New characters start with at least 200 SP to spend on skills and traits, and are limited to 100 spent on each section at first. This guide is designed to help explain the most important aspects of the skill system that a new player will interact with, and provide early assistance on point allocation.
Contents
Skills
What are Skills?
Skills are either things your character knows how to do, or refer to the raw capabilities of a character. The ability to do cool looking backflips? That's a skill. The ability to swing a giant mace or shoot a rifle? Those too are skills. Knowledge of topics in academia? Those are also skills.
What are Specialties?
Specialties are similar to skills, but more in depth. For example, while general speed and movement may be covered by Agility, it breaks down into a character's ability to react quickly (reaction), run (running), or move about in low gravity (Zero-G). Buying points in specialties makes one better in that section of a skill. Negative specialties can also be 'purchased' for a SP refund, which makes a character worse at that aspect of a skill.
Rolling Dice
When a skill is rolled, it will often be Main Skill + Specialty + 6 - 1d10. This means your 'net skill' in a section is your skill + specialty. So if you have 4 points in Agility, and 2 in Reaction, your 'total Reaction' is 6.
Traits
Traits are aspects of a character that either can't be described by skills alone, augment or add a special ability to a skill's use, or grants a character a special ability.
For example, the Linguist trait grants a character knowledge of an additional language, while Melee Defense allows one to use their melee skill to defend against melee or unarmed attacks.
Buying Skills
Skills are purchased with the +raise command. The command is:
+raise <skill> to <level>
Example:
+raise agility to 4
This would raise a character's agility to 4.
+lower works the same way, in reverse, and refunds points.
The levels are -2 to 7. -2 is terrible at a skill, 0 is meant to be an untrained person, 4 or 5 represents training of a reasonable quality, and 7 is top tier. Costs increase exponentially with more levels. This means buying the fifth level of a skill is far more expensive than buying the second level.
There are two traits worth noting here that directly influence skill cost. Superior <skill> halves the cost of that skill. Inferior <skill> doubles the cost of that skill. Superior Endurance, for example, reduces the cost of Endurance by half. Be sure to buy Superior or Inferior traits before raising a skill, or if you already raised the skill, be sure to +lower the skill to 0 first.
Buying Specializations
Specializations are bought the same as skills
+raise <specialization> to <level>
The levels for specialization are -3 to +3.
This means that the maximum possible net total for a specialization is 10 (7 in the main skill + 3 in the specialization).
Buying Traits
Traits are purchased the same as skills, but often only have one level.
+raise <trait> to <level>
+lower works the same as skills and specializations.
Spending Points
Initial Sheet Setup
Many new players may be confused, not quite sure how skills function in game, or just not terribly interested in the skills systems, and that's okay. This advice should provide most new characters the ability to be capable and competent in their chosen field. While they won't be able to surpass older players who specialize heavily in a skill right away, they will generally be able to compete with them if needbe.
Here is some advice for spending those early points:
- Define what you want your character to be best at. This skill will be raised to level 5, and the relevant specialization will be raised to +2.
- Define a couple secondary skills your character should be good at. Raise these to level 4, and the relevant specializations to +1.
- From there, buy up to 4 levels in skills that interest your character, with the occasional +1 specialization. You should be able to do this 7 times.
Skills every character should seriously consider:
- Agility: This is part of giving your character the ability to dodge, act first in combat, and run from danger.
- Endurance: Important for defense against some psionic abilities, but also good for playing tough characters.
- Strength: A defense against some telekinetic abilities, and also determines your character's ability to lift things.
- Perception: The general 'notice things' ability.
- Resolve: It's a telepathic defense, as well as represents your character's general willpower.
Traits most characters should consider:
- Agile Defense/Improved Agile Defense: These traits are the other half of the ability to dodge, in addition to agility.
- Linguist: Most characters start out knowing two languages (a racial language and either Hekayan or Terran Standard, depending on origin). One level of this will give your character a third, thus allowing your character to speak both Hekayan and Terran Standard, which will allow your character to easily communicate with most PCs, wherever they are.
Later Sheet Development
The initial points and sheet caps can be sufficient for many character types. However, it is not uncommon for players to want to make a more advanced sheet. The two major commands to start with are:
- +raise skill cap - This command raises the amount of points a character may spend on skills by 50. It costs 50*<times the skill cap has already been raised +1>. This means the first time this costs 50 SP, the second costs 100, and so on.
- +raise trait cap - This command raises the amount of points a character may spend on traits by 50. It costs 50*<times the trait cap has already been raised +1>. This means the first time this costs 50 SP, the second costs 100, and so on.
There are two major avenues of sheet advancement for a character. Development on a focus, or development on breadth. Developing on a focus means investing more points into a couple select skills and their specialties to achieve higher ranks in that skill. These are the characters that often have skills in a field in the 8-10 range, eventually. Development on breadth means investing in more skills, so as to have a wider range of skills and capabilities.
Neither is inherently superior to the other, and often depends on the desired end state for a character.