EDRulebook: 9 Skills

Not all people in the world are Adepts.
Some of learn our trade the old-fashioned way.
-- Harrok, Blacksmith

Many people of Barsaive lack the magical talents of Adepts, but can often accomplish the same tasks using mundane abilities. In Earthdawn, these mundane abilities are called skills.

[Musician Vay Ino] Skills add steps to one of your character’s Attributes, giving him or her an advantage when making tests for actions, engaging in combat, and so on. Skills enable your character to perform certain physical actions and to make informed decisions about various courses of action during an adventure. This section describes the three types of skills available to characters in Earthdawn, and includes detailed descriptions of how each type of skill functions in the game.

Using skills is similar to using talents, except that skills do not require magic to learn and use. Instead, a character must invest considerable time, effort, and money into acquiring them. Though some skills—Spellcasting, for example—may use magic, such skills do not require the character to possess the inherent magic of a Discipline (see Disciplines). Certain talents can be used as

skills if a character so desires; this section lists those talents and explains how to use them as non-magical skills. For more information on using talents, see Talents.

Because learning skills takes good old-fashioned physical and mental effort, skills cost more to learn than many talents. A character must spend money to pay instructors and time to train and practice in order to acquire a skill or to acquire additional ranks in a skill he already possesses (see Increasing Skill Ranks of Building Your Legend).

CHOOSING BEGINNING SKILLS

Earthdawn characters can have three types of skills: Knowledge, General, and Artisan. Artisan Skills represent the arts and crafts practiced by every denizen of Barsaive, Knowledge Skills represent how much your character knows about the world of Earthdawn, and General Skills allow your character to perform certain actions. In this age of magic, skills belong largely to the mass of ordinary folk, though all Adepts begin the game with a few skills and most like to learn a couple of additional skills to supplement their magical talents. Most Adepts, however, learn only one or two of each type of skill. For information on improving a character’s skills, see Building Your Legend.

Characters in Earthdawn begin the game with one Rank 1 Artisan Skill and with two ranks of Knowledge Skills. They can assign both ranks to one Knowledge Skill or assign Rank 1 to two different Knowledge Skills. Apart from the suggestions given for Knowledge and Artisan Skills in the sections following, there is no master list of Earthdawn skills; players simply choose or invent an Artisan or Knowledge Skill they want, and the gamemaster either accepts or rejects the choice. Characters do not begin the game with any General Skills; they must spend money and training time to acquire them, as described later in this section.

[Ork with Axe]

USING SKILLS

Nearly every time your character uses a skill, he makes a test to determine how successfully he used that skill (see Making Tests in Game Concepts ). This test often replaces an Attack Test (see Combat). The step number he uses for the test is determined by one of your character’s Attribute steps plus the rank of the skill. Knowledge Skills use the character’s Perception step; Artisan Skills, the Charisma step; and General Skills, the step number listed with each individual description. The Difficulty Number, the number the character’s dice roll must equal or exceed, appears in the sections explaining Knowledge and Artisan Skills, and also in the descriptions of each individual General Skill.

SKILL TEST

To make a Skill Test, the character rolls a number of Action dice based on the skill’s step number against a Difficulty Number. For the test to succeed, the dice roll result must be equal to or greater than the Difficulty Number. If the dice roll result exceeds the Difficulty Number by a substantial margin, the character using the skill may have achieved an advantageous success level, which would increase or change the effect of the character’s skill use (see Test Results in Game Concepts). The success level becomes particularly important when making Skill Tests for Knowledge Skills (also called Knowledge Tests), because the success level can determine whether or not a character successfully uses a particular Knowledge Skill.

USING TALENTS AS SKILLS

Nearly one-third of the talents described in the Talents chapter can be learned as a skill. In other words, a character can use the talent in a non-magical way. For example, the Melee Weapons talent can be used as a skill because almost everyone can pick up a sword and swing it; doing so does not require magical training. On the other hand, talents such as Air Dance and Spot Armor Flaw require magic to function, and therefore cannot be used as skills.

When purchasing talents as skills, use the Legend Point costs for skills, not the equivalent cost for purchasing that talent as a talent. For example, for a Swordmaster to increase his Riposte Skill from Rank 3 to Rank 4 requires 4 weeks of training, 4 months of practice, and costs 1,300 Legend Points, whereas increasing the Riposte talent from Rank 3 to Rank 4 costs only 500 Legend Points. (See Building Your Legend, p. 221.)

When using a talent as a skill, read the talent description, but ignore the Discipline Talent Use line. No such thing as a Discipline Skill exists. Any talents that require Karma still require Karma when used as skills. If a non-Adept character (someone without Karma Points) uses a talent that requires Karma as a skill, that character pays the Karma cost in Strain. For each Karma Point required, the character takes 2 points of Strain. Talents that cause Strain still cause Strain when used as skills.

TALENTS AS SKILLS

Air Sailing
Animal Bond
Animal Training
Anticipate Blow
Arcane Mutterings
Avoid Blow
Battle Shout
Called Shot
Charge
Climbing
Cold Purify
Conceal Weapon
Creature Analysis
Dead Fall
Detect Trap
Detect Weapon
Disarm
Disarm Mechanical Trap
Disguise
Down Strike
Emotion Song
Engaging Banter
Evidence Analysis
Fast Hand
Fence
First Impression
Forge Blade
Frighten
Graceful Exit
Great Leap
Haggle
Heartening Laugh
Hypnotize
Lip Reading
Maneuver
Melee Weapons
Mimic Voice
Missile Weapons
Momentum Attack
Picking Pockets
Read and Write Language
Read and Write Magic
Riposte
Second Attack
Second Weapon
Shield Charge
Silent Walk
Slough Blade
Spellcasting
Sure Mount
Surprise Strike
Swift Kick
Taunt
Throwing Weapons
Trap Initiative
Trick Riding
Unarmed Combat
Wheeling Attack
Wheeling Defense
Wound Balance