Distinctions: none - she's entirely, stubbornly human
Story Points and Goals
- Story Points: 12 (no Distinctions or Gadgets to pay for)
- Short-term Goal: find out who has been slipping future artifacts into her collection
- Long-term Goal: prove that at least one legend she grew up with really happened
At the table, a typical roll for Sarah - say, dating a strange carving - is Ingenuity 4 + Knowledge 4 + 2d6, plus her Focus die because it's an ancient mystery, against a Difficulty of around 12.
Background
Sarah grew up in London, fascinated by the stories her grandmother told about ancient legends. She studied archaeology at Oxford and now works at the British Museum. The most significant event in her life was discovering what appeared to be impossible artifacts - items that seemed to be from Earth's future mixed with ancient pottery. When she tried to investigate, she met a mysterious man with wild hair and a long coat who claimed to be a time traveler...
Want more finished examples? The Sample Characters page has ready-to-play travellers and whole TARDIS crews built the same way.
Try It at the Table
One: Quick Concepts
Create five different character Concepts of about two words each. For each, write one sentence explaining what makes them interesting.
- Retired _____ (profession)
- Young _____ (job/role)
- Mysterious _____ (background)
- Brilliant _____ (specialty)
- Ordinary _____ (everyday person)
Two: Attribute Scenarios
For each scenario, identify which Attribute and skill would be most important and explain why:
- Negotiating with hostile aliens
- Disarming a complex bomb
- Tracking someone through a crowd
- Resisting mind control
- Climbing a crumbling building
Three: Focus Complications
For each Focus, describe a situation where it earns the character a Story Point by causing complications:
- Insatiably Curious
- Protective of Others
- Never Harms Anyone
- Acts First, Thinks Later
- Lives for the Work
Four: Complete Character
Create a complete character using the process outlined on this page. Include:
- A Concept of about two words
- A Focus, with its bonus and its complication
- Two or three Experiences
- Attributes (18 points)
- Skills (18 points)
- Any Specialisations and Distinctions
- Starting Story Points (12 minus Distinctions and Gadgets)
- A short-term and a long-term Goal
More Character Creation Tips
The Weakness Advantage
Give your character at least one thing they're genuinely bad at. It creates opportunities for other characters to help and makes victories more meaningful.
The Relationship Web
Think about how your character knows or connects to the other player characters. Shared backgrounds create instant story hooks.
The Growth Arc
What does your character want to learn or overcome? Your long-term Goal is the natural place to write it down, and it gives the GM material to work with.
The Signature Move
What's your character's go-to solution? The thing they always try first? Make it part of your Focus, and it pays off in bonus dice.
Your Character Lives
Remember, character creation is just the beginning. Your character will grow and change through play, gathering new Experiences, cashing them in for Experience Points, and developing new skills, relationships, and story elements. The numbers on the sheet are important, but the real character emerges through the choices you make during adventures.
In Doctor Who, the most important thing isn't how strong or smart you are - it's how you choose to use your abilities to help others and make the universe a better place. Your character sheet is just the starting point for that journey.