Skill Rate: Staggered
Uses: The Acrobatics skill can be used maintain your balance, and reduce falling damage.
Balance: Whenever you have to walk across a narrow surface, or try to maintain your footing on slippery or shifting terrain, you make an acrobatics check. When balancing, you move at half speed.
You must make a balance check every round. If you remain stationary, you get +3 to the check.
DC |
Terrain |
0 |
Flat, stable ground |
4 |
An area narrower than 10 cm |
6 |
Area narrower than 5 cm, or a rope. Shifting terrain. |
8 |
Balancing on a swaying rope |
10 | |
12 | |
+1 |
Area is wet |
Techniques:
Passive Techniques
Active Techniques
Skill Rate: Staggered
Uses :
Initiative: Your Reflex bonus is added to your Dexterity when you make an Initiative check to determine the order that characters take their turns in at the beginning of combat. Further, there are a number of techniques (Nerves, Jittery Nerves, and Iron Nerves) that increase your odds of going first.
Dodging: The Reflex skill is used to make dodge defence rolls. Every rank in Reflex grants you an additional dodge defence roll per turn. Mobility penalties apply to dodges, as they are dexterity-based. A dodge against a damaging area attack reduces damage by 3 points instead of ignoring it altogether, and non-damaging effects cannot be dodged at all without special GM permission.
Catch Yourself: If you fall off a ledge, are falling by a branch or ledge, etc. you can make a Reflex check with DC 4 to try to catch the ledge and not fall. This counts as one dodge attempt per round, and can be done on anyone‚s turn. You can then make an Athletics check to pull yourself up (a 4SA).
Catch Something: To catch an object that you‚ve dropped (such as by being disarmed) you require a free hand. Make a Reflex check against DC 6. This counts as one of your dodge attempts per round, but does not otherwise take any time. This can be done on anyone‚s turn. To catch something that has been thrown, it must pass through an area in your reach. Make a Reflex check against DC 6 to catch it, as above (counting as a dodge attempt) unless the thrower is deliberately trying to make it difficult to catch. If so, the Reflex DC is equal to the Defence DC of the thrown object (typically 4+the thrower‚s Ranged Skill bonus).
Techniques:
Passive Techniques
Active Techniques
Skill Rate: Staggered
Uses
: Attacking with a ranged weapon, determining the complexity of attack
combos. You use your Ranged Skill bonus when making ranged weapon
attack rolls, and it is added to the DC to defend against your ranged
attacks.
Techniques:
Combo Components:
Example: Multi-Weapon Combat
This example will illustrate how dual wield, multi wield, and double throw interact with each other.
Colonel Mauve the walking arsenal finds himself surrounded by five knife-wielding ninjas. Fortunately, he's prepared. On his turn, he uses his combo "Storm," which consists of four attacks. Mauve draws a pair of knives using Quick Draw in his right hand and throws them both at ninja #1 (his first attack, using Double Throw). Mauve uses his second attack to throw his last knife at ninja #2 (granting him an extra attack from dual wield). Mauve still has two normal attacks remaining, but is now out of weaponsⓦ except the ones his mother gave him. He punches ninja #3 in the face twice (his second and third normal attacks, granting him a second extra attack from Triple Wield) and uses his fourth attack to punch ninja #4. He still has two extra attacks, which he uses to clobber ninja #5 with his fists.
In total, Colonel mauve made six attacks:
Unorthodox Reload : [Attack Combo +1] [Requires Rapid Reload] You may reload once during this combo, so long as you could normally do it in one second or less. You may add this component multiple times, each time reloading once more.
Active Techniques:
Skill Rate: Fast
Uses
: Sneaking, Sneak attacking
Size Modifier:
subtract your scale from your stealth modifier
Sneak : You may move stealthily up to half your speed. Make a Stealth check every round. You are undetected so long as your Stealth Check beats observers' passive Perception DC. The observer takes standard penalties for distance. As long as someone has not detected you, they are flat-footed to your attacks. If you attack from hiding, your stealth check gets a -6 penalty until your next turn.
Pick Pocket: as a 4SA, you can attempt to snatch an item from a flat-footed target. Make a Stealth check opposed a perception check made by your target. If you succeed (meet or beat his roll), he didn't notice you swipe the object. If the object is larger than can be conveniently hidden in your palm, you get -1 or more on the check. If your target notices you trying to rob him, you can make an opposed Wrestle check to steal it anyways.
Off-Screen Thievery: A character with Stealth can use his skill to steal money from the surroundings. Make a stealth check. You can generally get your result squared in silver marks for every day out robbing in a town of average wealth, per hour in a wealthy area, or per minute in an extremely wealthy area (like a palace). The GM secretly sets a DC from 2 (barely defended) to 4 (average defence) to 6 (well defended) to 8 or higher (paranoid security). A result lower than the DC results in the character not making any money. The point of off-screen thieving is to not derail the campaign with one character's hijinks, while still being able to use his skill. For attempting to steal a particular item, don't use off-screen thieving. Instead, this qualifies more as an adventure in and of itself.
Techniques:
Combo Components:
Passive Techniques:
Active Techniques:
Skill Rate: Fast
Uses: A character with the Timing skill has, as the name implies, excellent timing ƒ whether deliberately or simply through chance. At very low levels, the Timing skill could be used to, say, calmly walk through a crowd without bumping into anyone, arrive at a bus stop precisely as a bus arrives, or hit an unusual amount of green lights. At higher levels, a character could run through a crowded area or drive through heavy traffic at high speed, run through a corridor of swinging pendulum traps, or jump off a bridge ƒ and land on a passing garbage barge. This skill relies heavily on GM and player co-operation. Timing, like the Ingenuity skill, has no techniques. Instead, it has deliberately broad application if it‚s basic uses. This skill has as many uses as the player‚s creativity will allow, but some common examples are listed below.
Crowd Navigation: This use of Timing is fairly mundane, but can also be extremely useful. Normally, moving through crowds of people limits characters‚ speeds to 1m/s or lower. The character can make a Timing check to move at higher speeds through crowds. If desired, the character can also make optimum use of the surrounding crowd members as cover. Simply make one check per round and consult the chart for the results. Obviously, a character can‚t move faster through a crowd than he can move in open terrain ƒ the maximum movement speed may still be higher than the character‚s normal move speed, so the character simply moves at his normal speed.
Check Result |
Sparse Crowd |
Dense Crowd |
5 or lower |
normal speed, no running, no cover |
1/4 speed, no running, medium cover |
6 |
Run at 2x speed, light cover |
1/2 speed, no running, medium cover |
8 |
Run at 3x speed, light cover |
normal speed, no running, medium cover |
10 |
Any speed, medium cover |
Run at 2x speed, heavy cover |
12 |
Any speed, heavy cover |
Run at 3x speed, heavy cover |
14+ |
Any speed, heavy cover |
Any speed, heavy cover |
Serendipity: This broad use of Timing means that a character uses a combination of good timing and simply being lucky to great effect. He describes what he wants to have happen (such as a garbage barge appear underneath a bridge he wants to jump off of) and the GM sets a DC based on how likely that is.
DC |
Plausibility |
Example |
4 |
Fairly Likely |
Arriving at a parking lot just as someone is pulling out |
6 |
Unlikely |
Looking over a bridge and seeing a passing truck to jump onto; a bus arriving within 1 minute of arriving at the bus stop, hitting a green traffic light if desired; saved from an awkward moment by a phone call; running out of gas near a station |
8 |
Very Unlikely |
A bus arriving at precisely the instant you arrive at a stop; hitting only green traffic lights while driving; seeing a convenient grain or garbage barge passing underneath the bridge to land on |
10 |
Extremely Unlikely |
Transit security searching for bus tickets when you have one and your pursuers don‚t. |
12 | ||
14 | ||
16 |
Driving at top speed through a crowded street without risking a collision | |
18 |
Nearly Impossible | |
20+ |
Theoretically Possible |
Walking through a storm without being rained on, |
Other possible uses could include running across a prison yard without being tagged by a searchlight, escaping from a prison cell while the guards are on patrol elsewhere or are changing shifts,
Consequences of Failure: Characters cannot retry Timing checks, but the consequences of failure can vary. Generally speaking, failing a timing check doesn‚t mean that something bad happens, just that nothing surprisingly good happens. So, a character could fail his check to have a bus appear conveniently. This doesn‚t mean that a bus will never appear, or that it will be late ƒ just that this character has the same chance of catching a bus as a normal person would. However, this could have dire consequences. Say a vigilante is being pursued and is cornered on a bridge. He makes a Timing check to have a boat pass underneath (DC 8) and fails. No boat passes, so he has to escape in another manner. However, if he was pressed for time and jumped off the bridge before checking for a boat, he‚d make the same check (DC 8). If he failed, he‚d hit the water and might drown (Acrobatics check to minimize falling damage, Athletics to swim). Even on a success, he would need to make an Acrobatics check to minimize falling damage upon hitting the barge, and maybe an Athletics or Acrobatics check to even land on it at all.
Limitations: Timing can never be used as a substitute for another skill. So, a character can‚t use Timing to run through a hail of bullets ƒ instead, he‚d have to make defence rolls such as Reflex checks to dodge the attacks. Similarly, Timing shouldn‚t be used offensively (e.g., “lightning strikes the person shooting at me!”) or overused.