Skills

Characters may possess various skills such as but not limited to: Architecture, Tinkering, Search. Any character has a base chance of 1 in 6 to succeed in any specific situation where such skill is required. Some characters have a natural affinity to certain skills. For example, Dwarves have a basic chance of 3 in 6 to Architecture skill. Also, certain Careers or Classes allow characters to gain skill advances, improving the success chance. A single advance improves the base chance by one, turning 2 in 6 chance to 3 in 6 chance and so on. Numbers may also be modified by the situation (some strong doors and rare languages require some expertise to even have a chance of success).

Architecture

Clues, warnings, and rewards can be built into the very structures of a character’s surroundings.

Determining if a certain portion of a structure was built at a different time than the surrounding construction, determining if a passage shifts or slopes gradually, detecting if a particular structure is unsafe to travel in/on, determining what culture or even specific method of construction was used for any specific structure, all of these things (and more—this list merely illustrates some possibilities) can be important in keeping explorers alive and/or helping them achieve their goals of unlocking ancient mysteries.

Any character has a 1 in 6 chance to note any of these features in the surrounding architecture. Use of this skill is not passive; the character must spend one turn examining the structure.

Bushcraft

Characters may be able to find food and water during their journeys overland. To find food in the wilderness, the character must roll against his Bushcraft skill, with terrain modifying the skill as follows:

Hunting takes time, and the distance traveled during a day where successful hunting occurs is lessened by 1d4×25%. Unsuccessful hunting takes all day. Success means that 1d4 days’ worth of meals for a single person has been acquired for the party.

1d10 units of ammunition are expended in the attempt. If a character does not have a proper missile weapon, the chance to find food is lowered by 1. If a character has no missile weapon at all, reduce the chance by one more. If it is winter, reduce the chances by another point unless in the desert, where this does not matter.

All food gained from foraging and hunting is considered to be the equivalent of “standard rations” 

Finding enough water to drink is easy in most environments, but in the desert water can only be found if a Bushcraft roll is successfully made on 1d12 rather than 1d6.

Apart for foraging, Bushcraft may be used for simple crafts and pathfinding.

Climb

All characters have a base 1 in 6 chance to use the Climb skill, which allows a character to climb walls and other sheer surfaces without obvious handholds. Characters (except Specialists) must be unencumbered to make this attempt. Failure means that the character falls from a random point in the climb. Characters with two free hands can climb ropes and ladders with no die roll needed.

Trade Special

Trade skill represents a character’s practical knowledge of crafting, production, and commercial work. When taking this skill, a character must choose a specific trade area (e.g., blacksmithing, carpentry, tailoring, or pottery). The skill covers creating and repairing items within that area, appraising the quality of crafted goods, and performing work efficiently.

Doors

Locked doors are impassable without a key, picking the lock (which requires a Tinker skill roll and Specialist Tools), or breaking the door down. Breaking the door down requires the appropriate equipment (some sort of axe for a wooden door, a pick for stone, etc.) and takes 1 turn for wooden doors, 2 or more turns for doors made of other materials.

Many doors in dungeons and ruins are merely stuck. To open a standard stuck door (wood with iron banding), a character must successfully make an Open Doors roll (base 1 in a 6 chance), Strength modifiers apply to the roll’s chances, so having a Strength modifier of +1 means there is a 2 in 6 chance of opening the door. Use of a crowbar adds a further 1 to the chance, and each additional person helping adds another (although only two people can attempt to open a standard-sized door). Each attempt takes 1 turn.

Doors made of stronger or heavier materials may need a greater number to open (a giant stone door may have a –2 in 6 chance to be opened, requiring bonuses before there is even a chance to open it, for example), or be impossible to open.

Evaluate Special

A successful Evaluate check allows characters to know the value of a given piece of treasure, and whether there is anyone who might pay extra for it. Appraisal will also identify fake treasures, such as copper coins painted gold.

Engineering Special

Engineering skill covers the design and manipulation of machines, engines, and fortifications. It allows a character to construct or sabotage siege engines, reinforce or weaken defenses, improvise mechanical solutions such as pulleys or bridges, and manage large works like mines, mills, or waterworks. Where Architecture identifies what already exists, Engineering actively changes or creates, with success ensuring stability and function, and failure often leading to collapse, malfunction, or wasted effort.

Haggle

A successful Haggle roll lets the character strike a better deal when buying or selling, while a failure may worsen the terms.

Heal Special

The Heal skill represents a character’s ability to treat wounds, stop bleeding, and perform rudimentary surgery. It cannot restore lost Hit Points directly, but it can prevent death, reduce recovery time, and sometimes downgrade permanent injuries.

Using Heal:

• Stabilize: A dying character at negative Hit Points can be stabilized with a successful Heal check. This prevents death but leaves the character unconscious until naturally healed. On failed check the patient must make a Save vs Poison or take 1d4 damage.

• With a successful use of the Heal skill you can bind wounds, doubling the number of hit points recovered by a single patient when resting for that day. If the patient has at least half their hit points, failed attempt means the patient recovers no hit points at all for their rest. If the patient has less than half their hit points, a failure also requires the patient to Save vs Poison or suffer 1d4 damage.

Herbalism Special

Herbalism skill represents a character’s knowledge of plants and their practical uses, including identifying, gathering, and preparing herbs for medicinal, alchemical, or toxic purposes. A character skilled in Herbalism can recognize edible or poisonous flora, create basic remedies or salves, and combine ingredients to enhance or neutralize effects. When encountering an unfamiliar potion or mixture, the character may roll a Herbalism check to determine if they recognize its recipe and potential effects.

Languages

Most Characters are assumed to begin play being fully fluent in their native tongue, and are literate as well if they have an Intelligence of 7 or greater. Elves and Dwarfs will know the local human tongue in addition to the tongue of their particular clan (Halflings use the local human language).

When a character comes into contact with another language, his chances of knowing the language is 1 in 6, with the character’s Intelligencemodifier applying. If a character has a Languages skill at a greater level than 1 in 6, use that as the base chance instead.

There is a –1 penalty if the language is not local to the culture (Spanish, French, Swedish, English, and German would be part of the same “cultural group” to use a real-world example). The penalty is –2 if the language is considered to be exotic (English versus Japanese, for example, or the tongue of a different race to use a more common game situation), and –3 if it is an ancient, dead language.

A character gets one attempt to know any particular language. If that one attempt fails, the character simply does not know the language. Magical languages cannot be known using this method.

Lore

The Lore skill must be selected for a specific field of knowledge, such as history, religion, scholarly discipline, etc. A successful check allows the character to recall something interesting, useful, or valuable within that field, such as details of an ancient civilization, the principles behind a natural phenomenon, or the workings of a strange device. It can also be applied to conducting experiments, interpreting research, or evaluating the accuracy of information found in texts and rumors.

Sailing Special

Sailing covers all aspects of running, steering and maintaining ships of all sizes.

Searching

Many items and features of interest are hidden from open view, with secret doors or compartments being the classic example. To find these things, characters must search for them. Under normal conditions, searching takes one turn per character per 10' of area searched. Hidden items or features have a base 1 in 6 chance of being found per turn of searching. The Referee can create hidden elements that are more difficult (or easier) to detect at his discretion. If a character’s Search skill is greater than 1 in 6, use that as the base chance to find something during a search.

Note that finding a secret door does not automatically grant a character an understanding of how it works. The Referee may require additional rolls or other actions to be taken before the door can be opened.

Sleight of Hand

Picking the pockets of an unaware person, hiding a small object from a search, readying a weapon without any observers noticing, swapping out an object on a weight-sensitive plate with a similarly-weighted bag of sand, these and more are examples of Sleight of Hand. A character has a base 1 in 6 chance to successfully perform such an activity.

Stealth

Stealth allows a character to sneak around and hide. In order to use the Stealth skill, those that the

a character wishes to hide from must not already be aware of the character’s presence, and there must be somewhere to hide. Stealth is not invisibility! For example, if the character hears enemies coming down a bare hallway, he would not be able to simply hide because of the lack of available cover. In a room with furniture, the character would be able to use Stealth to hide, but if someone were to conduct a search of the room, the character would be found.

If a character attacks after successfully using Stealth, that attack is always considered to be a Surprise attack, even if the enemy is already engaged in battle.

Swim

It is assumed that every unencumbered character is able to hold to the water surface. Characters move at half their normal movement when swimming. Characters that are encumbered have a likelihood of drowning, though this is at the Referee’s discretion. Heavily encumbered characters, wearing plate mail armor and/or carrying a large proportion of treasure, probably have a chance of 5 in 6 to drown. Characters carrying less treasure or wearing lighter armor may have as little as a 1 in 6 chance of drowning.

Tinkering

Manipulating small mechanical objects is an activity called Tinkering. Tinkering is often used to open locks or remove small mechanical traps. Note that only mechanical locks where the character has access to the keyhole (or other opening mechanism) are able to be manipulated in this manner.

Only traps which have been found, and which have Adventuring: The Rules of the Game 41 a mechanism that is accessible to the character, can be disarmed. For example, a tripwire is a trap which a character can attempt to disarm, as is a lock with a poison needle. A pressure plate which, when pressed, collapses the ceiling, would be an example of a trap that the character could not disarm, because the mechanism itself is behind the walls, floor, or ceiling.

Other uses of Tinkering (setting traps, for example, or jury-rigging impromptu devices) should be adjudicated by the Referee on a case-by-case basis.

A character gets one attempt to use Tinkering on any particular object. If that one attempt fails, the character must gain a level before attempting to manipulate that object again.

The base chance of success for Tinkering is 1 in 6.