Skills and Abilities

In the image above we see Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, more commonly known just as Raphael, picture of The School of Athens. One of their chief subjects surrounded on the nature of mankind. Is a man a mind and a body? Is a man a mind, a body, and a spirit?

We do not need to delve into the various aspects of these philosophical arguments here, however when devising a role playing game system we do need to answer the question, what aspects of mankind do we want to model within our system? What impacts are important for narrative tension. I am going to argue that there are four primary impacts that can be made. The first is physical. The second is mental. The third is social. The fourth is spiritual. If we can track these four areas we can understand a given characters Body, Mind, Self Image, and their Soul.

Another aspect we need to understand is what sort of things about these areas we need to keep track of to differentiate various people from each other. The areas we need to track minimally are the Strength, Speed, and Capacity of someones Body, Mind, Self Image, and Soul.

Body

These ability scores measure how the hero’s body reacts to the challenges encountered by heroes on their journey through the world.

Muscle

Muscle measures bodily power, athletic training, and the extent to which you can exert raw physical force.

Athletics

Your Athletics check covers demanding situations you encounter while climbing, jumping, or swimming.

Drive / Ride / Pilot

Whenever you attempt to ride a horse over rough terrain, pilot a boat down a busy river, or operate a method of transportation in any way that is beyond simply riding on them you will need to make a Drive / Ride / Pilot roll.

Melee Combat

Melee combat measures your characters ability to attack and survive in armed melee combat.

Agility

This ability score represents the speed and gracefulness the commoner has with their body.

Acrobatics

Your Acrobatics check covers your attempt to stay on your feet in a tricky situation, such as when you’re trying to run across a sheet of ice, balance on a tightrope, or stay upright on a rocking ship’s deck. You might also need an Acrobatics check to see if you can perform acrobatic stunts, including dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips.

Sleight of Hand

Whenever you attempt an act of legerdemain or manual trickery, such as planting something on someone else or concealing an object on your person, make a Sleight of Hand check. You might also need a Sleight of Hand check to determine whether you can lift a coin purse off another person or slip something out of another person’s pocket.

Ranged Combat

Your Ranged Combat ability check measures your characters ability to attack and survive in a ranged combat.

Stamina

This ability score represents how healthy your character is. Eventually the hero will be struck by someone else in combat, or their body will be sustaining damage from the environment they exist in. Such events will challenge the stamina of the hero. If the hero makes it into the twilight years of their life, they will see their stamina start to slip away as time itself takes its toll on the hero’s body. Stamina can be restored by spending time with loved ones. Stamina can also be restored using various medicinal foods, drinks, and poultices.

Ruggedness

Make a Ruggedness check when you attempt to Force open a stuck, locked, or barred door, break free of bonds, push through a tunnel that is too small. You might also need a Ruggedness check to see if you can hang on to a wagon while being dragged behind it, tip over a statue, or keep a boulder from rolling. [^5EOGL]

Stealth

Make a Stealth check when you attempt to conceal yourself from enemies, slink past guards, slip away without being noticed, or sneak up on someone without being seen or heard.

Unarmed

Your Unarmed Combat ability check measures your characters ability to attack and survive in an unarmed combat.

Mind

These ability scores measure how your character’s mind reacts to the challenges put to him on his journey to becoming a hero.

Intellect

This ability score represents your character’s raw ability to observe, understand, and recall information. When a hero comes into circumstances where they are looking for something hidden or they are trying to recall what something looks like their intellect will be challenged.

History

Your History check measures your ability to recall lore about historical events, legendary people, ancient kingdoms, past disputes, recent wars, and lost civilizations.

Natural Sciences

Your Natural Sciences check measures your ability to recall lore about terrain, plants and animals, the weather, and natural cycles. Your Natural Sciences also includes both life and physical sciences – biology, chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, and other such fields of study.

Tradecraft

Your Tradecraft check measures your character’s ability to apply technology to build, modify, and repair devices. You might also need a Tradecraft check to see if you can reverse engineer a Dwarven chest, repair a broken crossbow, or disarm a trap. Every trade, craft, or occupation that requires someone to build something will be making a Tradecraft roll to determine their level of success.

Reasoning

This ability score represents your character’s ability to make wise and reasonable conclusions based on the information collected. When your characters have discovered all the clues to some hidden mystery, their reasoning will be needed to put all the clues together.

Medicine

A Medicine check lets you try to stabilize a dying companion or diagnose an illness.

Insight

Your Insight check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.

Investigation

When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Investigation check. You might deduce the location of a hidden object, discern from the appearance of a wound what kind of weapon dealt it, or determine the weakest point in a tunnel that could cause it to collapse.

Acuity

This ability score represents your character’s ability to synthesize information optimally. Eventually a hero will have to confront the loss of a loved one or see things that damage the mind, such events will challenge the hero’s mental acuity. If a Hero makes it into the twilight years of their lives, their acuity will slip into various forms of instability and disconnection from reality as the mind protects itself from the ravages of reality. Acuity can be restored by spending time with family, friends, in meditation, or temporarily the consumption of various foods and drinks can restore acuity.

Survival

You might be asked to make a Survival check to follow tracks, hunt wild game, guide your group through frozen wastelands, identify signs that owlbears live nearby, predict the weather, or avoid quicksand and other natural hazards. Another aspect of Survival is the ability to navigate within a given environment.

Perception

Your character’s Perception check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses. For example, you might try to hear a conversation through a closed door, eavesdrop under an open window, or hear monsters moving stealthily in the forest. Or you might try to spot things that are obscured or easy to miss, whether they are orcs lying in ambush on a road, thugs hiding in the shadows of an alley, or candlelight under a closed secret door.

Gambling

Your character’s ability to understand the risks and rewards associated with circumstances.

Social

These ability scores measure how the Hero interacts with others. As your character’s travels in their journey to become a hero, they will interact with many other people. These interactions will test them in each of these areas.

Beauty

This ability score represents how physically beautiful the Hero is. A hero will need this to understand the norms of beauty in among a new people. This will also be used to determine how people will react to the hero before a relationship can proceed past surface interactions.

Style

Your art check determines how well you can understand the mind of the public or a given audience to delight them with a dress, a painting, a sculpture, a poem, or any other form or artistic pursuit that produces some sort of cultural artifact.

Performance

Your performance check determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment.

Etiquette

Your characters ability to say the right thing at the right time to any person.

Personality

This ability score represents the Hero’s ability to understand the cultural and social graces needed in a situation. A hero will use Personality to build a relationship with various people beyond a surface interaction. Hero’s will also use the ability score to try to understand the various social interactions observed between others.

Deception

A Deception check determines whether you can convincingly hide the truth, either verbally or through your actions. This deception can encompass everything from misleading others through ambiguity to telling outright lies. Typical situations include trying to fast-talk a guard, con a merchant, earn money through gambling, pass yourself off in a disguise, dull someone’s suspicions with false assurances, or maintain a straight face while telling a blatant lie.

Persuasion

When you attempt to influence someone or a group of people with tact, social graces, or good nature, the GM might ask you to make a Persuasion check. Typically, you use persuasion when acting in good faith, to foster friendships, make cordial requests, or exhibit proper etiquette. Examples of persuading others include convincing a chamberlain to let your party see the king, negotiating peace between warring tribes, or inspiring a crowd of townsfolk.

Intimidation

When you attempt to influence someone through overt threats, hostile actions, and physical violence, you might be asked to make a Intimidation check. Examples include trying to pry information out of a prisoner, convincing street thugs to back down from a confrontation, or using the edge of a broken bottle to convince a sneering vizier to reconsider a decision.

Identity

This ability score represents the Hero’s own self-identity and how well, they will fair when socially disgraced. When the hero becomes stressed over extended socially they will begin to question their own identity, when that happens they will be tested to see if they will go with circumstances around them, or if they will maintain their own identity and push forward. Identity can be restored by spending time with family, friends, or meditation. Additionally, some foods and drinks can be used to temporarily enhance or restore someone’s damaged Identity.

Social Sciences

When you attempt to understand Psychology, anthropology, economics, politics, or the various forms social relationships within groups you might be asked to make a Social Sciences check. Examples include trying to understand which bureaucrat you need to talk to within the government.

Animal Handling

When there is any question whether you can calm down a domesticated animal, keep a mount from getting spooked, or sense an animal’s intentions, you might need an Animal Handling check. You also make an Animal Handling check to control your mount when you attempt a risky maneuver.

Leadership

Your characters ability to inspire others to become the best versions of themselves.

Soul

Faith

This ability score represents your character’s raw strengthen to believe in each spiritual thesis or contract and the beings who are involved in them.

Theurgy

This collection of skills is associated with interactions with other spiritual beings. These are rituals and practices that form the interactions and bargains that are made between those intelligent creatures that live within the spirit realm and who are capable of various bargains or contracts.

Adept

This collection of skills is associated with having an understanding one’s own personal spiritual power and skills. An Adept is someone who has perfected their understanding of their spiritual strengths and weaknesses and uses them to enhance their body, mind, and social interactions.

Order

Order is the study of how the spiritual realms are ordered, predictable, and outcomes are controlled.

Skepticism

The ability score that represents your character’s ability to question and oppose a given spiritual thesis or contract and the beings who are involved in them.

Arcana

Arcana takes the scientific method and applies it to the spiritual realm. A Gnostic would focus on knowledge of how something worked, while an arcanist would focus on a system of predicable outcomes.

Gnosis

Gnosis a focus on the spiritual realm that insists that understanding and knowledge and the abandonment of the physical are the keys to enlightenment, power, and monergism.

Chaos

The Chaosism ability score is your character’s ability to understand that the universe is unique, and every circumstance needs to be addressed uniquely. Chaosism attempts to harness the random aspects of a circumstance to their advantage.

Mystery

The ability score that represents your character’s overall ability to deal with the seemingly contradictory aspects of the spiritual realm by synthesizing faith and skepticism. A Journeyman’s ability to synthesize faith and skepticism degrades over time due to extended exposure to the spiritual forces that expose the forces and contradictions that are beyond their ability to process.

Divination

Someone who uses Divination is trying to understand the pathways through time and the future.

Animism

Animism is the understanding that the whole universe itself is imbued with spiritual power. Someone who uses Animism understands these powers and uses them to shape the world around them.

Shamanism

Shamanism is the understanding of, and conforming one’s own spiritual strengths and weaknesses to mirror the Physical, Mental, Social, and Spiritual aspects of living creatures or a philosophical ideal.Note: The image above is in the public domain.