Skills represent what your character is good at in this TTRPG system.
Each skill has a rating assigned to it from 0-12, with higher ratings representing more advanced ability. Your skill rating is used to calculate your dicepool for actions involving that skill. A higher skill rating means a bigger dicepool.
During character creation, you will choose which of the skills listed here to invest points in.
Knowledge skills are a separate but related category of skills. Knowledge skills are purchased separately from normal skills.
Physical Skills
Physical skills typically pair with the Physical attribute when you are calculating your dicepool.
Might
Power, potency, strength, & sinew. Might is a core skill for powerhouse characters. Might is more than just big muscles. It goes deeper. It is profound, making one able to dig deep into their psyche and channel their inner monster into terrible feats of strength.
Your rating in the Might skill is obvious to anyone who looks at you, unless you take the ‘Pint-Sized Powerhouse’ passive power, which allows you to play as a small child who regularly throws boulders and rips tanks in half. This power is great for making powerful telekinetic characters who don’t appear to be a physical threat until they start force-choking you.
Powers linked with the Might skill include methods for tearing down fortifications, lifting & throwing impossibly large objects, carrying large burdens without facing penalties, ignoring wounds, and generally tearing up the scenery.
Might Tests
Lifting or moving something heavy, forcing open a locked door, pushing a car, and similar feats of strength may require a test.
Test: (Physical) + (Might) vs (Object Size *4)
While performing this action, you take a -6 modifier for unrelated actions.
Mobility
Run faster, jump higher, swim deeper, perform acrobatics, & dodge bullets.
Mobility directly impacts your dodge defense.
Powers linked with Mobility include advanced combat maneuvers, baiting your opponents to hit each other, jumping impossibly high, walking on tree tops or water, flight, and teleportation.
Mobility Tests
Race Test:
(Physical + Mobility) * (Speed) vs. (Physical + Mobility) * (Speed)
Rough Terrain Test:
(Physical) + (Mobility OR Pilot) vs. GM Difficulty
Some terrain is hard to move through. Slogging through a swamp or walking around hot lava can be slow & dangerous. The GM sets the difficulty of this test on a case by case basis, depending on how difficult & dangerous the terrain is.
Failure to hit the difficulty of this roll results in the involuntary expenditure of 2 energy. If you cannot spend 2 energy because you have none, you must accept a critical or dramatic failure. Accepting a critical or dramatic failure on this roll can result in damage, death, or further hardship, as decided by the GM.
Close Combat
Cut, kick, punch, pummel, grapple, tackle. This skill governs attacks made with melee weapons, including bare hands & feet.
Close Combat doubles as a defensive skill; it is used to calculate your parry defense.
Powers linked with Close Combat include special attacks, methods for moving your opponents around the battlefield, the ability to deflect ranged attacks, and more.
Ranged Combat
The Ranged Combat skill governs your skill with ranged weapons.
Unlike the Close Combat skill, Ranged Combat does not provide the ability to parry attacks. Although, there are powers which can mitigate this somewhat.
Powers linked with Ranged Combat are mostly special attacks.
Protection
The protection skill governs your ability to protect both yourself and others. If you want to “tank” in combat, this is the skill for you.
Protection directly impacts your soak defense.
Powers linked with protection include special defenses; the ‘Area Defense’ power will let you block area attacks from hitting anyone in the space you’re in. The zenith of protection powers allows you to block completely a WMD.
Stealth
There are 4 broad categories that most stealth actions fall into: Infiltration(& exfiltration), Shadowing, Disguise, and Palming. Most stealth powers also fall into one of these 4 categories.
Stealth can pair with any of the 3 attributes, depending on the context.
Stealth has a whole page here.
Social Skills
Social skills typically pair with the Social attribute when you are calculating your dicepools.
Presence
Allure, glamour, magnetism, and gravitas. The Presence skill can manifest in a lot of ways. It can be used to intimidate, persuade, inspire, and soothe. Unlike Guile, the Presence skill is used sincerely, without deception.
Understanding the mechanics of cares & social actions is crucial to utilizing this skill in your game.
Powers linked with Presence include inspiring emotions, working minor miracles, binding oaths, and weaponizing your incredible radiance & charm, and more.
Guile
Trickery, treachery, chicanery, deception, and deceit. The Guile skill can manifest in a lot of ways. It can be used to blackmail, beguile, cajole, con, manipulate, entrap, and betray.
Unlike Presence, use of the Guile skill is never forthright, honest, or upstanding.
Guile is used to calculate your Shrewdness Defense against social actions.
Understanding the mechanics of cares & social actions is crucial to utilizing this skill in your game.
Powers linked with Guile include manipulating emotions, altering memories, spreading vicious rumors, magically censoring speech, and more.
Insight
Empathy, apprehension, acumen, and discernment. The Insight skill is used to discover the cares & motivations of other people. This skill is used whenever a sense motives action is taken.
Understanding the mechanics of cares & social actions is crucial to utilizing these skills in your game.
Powers linked with Insight include talking with animals, interrogation, learning enemy strengths & weaknesses, and other information gathering methods.
Leadership
Lead an organization, or lead troops into battle.
Leadership usually pairs with the Social attribute for most tests, but can pair with the Mental attribute as well.
Combat powers linked to Leadership include methods to make your troops more effective, prevent logistical nightmares like camp sickness, and make your troops capable of dealing with magical or supernatural threats.
Non-combat powers linked to Leadership let you run your Organizations more effectively.
Mental Skills
Social skills typically pair with the Mental attribute when you are calculating your dicepools.
Pilot
The Pilot skill governs your ability to use vehicles effectively.
Pilot typically pairs with the Mental attribute.
The types of vehicles used in different settings will differ greatly, but the pilot skill and its’ related powers govern them all. There are some types of vehicles which may be very exotic in one setting, while being commonplace in another setting. For the ability to pilot very exotic vehicles, a character may purchase the “Exotic Vehicle Piloting” passive power. For example, piloting a space ship in a modern setting would require the “Exotic Vehicle Piloting” power, but this power would not be required in a sci-fi setting in which space ships are commonplace.
Powers linked with Pilot include methods to get a dead vehicle running again, quickly hotwire a vehicle, special attacks & defenses, and powers similar to those from Mobility.
Physical Awareness
Physical Awareness has its own page here.
The Physical Awareness skill both sharpens your character’s senses and makes them more observant. Sherlock Holmes has a high Physical Awareness.
Physical Awareness is used when rolling initiative, which is important in combat.
Physical Awareness governs the ability to investigate crime scenes & similar.
Powers linked to Physical Awareness include things like super vision, super hearing, hunting & tracking, investigating crime scenes, planting bugs, surveillance, and scrying.
Spiritual Awareness
The Spiritual Awareness skill allows your character to interact with spirits, sense magic, perform astral projection, and more.
Understanding the rules for the spirit world/astral plane/immaterial realm is critical to effectively using the Spiritual Awareness skill.
Powers linked to Spiritual Awareness include methods to deeply understand strange magics, and bridging the gap between spiritual & physical worlds.
Medicine
Medicine has its own page here.
The Medicine skill allows you to practice medicine; diagnosis, treatment, surgery, & first aid.
Academics
Scholars of all stripes invest in the Academics skill. This skill governs what your character knows about setting-specific information.
Academics is a unique skill in that it contains all Knowledge Skills. Academics provides free Knowledge Skill points equal to 3X your Academics skill rating.
Powers linked with Academics include methods to control weather, shape the elements, speed read, speed write, call lightning, foretell the future, place curses, and much more.
Knowledge Skills
Knowledge Skills give you setting-specific information. Knowledge skills let you know things, as opposed to skills that let you do things.
Knowledge Skills are rated from 0-6.
All Knowledge Skills provided are merely examples. Players and GMs should feel free to invent their own Knowledge Skills; but use caution that they’re not too broad.
Knowledge Skill Categories & Examples
- Area knowledge: region or city
- History: region or subject(such as military history, religious history, etc.)
- Languages
- All characters begin with a free rating 6 language, which is their native tongue.
- A rating of 6 grants fluency in a language, such that most tests can be treated as trivial.
- All characters begin with a free rating 6 language, which is their native tongue.
- Professional knowledge
- Law
- Marketing
- Computers
- Chemistry
- Math
- Criminal
- Hobby Knowledge
- Art
- Music
- Literature
- Film
- Occult
- Astrology – fortune telling, fate, & stars
- Religion – gods, heavens, & traditions
- Fae – fairies & fae realms
- Death – ghosts & underworld
- Infernal – demons & hell
Knowledge Skills Points
All characters begin with a free rating 6 language, which is their native tongue.
At character creation, calculate the number of Knowledge Skill points you have to spend:
- You receive free Knowledge Skill points equal to 3X your Academics skill rating.
- You receive free Knowledge Skill points equal to 2X your Mental attribute rating.
After character creation, if you raise your Academics skill rating or Mental attribute rating, recalculate your knowledge skill points and spend the additional points you received for raising either of these traits.
After character creation, if you wish to learn a knowledge skill without raising your Academics skill rating or Mental attribute rating, you may spend experience points equal to (1x new knowledge skill rating)