Difference between revisions of "Abilities and Disabilities"

Abilities and Disabilities are your character’s inherent advantages and disadvantages. They reflect unique aspects of your life, such as things that you are naturally good at or that you have to work very hard at to overcome. They can also provide insights into your background, and populate your present with people who can help or hinder you.

Each Ability's description includes an indication of how many CPs it "costs" to acquire it (for example: 5 CP/level). Strictly speaking, the more an Ability benefits you, the more CP you can expect it to cost. Disabilities, on the other hand, always have a negative cost in CP (for example: -5 CP/level). Thus, when you take a Disadvantage, you receive extra CP to spend on other things. Typically, the more a Disadvantage harms you, the more CP you gain to spend elsewhere.

There are different types of Abilities and Disabilities:

• Some Abilities are helpers most people can't call on, while some Disabilities are unique obligations that could put you in harm's way. Examples include:
  • A Contact is a skilled person who can help you when you are in need.
  • A Dependent is a person who relies on you for protection.

• Some Abilities and Disabilities make Attributes or Skills more or less effective. You don't actually make any roles against these types of Abilities and Disabilities. They only serve to modify other rolls you must make. For example:
  • Acute Vision adds bonus dice to vision-based Skill checks.
  • Bad Hearing adds penalty dice to listening-based Skill checks.

• Some Disabilities indicate that you prone to certain anti-social behaviors, though you can try to avoid such behavior by making the appropriate Attribute check, and receiving at least as many Ss as your Disability level. For example:
  • Absentminded people find it hard to remember important facts, though concentration helps. When trying to remember an important fact, if you have Mana=4 and Absentmindedness=3 you roll 4 dice (your Mana level). If you get at least 3 Ss (your Absentminded level), you can remember the fact in question (provided you can find a quiet place to concentrate for a sufficient length of time).

An optional rule with the last category of Disabilities is for the GM to allow additional benefits to players who do really well on their Attribute check or additional penalties to those who badly fail their Attribute checks. The following chart explains this and provides some examples (though please note that Disabilities vary widely so not all examples will make sense with all Disabilities):

Here are two Two examples of a Disadvantage in action:

Jeremy has succeeded in rescuing the princess from the clutches of the bandit king and has hidden her in a nearby abandoned barn. Unfortunately, a bandit approaches him to ask if Jeremy has any information about the whereabouts of the princess. Because Jeremy has the Honesty Disadvantage, he must make a Will roll (TN=4) in order to lie. Because he has Honesty=5, he must get at least 5 Ss on his Will roll or he will not be able to lie. He has Will=7, so he rolls 7 dice, getting 1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6. He rolls an extra die for rolling a 6, and winds up with a 3. Since he has only achieved 4 Ss, which is fewer than the 5 Ss he requires to lie, Jeremy must either tell the truth or say nothing. Unfortunately, either is likely to get him into trouble in this case.

Same situation, but this time Jeremy rolls better and gets 6 Ss, which is 1 more than the 5 Ss required. He can not only lie, but the GM allows the lie to have a slightly increased chance (1 bonus die) to actually fool the bandit. Let’s hope Jeremy continues to roll well.

Notes:

1. At the GM's discretion, many types of situational modifiers can effect the way in which a particular roll is conducted. For instance, in the example above, if Jeremy was deeply in love with the princess, the GM could have given Jeremy a bonus die or two on his Will roll. Conversely, if Jeremy has always hated the princess and rescuing her was just a job to him, the GM could have assigned one or two penalty dice to his roll. For more information on bonus and penalty dice, see the Bonus and Penalty Dice section on the Main Page.
2. Players can create their own Abilities and Disabilities if they wish and if the GM agrees. As a rough rule of thumb, if the Ability or Disability in question affects 5 or more Skills, it should be considered as +/- 5 CP/level. Otherwise, it should be considered as +/- 2 CP/level. Some Abilities and Disabilities add bonus or penalty dice to the Skill roll it affects, others actually give additional (or fewer) levels to the Skill levels they affect.