Skills

## Skill rolls

If you roll a 1, -5 to the total of your skill roll. If you roll a 10, add an additional +5 to the total. The Game Master judges if your character can reasonably succeed regardless of your character’s modifiers. Impossible things are still impossible.  Of course, for mundane tasks players don’t need to roll and thus have no chance at failure.

**Note that there is no critical success or failure in this system.** The successes and failures are perfectly normal successes and failures and are not exceptional in any way.

### Optional House Rule: Critical success and failure

Some Game Masters might want there to be critical successes and failures on skill rolls in their games. With this variant, whenever a character succeeds with a roll of 10, or fails with a roll of 1 an additional effect determined by the Game Master occurs. With a roll of 10 a particularly beneficial event occurs for the character such as gaining a permanent long-term ally with **Negotiation**. With a roll of 1, an unfortunate event occurs such as a character falling off the wall they are climbing and landing on sharp jagged rocks.

In this system, you always round decimal results down.

### Skill Points

Every time you gain a level, you get 4 skill points. You may increase any skill from the entire list as you wish (there are no class skills). The maximum amount of skill points you may place in a specific skill is equal to your level. A skill point increases your roll in a given skill by its amount.

## STR Skills

### **Athletics**

Used for running, climbing and swimming. **Athletics** can be used instead of **Maneuver** check, which allows you to control or escape enemies in the battlefield.

### **Endurance**

Used for physical endurance, resistance to poison and addiction and even magical diseases and plagues. **Endurance** also reduces the chance you die when at zero **Life**.

### **Survival**

Used for knowledge about geography and surviving in the wild. Knowing how to find rivers, safe drinking water, good camping sites, hunting etc. **Survival** can also be used to conceal you and others trails over long distances.

## DEX Skills

### **Stealth**

The ability to not be seen or heard. You can only **Stealth** in places where others do not have direct line of sight to you such as darkness, tall grass, sneaking behind them etc.

### **Soul Manipulation**

The ability to manipulate soul energy in unintended, devious or subtle ways. Can be used to bypass magical wards, traps or conceal yourself from magical detection. It can be used to try and fool someone into thinking you are weaker or stronger than you really are.

### **Maneuver**

The ability to move with grace and bypass or avoid or control enemies in the battlefield.

Maneuver can also be used to wriggle through tight spaces, or dodge away from an unexpected surprise such as a blade trap.

### **Initiative**

The ability to react quickly to changing situations. Used to determine the order of combat. **Initiative** can also be used in a contested manner to see who reacts first, such as an archer readying an arrow as an opponent runs around a corner.

Occasionally, **Initiative** may be used for non-combat situations, such as catching a falling object or pressing the red button before others can stop you.

## INT Skills

### **Perception**

The ability to see, hear and smell things around you. **Perception** can be used to sense how powerful an individual is, as well as to spot a **Stealth**ed, phased or invisible opponent.

### **Lore**

General knowledge. Every 5 skill points invested in the skill, pick a specialization. The subjects are: Undead, Soul Magic, Wraeclast history, Karui, Geography, Beasts, Vaal, the Eternal Empire, Virtue Gems and Animals though your GM can add more as it fits the needs of the game. Specializations allow your rolls to be Lucky on that particular topic. Lucky allows you to reroll your roll and take the higher result. The better you do on a **Lore** roll, the more information the GM will give you on a question, topic or thing you encounter.

### **Soulcraft**

The practice and understanding of magic. **Soulcraft** can be used for a variety of purposes such as creating wards against magical detection and alarm wards that alert you to the presence of others.

**Soulcraft** can further be used for charms against minor ills etc fitting a witch-like theme.

**Soulcraft** can also be used for rune-binding. Rune-binding is a practice where you tattoo runes over your and another's body to create an empathic link. Thoughts, feelings and a rough sense of the direction and distance can be sensed through this link, though it is highly traumatic if someone in this link were to die. The darker option, a slave-link, can be created where the empathic ability only goes one way and there is no trauma on death. If you are linked to another, it is very difficult to lie, giving you a -5 penalty (per tier) to the attempt.

There is no limit to how many links you can establish, but a link can only be forged if both participants are willing (even with a slave link). Removing the tattoos removes the link, but requires expertise in **Soulcraft** to do so without trauma or damage to the subject.

**Soulcraft** is also used to extract a Skill Gem from an individual and place it in a Skill Gem. It can be used to gain more detailed information from other people's use of Skill Gems

## General Skills

**The following have no key stat, and need to have skill points invested for benefit.**

### **Negotiation**

The ability to gain better terms on a deal, trade or exchange. **Negotiation** is not mind-control, and the user better have a reasonable deal or exchange to start with, but it represents the ability to generally get the advantage in such deals.

Generally, the GM will assign a difficulty or range of difficulties to the roll. If you beat the number you succeed at the task. If you exceed the number by a certain amount you may gain an additional benefit as determined by the GM.

### **Charm**

The ability to be likeable or possess good etiquette and grace. **Charm** tends to smooth over social interactions, gaining you more friends, allies and connections or preventing a situation from spiralling into violence.

### **Intimidate**

Used to frighten others into complying. **Intimidate** has a wide variety of uses, some subtle, others obvious. While intimidated subjects might obey or flee you in the short term, only the most sophisticated intimidation works for long periods of time.

### **Artifice**

Ability to create mechanical gadgets and creatures. If you are skilled in **Artifice** you may attempt to make gadgets that assist you. It takes one hour per 2 TN to create a gadget as well as appropriate raw materials. By every 2 you exceed the TN, reduce the time required by one hour and the raw materials by 10%, to a minimum of one hour and a maximum of 50% less materials. If you fail this roll you lose all materials used to try to make the gadget.

Whenever you use a gadget roll a 1d10 twice, if both results are a 1, the gadget malfunctions and is destroyed. The player is encouraged to come up with and make their own kind of gadgets, as long as the GM approves. Popular gadgets include:

* Grappling hook: doubles your climbing speed and adds 2 to **Athletics** and **Maneuver** checks when used. TN 8 to make
* Grenade launcher: doubles your effective range when throwing grenades. TN 10 to make.
* Potion injector: allows you to use your minor action to use a Flask twice instead of just once. TN 12 to make.
* Potion gun: allows you to inject a target at range with a use of your flask as a minor action, potentially healing them or restoring their **Mana**. TN 12 to make.
* Ocular goggles: doubles your vision range, adds 2 to **Perception** checks. You become dazed if suddenly exposed to bright light, losing your minor action on your next turn. TN 6 to make.
* Mechanical creature: a mechanical creature that fights for you. TN 10 to make. It has 1 **WAM** per **Artifice** level and 10 **Life** per **Artifice** level. Mechanical creatures use the **Maneuver** and **Athletics** of their creator.  Depending on the type of creature, it gains an additional special ability:
* Giant Spider: can walk on walls and ceilings
* Rhoa: can charge in a straight line, gaining Lucky on its attack
* Hound: gains the scent ability, allowing it to track by scent
* Big Cat: gains the pounce ability, forcing its opponent to be Unlucky on its next **Maneuver** or **Athletics** check
* Mule: can carry an unusually heavy load and is ideal for transporting things

Mechanical creatures must be created with a passcode. If a person speaks the passcode they immediately gain control of the mechanical creature. The mechanical creature will obey the last person to speak its passcode.

A skilled Artificer might be able to learn the code by examining a deactivated or wrecked Mechanical creature. The artificer must beat the TN used to create the creature by 5 to learn the passcode from a wrecked creature and needs to beat the TN on a deactivated creature.

An Artificer can attempt to deactivate a mechanical creature without damaging it. First, the Artificer needs to beat the mechanical creature on a **Maneuver** or **Athletics** check to get close enough to reach its activation switch. Then, they need to make an Artifice check equal to the TN of the Artificer who made the creature to deactivate it.

Grenade: any trap Skill Gem implanted into a grenade has its **WAM** increased by 1, but now can only be lobbed as a grenade and has no detonation delay on impact. The Grenade uses all the appropriate stats of the creator regardless of who uses them. TN 5 to make.

Mechanical trap: any trap Skill Gem implanted into a mechanical trap has its **WAM** increased by 1, but now can only be set as a trap that can be hidden and detonated by a trigger.  The Mechanical trap uses all the appropriate stats of the creator regardless of who sets the trap. TN 8 to make.

Vertical Maneuvering equipment: a complicated set of grappling hooks and steam-powered thrusters that allow the user to swing from tree-to-tree or building-to-building. Very difficult to make and use. TN 20 to make. The user must succeed on **Maneuver** or **Athletics** checks to use the item, failing any **Maneuver** or **Athletics** check by 5 or more means you fall.