Skill Detail:
Academic

Alchemy is a little bit of science and a little bit of magic. Alchemists can identify substances and create potions and antidotes. Alchemy is expensive and every attempt usually costs money. Alchemy is a very time consuming activity, taking at least an hour, sometimes days or weeks, depending on the project and the materials at hand. A separate appendix is devoted solely to this skill.

In certain circumstances, the character may fail this skill and not be aware of it. If that possibility exists, the game keeper should roll the skill check for the player instead

Appraisal allows the character to determine the value of an item, helping to sort out quality from the absolutely worthless junk. An accurate appraisal requires up close inspection of the object, if not hands on examination.

Synergy Skills: Appraisal of any item that has something directly in common with another skill the character possesses can grant benefits. For example, an archer who finds a fine bow will more likely be more accurate than a gem cutter looking at the same bow.

This is essentially a trade/craft skill that is specialized towards the visual arts. The character must choose an emphasis. Common art types are drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, digital art, etc. Some art types are not acceptable for some campaigns.

For every three levels of this skill, the character can add a new style or sub-skill to her repertoire. Additional sub-skills are treated as if they were three levels lower than the previous sub skill. Thus, a character with a Skill of 12 in painting could also have drawing at 9, sculpture at 6, and wood cutting at 3.

Skill checks with this skill are handled differently than most other skills. Although the roll is handled the same as most other skills, results are interpreted differently. Every piece of art requires a standard skill check, but the results are compared to the chart, not pitted against the difficulty.

• 59 or lower: poor quality.
• 60 - 79: Mediocre quality.
• 80 - 99: Decent quality.
• 100 - 119: Good Quality.
• 120 - 139: Very good quality.
• 140 - 159: Excellent quality.
• 160 and higher: Wondrous.

Concentration is a character's ability to maintain focus when performing an action that requires full attention, particularly spell casting or while taking careful aim. Normally, a character will have no difficulty performing those actions, but sometimes something happens that can ruin concentration. Being injured, surprised, or distracted by dangerous activity around can cause a character to lose concentration, losing aim or causing a spell to fizzle out and fail. By making a concentration test, the character won't lose a spell or careful aim bonuses if he or she is hit.

The character is capable of performing essential first aid upon injured individual. First aid is also used to stabilize severe wounds that can get worse. First Aid takes several minutes to perform, thus it is usually impossible to perform First Aid during the heat of battle. More information is given in the chapter on Health and Damage.

Immediate Care: Immediate care must be performed within five minutes of injury. In the case of combat injuries, a recipient of immediate care can only benefit from one successful use of immediate care. Immediate care will heal a number of LW, MW, or SW equal to 1/3, 1/4, or 1/6 (rounded up) of the medic's skill respectively. As a matter of game balance, only one type of damage can be healed in this manner. Only damage suffered from the immediate combat or injury can be healed, so any extra healing is ignored.

Stabilize Wounds: Wound damage needs to be stabilized before it can begin healing. Usually this is important only for SW damage. If the character makes a successful First Aid check on a wounded individual to stabilize the wounds, she adds 1/2 of her first aid AV to the recipient's stabilization CON check.

Medicine: If the character also possesses the Medicine skill, the character's Medicine rank can be added to the character's First Aid rank when determining how much damage can be healed by immediate care.

The character is capable of identifying the animal and plant life of a region. Additionally, the character knows a lot about many animals and plants, including habitat, behavior, medical properties, and edible nature. The character must specify a terrain that the character has expertise in.

Forgery is used to create fake documents and letters. A forged document is handled differently from other skills. A document will have a rating determined by the skill roll modified by circumstances listed below. The Game Keeper will roll a 1d100 plus the AV value minus any modifiers of the forger's skill to determine the quality of the document.

When the document is observed, the reader must make a check with their own Forgery or Investigations skill (whichever is higher) against the quality of the forged document. Some modifiers that may affect the reader's check are indicated below. If the reader's check fails by 20 or more points, the reader has no idea that the document is a fake. If the check fails by less than 20 points, the document is mildly suspicious to the reader but is otherwise acceptable. If the reader makes his check by less than 20 points, he will detect something wrong with the document, perhaps requiring more information or a confirmation. If the reader makes his or her check by more than 20 points, the document is immediately recognized as a fake. The following modifiers assume that the reader is scrutinizing the document carefully.

The investigations skill includes a wide range of knowledge and skills, ranging from forensic knowledge and proper investigative procedure to suspect profiling and questioning. Characters with this skill are also more likely to notice things that are suspicious or out of place. Investigating the scene of a crime takes at least several minutes, if not hours or days.

Synergy skills: Each of the following skills could be synergetic in the proper context. Medicine, Weapon Skills, Appraisal, Gunsmithing, Linguistics, Tracking, Flora/Fauna, Herbalism, Alchemy, Forgery, Lock Picking, Craft (lock smithing), Research, Spellcraft.

The character has extensive knowledge on a particular topic, which must be declared when this skill is taken: Religion, chemistry, astronomy, mathmatics, physics, undead lore, regional and political events, regional lay of the land, history, etc. The possibilities are nearly infinite, although this skill can not duplicate any other existing skills. The difficulty of skill checks on this skill are based upon how obscure the information is.

For purposes of healing, a character with the Medicine skill may tend to the wounds of another. When this is done, a skill test is made against the difficulty of the wound type. If successful, the character heals at a rate equivalent to their Constitution plus the caregiver's Medicine skill. Failure indicates that the character simply heals as normal. Botching indicates that the treatment was counter productive and the patient takes 1 point of that type of damage due to infections or wound aggravation. One care giver can tend to up to 5 patients out in the field or up to 10 patients in a care giving setting such as a hospital. For each additional patient, the doctor suffers a +5 TAV to all skill checks.

If the character possesses the First Aid skill, this skill can be added to the value of First Aid for purposes of determining how much damage can be healed during immediate care. This does not add to the character's First Aid AV when rolling the skill check.

This is a representation of a character's ability to research information. An entire chapter section is devoted to this particular skill.

The character is trained how to operate various siege weapons and how to target them. Most siege weapons are not accurate enough to hit small targets, so a -80 AV difficulty applies to all attacks that are targeted against specific targets.

Spellcraft is a representation of a character's knowledge of arcane theory. Often, wizards and priests possess this skill to help them in their studies of the arcane arts. This skill is also required for the creation of magical items, such as wands, staves, scrolls, etc.