102. Skills

Determining Skill Allocations

  • Determine Starting Attributes: Are we starting as heroic, legendary, or epic characters?  That will determine how many skills we’ll start with, and how high those attributes will be.
  • Bonus Points:  We can spend bonus points on modifying starting attributes, gaining stunts / extraordinary attributes, or you can save them as Refresh points, which determine your starting pool of Fate points.
  • Starting Gear: We’ll generally assume that your characters will start with possessions appropriate to their aspects and skills.  If you have a skill, you probably have the tools needed to perform that skill.  The quality and quantity of possessions will be determined by your character’s “Wealth” or “Resources” attributes.   You can also spend Bonus points to start with extraordinary possessions, like a magical dagger or amulet, and we can determine those on a case by case basis.

Starting Attributes

Fantasy heroic characters will start with ten different attributes:

  • One Great (+4) attribute
  • Two Good (+3) attributes
  • Three Fair (+2) attributes
  • Four Average (+1) attributes

Any Attribute or skill you choose not to invest a rating in will have a default rating of Mediocre (+0).

Skill Competence

  • Mediocre (+0) indicates a lack of talent or training.
  • Average (+1) indicates a novice level of training, or a degree of talent with no formal training.
  • Fair (+2) and Good (+3) indicate journey-man or “professional” capacity, or a nearly inhuman degree of talent.
  • Great (+4) and Superb (+5) indicate veteran or masterful capacity, or the combination of extreme talent and good training.
  • Fantastic (+6) and above skirt the boundaries of natural human capacity.

It’s important to note that aspects designate what a character can do. Forgery, sleight of hand, and auto repair are not everyday skills, so only characters with appropriate aspects have “permission” to do them.

Fantasy world skill and attribute list:

Common skills and attributes:

  • Investigate
    • skill in active searching
  • Notice
    • passive awareness
  • Empathy
    • examples: reading people, a shoulder to cry on, social defense, social initiative, ability to act preemptively in social situations
  • Rapport
    • examples: chit-chat, closing down, first impressions, opening up, social defense, verbal defense ability in social situations
  • Willpower
  • Wealth / Resources *

Skills or attributes with specialties or limitations that will determined by character aspects:

  • Athletics / Physique
  • Deftness / Dexterity
  • Toughness / Brawn
  • Craft
    • ie. cooking, building, fixing
  • Drive / Ride
    • ie. horseback, wagon, etc
  • Fight
    • fists, feet, and unarmed combat
    • swords, knives, clubs
    • offense, defense
  • Shoot
    • archery, crossbows
  • Survival
    • wilderness, mountain, northern, desert, etc
  • Lore / Knowledge / Research / Academics
  • First aid, medic, etc

Suggested specialty skills that not everyone has:

  • Deceive / Bluff
  • Charm / Persuade
  • Provoke / Intimidate
    • provoking any kind of strong, negative emotional reaction from somebody – fear, fury, shame
  • Sneak / Stealth
  • Shadow / Follow
  • Carousing / Conversation
    • Gently, subtly learning things from people
    • Carousing is the ability to party and work a room
    • Conversation is more one-on-one
  • Burglary / Infiltration
  • Contacts * (works kind of like Wealth, but for social resources)
  • Reputation * (works kind of like Contacts, but for motivating others)

These could be skills or they could be bought as stunts with bonus points, and tied to other skills or attributes:

  • Streetwise
    • could be situationally based on rapport, investigate, et al
  • Lock-works
    • deftness or occasionally Lore / Knowledge
  • Trap-works
    • deftness, lore, notice, investigate
  • Sleight of Hand / Pickpocket
    • deftness, notice
  • Interview / Interrogate
    • Getting information out of someone, either nicely or forcefully
    • rapport, willpower, intimidate, et al
  • Animal Handling
    • specialty / limitations based on character aspects
    • could be horses, falconry, ferreting, etc.
    • Could be tied to empathy, lore
  • Performance
    • specialty / limitations based on character aspects
    • could be storytelling, acting, musical instruments
    • rapport, deftness, lore
  • Acrobatics
    • athletics, dexterity

Feel free to suggest others that fit your character.

* While most of the above are skills, a few are better described as general attributes, such as Wealth / Resources, Contacts, and Reputation.

Bonus Points

Our fantasy heroic character will start with ten bonus points that can be spent on modifying the starting skills or gaining stunts or extraordinary abilities.   Any unspent bonus points will become your character’s Refresh stat, which determine the base size of your Fate point pool.

Most stunts cost a single bonus point to acquire, and can be anything that fits into your character’s aspects.   A classic trope stolen from D&D is the rogue’s “Sneak Attack.”

Stunts are typically based on a skill, providing a bonus effect of some sort in the right circumstances.  Powerful stunts may require you to spend a Fate point to use them, or may be limited to a certain number of uses in a given period of time.  Very powerful stunts may require you to spend double fate points for every subsequent use in a certain period of time.

I cannot possibly list every conceivable stunt or extraordinary ability, so we’ll be coming up with them together.