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Revision as of 20:43, 5 April 2009
Skills are the very bread and butter of doing something in roleplaying. Skills represent your character's knowledge, expertise, and specialties in comparison to everyone else. While any given person may be able to perform a skill, even be decently good at it, a character with ranks in a skill is exceptionally and heroically good at it.
Skill Checks
Whenever a challenge comes along that requires a roll from a player that involves a skill, the GM will announce that all the players that are part of that action need to make rolls.
As detailed in the How to Play chapter a skill check like any other is equally comprised of luck, ones innate talent, and gained knowledge.
The relevant ability is what a character might use in conjunction with the skill—Endurance with Swim for example. A skill is usually associated with a single ability, but sometimes your GM might have you use a different one. For example, if you're trying to stay afloat in strong current, not just swim a long distance, the GM might tell you to use Muscle instead.
Pass or Fail
To pass a skill check, you want the total number to meet or exceed a Difficulty Level determined by your GM. If your total is less than the Difficulty Level your character fails for that attempt at the task. Some tasks cannot be retried (unless the GM allows you to spend a Fate point to attempt a re-roll).
Teamwork
Skills marked with an asterisk (*) allow for other characters to assist when a check is made. Two heads are better than one, right? Decide on one ally to make the actual check. Each ally assisting in the activity can add their own ranks in the skill to the result (as well as any supernatural bonuses, like from spells or trumps). The GM should decide if there is a limit to the number of people who can assist a given task.
Example
Jay wants his character Riordan to jump a chasm. The GM decides since it's a really big, wide chasm the difficulty is rather high, setting the DL at 27. So even if Riordan had the maximum allowed stats in both his Athletics skill and Muscle ability, Jay still has to roll a 7 on his roll, which is pretty crazy. So Jay rolls his dice and the score comes up as 5. Riordan's Athletics skill is 8 and his Muscle is 8, so the final result is 21, not nearly enough to jump the chasm and Riordan likely falls to an untimely, sticky death. Cue the GM's maniacal laughter.
Skill Ranks
Like all things, skills are bought with Expoints. There are two kinds of skills: standard skills, the ones listed in the table below, and special skills: weapon skills and magic skills. You can buy 1 skill rank for 2 Expoints. Magic school ranks cost 3 Expoints for every 1 rank. You can only have a maximum of 10 ranks in any skill without the purchase of the Legendary Skill trump (see the Trumps and Faults chapter for more information about this trump). At character creation, you receive 50 Expoints to purchase skills.
Skills represent knowledge or practical experience your character has. He or she didn't just wake up the day after slaying a giant with inexplicable knowledge of opening locks. Like all upgrades to your character, the GM should have final approval on what your character learns and how he or she learns it. Without an available book, scroll, mentor, or loads of trial and error, your character has a slim chance of learning a skill.
Time
Some skill checks are instantaneous. That is, used during combat, they cost no Action Points (Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of how to use AP. See the Combat chapter for information about AP in combat). The skills that take no time to perform include Spot, Listen, Discern (sometimes), Focus, Knowledge and Lore, Occupation (for occupational knowledge only), and Estimate. Some skills are used as part of another action in combat. Some skills have AP costs inherently. A few can take days or weeks.
Take 5
On skill checks that carry no penalties for failure (see the Retries portion of the skill description) and your character is in no immediate danger, you can choose to just pretend you rolled a 5. This is useful if a low roll might be too small, or a high score might not benefit anything, but the average would probably work.
Take the Best
On skill checks that carry no penalties for failure and your character is in no immediate danger, you can choose to take 10 as if you had rolled it. (This does not count as a Critical Success). As opposed to "Taking 5", taking the best requires far more time. In game terms, your character keeps trying until the check is done perfectly. Usually, this means taking the time it might normally take for one attempt and multiplying by 10 or more.
Difficulty Levels
A Difficulty Level (or DL) is the minimum target for success when making skill checks. The lower the number, the easier it is to complete the task. Many skills have some example DLs listed, but the GM should ultimately decide this number. As a quick tip, increase the DL by 5 for each major obstacle in the way of completing the task. Minor obstacles should increase it by 1 or 2. Effects that are helpful should similarly reduce it by the same amounts. The following table gives some examples of DLs and who might be able to meet them.
| DL | Who could do it? |
|---|---|
| 0 | Anyone |
| 5 | Even the village idiot |
| 10 | Your average person |
| 15 | Only people with related experience |
| 20 | Experts |
| 25 | Very lucky experts |
| 30 | One with maximum human potential |
| 35 | Someone with powers beyond human |
| 40 | A legendary hero (or villain) |
Stupidly Impossible Tasks
Sometimes you might want to do something that absolutely defies all rhyme, reason, or logical sense. But even physics and logic are just guidelines in a fantasy game. DLs of ridiculous tasks should be 40 or higher and made by your GM. You might decide you want to try Climbing up a solid marble wall. Your GM laughs audibly and might say the DL for such a mockery of physics is 80. This chapter won't list any DLs over 40. Since you can probably come up with far more ludicrous tasks than we can, we'll leave it up to your GM to figure out their DLs.
Skills
Muscle
Agility
Endurance
Intellect
Insight
Cunning
Personality
Presence
Persuasion
Special Skills
Weapon
Weapon skills are used alongside Cunning in an Attack Roll.
 |
+ | Cunning | + | Weapon Skill | + | Muscle | + | Weapon Damage |
A parry for an attack would be:
|
+ | Cunning | + | Weapon Skill | + | Armor | + | Endurance |
A rank in weapon skill represents intense training with a specific weapon type. See the combat chapter for more details on weapon skill.
Magic School
You can buy ranks in any of the magic schools with the ownership of the Spellcasting special power. See the magic chapter for a list of schools. Your number of ranks in magic schools affects the length of time a spell lasts, or how big an area it can cover. You can add your magic school rank to both Spell Attack and Spell Defense rolls. For instance, if you have 5 ranks in the Fire School, the following is a Spell Attack roll for a Fireball.
|
+ | Agility | + | 5 (School) | + | Fire Damage |
Against a fire spell, this mage can add the school rank to his Spell Defense roll.
|
+ | Agility | + | Dodge | + | 5 (School) | + | Endurance |
See the magic chapter for more details on Spell Attack and Spell Defense.
