Traits Defined

Characters are defined by their “Traits,” attributes and skills ranked by die types. A d6 is average, while higher die types reflect much greater ability. Attributes are primarily passive or innate abilities used for resisting effects like fear or supernatural attacks. Skills are used to actively do things or affect others. Exceptions occur, but these are the foundational differences between the two concepts.

Attributes

Attributes don’t directly affect skill rolls. Savage Worlds treats learned knowledge and training as the most relevant and direct factors. A high attribute allows one to increase a skill faster and opens up options to Edges that greatly differentiate two characters with the same skill. Every character starts with a d4 in each of five attributes:

Agility

Agility is a measure of a character’s nimbleness, dexterity, and general coordination.

Smarts

Smarts measures raw intelligence, mental acuity, and how fast a heroine thinks on her feet. It’s used to resist certain types of mental and social attacks.

Spirit

Spirit is self-confidence, backbone, and willpower. It’s used to resist social and supernatural attacks as well as fear.

Strength

Strength is physical power and fitness. It’s also used as the basis of a warrior’s damage in hand-to-hand combat, and to determine how much he can wear or carry.

Vigor

Vigor represents an individual’s endurance, resistance to disease, poison, or toxins, and how much physical damage she can take before she can’t go on. It is most often used to resist Fatigue effects, and as the basis for the derived stat of Toughness.

Using Attributes

Attributes are used to:

• Determine how fast skills increase during Advancement.

• Limit access to Edges.

• Derive secondary statistics such as Toughness or melee damage.

• Resist effects such as being grappled or counter spells, powers, or social attacks such as Taunt or Intimidation.

Skills

Heroes have 12 points to buy skills during character creation.
A skill that’s below the linked attribute (noted in parentheses beside the skill name) is cheaper to increase than one that’s at or above it. See Character Creation and Advancement.
Core skills are marked with a ✪ star, and start at d4 for player characters. Characters can attempt skills they don’t have but it’s more difficult. See Unskilled Attempts.

Skill Philosophy

New players sometimes focus on some skills being so broad—such as Fighting or Shooting—and trying to make all other skills equally so. But the primary goal of the skill system is to create and support character tropes. A shooter, whether he’s a sniper or a bowman, is ubiquitous across many settings and all use a single ability— being able to fire weapons accurately. You don’t need a skill for firearms and another for bows to reinforce those character tropes.
Investigators do need many different skills, however, because they do things in completely different ways. A hard-nosed detective needs Intimidation to work the streets, socialites mingle with high society, bookworms hit the library, and computer geeks use Hacking to get what they want.
Also, some skills just don’t make sense when combined. You could combine Boating, Driving, and Piloting into “Vehicles,” for example, but then every modern day person who can drive a car could fly a plane. Consider that when you’re altering skills for your campaigns.