What Is a Skill?

A Skill represents a learned or practiced ability that a Being possesses. Skills cover everything from combat proficiency (Sword, Shield, Bow) to everyday talents (Riding, Climbing, Awareness) to specialized knowledge (Herblore, Law, Physician). Every meaningful action a character attempts in the game is typically resolved through a skill test.

A combat technique is a Skill. There is no separate Combat Technique item: a bite, a claw rake, a grapple, or a bare-handed strike is a Skill whose Category is Combat Technique, carrying its own single strike mode. Everything on this page about attacking, blocking, and counterstriking is describing that category — see Combat Techniques.

Where It Appears

Skills appear on the Being sheet’s Skills tab, organized by Category (such as Combat, Physical, Communication, and so on). Skills are typically added from compendium packs during character creation.

Each skill is based on one or more attributes via a skill base formula — for example, a physical skill might derive its base from the average of Strength and Dexterity. This means a character’s innate attributes directly influence their starting skill levels.

A Combat Technique skill appears in a second place as well: on the Combat tab, in the Melee or Missile Strike Modes ledger, alongside any weapon the character is holding. That is where its Atk / Blk / CX numbers are rolled from.

Each row on the Skills tab is itself a set of controls:

Spending Fate is described on Fate.

Additional Properties

Along with the Standard Item Properties, the following properties also appear in the Properties tab:

• Category: Type of this skill. One of:
  • Social
  • Nature
  • Craft
  • Lore
  • Language
  • Script
  • Mystical
  • Physical
  • Combat
  • Combat Technique — a natural or unarmed fighting maneuver; adds a Strike Modes tab (see Combat Techniques)
• Skill Base Formula: Formula for calculating the skill base from referenced attributes. Written as a Safe Expression over attribute values, such as sb(attr.str, attr.dex); the ✎ button beside it opens the formula editor. A blank formula is allowed and yields a Skill Base of 0; a malformed one is flagged on the sheet and shows a ✗ in the Skills tab’s SB column.
• Mastery Level: Base mastery level representing training and experience. Leave it blank to have a skill on a character open automatically at Skill Base × Init Multiplier; enter a number to set the level explicitly.
• Init Multiplier: Multiplier applied to the skill base to open the skill’s mastery level for a new character. When Mastery Level is blank and the skill is on a character, the opening mastery level is Skill Base × Init Multiplier.
• Parent Skill: Shortcode of the base skill if this is a specialization. Leave it as None when the skill stands on its own.
• Adopt Parent Mastery: Shown only once a Parent Skill is set. When ticked, the specialization tracks its parent skill’s mastery level instead of its own base, with this skill’s own bonuses applied on top.
• Improvement Flag: Whether this item is flagged for mastery improvement via Skill Development Roll (SDR). This is the same flag the ☆ star on the Skills tab toggles, and the same one Toggle Improve Flag flips.
• Combat Category: Shown only when the Category is Combat. The class of attack this weapon skill governs — None, All Weapon Types, Melee, Missile, Melee & Missile, Maneuver, or Melee & Combat Maneuver.
• Impaired By Roles: A list of body roles whose injury impairs this skill — vital, core, manipulator, or locomotor. An unhealed injury at a body part carrying one of these roles penalizes this skill’s tests, and an unusable part makes them fail automatically. Use Add Role to add one and the 🗑 to remove it.

Combat Techniques

A Combat Technique is a weaponless combat maneuver or mode — a special fighting technique, an unarmed attack, a grappling move, or any other combat action a character can perform without a weapon.

For creatures these are the norm rather than the exception: biting, raking with claws, piercing with a stinger, grappling, and in some cases flinging spikes or quills (a missile technique). Creatures almost exclusively rely on Combat Techniques and almost never use weapons.

A Combat Technique is a Skill, not a separate item. Set a skill’s Category to Combat Technique and it becomes one: it gains a Strike Modes tab, its Atk / Blk / CX derive from its own mastery level, and it gains the Attack, Block, and Counterstrike actions. This is what keeps a character able to fight when disarmed, and it is why an unarmed strike is trained and improved exactly like any other skill.

The Strike Modes tab

The tab appears only for the Combat Technique category, and a technique carries exactly one strike mode. A newly created technique is given a melee strike mode named after the skill, so it is usable at once; refine it from there.

The tab lists the mode with its Shortcode, Type, and Impact formula. Open the ⋮ menu on the row to edit or delete it, or use Add Strike Mode when the technique has none.

The strike-mode editor

Editing the strike mode opens a small configuration window. Its Type (Melee or Missile) is fixed once created — to change it, delete the mode and add a new one.

A missile technique has no Defense section: you cannot block or counterstrike with a thrown quill.

The Skill Actions

Attack, Block, and Counterstrike appear only on a Combat Technique skill; every other category has the rest. Every skill also carries the shared document actions — Edit, Delete, and Output Description to Chat — described once on Base Item.

A hidden action is never in the Actions context menu. It is not off-limits: it is simply reached another way — here, by a script or macro that wants to set the flag rather than flip it.

To reach any of them, right-click the skill’s row on the Skills tab, click its ⋮ control, or open the skill and use its Actions tab.

Success Test

What it does and when to use it

This is the skill roll — the one you reach for whenever a character tries something and the table wants to know whether it worked. It rolls a d100 against the skill’s effective mastery level and reports how well it went: critical success, marginal success, marginal failure, or critical failure.

Use it for any single attempt with a clear pass/fail shape: picking a lock, spotting an ambush, recalling a piece of lore, keeping your feet on a wet deck. For work that is graded rather than passed — a week at a forge, a season’s research — use Success Value Test instead.

What happens on screen

1. The standard test dialog opens. Target, the modifier breakdown, Situational Modifier, Success Level Modifier, and Roll Visibility — its fields are described once on Base Item. Cancelling it rolls nothing and posts nothing. Clicking the EML cell with Shift held skips the dialog and rolls at once.
2. The d100 is rolled against the effective mastery level.
3. A test-result card posts to chat showing the modifier breakdown, the Target, the Roll, and the outcome, colored by success or failure.

The test-result card

The GM’s pencil is described on Base Item, under Editing a Posted Test Result; spending Fate is described on Fate.

Two things that change the roll for you

• Injury. If the skill names Impaired By Roles and the character has an unhealed injury at a body part with one of those roles, the test is penalized by −5 or −10; if the part is unusable altogether, the test fails critically without a roll.
• A disabled mastery level. A skill whose mastery level has been disabled shows a ✗ in the Skills tab and cannot produce a meaningful result.

Success Value Test

What it does and when to use it

A Success Value Test answers “how good was the work?” rather than “did it work?”. It is the one-roll way to resolve sustained effort — a week of smithing, a voyage’s navigation, a season of research — instead of making the same skill test over and over.

It rolls exactly like a Success Test, through the same dialog, but grades the outcome against the skill’s Skill Index (the SI column — the mastery level’s tens digit) instead of reporting a plain pass or fail. The better the skill and the better the roll, the higher the value of the work produced.

What happens on screen

The pre-roll dialog and the d100 are identical to the Success Test. The card that posts is the same card with two extra rows:

The Result row names the grade reached:

What a Success Value buys is a matter for the rules of the work being done — how many arrows the fletcher finished, how much ground the tracker covered, how good the blade turned out.

Toggle Improve Flag

What it does and when to use it

Flips the skill’s Improvement Flag — the mark that says this skill was used meaningfully, and is a candidate for a Skill Development Roll. Flag a skill in the moment it matters, during play, and the flag is still there when the table gets round to improvement.

There is no dialog, no roll, and no chat card: the flag flips and the star on the Skills tab fills in (★) or empties (☆) to match. Run it again to put it back.

The star on the row is a shortcut for the identical change — it is shown only on skills you may improve, which means you own the character (or you are the GM) and the skill’s mastery level is not disabled. Reached from the context menu on a skill you cannot improve, the action quietly does nothing.

The two hidden half-toggles

Two further actions exist — Flag for Improvement (setImproveFlag) and Clear Improvement Flag (unsetImproveFlag) — which set and clear the flag outright rather than flipping it.

They are hidden: neither appears in the Actions context menu. They are the two halves the toggle is built from, kept for scripts and macros that want to set the flag to a known state rather than invert whatever it currently is. Anything you can do with them, you can do with the toggle.

Improve with SDR

What it does and when to use it

Makes the Skill Development Roll — the attempt to turn practice into a higher mastery level. Run it when the table settles up: at the end of a session, after a period of training, or whenever your GM calls for development.

The roll is 1d100 + the skill’s Skill Base, and it must come out above the skill’s current base mastery level. So a character with good natural aptitude (a high Skill Base) improves more easily, and a skill already trained high is harder to push further — improvement slows as mastery grows.

What happens on screen

There is no dialog — the action rolls straight away.

1. The roll is made and compared to the current base mastery level.
2. On a success, the mastery level rises by 1, and the new value is written to the skill.
3. The Improvement Flag is cleared, on success or failure alike. A development attempt spends the flag either way; flag the skill again the next time it earns it.
4. A card posts to chat naming the skill, showing the roll and the mastery level it had to beat, and saying whether it improved.

Before you start

• The skill must be flagged for improvement. The action appears in the menu only for a flagged skill — flagging is what marks the skill as having earned a development attempt, and the roll spends the flag. If you do not see the action, flag the skill first with Toggle Improve Flag or the ☆ star on the Skills tab.
• You must be able to improve the skill — you own the character (or are the GM) and its mastery level is not disabled.

Opposed Test

What it does and when to use it

Starts a contest with this skill: your character acts against another character who gets to resist. Sneaking past a guard, talking a merchant down, arm-wrestling, tracking someone who covered their trail — anything where the other side’s ability is what stands in your way.

Both sides roll, the system compares the two results, and reports who won and by how many degrees, rather than leaving the table to eyeball two separate rolls.

Before you start

• Your character needs a token on the current scene. Without one the action refuses, reporting that the skill “cannot start an opposed test: its actor has no token on the canvas.”
• Target exactly one opponent with Foundry targeting (the crosshair), not selection. With nothing targeted you are told “No tokens targeted.”; with more than one, you are warned and the first is used.
• You must own the targeted token. If you do not, the contest refuses to start. In practice the GM starts contests against NPCs — see Token for what this means at the table.

What happens on screen

The skill hands the contest to your character’s token, which runs it from there. The standard test dialog opens for your roll, your result posts, and an Opposed Action Request card invites the other side to answer with a skill or attribute of their own.

The whole flow — the targeting rules, both cards, the responder’s dialog, and how Victory Stars are read — is described once on Token, under Starting an Opposed Test. For the rules behind a contest, see the Opposed Tests rules.

Nobody rolls for anybody. The request card sits in the chat log until a user who owns the target answers it, and it can be ignored entirely if the table would rather rule the outcome by hand.

Attack, Block, and Counterstrike

These three actions belong to a Combat Technique skill only. On any other skill category they are not present at all.

What they do

Each rolls a d100 against the technique’s mastery level for that use of it:

• Attack — striking with the technique. Bite, claw, punch, grapple, or loose a quill.
• Block — turning an incoming blow aside with it.
• Counterstrike — defending and hitting back in the same motion.

They are the same three tests a weapon offers, on the same rows of the Combat tab — a combat technique is simply a weapon the character cannot drop.

How they run

A technique carries exactly one strike mode, so you are never asked which mode you meant: the strike-mode picker that a multi-mode weapon shows never appears here. The technique’s mode is used, the standard test dialog opens, and a test-result card posts — the same card described under Success Test. Both dialogs are described once on Base Item.

Clicking the Atk, Blk, or CX cell on the Combat tab is the direct route, and holding Shift while you click skips the pre-roll dialog.

Where they are unavailable

• Block and Counterstrike need a melee mode. A missile technique — a flung quill, a spat venom — has no defense to roll, so those two actions are not offered on it. The Combat tab’s Missile ledger has no Blk or CX columns at all.
• A mode can be switched off individually. A melee technique whose attack, block, or counterstrike has been disabled shows a ✗ in that column instead of a rollable value.

Assisted, not automated. These actions roll the test and report it; they do not move a combatant, spend an initiative, or apply an injury to anyone. For the full combat sequence — declaring an exchange, resolving a strike against a defender, and turning impact into a wound — see Combat Basics and Combatant.

See also

• Base Item — the standard item properties, the shared Edit / Delete / Output Description actions, and the standard test dialog every roll on this page opens.
• Skill Tests — what the numbers in a skill test mean, and how success levels are read.
• Fate — spending a Fate Point to improve a settled result.
• Safe Expressions — how to write a Skill Base formula.
• Token — the opposed-test flow this page’s Opposed Test action hands off to.
• Combat Basics and Combatant — where a combat technique’s attack, block, and counterstrike sit in a fight.
• Weapon Gear — the weapon counterpart, with the same three combat actions across several strike modes.
• Shortcodes — what Parent Skill and Associated Skill are naming.
• Items — every item type at a glance.
• User Guide — back to the index.