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Post by Admin on Jul 9, 2015 21:35:31 GMT
Universal Abilities are traits any character can have. For ones that seem unfamiliar or have new clarifications be see additional response posts below.
Academics
Alertness
Athletics
Awareness
Brawl
Computers
Cosmology
Dodge
Drive
Endurance
Empathy
Enigmas
Etiquette
Expression
Finance
Firearms
Intimidation
Investigation
Law
Leadership
Linguistics
Medicine
Meditation
Melee
Occult
Politics
Psychology
Primal-Urge
Repair
Rituals
Security
Scrounge
Stealth
Streetwise
Subterfuge
Survival
Tactics
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Post by Admin on Jul 9, 2015 22:11:57 GMT
Alertness:
Anytime surprise is claimed on YOU, you are able to expend a level of the Alertness ability to negate most of it's effects. You are no longer relegated to only soaking a surprise attack and can now dodge or parry as you normally would. However, you can not activate any forms of speed enhancing powers or tools, such as Rage, Gifts, Fetishes, etc., nor can your defensive action do any harm to the attacker at all. If in doubt see a narrator for assistance in arbitration.
Alertness can also be used with a perception based mental challenge to detect things at a quick glance or moving by at high speeds. Extreme detail is not given, but it is the ability used when you are not scouring an area or have very limited time on a search.
Athletics:
For those who have the ability to fly or levitate, be that by physiological means or magical ones, athletics is the ability that will now be used as a retest in place of flight. For those creatures who may have access to special maneuvers based off their Flight score it is now based off your Athletics score. Athletics will also be taking the place of Archery and Throwing when retesting for Archery and Throwing.
Awareness:
Awareness is used to only sense when the real world around you has been forced to take a hard left out of what is typical. This can be used to sense places or objects of supernatural resonance, as well as if a power has been used on you. The use of this ability takes focus and concentration. When using it you are not truly hindered, but interruption or physical exertion will make use of this ability impossible. Meaning, this can not be used in combat. Also, you only know something happened, not who did it, or what kind of power it was. This ability is more for subtle sensations and awkward feelings, if the fourteen year old at the dinner in front of you just turned into an obvious supernatural entity, well then, it was 'obvious'. Awareness retests with Awareness, NOT Occult ability.
Cosmology:
Cosmology is the Survival of the Umbra. Without this skill you are going to get easily lost and find yourself in dangerous situations when not following a guide. Cosmology will not give you truly defined information, but can warn you of what is a bad idea, can help you recognize types of spirits (elemental from ancestors), and give you a rough idea of how to follow the signs and symbols you are seeing to move around easily.
Endurance:
Endurance is the ability to use and measure how long you can go without food, water and/or sleep. It also helps when enduring damage and resisting the environments around you to none extreme levels that would normally require specific equipment. Endurance replaces the commonly used ability of Survival for retesting stamina challenges to shrug off damage in combat. It is also the retest for resisting poisons and other similar toxins. Most people can go a number of days equal to their base Stamina (form change traits do not apply) day without food, water, or sleep and not start feeling any ill effects. The first level of Endurance adds another full day to that, and each level after it is another half day, so a person with Endurance 5 can go four days without feeling any negative effects from lack of sleeping, food, or hydration, but after that time penalties are gained at their normal rate.
Intimidation:
Intimidation is now the ability you use to Torture people, what form of torture you use will dictate what Attribute category you test with. If you beat the person in the appropriate challenge they lose a willpower trait, when they are at zero willpower they break down and start talking/telling you what you want to know. Torture does have backlash though; being that it is illegal, can be fatal and kill people before any info is gained, and has moral repercussions on those using it (yes possible wyrm taint as that is a Fera's form of losing humanity, negative traits, and derangement/flaws). One also needs to be careful when employing torture as it is known to lead to false hoods and lies in the hopes of the tortured telling the torturer what they want to hear to be let free.
Linguistics:
This ability allows a person to speak, understand, read/write whatever languages they have mastered. How many languages a person knows beyond their base is established by what level of this ability you have. Linguistics is also the ability used to employ cryptography, but you do need to know the language to correctly and accurately decipher any code. In some cases a cipher may be needed.
-Ability Score/Languages gained/total number of languages known including base
1/ 1/ 2
2/ 2/ 4
3/ 2/ 6
4/ 3/ 9
5/ 3/ 12
Meditation:
Meditation for every creature has the ability to reward a willpower for 10 minutes of uninterrupted time in meditation. You make a mental challenge, retest with Meditation, against a difficulty of 10+ the number of willpower you wish to restore. You can only restore up to your permanent Meditation ability in willpower a night, be that in one challenge or multiple over the course of the night. If you attempt to do it in one challenge you must meditate for 10 minutes for each willpower you wish to regain. Fera, when mediating at a place with a Gauntlet rating of 5 or lower, can choose to gain Gnosis instead of willpower by spending time to reconnect them selves with their spirit side.
Primal Urge:
Is your connection and understanding of a more violent, pure, feral nature. In rare cases some humans who have let their humanity go have been seen acting and responding in similar manners. These people are most likely dangerous and have some sort of mental instability. Vampires on low humanity or not at all are known to have access to such abilities as well as their beast is so much closer to the surface.
Psychology:
With this ability and a good amount of time you can attempt to glean information about a person. With at least fifteen minutes of conversation with a person you can use a mental challenge, retest Psychology, to glean if a person has any underlying conditions (Derangement, certain social or mental flaws, and certain social or mental Negative traits.) With extended visits (multiple months and game sessions) you might even be able to assist a person in working off some derangements, or at the least help teach them to keep it suppressed. With this ability and the willingness of the target, you can even induce a hypnotic and suggestive state in the target, again, they must be willing. Characters who have a Derangement as part of their creature type (Metis, Malkavian, Silver Fang) can never be alleviated of such problems, but may be assisted in keeping them under control for a short while.
Survival:
Is no longer used as a retest in physical challenges to ignore or resist damage. The abilities Navigation (Corax) and Fishing (Gurahl) are part of the Survival ability.
Tactics:
When a plan has been finalized ( and should usually include a staff member, preferably the one who is running the scene you are making this Tactic for) the person with the highest ability level in tactics makes a Mental Challenge, retest with Tactics, against a difficulty of three plus one for each person involved in the tactic. In the case of ties the testing player gets a plus one to the test for each player involved in the Tactic that has at least one point of the Tactics Ability.
If they succeed at the test they get a base pool of retests equal to twice the testing players Tactics ability. Each player involved in the plan may then spend a point of Tactics or Willpower to put another Retest into this pool. These retests are situational retest and happen either before or after Ability retests. The book states that you must divide these tests up, but that is not required or advised in this game. The staff member present will grab an index card and write down the amount of retests to be used in the next scene.
Notes:
-These retests are only available as long as everyone sticks to the plan. If one person defects the test pool is lost to everyone.
-Making a plan requires actual knowledge of the situation, making plans on rough ideas and minor information can quickly lead to an automatic loss as of the retest pool for shoddy work and information gathering that was unreliable.
-You can only use on Tactics Retest per a challenge.
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