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SensationCharacterSkills

You are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. The third component of any Sensation character is the set of Skills he or she possesses. Skills represent general and specific knowledge of various sorts that a character has picked up over the course of his or her life. Most characters possess a wide array of general purpose skills that are part and parcel of ordinary life, as well as some skills which are more specialised and are often related to a character's chosen profession. Skills can be practical or trivial. Certain skills may be highly cereberal, while others may have more bearing on day to day life.

Skills are similar to Advantages and Disadvantages(A&Ds) in that they are player designed. The design process for Skills is, in fact, almost entirely identical to that of A&Ds.

When designing a Skill thee player first chooses a name for the Skill. This name can be something logical and concise, such as "Firearms" or "Melee", or a bit more creative, like "Frag skillz" or "Bitchslapping"

Once a name is chosen, the player may be required to write a brief outline of the knowledge the Skill entails. This is only done if the GM feels that the Skill possibly has certain subtle elements to it. This is most generally the case when creation specialist skills, such as "Knowledge of High Energy Physics", occurs. The outline description for a Skill should be as short as possible.

Once a Skill has been named and defined it is merely a matter of purchasing it. Skill purchase differs from A&D purchase due to various differences between Skills and A&Ds.

Proficiency in Skills differs between various individuals. Some characters may be highly skilled in the art of Melee comabt, while others may have only a cursory knowledge of the subject, or lack real-world experience. To represent this, Skills are rated at one of three different levels:

• Amateur
• Trained
• Proffesional

Each level conveys a correpsondigly greater degree of training and experience than the previous one. It also encapsulates all of the knowledge, etc of previous levels as well as supplementing that knowledge with new material. This has a very real effect on the game as the GM can make decisions based on a characters rating in a Skill as to whether or not he or she can even attempt to use that Skill in a given situation. For example, a character with only an Amateur degree of Skill with Firearms can not attempt to try and opearate some kind of extremely advanced experimental weapon system, as he or she just simply does not possess the requisite amount of knowledge, etc necessary to do so. As always, decisions such as the one above are at the GM's discretion, although he or she is advised to remain fair and logical at all times.

Skills also differ from A&Ds in that they are generally linked to a Sense when they are obtained. The chosen Sense is the one which the character relies on and uses when making use of that Skill. Thus, while one characters Firearms Skill may be linked to his or her Sense of Sight, for another it may be more of a matter of making use of one's Sense of Hearing. The Sense that a Skill is chosen to be linked to is the Sense generally used when making Skill rolls for that Skill. This is detailed more throughly in the SensationCharacterUsingSkills? section. However, it should be noted that if a character's Firearms Skill is linked to his or her Sense of Sight, he or she may not be able to make use of that Skill in a pitch-black room, for example. Similarly, a character with a Hearing based Firearms Skill would have similar difficulties when defeaned. It is thus important to note that Firearms(Sight) and Firearms(Hearing) are purchased and treated as separate Skills. A character lacking one or the other might find him or herself in difficulty in certain situations. Thus, when purchasing Skills, players are advised to ensure they purchase exactly the right Skills.

The only exceptions to the above rule are extremely cerebral Skills that do not rely on the Senses to any great extent. These Skills do not have to be purchased linked to a Sense. However, a player must be able to explain in detail why the Skill is not linked to any Senses at all before the GM decides to forego the linking step of Skill creation. This also has impacts on Skill use, which are explain in the section on Skill use.

Of final note is the manner in which Skills are purchased. Unlike A&Ds, Skills are purchased in a manner more similar to Sense purchase, but with certain extra rules. Purchasing the Amateur level in any Skill costs 1 Skill Pt. Upgrading to the Trained level costs another 2 Skill Pts, while finally upgrading to the Proffesional level of expertise requires the investment of a further 3 Skill Pts. This means that a total of 6 Pts must be spent to attain Proffesional level in a Skill.

Starting characters recieve 15 Skill Pts to spend on Skill purchase. Also, any unspent Sense Pts can be converted to Skill Pts at a rate of 1 to 2.