While Attributes are the basic building blocks of your character, Abilities show the specific tasks in which you excel. Are you a long distance runner? You need Athletics and Endurance. How about a master violinist? Performance is a must. Are you a Hollywood stunt driver? Then you better have some ranks in Pilot.
When making an Ability check, you add the number of ranks you have in that Ability to the number of ranks you have in the appropriate Attribute. The total number is how many dice you roll. For example:
Smitty the hacker wants to access a restricted website. His GM tells him to make an Intelligence + Computer roll at Difficulty 6. This means Smitty takes his Intelligence (3) and adds it to his ranks in Computer (5) and rolls the appropriate number of dice (total of 8). Any die that comes up equal to or higher than the Difficulty (in this case 6) is considered a success.
Normal humans have Abilities ranging from one to five.
· – Competent
·· – Skilled
··· – Professional
···· – Master
····· – World-class
Talents
Skills
Knowledges
Secondary Abilities
Fields and Specialties
When relevant, you have a number of fields determined by your ranks in an Ability.
Abilities that require a high degree of specialization, such as Science and Academics, allow one field per rank.
Other Abilities, such as Culture and Linguistics, allow a greater number of fields, as follows.
- One rank allows one field.
- Two ranks allow a total of two fields.
- Three ranks allow a total of four fields.
- Four ranks allow a total of eight fields.
- Five ranks allow a total of sixteen fields.
Once you have reached 4 in an Ability, you may specialize in a certain field. Write this down next to the Ability in question. When rolling in your specialty field, you may reroll 10's. Ones rolled on these rerolls are not subtracted from the number of successes.
Choosing a specialty is free and can be done as soon as you achieve four ranks in an Ability; however, it cannot be changed. As always, choose wisely.
Additionally, High Rollers may also receive Ability Mastery in an ability, to further enhance their expertise.
