About
Skills are traits that you can perform actions with, and are the most important part of the Strikermechanica.
There are 7 categories of skills: qualifier, trait, knowledge, social, combat, engineering and psionic. They're groupings are besed on where and how they are used.
All skills start at -3, but your sophont will provide bonuses to many of these, which are applied at the beginning of your character. Each sophont as a list of these bonuses.
Action & Trait Instructions
An action instruction is a summary form that tells you how to make a roll and what it's saving or checking against. We use these to quickly express what needs to happen.
A trait instruction is also a summary, but does not list an action, but generally a trait, or a modifier to a trait
Each skill lists one or more actions that can be performed, some also list trait modifiers.
We'll take the example of the strike action instruction, because it has quite a few extra options in it.
Action Instruction in Text
when you express the strike action as an instruction in text, you put it this way:
strike(round & day+, 1fp) chk(C) = d20 +M*[1](Psiportation) + Vcl-Striker
Breaking this down:
- give the action name, which is strike
- in brackets we say what is needed for the action. This is usually a duration and a cost (if any).
- In this case the duration is two-part with the first part, being time to initiate the strike (1 round) and the second part the period over time the strike is maintained (1 day or more). This is often a concentration input.
- The cost for doing this action is 1fp per duration increment. Therefore 1fp to initiate and 1fp per day to maintain.
- chk(C) indicates that the roll is a check as opposed to save (sv), effect (eff), imposition imp(sv) etc. C just indicates that its a general or miscellaneous type of challenge (as opposed to one of reserved challenges like TC for target challenge, SC for social challenge or PC for perception challenge)
- the equals sign is there to separate the requirements of the roll from the roll itself.
- the roll starts with a d20
- it mentions that it's the modifier (M) for Psiportation. The * (star) indicates that the modifier should include each focus point used (indicated in the cost side), which is by default 1, so +1 additional to the modifier itself.
- the striking navigator needs also to be familiar with the operations of strikers themselves (Vcl-Striker) or will suffer the -3 penalty.
Action Instruction as a Property (Skill)
when you express the strike action roll as a property of a skill
strike(round-action & day+, 1fp) chk(C) +M*[1](this)
The use of the word this instead of Psiportation is just saying that the skill being referred to is in the title od the propery block.
Action Instruction as a Property (elsewhere)
or in an item of equipment
strike(round-action & day+, 1fp) chk(C) +M*[1](Psiportation)
Aspected Action Instructions
An aspected imposed save:
feint(bonus-action) imp(sv,Insight) 8 + R(Cbt-Melee) + M(Deceive)
The feint action requires a bonus-action and imposes an Insight save on your opponent, with challenge equal to 8 + the ranks you have in Cbt-Melee + your modifier for Deceive.
Example Skill Listing
Now that we've covered some of the ways in which instructions are expressed, let's look at a whole skill listing. By taking a really detailed example, we can explore all the ways in which skill traits and actions are presented.
Aspects: Tech
Actions: gen(main-action) chk|sv +M(this), know(free-action) chk +M(this), make(day+) chk(CC) +M(this), modify(hr+) chk(CC) +M(this), repair(hr+) chk(CC) +M(this), operate(main-action) chk(CC) +M(this)
Aspect-Actions: diagnose(min+) chk(CC) +R(this) +M(Investigate), salvage(min+) chk(CC) +R(this) +M(Investigate), hide(main-action) set(PC) +R(this) +M(Stealth)
Machinery is an engineering skill and is largely knowledge-based, which explains the presence of the know action
know(free-action) chk +M(Machinery)
To know something related to the field of machinery takes no time at all and is a direct check on the Machinery skill with a challenge (C) determined by the GM, but is often calculated by 10 + twice the rarity number of the artefact, if this applies.
Aspect Line
The top line is added if either or both of the provenance aspects apply, and/or if any of the usual skill aspects apply (which is usually one or more of Body, Mind, Cbt, Eng, Soc or Vcl).
In this case the Tech provenance aspect is listed. This means that, by default, you use this skill with your tech aspect. In the case of humans in Striker, this is nearly always Tech-Modern. Therefore the actions and traits specified in this skill assume that you are working with Tech-Modern machinery artefacts. If you encounter an artefact that is best characterised by the Tech-Ancient aspect, then you will be at disadvantage working with it (unless you had tyhe Tech-Anc aspect as well).
Actions Line
Apart from the aforementioned know action, there is a make, modify, repair, operate, as well as the generic, gen action. The actions make, modify, repair and operate are very standard actions for engineering skills, and have differing assumptions.
Each of the actions can be given the slightly longer notation to explain them better:
make(day+) chk(CC) = d20 +M(Machinery)
modify(hr+) chk(CC) = d20 +M(Machinery)
repair(hr+) chk(CC) = d20 +M(Machinery)
operate(main-action) chk(CC) = d20 +M(Machinery)
It suggests that making something will take a minimum of a day (but probably longer), modify and repair are likely to be in the order of hours, and operate is given the nominal main-action, but probably depends on the device being operated.
The time taken is the main difference between these check instructions, each are checked against a complexity challenge, which is mostly determined by the complexity of the artefact subject to the make, modify, repair or operate.
All of these actions are checked directly against the Machinery skill.
Sometimes, it is useful to list what the generic action on a skill looks like. Engineering skills can be like this as they can be used in all sorts of ways. The gen action is the catch-all for this purpose.
gen(main-action) chk|sv = d20 +M(Machinery)
It shows chk|sv as there can a task that you need to perform that is not covered by one of the other actions, or you have a Machinery save imposed upon you. You generally don't impose saves from this generic position, not do you set challnges. The gen listing is shown with a duration of main-action, as this is the most common duration.
Aspect-Actions Line
There are three aspect actions listed: diagnose, salvage and hide. Aspect actions are listed separately becuae they are a little more complicated and involve other skills. Any aspect action uses Machinery as an aspect on some other skill for a particular action.
diagnose(min+) chk(CC) = d20 + R(Machinery) +M(Investigate)
salvage(min+) chk(CC) = d20 + R(Machinery) +M(Investigate)
hide(main-action) set(PC) = d20 + R(Machinery) +M(Stealth)