Abilities

Your character has a set of abilities that cover all actions you may want to take. Whenever you want to do something where success or failure leads to an interesting outcome, the game master (GM) will prompt you to roll for the ability that fits your described action the best.

Sometimes multiple abilities are applicable to a situation. In that case, the player decides which check to make. You may also ask to use a seemingly unrelated ability if you can describe how it applies. However, the GM still has to approve (GM hint: approving it encourages creative solutions).

Social Abilities

• Charm influences how well your words are received. It is used to sway opinions and convince others. The check is made against the target's willpower.
• Deception influences how believable your lies are. It is used to disguise truths and intentions as well as to convince others that you are someone else. The check is made against the target's intuition.
• Intimidation influences how dangerous others think you are. It is used to force action, encourage the telling of truths and demoralize or infuriate foes. The check is made against the target's willpower.

Physical Abilities

• Athletics influences how strong you are, how high you can jump and how fast you can run. It is used to perform acrobatic feats and many other strength-based actions.
• Craft influences how well you execute your craft and how well you follow instructions and recipes. It is used to create items or perform actions that are part of your learned trade.
• Dexterity influences how quick your reflexes are and how well you perform tasks that require a delicate touch. It is used to evade or disable traps, manipulate mechanisms, play an instrument and perform tricks.
• Stealth influences how well you are able to hide from others. It is used to move silently, camouflage yourself and hide items.
• Toughness influences how much damage you can take and how robust your health is. It is used to resist poison and disease.

Mental Abilities

• Awareness influences how attentive you are to your surroundings. It is used to look for items, people and hidden mechanisms, listen for noises or consciously use any other senses.
• Intuition influences how well you are able to interpret unknown situations and judge a person's intentions. It is used to estimate the power of an enemy, to detect lies and to read the body language of people and animals.
• Nature influences how well familiar you are with the outdoors. It is used to find and identify plants and animals, follow tracks through the wilderness and pathfinding in general. It also entails knowledge of diseases, poison and medicine.
• Reasoning influences how well you are able to make sense of circumstances and how quick your wit is. It is used to do calculations, translate texts, read between the lines and find patterns. Reasoning also represents your depth of knowledge.
• Willpower influences the strength of your convictions. It is used to resist attempts at persuasion, intimidation and unwanted mystical influence.

Combat Abilities

• Assault influences the power and precision of your attacks with melee and throwing weapons.
• Defend influences how well you are able to evade and deflect incoming attacks.
• Shooting influences how well you are able to predict the movements of your target and aim with shooting weapons.

Making Ability Checks

To use an ability, roll 2d6 and add your character's respective ability modifier. The modifier is a static bonus to the roll that represents the character's training.

To succeed with a task, the result of your roll is checked against a difficulty that is set beforehand (by the GM). The result of your roll or check must be equal to or higher than that difficulty.

Sometimes you gain an advantage or disadvantage to an ability check. Gaining an advantage of 1d6 means that you get to roll an additional die and gaining a disadvantage of 1d6 means that you get to roll one fewer die.

If you gain advantage and disadvantage to a check at the same time, they cancel each other out. For example, if you gain 2d6 advantage and 1d6 disadvantage, then you gain a total of 1d6 advantage to your check.

If disadvantage reduces your roll to zero dice, the result of your check is equal to your ability modifier.

Difficulty

The difficulty of any task depends on the situation. Climbing up a rough rock wall with large crevices and rocks to hold onto is not that challenging. However, if it is raining and the rocks are wet, the difficulty increases. If there are loose stones that may break off, difficulty increases. If a strong wind is blowing, difficulty increases. If you are carrying a heavy load, difficulty increases and so on.

Another example for the compounding of difficulties is convincing a peasant that you are a noble (but you actually are not). If you are not wearing the right clothes, difficulty increases. If the peasant has frequent contact with nobility, difficulty increases. If you travel alone, difficulty increases. If you meet them at a place where nobility are very rarely found, difficulty increases and so on.

Difficulty	Description
8 and below	A somewhat simple task that can be done by a character with no training.
10	A task that is simple for a character with some amount of training.
12	A medium difficulty task for a trained character.
14	A challenging task for a trained character.
16	A difficult task for a trained character.
18	A difficult task for a well trained character.
20	A very hard task for a highly trained character.
22 and above	An almost impossible feat that requires skill and luck.

Character Level

The current level of your character is equal to the sum of ability points (AP) you have assigned to increase ability modifiers and gain talents and maneuvers. Whenever you assign any number of AP, the character's level automatically increases by that much.

At the beginning of a new adventure the GM tells you what level you start at. It is recommended to start at least with level 16.

Leveling Up

During the game, the GM will award you a number of experience points (XP) for challenges you have overcome or when reaching certain milestones. Whenever your character has earned enough XP, you may use these points to assign AP to abilities and/or acquire new talents and maneuvers. This is possible whenever you finish a long rest.

To gain one AP, you must spend a number of XP equal to your current level. Any number of AP gained this way must be spent immediately.

That means that a level 20 character must spend 20 XP to gain one additional AP. This increases the character's level to 21 which means the next AP costs 21 XP and so on. If that character wants to gain a new talent that costs 3 AP at level 20, they must have accumulated at least 63 XP (= 20 + 21 + 22).

Maximum AP

There is a limitation to how many AP you may spend on increasing an ability modifier. Your character may only have an amount of AP invested in any ability that is equal to your character's level divided by 4 (note that values are rounded down by default). Up to level 4, you may invest up to one AP into any ability.

This means that a character of level 8 may have up to 2 AP assigned to any single ability. At level 12, the limit increases to 3 AP, at level 16 to 4 AP and so on.

Talents and Maneuvers

Another way to spend your AP besides increasing ability modifiers is to acquire new talents or maneuvers which provide you with additional options. Gaining a talent or maneuver costs a certain amount of AP denoted on the respective list.

Most talents and maneuvers have conditions that have to be fulfilled before you are able to acquire it. Such conditions may be either a certain ability modifier (for example three points invested in intuition; denoted as Intuition 3) or another talent/maneuver (for example Medic). Once you have gained a certain talent, you do not lose it if the conditions are not met any more.

The benefits of a talent are permanent and passive. They do not require any action to activate.

Maneuvers on the other hand are actively used by spending resources. Whenever you want to use one of your maneuvers, the cost of the action increases by 1 vigor or focus, depending on the type of ability check that is required: vigor for physical and combat abilities (except shooting) and focus for social and mental abilities as well as for the ability shooting. If a maneuver applies to a favor, it also requires focus.

Traumas

Traumas act as an opposite to talents. You may choose up to three traumas during character creation. Each trauma has a certain value and by choosing them during character creation, you gain an amount of AP equivalent to the value of the chosen trauma. These extra AP do not increase your level.

Note: You do not get any AP if you gain a trauma during the game!

When gaining a new trauma through damage or stress, you may choose one from the list of traumas that fits the cause of your near-death or breakdown. You may also roll a 1d100 (chance die) and choose that number from the list. If you roll for it and it does not fit the situation at all or that number does not exist in the list, just roll again.

Whenever one of your mental traumas is triggered, you may try to overcome the trauma. To do so, make an ability check for either willpower or reasoning against difficulty 20. If your check succeeds, remove the trauma from your character sheet. If your check fails, you gain an amount of stress equal to the difference between your result and the difficulty.