Character skills form the foundation of how your character interacts with the world, defining their capabilities, expertise, and training. Skills represent a character’s proficiency in resolving challenges, avoiding hazards, and shaping the narrative through action. To keep character capabilities distinct and organized, skills are structured across three primary categories: General Skills, Combat Skills, and Magical Skills. Additionally, the system incorporates Secondary Skills, which reflect specialized training and require specific Edges or unique background traits to unlock and utilize effectively.
General Skills: These govern everyday tasks, social interactions, exploration, and mental acuity. They encompass broad utility proficiencies such as Athletics, Awareness, Bartering, Crafting, Persuasion, and Sneaking. General skills serve as the primary toolkit for navigating non-violent encounters, investigating mysteries, traversing dangerous environments, and dealing with NPCs. The General Skills list is limited to 20 broad skills to keep you from needing hundreds of highly specialized skills to represent your character's training and education.
Combat Skills: Focused strictly on martial encounters, martial capabilities, and self-defense, combat skills govern accuracy, weapon proficiency, and defensive maneuvers. Options include specific weapon styles such as Axes, Bows, Crossbows, Knives, Swords, and Shields, alongside defensive capabilities like Evade or unarmed options like Brawling. Characters select designated combat skills as trained to reflect their combat style and physical training. The Combat Skills list is limited to 12 skills.
Magical Skills: Representing esoteric, mystical, or supernatural powers, magical skills allow characters to bend the laws of reality, manipulate energies, or exercise otherworldly talents. Whether represented by high academic wizardry or dark, instinctual blood arts and ancestral curses, these skills cover tasks such as altering perception, shaping elemental forces, or exerting mental dominance over targets. Using magical skills typically risks internal stress, strain, or physical backlash. The Magical Skill list is limited to 8 magical disciplines.
Secondary Skills: Beyond the core skills available to all characters, Secondary Skills represent niche, highly specialized training that cannot be used normally without specific prerequisites. Unlocked through specialized Knacks or background traits, these skills cover specialized disciplines. If a character attempts a task tied to a Secondary Skill without possessing the required Knack, they must instead adapt a standard skill to achieve a lesser effect.