I just finished Barbara Hambly's Ladies of Mandrigyn, which is excellent 1980s sword and sorcery, and I'm going to stat up Sun Wolf and Starhawk as beginning BoL characters. Sun Wolf is pretty straightforward in terms of his careers:

1. As a child, he could see demons that no one else could see. So he gets Magician 0 to reflect his potential for mystic training (something of an issue in the novel).

2. He was raised in the savage northern marshes. Barbarian 1.

3. He became a soldier for hire, eventually leading his own company and training others. Mercenary 3. (He has a barbaric background, but Hambly focuses more on his leadership abilities and training skills, so I gave Mercenary the edge.)

4. Gardener 0. As a hobby, Sun Wolf likes to arrange rock gardens and tend orange trees. I don't think this interest merits a score of 1; it's sort of the poster child for a 0 score that represents exposure as opposed to potential.

Starhawk is the bigger problem.

1. We know that she spend substantial time in a convent and even appears to have been a nun. So Priest 1 at least.

2. She also has a Mercenary score comparable to Sun Wolf's. So Merc 2 or 3.

I don't remember any other hints from Ladies about the rest of her backstory. Anyone capable of enlightening me?

Gruntfuttock wrote:

Sorry, I've not read the book, so I'm no use to you. However, I love your post as it shows just how simple it is to generate a character from a book using BoL - the Careers mechanic for the win!!

100%. Super-experienced characters (e.g., Gandalf, Fellowship-era Aragorn, King Conan) require some work, but many of the younger versions of those same characters can easily be statted up as starting characters ("Ill Met in Lankhmar" Fafhrd and Mouser, "Queen of the Black Coast" Conan, etc.).