Clarity on Skills

8/8/2019 Clarity on Skills

1/4

Clarity on Skills

or, Those Damn Skills

What follows is official. From here on out, this is

how Skills work in SHADOW,SWORD &SPELL.

Basics

Before getting to the heart of the matter, here are a few things that should be kept in mind.

Ability

The stats that measure a character (which are typically called Attributes in other roleplayinggames) do not have Ranks, they simply have a value.

RankThe term Ranks is used only with Skills, and is a measure of how skilled a character is with aspecific Skill. When a Skill is first purchased, it is said to have been purchased at the Base Rank.

Base Rank

Base Rank is defined as the starting rank of a Skill's starting rank, which is equal to the governingAbility at the time the Skill was first purchased. This is a number that a player wants to keep trackof, as it will determine the cost of Skill Rank increases in the future. One cannot automaticallyassume that a Skills Base Rank will always be equal to the governing Ability, as it is possible for anAbility to change in value during the course of a game.

Skill Limits

A Skill cannot have more than 12 Ranks. Characters with Abilities at 10-12 are damn near demi-gods, therefore, when they buy a Skill at Base Rank they are very near to, or at the top of theirgame. Period.

If a character starts with an Ability at 10, this means that the player character cannot add morethan 2 additional Ranks to give his character a Skill with a Rank of 12.

Starting Characters

All characters begin with 35 Points which are used to purchase the five Abilities (Brawn, Quickness,Toughness, Wits and Will).

All characters have 45 Skill Points which are used to buy Skills.

The reason for the lower total is due to the core assumption of SS&S:BASIC: this is a game aboutstarting out; you create competent people that still have room for improvement.

2010 Rogue Games, Inc. the Rogue Games logo, Games so good they sneak up on you., Shadow, Sword & Spell, and their respective logos are TM and 2007-2010 ofRogue Games Inc.


2/4

Skills

A design goal underlying all 12SYSTEM games is that characters will have only a handful of Skills inwhich they are truly formidable, and a number of Skills in which they are of average proficiency.Keep this in mind.

There are two types of Skills in the games, Untrained (marked as such in the rulebook) andTrained (there is no such category as Trained in the game, but it helps for the purpose of thefollowing explanation, so it is best to think of them as such).

Untrained Skills can be used by anyone without the need to spend Skill Points on them.

Trained Skills can only be used by spending Skill Points on them.

An Untrained Skill for which a player has purchased Skill Ranks also can be called a TrainedSkill.

A Skill's Target Number (TN) equals the Skill's governing Ability + the Skills Rank.

See the above definition above for a Skills Base Rank.

Any character may use an Untrained Skill at any time, but with a -4 modifier to the TargetNumber. Trained Skills may only be used by those who have purchased Ranks in them (thereforethey never suffer the -4 Untrained modifier to the Target Number).

Untrained Skills have a Base Rank equal in number to the governing Ability without the need tospend Skill Points minus the Untrained of -4 (e.g. Brawn 10 = Melee 6 as an Untrained Skill)

Trained Skills have a Base Rank equal in number to the governing Ability only after the playerhas spent a number of Skill Points equal to the governing Ability (e.g. Quickness 7 = Acrobatics 7 asa Trained Skill only after spending 7 Skill Points).

A player may spend Skill Points on an Untrained Skill to increase the number of Ranks in it(effectively making it a Trained skill). To do this, the player spends a number of Skill Points equal tothe governing Ability to purchase the Base Rank. In my the example above, I would spend 10 SkillPoints to make Melee a Trained skill, and its Rank would remain 10, the same as when it wasUntrained, with the difference being that the -4 modifier does not apply anymore as this is nolonger an Untrained Skill.

A player may spend Skill Points on a Trained Skill to increase the number of Ranks in it beyondthe Base Rank. Remember that Trained Skills can only be used after being purchased at Base Rank.

To increase a Skill's rank by +1, a player spends a number of Skill Points equal to half the BaseRank for that skill (this is why it's important to record what a skill's Base Rank is). Note thatmultiple Rank increases may be purchased at the same time, each costing the same.

To illustrate this, let's create a character.

I decide to create a new character, Johan the Dark, a young thief off the canals of Gravinia. Ispend my 35 Ability Points as follows:

Brawn 6

Quickness 10

Toughness 7

Wits 4

Will 8



3/4

My Background is Civilized and my Modifier is Mercantile. From these two, I derive thefollowing bonuses:

Bureaucracy at Base Rank, Study at Base Rank, Native Language at Base Rank, +1 Action Point,Bargain +1 and Diplomacy +1.

I now spend my 45 Skill Points to buy skills as follows (skills marked * can be used Untrained):

Bargain (8 Base Rank [8 Skill Points Spent] + 1 Rank [Bonusfrom Mercantile] + 2 Ranks [4 Skill Points for each Rank for atotal of 8 Skill Points spent]) = 11 Skill Ranks

Bureaucracy (4 Base Rank [Free from Background] + 3 Ranks[2 Skill Points for each Rank for a total 6 Skill Points spent])= 7 Skill Ranks

Diplomacy (8 Base Rank [8 Points Spent)] + 1 Rank [Bonusfrom Mercantile] + 2 Ranks (4 Skill Points for each Rank for atotal of 8 Skill Points spent) = 11 Skill Ranks

Study (4 Base Rank [Free from Background]) = 4 Skill Ranks

Subterfuge (10 Base Rank [10 Skill Points Spent]) = 10 SkillRanks

Native Language (4 Base Rank [Free from Background]) = 4Skill Ranks

After all the math, my Skills and their Ranks look like this.

Bargain [+11]

Bureaucracy [+7]

Diplomacy [+11]

Study [+4]

Subterfuge [+10]

Native Language [+4]

So what would the Target Number ([TN)] for each Skill be?

Remember the formula = Ability + Skill Rank = [Target Number]

Bargain (8+11) = [19]

Bureaucracy (4+7) = [11]

Diplomacy (8+11) = [19]

Study (4+4) = [8]

Subterfuge (10+10) = [20]

Native Language (4+4) = [8]

Now, to compare, here are three Untrained Skills, with the TN already factoring in the -4modifier for Untrained use:

Dodge (10+6) = [16]



4/4

Melee (6+2) = [8]

Throw (10+6) = [16]


Documents

Clarity on Skills