Attributes, Skills, and Traits

Attributes

Your character’s physical and mental attributes are summarised in six values, called Attributes. These scores are Body, which represents their physical strength and toughness; Agility, their reflexes, balance, and motor control, Perception, their awareness, attentiveness, and sensory acuity, Intelligence, their mental acuity, recall ability, and problem solving, Willpower, their drive and mental fortitude, and Charisma, their confidence, eloquence, and force of personality.   Attributes are rarely used themselves, as your character will usually rely on their Skills in order to accomplish tasks. However, Attibutes are used to resist effects, for example, when targeted by a grenade. In some instances, though, the GM may decide a check relies on an Attribute rather than an applicable skill.   An Attribute score of 5 is considered "average" and carries a modifier of 0, and each point above or below 5 adds or subtracts 1 to this modifier, respectively. For example, a score of 1 would have a modifier of −4, and a score of 10 would have a modifier of +5. An Attribute cannot go below 1, and a character cannot naturally raise an Attribute above 10.   Start each Attribute score at 5, you then have 5 additional points to allocate. Scores can be lowered below 5 to gain additional points to allocate. When finished allocating points, adding all of your character’s Ability Score modifiers together should result in a total of +5. When determining your character’s Attributes, it’s important to keep in mind what kind of character you want to play, as their Attributes help determine what they’re good (and not-so-good) at.  

• Body: your character's physical strength and toughness; determines Hit Points and melee weapon attacks.
• Agility: your character's reflexes, balance, and motor control; determines Dodge, Initiative, and speed.
• Perception: your character's awareness, attentiveness, and sensory acquity; determines Dodge and ranged weapon attacks.
• Intelligence: your character's mental acquity, recall ability, and problem solving; determines languages known, Tag Skills, and Focus for magic users.
• Willpower: your character's drive and mental fortitude; determines Focus for magic users and Composure.
• Charisma: your character's confidence, eloquence, and force of personality; determines disposition.

 

Skills

When your character attempts to accomplish a task, it will usually involve one or more of their Skills. The GM calls for a roll and sets a difficult class (DC). You roll a d20 and add the appropriate Skill modifier to the roll. If the result is equal to or greater than the DC set by the GM, the attempt succeeds, else it fails.   Some tasks may involve more than one Skill. For example, tying a knot may require Knowledge to remember how to tie it, and Dexterity to actually do it, or drawing something might require both Dexterity and Intuition to represent your character’s artistic skill. In this instance, the GM tells you the Skills involved in the check. Roll the d20 like normal, but then add the average of the modifiers to the roll to determine the total. For example, in the knot tying example, imagine you roll an 11, and your character has a +5 to Dexterity and a +2 to Knowledge. You add the modifiers together to get +7, then divide by the number of modifiers added together, 2, to get 3.5. Numbers always round up, so you add a +4 to your roll of 11 for a total of 15.   The Skills and their relevant Ability Scores are presented in the table below.

Body	Agility	Perception	Intelligence	Willpower	Charisma
Athletics Melee	Acobatics Dexterity Stealth	Awareness Firearms Investigation	History Intuition Medicine Nature Technology	Grit Occult	Drama Eloquence Speech

 

• Acrobatics (Agility): bodily nimbleness, flexibility, balance, and poise; example uses: jumping a large gap, landing on a moving cart, walking a tightrope.
• Athletics (Body): general physical fitness and ability to perform physically demanding feats; example uses: forcing open a door, climbing a cliff face, running a long distance.
• Awareness (Perception): reading surroundings; example uses: seeing through a disguise, noticing tracks, hearing a distant sound.
• Dexterity (Agility): nimbleness or deftness with hands; example uses: picking a lock, catching a flying object, tying a knot.
• Drama (Charisma): performing acts that require force of personality or creativity and artistic ability, example uses: performing a confidence trick, acting in a play, drawing a sketch.
• Eloquence (Charisma): navigating high society, general manners, and avoiding faux pas; example uses:
• Firearms (Perception): proficiency with firearms; example uses: attacking with a firearm, maintaining a firearm, determining the calibre used in an assassination.
• Grit (Willpower): ability to persevere through stress and trial; example uses: withstanding torture,
• History (Intelligence): knowledge and trivia about the world and history, as well as general recall and memory; example uses: remembering a line of scripture, recalling a name, remembering a historical grievance that made two peoples enemies.
• Intuition (Intelligence): ability to conclude things based on data, to separate signal from noise, problem solving; example uses: determining the use of an unknown object, reasoning why a character is suddenly acting distant, deciphering a code.
• Investigation (Perception): ability to notice, find, and identify when searching for things; example uses: searching a room for a hidden switch, scanning a newspaper article for important information,
• Medicine (Intelligence): knowledge and application of medical and/or homeopathic knowledge and practice; example uses: diagnosing an illness or infection, performing surgery, determining cause of death.
• Melee (Body): usage and technique in a scrap, both with weapons and bare-fisted; example uses: hitting someone with a pipe, fighting a boxing match, tripping a fleeing suspect.
• Nature (Intelligence): knowledge of bushcraft and natural subjects and phenomena; example uses: determining the type of animal tracks belong to, making a snare trap, recognising edible plants.
• Occult (Willpower): experience with magic, ability to rationalise things that defy expectation, knowledge of obscura and forbidden secrets; example uses: comprehending the scrawlings of a mad mage, understanding the purpose of a ritual circle, detecting the presence or usage of magic.
• Speech (Charisma): force of personality, ability to persuade, convince, or manipulate others; example uses: convincing a leader of your value to their cause, blackmail, lying to a client about your relationship with their rival.
• Stealth (Agility): avoiding detection; example uses: sneaking down a hallway in a guarded manor, travelling undetected by scouts, approaching an animal unnoticed.
• Technology (Intelligence): familiarity with modern wonders of science; example uses: operating a difference engine, making a work-around for a broken component, performing a chemical reaction.

 

Proficiency

Proficiency represents training and skill in a certain area. It can both enhance an ability your character is already naturally talented at (represented by a high value in the Attribute which determines the Skill), or make up for a lack of such. When you first make your character, your Skills should start with a modifier determined by the relevant Attribute. For example, if your character has a +2 Intelligence modifier, their Intuition should start at a +2. Your character’s background will then give them set proficiency bonuses, which should be added to the appropriate Skills. Proficiency in a Skill cannot be raised above +10. Skill proficiency can be increased using XP.   Choose a number of Skills equal to 1 + your Intelligence modifier to be your Tag Skills. If your Intelligence score is below 5, your character does not have any Tag Skills. It costs less XP to increase the proficiency of a Tag Skill. These Tag Skills should also be marked on the character sheet using the box next to the Skill. The XP cost for Skills associated with Intelligence, Willpower, or Charisma increases for a character with 3 Intelligence; XP cost for all Skills increases for a character with 2 Intelligence. XP costs increase further for a character with 1 Intelligence. The XP curve for increasing skills is shown below:    

Skill increase	−4 to 0	0 to +2	+3 to +5	+6 to +7	+8 to +9	+10
Normal	3 XP	5 XP	7 XP	10 XP	14 XP	18 XP
Tagged	2 XP	4 XP	5 XP	8 XP	11 XP	15 XP
Low Int	4 XP	6 XP	8 XP	12 XP	16 XP	20 XP
1 Int	5 XP	7 XP	10 XP	13 XP	17 XP	22 XP

 

Languages

Language proficiency comes in three tiers: basic, conversational, and fluent. Basic proficiency allows a character to communicate basic ideas and simple sentences. They can ask and understand "tourist questions", but communication is slow and deliberate, and topics are narrow. Newspapers, signage, and other simple materials can be read effectively, but more complex material like novels, poetry, or scholarly works cannot. Conversational proficiency allows for discussion of a wide array of topics with relative ease and the reading of more difficult material. For all intents and purposes, your character will not have any difficulty with communication in or understanding of the language outside of heavy regional dialects and colloquialisms. Fluency in a language over conversational proficiency simply represents a native or native-like command of the language. Your character speaks with a native accent and can imitate other accents, both native and non-native, in the language. They also have a greater grasp on dialectical and colloquial forms and casual language.   Additionally, their are so-called scholarly languages: dead languages used (or moreso formerly used) for international communication or studied by scholars studying and specialising in ancient civilisations. These languages are not spoken and proficiency cannot raise above conversational.   The number of languages your character knows and how well is determined by their Intelligence. Below a score of 4, your Character is fluent only in their native language. Each point above a score of 3 allows an extra language proficiency, with fluency representing three levels of proficiency. For example, at 5 Intelligence, you can have basic proficiency in two languages or conversational proficiency in one language in addition to your native fluency. Some backgrounds grant extra language proficiency.  

Traits

Traits are modifiers to a character taken at character creation that come with a benefit and a drawback. Traits are not required, but a character can have up to two.  

Trait Name	Description
Fancy fighter	You like to strike at the weak points, but this sometimes means forgoing easier hits. Gain +5% critical chance. Suffer –1 to all attacks.
Sex Appeal	Your physical features inspire attraction in some, envy in others. You gain +2 to Charisma-based Skill checks against members of the opposite sex. You suffer −2 to Charisma-based Skill checks against members of the same sex.
Small Frame	You are light and nimble, but unfortunately also fragile. You gain +1 to your Agility score (to a maximum of 10). You suffer −1 crushing, piercing, and slashing Damage Threshold to your head and torso, and −2 to your limbs.
Southpaw	It’s a right-hander’s world, and you’re stuck living in it. Guns aren’t designed for your sinister persuasion, but your backwards footing catches opponents off guard in a scrap. You gain +1 to melee attacks. You suffer −1 to attacks with firearms. Non-firearm ranged attacks are unaffected.
Straight Shooter	You don’t mess around with any fancy flourishes, you hit ‘em hard, centre mass, every time. Every die of damage you inflict deals an additional +1 damage. You are unable to make targeted attacks.