04.07 Rd6 Strength Skills

Acrobatics

Specializations: Jumping, Leaps, Tumbles, Balance, High wire, Trapeze work.

Skill Bonus: Intimidate (Intimating Moves) – Acrobatics can make a character appear more intimidating.

This is a skill in performing feats of jumping, gymnastics, and extraordinary balance, as well as jumping and breaking falls. It is also useful for running obstacle courses or doing courtly promenade.

Using acrobatics can also improve many of a character’s climbing and running attempts. See Each skill for the Synergy notes.

Instead of adding a modifier to the running or swimming difficulty for particularly challenging obstacle courses, the gamemaster may have the hero make an acrobatics roll in addition to a running or swimming roll.

During a fall, acrobatics may be used to reduce bodily harm. If the character has not already used his turn for the round, he may rely on acrobatics in an attempt to land properly. The character generates an acrobatics total. For every five points over the base difficulty number of 10, the hero reduces the damage total by one point, in addition to a base reduction of one point. The damage total, however, cannot be lower than zero.

Maneuver	Difficulty
Somersault; pirouette	Easy
Handspring; cartwheel; handstand	Moderate
Swing over a obstacle	Moderate
Round-off; backflip	Difficult
Vaulting over an obstacle	Difficult
Bouncing off a surface to reach a specific destination	Very Difficult
Walking up a wall*	Heroic

*The character may “walk” a maximum of her Move in one round; she must have a flat surface to stop on at the end of her turn or she falls and takes damage from the fall. Some conditions that might effect the skill check are how flat the surfaces are, how much landing space the person has, and the type of terrain the character is making the attempt on.

Note: Characters may combine one or more maneuvers in the same action. In this case, use the difficulty of the most challenging maneuver, subtract 3 to the roll for each additional maneuver (up to five additional maneuvers), and include modifiers as if the complex stunt was one maneuver.

Skill Use: Balance – This skill use helps a character maintain her balance whether on a tightrope or being tripped by an opponent in combat.

Athletics

Specializations: Climbing, Running, Lifting, Throwing.

Skill Bonus – Acrobatics

Skill Use: Climbing – Climbing is the skill to scale various surfaces. Difficulties for this skill are included in the “Movement” chapter. Note that taking care in climbing and carrying 50% or more of the character’s body weight slows the character down by two meters or more per round. Conditions that affect the roll may be taking care in climbing, degree of angle in the climb, whether the character is prepared to climb, and how much they are carrying.

Action	Difficulty
Scale surface with many hand and footholds	Moderate
Scale surface with few hand and footholds	Difficult
Scale surface with no hand or footholds	Heroic
Stop a fall	Legendary

Skill Use: Scaling – Climbing human-made structures requires a set of skills similar to but not exactly like that needed for rock climbing. The scaling skill use of Climbing covers everything from pyramids to skyscrapers.

Skill Use: Lifting – This use of Athletics is for Moving or lifting heavy objects, as well as representing the ability to inflict additional damage with strength–powered weapons.

At the gamemaster’s discretion, a player may make a lifting check when his character first picks up an object. (Generally, if the object’s weight would give it a difficulty equal to or greater than one-half of the character’s lifting, rounded up, or the object is being lifted hastily or under stress, the gamemaster should require a lifting roll.)

For each round the object is carried, the character makes another check to see if he can continue to carry the object. If he fails the roll, he is too exhausted and must put the object down. If the character is doing anything else at the time (other than walking slowly or talking), continuing to carry the object counts as a multi-action.

Abridged Lifting Table

Weight (kg)	Weight (lb)	Difficulty
1	2.2	Easy
10	22	Easy
50	110	Easy
100	220	Moderate
120	265	Moderate
200	440	Difficult
250	550	Difficult
500	1100	Very Difficult
750	1650	Heroic
1,000	2,200	Legendary
1,100-2,000	2,400-4,400	Legendary
2,500-10,000	5,500-22,000	Legendary +2
15,000-100,000	33,000-250,000	Legendary +3

The gamemaster may further subdivide the lifting chart if desired to include the weights for the difficulties not listed here. Lifting Fatigue Modifier are generally from the amount of time spent lifting.

Time Skill	Modifier to the Dice Rolled
1-6 rounds	0
7 rounds to 3 minutes	-1D
3-10 minutes	-2D
10-30 minutes	-3D
30-60 minutes	-4D

Note: After the first hour, the character must make a check once per hour at the same difficulty as one hour. If the character fails the roll, then he must rest for twice as long as he was lifting the weight.

Skill Use: Running – Moving quickly on the ground while avoiding obstacles and keeping from stumbling. Difficulties for these skills are included under Movement. Skill Bonus: Acrobatics (known as Acrobatic Running).

Skill Use: Swimming – Moving and surviving in a liquid medium. Difficulties for these skills are included under Movement.

Skill Use: Throwing – Throwing is the ability to hit a target accurately with a thrown item, including grenades, stones, javelins, bottles, and knives. Also used for catching thrown items. A character’s ability to grab projectiles out of the air is enhanced by the throwing skill. The difficulty of catching an object is typically the thrower’s throwing roll. If the thrower wants the catcher to get the object, and thus takes care to throw well, reduce the thrower’s skill total by 1 success.

The Base Throwing Range is 5/10/20 for any Grenade sized device. This is increased by the characters Strength: Athletics Die Code. For every whole Die above 3D, increase the Base Throwing Range 5. See table below.

Strength: Athletics Die Code	Range
3 or less	5/10/20
4	10/15/25
5	15/20/30
6	20/25/35
7	25/30/40

Fighting

Specializations: Brawling, Martial Arts, or Fighting Style

This is a competence in unarmed combat.

Skill Knack: Blind-fighting – Search – A character may make a Search Moderate roll as a free action before each attack (Results Points may be used as bonuses to the attack). This character then can operate or battle in dark or otherwise reduced-sight conditions (blizzards, blindfolded, etc). Character in combat normally suffer a -4D to the combat difficulty during full darkness conditions. (See Combat for more information.) The character must make a blind-fighting check (using Search) roll every round to continue to enjoy the skill’s effect.

Melee Weapons

Specializations: Specific weapons

Wielding and attacking with hand–to–hand weapons.