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Chapter 6: Skills
[ | Rolling Skills | Expert Skills | How Weapon Skills Work | Choosing Skills | Creative | Engineering | Espionage | Mystical | Physical | Pilotry | Science | Technical | Technology | Weapons (Melee) | Weapons (Ranged) | Wilderness | ]
Expert Skills
If you're reading this section, it means you want more to your character's skills. Perhaps you want a way to customize your character's
skills to suit very specific needs or you are just looking to get more out of skills as a whole. Either way, the next few sections will
show you how to capitalize on your current skills and even how to optimize your skill rolls so that when you succeed, you can customize
exactly how the skill itself is performed.
Many world books will offer the chance to lower experience costs on a few skill sections; take advantage of this by ensuring that your
character has a number of skills in any areas offered or chosen.
Talents
Talents are a really great way to enhance a skill on your character. When you take a Talent, you get it as the Basic Talent; if you
take the same Talent again, then it becomes Extended. An Extended Talent is the same as the Basic Talent, but is more powerful.
The number of talents or bonuses a character can have is limited by his intelligence. So if you have an intelligence of 8, you may have up to
only 8 talents and/or bonuses. You may get free talents from a higher intelligence, but these still count towards your total maximum.
If you cannot add any more talents to your character, consider instead just upgrading the existing ones.
When you roll an Extended Talent, your skill is considered broken at the time.
Definition: Talents are used in order to further detail how a character has learned to use his skill. In other words,
your character may be really good at repairing cars, but he's especially talented at handling the engine block. So he
would have the skill Automotive Mechanics with a talent in Engines. The Basic Talent will add 2 skill levels to your skill before
the required roll. The Extended is +3 skill levels. Because this is a Talent, you *may* exceed the limit on your skill with the
talent. So Automotive Mechanics is 10. You roll for an engine repair; since you have Engines as a basic talent, you have a skill
of 12 (notice how this is over the usual limit of 10). It is not considered a broken skill for the roll though, since you are using only
a basic talent.
You may come up with your own skill talents for a skill, if you don't find the listed ones appropriate. When you write down your
talents, simply write them down below the skill, using an (*) to indicate if it's extended. Example:
Automotive Mechanics Level 10
-Engines, Street Mods*
Skill Bonuses
Many skills have listed bonuses for them. You don't get them automatically for having the skill. You must pay extra
to get your hands on them. For every 4 levels in the skill, you're allowed to buy one skill bonus. You may not take the same one
twice unless explicitly allowed by the skill.
Each bonus costs 10 experience. A skill bonus (usually to a primary and a secondary stat) is then added to your character. This shows that the training your character has in the skill has reflected itself in other
areas of your character's development.
Expert Performance
Sometimes you may have an excellent skill level or just a really great roll. In other words,
your professional performance actually gives you some advantages. You may get combat bonuses, skill bonuses for future rolls,
or higher stats for the remainder of the scene.
Expert Performance reflects the Quality and the Pace of your roll. Here's how it works:
For each point you beat your skill roll by, you may choose to take 1 Quality or 1 Pace. For each Quality point
you take, your Expert Performance is increased.
Unless the skill is broken, your character cannot have higher than 5 Quality from the performance. Even then,
you may not have more than 7 Quality points. Certain abilities or other world-specific bonuses may ignore these limits.
If a stat or skill is increased past the limit as a side-effect of Expert Performance, then it operates past that limit for now.
Ignore the limit on a stat or skill while Expert Performance is in effect.
You will frequently see +X in the Expert Listing for each skill. Replace 'X' with the number of Quality points you earned from the
roll.
GMs, feel free to come up with your own Expert Performance of a character when he wildly succeeds at his skill performance.
If you find that the bonuses provided in our sections are inappropriate or unreasonable, just scale or completely
change the information provided.
Pace & Quality
How long does it take to perform the skill? How well is it performed? Does it meet or exceed expectations?
Okay, so you beat the target number. It's time to spend success points on Quality and Pace. Please only do
this carefully if the skill was of severe importance. You can just say 'all pace' or 'all quality'. Whatever. Hurry it up,
because other players are waiting.
For a standard roll, the Quality and Pace start at 0. If the player failed, reduce his Quality below zero to determine the disastrous (and possibly hilarious) consequences.
Players may receive penalties to Quality and Pace because of Burdens or low stats, or they failed the roll by a lot and
the GM feels like giving them a really bad day. For penalties to Quality, just look at the Expert Performance and however much they fail by, apply
it as a penalty instead (or come up with your own hilarious or disastrous penalty).
For Pace, you may want to use the following chart to determine how much time the skill performance takes:
Pace
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-3
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You take five to six times longer. Loser.
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-2
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You take three or four times as long.
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-1
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It takes twice as long as expected.
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0
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Well, a little longer than expected, but alright.
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1
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You were able to shave it down a bit.
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2
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This takes three quarters of the time asked.
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3
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Woah...did that actually take only half the time?
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4
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Done and done. A quarter of the time asked.
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5
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A fifth of the time for what any professional could ever ask.
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Keep in mind that sometimes a character may not realize he has failed the skill, even if the player has. Poisoning your guests
with food, or failing to screw a tire on properly... they'll find out later.
Slowing It Down
Okay, Pace is all well and good, but how does the GM know how long a job takes? Well, he's gonna need to use intuition. Building
a car from scratch could take a week of straight work and would require many skill rolls. Each time the character sits down to accomplish
a task (say installing a particular piece), it's the GM's job to determine how long it would take. Some skill rolls will require
minutes while others could require hours. Each skill roll will have a different timeframe associated with it; it's up to the GM to determine
just what that is.
If the player isn't concerned about Pace in his roll, he is allowed to reduce his Pace for skill bonuses. If you decided that painting a small picture
would take about two hours, then that's the timeframe. The character may double the timeframe (reduce his Pace by 1) to get +1 to his target number
for his roll. The player may only reduce his Pace in this way twice; just because you take more time doesn't mean you'll be that much better at it.
If the player chose to take longer, he may only increase Quality on a successful skill roll.
Remember Joe?
It seems he can slow down his Pace when analyzing those ancient tablets; this could get him up to another +2 if he takes the time. The
GM determines that it would probably take about 6 hours just to figure everything out. So Joe decides to do an entire's day worth of work
(doubles it twice = 24 hours) for the task, probably pulling
hair and being generally frustrated while he performs his skill. He has a target number of 5 now and he manages to just barely make it.
He did the job, as crude as it might be at 0 Quality; he could be missing some details but he got as much as anyone could expect from him.
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