Skills

So within the rule set of Valerian Adventures TTRPG, Skills define exactly what it sounds like. These represent skillsets that your character has, and how well they can use them. Basically everything, from attacking to casting magick to gardening to building complex machinery is going to be a skillset roll of some kind. All skills follow Pathfinder 2e rules but with a single twist. At Master rank and above you add the secondary Attribute Bonus as well as the first. Naturally this list and the PF2e list may contain some overlap and also you might need to decide what secondary stats apply to some PF2e skills if you wish to use that extra twist. But it is not required to be used.

Presented here is a table of the various skillsets, with their associated Stats. After that, you will find a brief description as to what each skillset is meant to cover, the sorts of tasks that it would apply to, though by no means a comprehensive list. Remember, always ask your GM, stating intent, before rolling a skill test, to insure you and your GM are on the same page as to what you should be rolling.

Skill Primary Statistic Secondary Statistic
Animal Caretaking * Charisma Wisdom
Athletics Strength Dexterity
Awareness Wisdom Charisma
Bribery Charisma Intelligence
Consume Alcohol Constitution Wisdom
Craft (Speciality) * Strength or Dexterity (see skill description) Intelligence
Drive (Speciality) * Dexterity Wisdom
Investigate * Intelligence Charisma
Intuition Wisdom Charisma
Intimidation Strength Charisma
Lore (Speciality) Intelligence Wisdom or Charisma (see skill description)
Medical Dexterity Intelligence
Navigation (Type) * Intelligence Wisdom
Persuade Charisma Wisdom
Perform (Speciality) Charisma Dexterity or Strength (see skill description)
Prayer (Diety) * Charisma Wisdom
Spell-Weaving (Order of Magick) * Intelligence Wisdom
Subterfuge Dexterity Charisma
Survival Wisdom Intelligence
Ride (Speciality) Dexterity Constitution


Skill Descriptions



Animal Caretaking: This skillset would be used for most any sort of interaction with a wild or domesticated animal. Whether that be in trying to make it friendly, in trying to control its behavior, in trying to diagnose illness or injury, all that sort of thing.

Athletics: This skillset represents everything from jumping and climbing to landing safely after long falls, along with things like swimming. It is also suggested to be used for various combative things like grappling, trips, attempts to disarm, those sorts of things.

Awareness: This skillset is meant to represent your perceptive knowledge, that innate observation ability of your surroundings and physical behaviors of those around you. Subtle movements, hidden threats, hidden treasures, all of that.

Bribery: This skillset has its obvious uses of course, which is the social path it can provide, and being able to sort of read the social situation and get an idea of the sort of value you should offer when attempting to set up such a social transaction. However this skill also is meant to represent one's ability to 'read the metaphorical room' to know if this social path would be relatively a safe one, or perhaps a more risky option to bring up and initiate.

Consume Alcohol: This skillset does not just cover alcohol, but all mind-altering and physically intoxicating substances. This is used to establish the level of intoxication and potential poisoning/overdose, along with relative level of intoxication.

Craft (Speciality): This skillset is one of several that would have subsets. Depending on the craft, on the skilled trade, your primary stat would be Power OR Agility. As an example, a Watchmaker would likely have Agility, whereas a Blacksmith would likely use Power. The specialities are basically limitless, and as such no comprehensive table is provided here. It is best that you and your GM discuss which of those two stats, Power or Agility, feels the most accurate for the particular Craft your character wishes to be trained in. Two important skills here in this family however, are Craft (Locksmith) which and Craft Trap-making, which both use Agility. They are also relevant because these are the skills for lockpicking and trap disarming.

Drive (Speciality): This could again, have many specialities, but not as many as Craft. However that would also depend how in the weeds your GM wishes to get, hence the Speciality in brackets, for those the same stats apply to them all, they are unique skillsets and should be treated as such. You can split some of them up further, however at base the specialities are simply; Land, Rail, Sea, Sky. These groups can be made more or less specific depending on your table and discussions between your group and GM. Land would refer to things like stage coaches, and dog sleds. Rail would refer to anything in the locomotive field. Sea would refer to any sailing vessel, from the smallest rowboat to the largest warship. Sky would refer, obviously, to any sky-ships or other aeronautic vehicles that happen to exist in your setting or game.

Investigate: This skillset is meant to represent your ability to not just be aware and note things around you, but to spend time and effort to really pick over your surroundings, the objects, people, terrain and other surroundings, and take all that raw data and read it, picking out particulars. Clues, hints of behavior, intents, any other way you'd wish to word it. The detective sort of skill.

Intuition: This skillset is the sister to Investigate. While that is the processing of data from the environment, non verbal behaviors, and physical evidence and items in a space, this skill is focused on people and creatures, reading intent behind actions, nervous ticks and of course, language and speech. It also could be used on written material as well, though you would be missing a key piece of information, which would be tone/body language. You could use this skill to get an idea if someone is lying, if they were nervous, aggressive, defensive, etc.

Intimidation: This skillset is used to coerce, intimidate, threaten and otherwise in a non friendly manner convince someone to behave in a certain way, make certain choices, or to otherwise scare them for whatever your reasoning would be.

Language (Speciality): You can speak, read and write a language with some level of skill. The secondary statistic of this skill at any given time changes based on if speaking or reading/writing. If speaking it is Persona, if reading/writing it is Intellect.

Lore (Speciality): This skill set is meant to represent a variety of broad general topics, and the secondary Stat's could vary within those choices. This is by far of course a comprehensive listing, and if you and your GM agree that their are any missing here, or that feel to broad, you may add or edit them as you would agree fit. However as some example of these specialities and which secondary stat would apply; Local (Persona), Engineering (Sagacity), History (Sagacity), Religion (Sagacity), Arcana (Persona), Nature (Sagacity)

Medical: This skill set represents the ability to diagnose, and treat injuries and illnesses to some level. It is not as effective as proper medical care via potions, doctors or healing magick. But you can avoid infection, treat some conditions (like bleed) or even, if you have a full first aid kit to work with, minorly heal people for 1d4+2/rank of the skill (maxing at +8). First aid kits are consumable items with x amount of uses based on their size, and once they gone they are gone.

Melee (Family): This is the skillset that is used to fight with and maintain melee weapons, each family of weapon being its own skill-set.

Navigation (Type) This skill-set represents your ability to find your way around, remember routes and landmarks, and follow maps. There are 'types' within this skill, of which you pick one. These are Seafaring, Aeronautics, Overland, Urban, and Subterranean.

Persuade: This skill-set represents your conversational ability in the arts of diplomacy and flattery. How well you can spin those honeyed words, and navigate that social web with your charm and friendliness.

Perform (Speciality): This skill set has many specialities, and amongst those, some may use Power but others Agility as their secondary stat. This can be an instrument group, acting, oration, juggling, dancing, fire-dancing, singing or anything else you and your GM feel fits here. When you pick a Perform Speciality, you and your GM should decide and lock in whether you feel Power or Agility should be its secondary stat. One that is super noteworthy as being Agility however is Perform (Sleight of Hand) and the reason for this is because this is the natural skill for pickpocketing.

Prayer (Deity) This skill is used to call upon Divine Powers of the god you worship. This skill only applies to Priests and Templars and a few distinct Focus Paths of other Careers.

Ranged (Family): This is the skill-set for ranged weapons and attacking with them, as well as maintaining them. Each family is its own skill set.

Spell-Weaving (Order of Magick): This skill is used to weave manna and create spell-forms. This skill applies only to Magisters, Shamans, and a select few Focus Paths of other Professions.

Subterfuge: This skill set encompasses everything you could think of in regards to stealth and espionage. Bluffing/Deceptive speech, creating a physical disguise, etc. Hiding, moving silently, or unseen/unnoticed, etc etc.

Survival: This skill set encompasses your general fieldcraft knowledge, your ability to track, to understand the wilderness around you, the ecosystem and the dangers. What is safe and not safe to eat for wild flora and fauna, and other such related information.

Ride (Speciality): This skill set encompasses your skill at riding within a certain type of creature, a certain speciality, and all the associated parts of such a discipline. Fighting from the saddle, controlling the mount, etc etc. The various specialities generally are sorted by like family of creature. As examples; Equine (horses, mules, ponies, etc), Swine (Wild Boar), Aerial (Pegasus, Griffon, Drake or Wyvern, etc etc), Ungulate (Camel, Llama, Alpaca, etc). This by far is not a complete list, so between you and your GM, you are encouraged to adding specialities to this list appropriate for your game.


Setting Target Number (TN)



Now of course a reasonable question from here is 'great, now how do I set difficulty'. Well ultimately as the GM you do need to decide exactly how you feel that should be measured. But below for a rough reference is a little table to help you undersand the sort of scaling to work off of within Adventures in Valerick, broken down into Intended Relative Difficulty brackets. These brackets very roughly are defined below the table;

Intended Relative Difficulty TN suggested rough range
Simple 10 or less
Easy 11-15
Average 16-20
Moderately Difficult 21-30
Difficult 31-40
Extremely Difficult 41-45
Implausible 46-50
Impossible 51+


Difficulty defined



Simple: In all honesty, these tasks are only advisable to get your player to roll for if they have no ranks of training at all in a skill yet wish to attempt it anyway, if you deem fit that they can try without any training. Even then, unless there is a direct and tangible consequence to failure or a notable time pressure (like the goblins are closing in, or the wyvern will be passing overhead shortly and notice them, or there is a chemist Timed Charge burning about to drop part of a wall on them, as examples) it isn't worth getting a player to roll these. Just decide a length of time it takes and move on.

Easy: These tasks are very similar to Simple, but instead of being instinctual things we all conceptually understand in our subconscious, these are instead tasks that require some basic level of training/understanding, a most base level of training. For example, simple would be using a piece of cloth and pressing on a cut to slow/stop it bleeding. That would be a simple Medical Test But applying a bandage, something almost every person has done in real life, properly, would be in the Easy range. Because technically, though most of us likely don't think about it all the time, you are supposed to clean any cut, even a papercut, before applying a bandage. This is the difference between base knowledge and instinctual knowledge, as an example.

Average: These tasks are average, run of the mill. Sticking with the theme of our examples now, let us say someone has a bad gash. Needing a few stitches. That is a bit more complex than a bandage, but would fall very likely in the Average range as a Medical Skill Test. Remembering to clean it, properly aligning the two edges of the wound, threading the needle and thread, and stitching the wound. Then a proper wrap. Still relatively easy, as far as medical tasks go, but more complex than the above Easy example.

Moderately Difficult: These tasks however between the truly difficult upper tiers of the skill, and the more easy and day to day tasks. As an example, continuing the use of the Medical Skill. Perhaps someone has a dislocated knee after a bad fall, or being struck by something. Nothing is broken, but it is popped out of the socket. This would have a difficultly in the moderate range to fix (mechanically this would kind of fit removing an instance of most conditions) because you are flying a bit blind. You understand the anatomy, but you can't see inside to make sure everything is lined up visibly as you pop it back in. You are working off of feel and sound alone, a higher tier of skill than the previous examples where the primary and strongest sense of most humanoids (vision) could help you.

Difficult: These tasks move into true higher tier of ability for their skill. Sticking with our Medical theme, this would be something like an amputation. Let us say an ally of yours has been forcibly mutated and grown an extra arm. Though that arm is no use, and heretical, and needs to be removed, it is still connected to their blood system, nerves, and body. So you set up to amputate. This sort of surgery, with only direct risk to blood vessels and extremities, but no risk of direct contact with organs, would be in the difficult tier. You need to manage pain, saw the limb off, including bone, whilst also insuring they don't bleed out, etc etc. You are managing many factors in a higher pressure situation. Mechanically this would be like removing Wounded (1) condition.

Extremely Difficult: These task move into the realm of high danger and high complexity. Again sticking with our medical theme, perhaps you have the knowledge and know-how that your companion who has shattered their hip after a giant smashed them, you can replace that. That surgery? That would be in this range. This is because of the length of time, the complexity of insuring you get all the bone shards out, stitch all the muscles and tendons properly, make sure they don't bleed out, repair as best you can blood vessels and soft muscular structure whilst also properly aligning, positioning and fastening the prosthetic piece into place to allow it to act the part as close to the now missing bone structure as normal. Mechanically this would be like removing Wounded (2) condition.

Implausible: These tasks move into the realm of the highest tier stuff, the truly difficult and impressive. Sticking with out Medical theme, this would be something like removing a failed organ (like a kidney) or doing an organ swap. Something that, in the base setting of Valerick at least, would be looked at as almost quasi-magick. Mechanically this would be like removing Wounded (3) condition.

Impossible: These task move into the realm of the truly impossible. Sticking with our Medical Skill theme of examples, what I can list here as an example may not be impossible in your setting. But using Valerick as a base line, an example of a task in this category for the Medical Skill would be; somehow, no magick involved, bringing someone back to life. Getting their heart beating again. That is a level of knowledge, the idea that in some cases, though not most for adventuring types, death is not fully death. For adventuring sorts, this is rare, as the ways they die are often quite permanent, such as; blood loss or trauma, or loss of their head. However we know in real life in today's day and age, someone's heart can stop beating but if you get it beating again, and get them breathing again fast enough, they can still survive. That is not known or understood in Valerick. That would be an example of an Impossible task. (This would be the equivalent, if you allow this level of knowledge and medical understanding in whatever setting your game is in, to bringing someone who has just officially Died back to life. Likely only within a half dozen minutes of their death at most.)

Comments

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Jan 17, 2023 12:41

Oh especially digging those specialities. Makes everything a bit more streamlined!

Feel free to check my new world Terra Occidentalis if you want to see what I am up to!
Jan 17, 2023 20:23 by Keon Croucher

Thank you!! :D

Keon Croucher, Chronicler of the Age of Revitalization