Character Creation: Buying Skills

Skills are bonuses that are added to a roll’s Precision.

A certain skill can apply only to a specific circumstance, and always uses the same Attributes for the roll.  Any action can be a skill, so long as it is specific, is consistently used with the same two Attributes, and the GM verifies that it is okay.

Examples of good skills:

•  Pistol use: Finesse/Quickness
•  Diplomacy: Finesse/Charisma
•  Researching: Smarts/Intuition
•  Initiative: Quickness/Intuition
•  Swimming: Power/Endurance

Examples of poorly defined skills:

•  Talking to people: Charisma/Smarts
•  Fighting: Power
•  Being liked
•  Jumping 20 feet straight up: Power/Quickness
•  Not dying: Endurance/Endurance

Skills can have a value between 1 and 5. Each point in a skill costs Experience Points equal to three times the rank that you are buying. The first rank costs 3 XP, the second costs 6 XP, and so on. Like buying larger dice in an Attribute pool, you must but each rank in a skill individually. Therefore going from having no ranks in a skill to having a skill of 3 would cost 18 XP: 3 for the first rank, 6 for the second, and 9 for the third.

Example: Frank has gotten a couple adventures under his belt and wants to spend his Experience Points. After infiltrating that pirate ship two months ago Frank realized that his swimming could use some improvement. He currently has 10 XP to spend, so he first spends 3 of it on a point in the skill Swimming (Power/Endurance). He now has Swimming (Power/Endurance): 1 and still has 7 XP left. He decides to spend 6 XP on a second point of Swimming. Now he has Swimming (Power/Endurance): 2 and has to save his remaining 1 XP for later use.