Attributes
Attributes describe the general non-skill capabilities of a character. Attributes are sometimes pooled together into abilities.
Attribute descriptions
A character has a rank from 0 to 5 in the following 6 attributes :
- Strength
- Endurance
- Agility
- Perception
- Charisma
- Intelligence
Strength determines physical strength. Strong characters tend to do more damage when fighting unarmed or with melee weapons.
Endurance determines a characters physical and mental toughness. High endurance characters tend to endure hardships, both physical and mental, better than others.
Agility determines a character’s motor skills and determines precision and quickness. Agile characters are fast and nimble.
Perception determines how aware a character is of her environment. Perceptive characters tend to notice things others don’t.
Charisma determines the character’s inner strength and force of presence. Charismatic characters tend to be confident in their dealings with the world and often come across as strong, likeable or as people of integrity.
Intelligence determines a characters ability to learn and process information. Truly high intelligence characters seem to know something about anything.
Skills
Characters generally possess numerous skills with ranks from 0 to 5 where a 0 represents no training and 5 represents ultimate skill. Some of the skills with example uses are :
- Athletics – Climbing, jumping, balancing
- Brawl – Dirty fighting, martial arts
- Craft – Woodworking, painting
- Linguistics – French, latin, hieroglyphs
- Manipulation – Intimidation, wooing, selling
- Melee – Sword fighting
- Occult – Monsters, magic rituals
- Performance – Drama, singing, playing an instrument
- Religion – Religious texts, ancient rites
- Science – Biology, physics, chemistry
- Shooting – Slingshot, dart, archery, guns
- Stealth – Hiding, sneaking
- Survival – Camping, herbalism, navigation
Characters begin with an amount of skill points that they can delegate according to starting rules or their GM’s whims.
Abilities
Abilities relate to the very natural capabilities of your character and as such, they pool attributes together. Abilities are most often used as “saving throws” to avoid traps, resist poison or keep a cool head when things get seriously spooky.
Ability descriptions
Attributes can be combined in various ways to form abilities, but the standard ones on your character sheet are as follows.
Fortitude (Strength + Endurance) – Determines overall physical toughness and resilience. It determines how quickly characters become fatigued, poisoned or sick. Example uses: Resist fatigue, resist poison, resist sickness.
Reaction (Agility + Perception) – Determines how fast you can react to the external world. This determines your combat initiative bonus, but also your ability to react quickly to sudden surprises. Example uses: initiative, avoiding the trap you just stepped in, avoid slipping on ice.
Observation (Agility + Perception) – Determines a characters ability to notice things. Examples: notice a hidden door, hear the stalker breathing outside the door.
Willpower (Endurance + Charisma) – Determines your mental resilience, integrity and composure. It determines how quickly you get scared or possibly how vulnerable you are to a mental attack like a charm spell. Example uses: resist fear, avoid being manipulated, dispelling illusions or psychosis.
Wits (Agility + Intelligence) – Determines how quick a thinker a character is. Example uses: Rap battles, improvised speeches.
Magic power (Intelligence + Charisma) – Determines how powerful your spells are. Example uses: casting a spell, successfully using a magical item.
The above abilities are not to say that other combinations don’t exist. If the player can argue why Intelligence should be swapped for Charisma in a Willpower check under some specific circumstance, that might be alright (possibly at an altered difficulty) .
Optional rule : Ability checks in place of skill checks
The GM may even allow players to roll ability checks in place of skill checks. For example, a character would normally roll Charisma + Manipulation in order to intimidate someone, but let’s say the character is big and strong but not particularly good at the finer points of manipulation. The GM may allow the character to roll Charisma + Strength to intimidate someone instead.
Ranks
Ranks, for adults, can be described as follows :
- 0 – No ability (ex. “braindead” character has no intelligence)
- 1 – Low skill (ugly, stupid, weak, slow)
- 2 – Untrained (couch slouch, average joe)
- 3 – Trained (runner, amateur chess player)
- 4 – Well trained (excercise freaks, smart-asses)
- 5 – Exceptional (Top athletes, geniuses)
Max possible rank is character age divided by four and round down. Example, Gregor is 13 years of age and his max rank is 6 (13/4 = 3,25 which is then round down to 3). For ease, max ranks are also given here:
- 0 to 7 years old – rank 1
- 8 to 11 years old – rank 2
- 12 to 15 years old – rank 3
- 16 to 19 years olf – rank 4
- 20+ years old – rank 5
When describing skill ranks for characters younger than adults, the general rule is to describe them as higher than for adults. For Gregor who is 13, a skill rank of 3 in performance due to his prowess at playing the piano would be considered “exceptional”.