Skills

A character’s skills are the PC’s learned abilities. A newly-created character starts with a few relevant skills and may acquire more as they advance in level. NPCs do not have individual skills, instead relying on their combat stat line’s skill bonus when relevant.

Skills are rated on a scale between level-0 and level-4. A character must reach a certain minimum experience level to develop a skill to level-2 or beyond.

List of Skills

Administer: Keep an organization running smoothly, scribe things well, plan out logistics, identify incompetent or treacherous workers, analyze records or archives, or otherwise do things that an executive or middle-manager would need to do.

Cogitomancy: Interact with high technology (like cogitators, complex electronic devices, sensors, etc.) Investigate and interact with anything that’s sufficiently “computery” or has a machine spirit. Control servitors and operate sensors.

Connect: Find or know people who are useful to your purposes, make friendships or social acquaintances, know who to talk to get favors or services, and call on the help or resources of organizations you belong to. Connect covers your PC’s ability to find the people you need, though convincing them to help may require more than this.

Drive: Drive vehicles, sail ships, fly planes, pilot drones, and perform maintenance and basic repairs on such devices. A PC’s background may incline them to a particular kind of driving, but with some practice this skill can be applied generally.

Exert: Run, swim, climb, jump, labor for long periods, throw things, or otherwise exert your physical strength, stamina, and coordination. Even a PC with poor physical attributes might have a good Exert skill reflecting athletic training and expertise in making the most of their available talents.

Fix: Create and repair devices both simple and complex. How complex will depend on your character’s background; a feral world blacksmith is going to need some study time before he’s ready to fix that broken fusion reactor, though he can do it eventually. Roll it to fix things, build things, and identify what something is supposed to do.

Gamble: Succeed at games and tests of nerve and chance. Identify good bets and bad. Connect with other gamblers, bluff out those with less skill than you.

Heal: Treat wounds, cure diseases, neutralize poisons, diagnose psychological health issues, and otherwise tend to the wounds of body and mind. The Heal skill cannot cure lost hit points directly, but it’s a vital skill in stabilizing Mortally Wounded allies or ensuring clean recovery.

Know Common: Know about common Imperial institutions and personages. Understand how Imperial society operates at the planetary and interplanetary level. Understand practical social matters like war and planetary cultures. The Imperium is an incredible parochial and xenophobic place; most humans will lack this skill and shudder in ignorance at how anything beyond their gravity-chained myopic existence works.

Know Forbidden: Know secrets suppressed, concealed, or guarded by various groups. Sorcery, heresy, high technology, archeotech, xenology, cultic rites, Inquisitorial records and the mysteries of the Mechanicus. Most people in the Imperium are not permitted to know any forbidden knowledge (naturally.) Some will gain forbidden knowledge by being inducted into a cult or part of the elect; others will seek and stumble their way into forbidden knowledge through other pursuits. Knowing forbidden secrets is an active choice; a character's Know Forbidden skill puts them under threat of those that wish to see secrets contained or extinguished. A character with any Know Forbidden skill must declare their relationship to the forbidden knowledge; whether it was gained purposefully or accidentally, whether it was granted to them or stolen from its guardians.

Know Scholastic: Know matters of history, geography, natural science, zoology, and other academic fields appropriate to a sage or scholar. While some sages might specialize in particular fields, most learned men and women in this age have a broad range of understanding, and will rarely be unable to even attempt to answer a question relevant to this skill. Lead: Inspire others to follow your lead and believe in your plans and goals. Manage subordinates and keep them focused, loyal, and motivated in the face of danger or failure. A successful leader will keep their subordinate’s faith and confidence even when reason might make the leader’s plan appear questionable at best.

Navigate: Determine direction and navigate through terrain or in space. For Navigators, strengthen Navigator powers and allow navigation through the Warp. Notice: Notice small details, impending ambushes, hidden features, or concealed objects. Detect subtle smells, sounds, or other sensory input. Notice cannot be used simply to detect a lie, but keen attention can often discern a subject’s emotional state.

Perform: Sing, act, dance, orate, or otherwise perform impressively for an audience. Compose music, plays, writings, or other works of performance art. Most performers will have a particular field they excel at, though polymaths might exist if the PC’s background is appropriate for such versatility.

Pilot: Sail or maintain a voidship, maintain small voidcraft, maneuver in realspace, read solar weather, manage starship ratings, and otherwise conduct the business of a professional voidfarer. Also covers piloting fighters and conducting dogfights in space. In a pinch, can be used to replace drive for aeronautica vehicles sufficient similar to their void counterparts.

Pray: Perform the clerical rites of your religion, and be familiar with the gods, demons, and taboos of major and minor faiths, and identify iconography and persons of religious importance. Pray also helps you know the state of local faiths and the important persons in their hierarchies.

Punch: Fight unarmed or with natural body weaponry. Punch, kick, grapple, or otherwise brawl without the benefit of man-made tools. This mode of fighting is inefficient at best without some special Focus to improve it, but it’s reliably non-lethal.

Shoot: Fire a gun or artillery or throw a hurled weapon. Maintain ranged weaponry and tune ammo.

Sneak: Move silently, hide in shadows, avoid notice, pick pockets, disguise yourself, pick locks, defeat traps, or otherwise overcome security measures.

Stab: Fight with melee weapons or throw a hurled weapon. Maintain and identify melee weaponry.

Survive: Hunt, fish, mitigate environmental hazards, identify plants and wildlife, and craft basic survival tools and shelter. Ride mounts a PC has trained with. A PC’s Survive skill is most pertinent to the environments in their background, but the basic principles can be applied in all but the most alien environments.

Talk: Persuade a listener that something you are saying is true. Naturally, the more implausible the claim or more emotionally repugnant it is to them, the more difficult it is to persuade them. Furthermore, how they act on their newfound conviction is up to them and their motivations, and may not be perfectly predictable.

Trade: Buy and sell at a profit, identify the worth of goods or treasures, deal with merchants and traders, find black-market goods and services, and know laws regarding smuggling and contraband.

Work: This skill is a catch-all for any profession that might not otherwise merit its own skill, such as a painter, lawyer, farmer, or herdsman. The precise skill it represents will vary with the PC’s background.

Psychic Skills

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Skill Checks

Most characters are skilled, competent people who are perfectly capable of carrying out the ordinary duties of their role. Sometimes, however, they are faced with a situation or challenge beyond the usual scope of their role and the GM calls for a skill check.

To make a skill check, roll 2d6 and add the most relevant skill level and attribute modifier. If the total is equal or higher than the check’s difficulty, the check is a success. On a failure, the PC either can’t accomplish the feat at all, bad luck cheats them, or they achieve it at the cost of some further complication. The GM determines the specific consequence of a failure.

If the character doesn’t even have level-0 in the pertinent skill, they suffer a -1 penalty to the roll. In the case of particularly technical or esoteric skills they might not even be able to attempt the skill check at all.

The GM is always the one who calls for a skill check, and they do so at their discretion. The player simply describes what their PC is attempting to do, and the GM will tell them what skill and attribute combination to roll. If multiple skills or attributes might plausibly fit the action, the player can pick the one most favorable to them. If the combination is only marginally relevant, but still reasonably plausible, it might suffer a -1 or -2 penalty at the GM’s discretion.

Skill Check Difficulty

The following difficulties ratings reflect common challenges.

Helpful or hostile circumstances can modify a skill check by -2 to +2. Usually, no combination of situational modifiers should alter the roll by more than this, or else it becomes a near-foregone conclusion. This does not include modifiers applied by gear mods, magic items, or PC aid.

NPC Skill Checks

When an NPC needs to make a skill check, they roll 2d6 and add their listed skill modifier if their action is something they ought reasonably to be good at. If it isn’t, they roll at +0, or even at -1 if it seems like something they’d be particularly bad at doing. If the NPC is special enough to have actual attribute scores and skill levels, they use those instead.

Aiding a Skill Check

To aid a comrade’s skill check, a player explains what their PC is doing to help. If the GM agrees that it’s plausible, they may roll a relevant skill and attribute modifier against the same difficulty as the check they are aiding. If they succeed, their ally gains a +1 on their skill check. If they fail, no harm is done. Multiple PCs can try to aid if their actions are plausible, but the total bonus can’t exceed +1. Aiding a comrade is usually done in ways that let the aiding PC leverage their own special talents or skills. A PC may not have the skills to attempt to Sneak past a vigilant guard, for example, but they might have a good Perform skill they can use to create a distraction that helps their comrade skulk past.

Opposed Skill Checks

When skills oppose each other, each participant makes a skill check and the winner is the one who rolls higher. In cases of ties, the PC wins. Thus, a PC trying to sneak past a guard might roll 2d6 plus their Dex/Sneak against the guard’s 2d6 plus their skill modifier. If the guard was significant enough to actually have attributes and skill levels, it might be a Dex/Sneak challenge versus their Wis/Notice.

Languages

Characters can learn languages over the course of a game Basically all characters start out speaking Low Gothic Two levels of knowing a language: Speaking, and Literate If you want to learn a language you first learn to speak it, then you can become literate in it

If you can speak a language, you can talk to people in that language. You'll be understood by those that know that language, and those who don't know won't be able to discern what you're saying. If you lack a shared language with someone or a group, you get a -1 penalty when trying to use Talk or Lead. Knowing a culture's language gives a +1 bonus to Connect and Trade rolls when interacting with that culture (e.g. trying to find a specialist, trying to conduct complex trade negotiations.) If you don't know the language and they don't speak yours, using an NPC translator incurs a -1 penalty, and a machine translator incurs a -2 penalty.

If you are literate in a language, you can read and write. You are also more likely to know famous written works, or be able to discern mistakes in memory or quotations. When making Know Common, Know Scholastic, or Know Forbidden rolls, not knowing the relevant language for the information you're trying to seek out is a -1 penalty to the skill roll. Knowing the relevant languages of buildings or ruins gives a +1 bonus to Notice rolls or other rolls to discern traps.

Gaining Languages

Languages can be given as rewards for good roleplaying or completing certain Endeavors, as the result of downtime investment, or by spending Skill Points. A character can spend one skill point to speak a language they have heard and for which they have a relationship with a speaker of the language. A character can spend another skill point to become literate in any language they speak. The GM may restrict spending skill points on certain esoteric languages.

Common Languages

• Low Gothic
• High Gothic
• Fleet Cant
• Lingua-Technis

Unique Languages

You pick a specific source for these languages. (E.g. Ship Dialect: {ship name})

• Ship Dialect
• House Cipher
• Planetary Dialect
• Hiver Slang