Character
Skills
Skills represent a character's specialized capabilities developed with experience and training, while Stats represent innate abilities and potential attitudes. Skills are organized into categories that group together Skills with a similar theme or purpose — for example, the Combat category contains Skills commonly used in combat situations. Categories are used for quick reference and for determining character advancement according to their Vocation.
Each Skill is associated with a particular Governing Stat, which determines the natural affinity a character has with that kind of task. Some Skills (like Armor) have no associated Stat. Skills improve by spending Development Points earned each level, and may also receive bonus ranks from a character's Culture and Vocation at creation.
The seven skill categories are: Armor, Combat, Adventuring, Roguery, Lore, Body, and Spell Lores. Spell Lores are a special category described in the Grimoire.
Armor
This Skill represents the character's ability to offset the penalty that they would face when using certain Skills and moving around while wearing armor. Generally, the penalty is applied to Spell Casting Rolls and to the Acrobatics, Athletics, Ride, and Stealth Skills.
The Armor Skill is never rolled, nor is it associated with any Stat. Its bonus simply reduces the Armor Penalty from the armor a character is wearing, down to a minimum of zero.
Combat
This set of Skills determines how effectively the character can perform an attack with or without a weapon. These Skills can also be used to assess the enemy combat skill and to evaluate combat gear and equipment. Rather than developing Skills in each specific weapon, the character assigns Development Points to a Skill that represents a broad group of similar weapons. Whenever a character performs an Attack Roll with a weapon, the Skill Bonus is added to the d100 roll. This bonus is also called Combat Bonus, or CMB.
Blades
Governing Stat: Brawn (BRN)
Bladed weapons are made to cut and slash through the target's flesh. Swords long and short, scimitars, and similar slashing weapons belong to this group.
Blunt
Governing Stat: Brawn (BRN)
Blunt weapons, often also called mass weapons, produce damage on impacting the target with blunt force to crush, smash, and break. This group includes weapons such as clubs, maces, axes, and hammers.
Ranged
Governing Stat: Swiftness (SWI)
Ranged weapons encompass all weapons that either shoot projectiles of some sort or are themselves thrown as projectiles. This group includes weapons such as bows, crossbows, and thrown weapons like spears, daggers, or javelins.
Polearms
Governing Stat: Brawn (BRN)
Polearms encompass any weapon consisting of a piercing, slashing, or blunt head mounted on a longer (from 1.5 to 3 metres) shaft. This group includes weapons such as spears, staves, poleaxes, bardiches, and variants.
Brawl
Governing Stat: Brawn (BRN)
Brawl is a catch-all Skill encompassing all manners of fist-fighting, unarmed techniques, and also the use of so-called hand weapons, such as daggers, armored fists, and improvised weapons such as stones, table legs, and other objects.
Adventuring
This category includes those Skills that are often used in an outdoor environment: Athletics, Ride, Hunting, Nature, and Wandering.
Athletics
Governing Stat: Brawn (BRN)
This Skill is rolled when characters have to use their strength or stamina to overcome an obstacle.
Ride
Governing Stat: Swiftness (SWI)
This Skill is rolled when a character uses their ability to control and maneuver a mount or drive an animal-powered land vehicle. Horses and camels are common mounts, but it can also cover more exotic creatures like giant eagles, dragons, and such.
Hunting
Governing Stat: Wits (WIT)
This Skill is rolled whenever a character wants to hunt or track down a creature, or set up simple traps.
Nature
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD)
This Skill is used when a character wants to apply their outdoor knowledge in order to recognize plants, beasts, and natural phenomena, or actively interact with animals or with the surrounding environment.
Wandering
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD)
This Skill is used when a character needs to apply their knowledge of the outdoors in order to properly navigate and survive in the wilderness.
Roguery
This category includes those Skills related to the character's swiftness, agility, dexterity, and more generally their ability to deceive: Acrobatics, Stealth, Locks & Traps, Perception, and Deceive.
Acrobatics
Governing Stat: Swiftness (SWI)
This Skill is rolled when characters need to perform maneuvers that require a great deal of agility, balance, and motor coordination.
Stealth
Governing Stat: Swiftness (SWI)
This Skill is rolled whenever the character needs to avoid being seen or heard by an opponent in order to gain an advantage against them or a situation. This Skill is often resolved as a Conflicting Action.
Locks & Traps
Governing Stat: Wits (WIT)
This Skill allows the character to successfully pick locks and padlocks, and deal with traps, mechanisms, and similar devices.
Perception
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD)
This Skill allows the character to gather information and clues through their five senses.
Deceive
Governing Stat: Wits (WIT)
This Skill allows the character to successfully mislead others, disguise themselves, or provide a false perception of reality. This Skill is often resolved as a Conflicting Action.
Lore
This category includes those Skills related to the character's mundane and academic knowledge of the world around them and their ability to use that knowledge to their advantage: Arcana, Charisma, Cultures, Healer, and Songs & Tales.
Arcana
Governing Stat: Wits (WIT)
This Skill allows characters to read magical runes, use and identify enchanted items or materials, and recognize or analyze supernatural creatures and phenomena. Arcana does not grant the ability to cast spells — that requires Spell Lore ranks.
Charisma
Governing Stat: Bearing (BEA)
This Skill is rolled when the character is trying to convince others to do something without resorting to tricks or misdirection.
Cultures
Governing Stat: Wits (WIT)
This Skill represents a character's knowledge of the customs, beliefs, traditions, institutions, and languages of the various cultures they've encountered in their travels.
Healer
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD)
This Skill covers general medical knowledge, and it's used to treat wounds and injuries or to cure diseases and other ailments.
Songs & Tales
Governing Stat: Bearing (BEA)
This Skill represents a character's scholarly education and knowledge of folklore, history, myths, and legends, as well as their ability to tell them in an entertaining manner.
Body
Governing Stat: Fortitude (FOR)
This Skill represents the character's ability to endure physical punishment like wounds, scratches, and pain. The Body Skill Bonus sets the total number of Hit Points (HPs) the character has. While taking wounds and damage reduces a character's current HPs during play, it never reduces the Body Skill Bonus, which expresses a character's maximum potential.
The Body Skill is never rolled during the game.
Specialty Skills
Specialty Skills represent unusual and highly specialized proficiencies that come with focused training in a particular area of expertise. These Skills are completely optional. They can be used to inject more variety in the game, to give Warriors and Rogues an edge at higher Levels, or to stress the importance of certain aspects of a setting or campaign.
Vocations with no Vocational Spell Lores (Warriors and Rogues) can develop Specialty Skills using DPs from the Category the Skill belongs to, gaining two ranks in the Skill for each DP spent. Other Vocations must spend 2 DPs for each rank they develop in a Specialty Skill. Even with Specialty Skills, characters are still limited to purchasing a maximum of two ranks per Level in each Skill.
The group can pick and choose which Specialty Skills to use in their game from those listed below, or come up with their own, using those presented here as a template.
Assassination
Governing Stat: Swiftness (SWI) · Category: Roguery
This Skill represents the ability of the character to effectively strike to cripple or kill a humanoid foe when ambushing. This Skill can be used only in conjunction with a melee weapon with the Backstab Quality, such as a dagger or a short sword.
Each rank developed in this Skill equals a +/- 1 modifier to Critical Strike Rolls. The modifier can be added or subtracted from the roll, and the attacker gets to choose any result within the range of the roll.
Battle Frenzy
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD) · Category: Combat
By developing this Skill characters learn to focus their rage into a destructive frenzy, turning into unpredictable killing machines. Characters with at least one rank in this Skill can enter this frenzy as a Full Action. While frenzied, they cannot parry and gain a bonus equal to the number of ranks in their Battle Frenzy Skill to their melee CMB, and a +20 bonus to their BRN stat. However, they must engage in melee and attack the nearest creature they see. When the frenzy ends, they become Weary.
Cooking
Governing Stat: Swiftness (SWI) · Category: Adventuring
The Cooking Skill allows characters to turn simple rations or raw ingredients into savory meals. Cooks also know how to make the most of scraps and leftovers. Once per travel, characters can attempt a Hard (-20) Cooking Roll to reduce rations consumption in their party by one third.
Craftsmanship
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD) · Category: Lore
The Craftsmanship Skill represents a character's superior ability to work a specific kind of material (like wood, stone, or leather), or to create and repair a particular type of items (such as musical instruments, clothes, or bows and arrows). Characters developing the Craftsmanship Skill are true masters of their trade, able to manufacture items of a quality that goes well beyond the capabilities of the common artisan.
Dual Weapons Training
Governing Stat: None · Category: Combat
This Skill represents specialized training in fighting techniques using two identical weapons. Generally, only light bladed weapons no longer than Short can be used (for example, two daggers or two short swords). This Skill must be developed separately for each combination of paired weapons.
When fighting with paired weapons, normal Two-Weapon Fighting rules apply and the character gets to offset one point of penalty to attacks for each rank developed in Dual Weapons Training. When the penalty reaches 0, the excess ranks are added as a bonus to both attacks. The maximum number of ranks that can be developed in this Skill is equal to the character's SWI value.
Intimidation
Governing Stat: Bearing (BEA) · Category: Combat or Roguery
This Skill represents the ability to browbeat, coerce, and terrorize other people, through subtle threats or vulgar displays of power. In combat, characters can use this Skill to attempt to shift their opponent's current disposition to the next more favourable result on the Reaction Rolls Table.
Meditation
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD) · Category: Lore
Using this Skill, characters can meditate to focus their mind and awareness on some subject. After meditating for an appropriate time (usually at least one hour) on a task, the character can make a Skill Roll to gain a bonus to the Skill Roll needed to accomplish that task.
Quick Draw
Governing Stat: None · Category: Roguery
This Skill represents precision training in quickly drawing readied items. Each rank offsets one point from the -20 penalty for taking a Half Action together with a Full Action when drawing weapons or quick-loading missile weapons.
At 20 or more ranks, characters can make two separate attacks per Round with thrown weapons or missile weapons with the Quick Load Quality, with a special -20 penalty to both, reduced by one point for each rank over 20.
Scholarship
Governing Stat: Wits (WIT) · Category: Lore
In settings where writing is more common, the Scholarship Skill substitutes the Songs & Tales Skill, representing a character's general level of education and erudition. It also represents the characters' ability to read written texts in languages they know.
Stewardship
Governing Stat: Wisdom (WSD) · Category: Lore
This Skill represents the characters' ability to make sound economic decisions and administer their wealth. Heroes can use this Skill to pursue the Economic Endeavor activity between adventures, even if they are not in a Safe Haven.
Swashbuckling
Governing Stat: None · Category: Combat
This Skill represents the ability to get maximum advantage of a flamboyant, skirmishing fighting style. To effectively take advantage of this style, the character must be unarmored, unencumbered, and using a single one-handed weapon with no other item in their off-hand. Each rank developed in this Skill adds a +1 bonus to the character's DEF, and offsets a -1 penalty from making Dashing Attacks.
Swift Step
Governing Stat: Swiftness (SWI) · Category: Roguery
This is the Skill of moving with swift, smooth, and quick steps. The character must be unencumbered and suffer no Armor Penalties to use this Skill.
This Skill has two uses. Firstly, it offsets the -20 penalty for taking a Half Action together with a Full Action when taking the Half Movement action: the penalty is reduced by 1 for each rank (to a minimum of zero). Secondly, it can be used as a Full Action during the Move Phase to move more quickly over short distances, up to three times the normal Move Rate on an Outstanding Success.
Warfare
Governing Stat: Wits (WIT) · Category: Combat
This Skill represents the character's general knowledge of military tactics, as well as their ability to operate siege weapons, such as catapults, battering rams, or siege towers. Characters gain a +1 bonus for each rank they possess in the Warfare Skill to all their Skill Rolls made to lead troops into battle.
Weapon Specialization
Governing Stat: None · Category: Combat
This Skill represents the character's specialization in wielding a single, specific type of melee weapon — for example, the longsword or falchion, but not all weapons that fall into the Blades Skill. This Skill can be developed multiple times for different weapons.
Characters reduce their weapon's Clumsy Range by one for each five ranks in this Skill (to a minimum Clumsy Range of 1). At 20 or more ranks, characters can split their CMB in two and make two separate attacks at half CMB. At 30 ranks, the CMB can be split in three for three separate attacks.