T3 Skills

	Skill List Skills in italics are genre skills.
	Skill		Attribute
	Deceit		Perception
	Dodge		Agility
	Drive		Agility
	Fix-It		Willpower
	Guns		Agility
	Gunnery		Perception
	Honor		Fortune
	Intimidation		Charisma
	Intrusion		Agility
	Investigation		Perception
	Leadership		Charisma
	Martial Arts		Agility
	Medicine		Constitution
	Powers		Magic
	Scholar		Perception
	Seduction		Charisma
	Shaping		Fortune
	Sorcery		Magic

General Skills

These skills are applicable in all genres.

Deceit

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p. 70. It has absorbed Gambling (Feng Shui, p. 72).

Quick of mind and body, the trickster can stay on top of any situation by wit and luck.

Default Attribute: Perception

Unskilled Use: You can perform tricks if you have been instructed or planned them in advance, but are not capable of spur-of-the-moment trickery. You cannot make forgeries or imitate individuals. You can learn the ropes and play a hand in most regular games, but arcane games such as Buddhist riddles are out of your league.

Physical Ability: This skill is used to quickly come up with and implement tricks to distract and confuse others. Tricks can be confusing harangues of spurious logic, but are most often physical in nature, such as sand thrown in an opponents face or a quickly spotted pile of boxes used as a trap. Deceit stunts can be used in combat, more details can be found in the interaction stunt rules. The difficulty of Tricks are most often the opponents Deceit or Perception.

You can disguise your appearance, either to hide your identity or look like a specific individual. You can mimic voices. You can forge credentials and feign familiarity with skills you don't really have.

You have a knack for gambling. You can read faces and body language and sense whether people are bluffing or not. You can convince professional gamblers and others on the shady side of the law that you're one of them, someone they can trust not to bug out on a wager or squeal to the cops. You can perform outrageous tricks: cock a die you are throwing in order to get a desired result, employ sleight of hand, and so on.

Knowledge: You know of famous scams and tricks. You are familiar with the exploits of various con-men and adventurers. You know the rules, odds, and statistics of any popular game of chance like the back of your hand. You know the various legal penalties for various forms of gambling, fraud and deception. You know by reputation the law enforcers responsible for enforcing such laws in your usual area of operation. You know many colorful anecdotes of notorious deceivers of the past and present. You know a lot of trivia, such as the last ten presidents of Turkmenistan, the current needed to cause an ordinary light bulb to explode or the optimum temperature for silicone lubricants.

Contacts: You know shady lawyers and bail bondsmen. You know gamblers, bookies, casino staff, and gambling groupies of either sex. You may know, but are not likely to be friendly with, beat cops, fraud squad officers, and prison guards. You may know low-level gangsters and their associates. Some tricks require preparation and props, and you have a knack for finding the right person to supply such things. You also have some contacts with other tricksters and former "clients'', but such contacts are rivals at best, intense enemies at worst.

Dodge

Dodge is not as skill, rather it is a derived value, your basic defensive value. It is given by the highest of Guns, Martial Arts, Arcanowave, Creature Powers and possibly Sorcery (if you have the Blast schtick). The main use of Dodge is to gauge the difficulty of attacks directed against you. See the Hitting Things rule.

Drive

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 71.

You can ride or drive any vehicle or mount. Anything goes, as long as you can have a chase scene in it.

Default Attribute: Agility

Unskilled Use: You can manage basic non-emergency, non-stunt driving of a vehicle common to your juncture. This means horses for 69 and 1850, or automobiles for the contemporary and 2056 junctures.

Physical Ability: You can drive vehicles like there's no tomorrow. Vehicle stunts are second nature to you. You may drive any vehicle once you figure it's controls. Given adequate time and equipment, you can repair and care for any vehicle you are familiar with. Note that the horse counts as a vehicle, if your background is appropriate you know the basics of the care and feeding of these animals.

When driving, you can use your Drive as Dodge, both for yourself and your vehicle.

Knowledge: You know about the history of the vehicles you are familiar with. You know the quirks of various specific models of your favored vehicle. You can quote statistics about their technical specifications, if applicable. You know where to go to purchase vehicles, and how to negotiate good prices from sales staff. You are familiar with anecdotes about vehicles and famous drivers and pilots.

Contacts. You know mechanics, other expert drivers and vehicle sales people. (In the case of horses, you know riders, livery stable employees, breeders and owners.) You know people involved in racing, if applicable for your vehicle: these might include fans, sports writers, touts, and groupies of either sex.

Optional Rule: In certain genres, it might be too much to allow all vehicles to be governed by a single skill. This applies most especially to campaigns dominated by vehicles, such as mecha or piloting campaigns like Crimson Skies. Under this rules, a character only learns to drive one type of vehicle upon learning the drive skill. All other vehicles are operated at -3 Action Value. It costs 3 experience points to learn a new type of vehicle.

Vehicle types are rather broad. Examples include Airplanes, Rotary Aircraft, Cars, Machinery (this includes trains, cranes and caterpillars), Horses, Camels, Airships, Boats.

Fix-It

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 71. It has absorbed Sabotage, from Feng Shui, p 76.

You can build, repair or design almost anything. If you are good, you are an inventor that can build or improve almost any machine or gizmo. If you are a beginner, you need blueprints and tools to work your "magic".

Default Attribute: Willpower

Unskilled Use: You can make minor repairs or basic construction work if you have an instructor or manual.

Physical Ability: You can repair almost any object, given enough time and the right equipment. The difficulty depends on the complexity of the repair and the severity of the damage it has sustained. The Difficulty does not necessarily correspond to the technological advancement of the item: for example, many pieces of electronic gear can be repaired by simply popping out a fried component and sticking in a new one. If you are not familiar with the type of object, however, the GM should factor in the complexity as well. If you are used to fixing ox carts and pounding out punctures in plate armor, the control panel of a SCUD missile launcher is going to take you a while to puzzle out.

You can also jury-rig from scrounged parts devices whose basic design is familiar to you. The VCR you build from leftovers in a junk shop may not look as nice as a factory model, but it will work. You can also design and build new inventions, as long as you can convince the GM that such a device is possible. In the case of either repairs or jury-rigged items, the GM decides how long the task takes.

Note that you can't create devices which are better in every way than equivalent factory-made objects: no ultra concealable .22 handguns with the damage rating of a.45, for example.

You know how to get nasty stains of any sort out of almost any material. (You laugh now, but wait until all of the other PCs come to you wanting all of those nasty bloodstains out of their Armani jackets!)

If you find yourself in the middle of a tight spot and want a particular piece of equipment, make a Fix-It check to see if you just happen to have such a thing on your person. This is called the "Hey, I just happen to have one of those!'' effect. Items that can be scrounged up via this method might be anything from a basic tool or utility item, a screwdriver, strapping tape, vinyl rope-to an exotic or jury-rigged device such as a geiger counter, acetylene torch, or grappling hook. The GM chooses the Difficulty of the check, deciding how likely it is that you'd have been expecting to need the object you're asking for. Characters should face higher Difficulty numbers if the items in question don't match their archetypes: Ninjas have an easy time coming up with jury-rigged smoke grenades and the like, but have a lousy chance of having high-tech devices on hand. If it's a jury-rigged item appearing in the story line for the first time, the GM will require an additional check to see if the thing actually works when you try to use it.

Knowledge: You can recognize any technological device, and give an estimate of what it does and how well it does it.

Contacts: Grease monkeys gather in garages and greasy bars, and you fit right in among them. You also know suppliers for parts and customers who want to buy the finished product. In fact, some of these customers are probably spies and soldiers, that could give you a hand in any number of situations.

Guns

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 72.

Although this skill is called "guns", it actually refers to all kinds of ranged weapons. The only exception is ranged Arcanowave weapons; they operate according to magical principles rather than basic physics, and are covered under the Arcanowave skill. There is an entire section devoted to the use of guns.

Default Attribute: Agility

Unskilled Use: You can use basic small arms like pistols, shotguns and crossbows. With some instructions you can fire archaic gunpowder weapons, but bows, military support weapons or other arcana require skill. You can throw grenades and rocks, but not weapons such as knives.

Physical Ability: You can fire guns at targets with a high degree of accuracy. You can repair guns; you can diagnose problems with faulty or damaged guns. You can identify a quality gun when you see it. You can understand new types of guns with ease, and have some basic familiarity with all types of ranged weapons. You can use ranged weapons of other types as well; blasters, thrown grenades and crossbows are prime examples. Throwing weapons are governed by the Martial Arts skill.

Knowledge: You know the history of guns. You know the technical specifications of guns inside out, and can rattle off statistics about guns and ammo until the cows come home. You know the legal regulations concerning guns as enforced by various jurisdictions in your juncture. You know all about the companies that manufacture, import, and sell guns. You know by reputation the famed shooters of your juncture. You know stories about the great shooters of the past.

Contacts: You know gun dealers, legal and otherwise. You know gunsmiths. You know individuals involved with competitive shooting: fans, officials, and hangers-on. In the modern era, you know journalists who specialize in writing for gun publications.

Intimidation

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 73.

Fear is not all, there is also the inferiority inspired in the sloppier dresser or etiquette-breaker to savor.

Default Attribute: Charisma

Unskilled Use: You can intimidate, taunt or threaten, but always do so in an obvious and direct manner.

Physical Ability: You make others feel frightened, uncomfortable, self-conscious, or inadequate. You may do this by displaying impressive size, great skill, profound intellect, or just an indefinable quality of superiority. This is most often done using the interaction stunt rules.

Once you have successfully Intimidated someone, he is more likely to go along with your suggestions. This does not mean that he will automatically adhere to any request you make, but he will give it much more weight than he otherwise would have.

The Difficulty for Intimidation task checks is the Willpower or Intimidation of the subject you are attempting to Intimidate. If you are attempting to Intimidate a group of people at once, use the highest rating in the crowd. The GM may assess modifiers to Intimidation checks based on circumstances. If you have the upper hand in a situation, or have done something threatening or inspiring, the modifier is positive. If you are in a tight spot or have just done something embarrassing or awkward, the modifier is negative.

Knowledge: You know fashions and customs, and how to look good and/or impressive in the local culture. You know which clothes to wear and how to wear them. You have a way of finding out the secret weaknesses others try to hide.

Contacts: You know people you have browbeaten in the past, and a few strong individuals who have stood up to you. Most of the people you know respect but dislike you. Intimidation really doesn't have much of a contacts element, but can modify other contacts to be more respectful and submissive.

Intrusion

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 73.

Security! What security? I am security!

Default Attribute: Agility

Unskilled Use: You can sneak, but not use more advanced break-in techniques.

Physical Ability: You are good at getting into places you're not supposed to be. You can rappel up or down vertical surfaces with the help of a rope and grappling hook. You can quickly examine secure areas and determine the best means of illicit entry. You can move quietly, hide in small places, and generally avoid being noticed under scrutiny. You can pick locks, crack safes, and circumvent electronic or magical security measures. You can install such measures to stop others like you from entering an area. The GM assigns Difficulties to such attempts based on the sophistication of the security measures, locks, and so on, or on the quality of the scrutiny. See the trap rules.

Knowledge: You know about the latest security measures. You know what equipment you need, and how to find quality gear. You know about the great heists of history, and the techniques of the great burglars of the past. You know by reputation the best in your business today: the very best are known only by nicknames or by famous jobs they have pulled. You can recognize how a heist was done, and identify the style of the burglar.

Contacts: You know criminals willing to fence stolen gear, middlemen who hire freelance spies for private or public clients, and, if you've been unlucky or careless, representatives of the justice system such as cops, lawyers, judges and jailers.

Investigation

This skill replaces Detective (FS, p. 70), Police (FS, p. 75) and Journalism (FS, p. 74) and has the effect of all of them. The contacts element depends on the character's background.

Default Attribute: Perception

Unskilled Use: You can search for clues, evidence and hidden items, but might not understand what you find.

Physical Ability: You can rank ideas in order of importance and condense them into short and pithy reports. Your prose may not win you any literary prizes, but you know how to get a main idea across to even the thickest reader. You are good at remembering things people tell you, and at taking notes. You are good at research and legwork. You are good at following mundane details such as financial and travel records and using them to reconstruct the activities of your subject. You can search an area, and be fairly certain that no clues or hidden features remain there.

You can make shrewd deductions based on physical evidence and your familiarity with human nature. You can assemble disparate clues into a mental recreation of a crime or other past event; in game terms, the GM assigns a Difficulty to the situation based on its obscurity. If you make your Investigation check, you are given a hint, or outright told what the clues mean, depending on the GM's needs in moving the story along.

If you have an outdoorsy background, you can track both men and animals, and are an expert at pursuit.

You are a good judge of character and can sense when people are lying. You are a good interrogator, using psychology and the inconsistencies in what people say to pin down the truth.

Knowledge: You are familiar with police procedure and the law. You are familiar with many case histories of famous crimes. You know by reputation the famed celebrities, cops, detectives, and criminals of your day. You are acquainted with the latest forensic techniques of your juncture. You know a little about every topic under the sun. However, experts in any field you cover invariably hate the way you oversimplify complex issues and gloss over details in the reports you file.

Contacts: Your contacts depend on your background, moreso than for many other skills. As a cop you know other cops, superiors in the police hierarchy, prosecutors, civilian staffers, and (depending on your era) journalists. You know many petty criminals, including stool pigeons, as well as ordinary citizens just trying to get along.

As a journalist know other reporters as well as editors, columnists, photographers, and technical people. From the stories you've covered, you have contacts in every walk of life. You've met everyone from heads of state to street corner scumbags. Unfortunately, although this skill provides a wider range of possible contacts than most any other, the people whose stories you've told are highly likely to despise your intestines. Note that contacts who'd like to see you squashed like a bug may, if they have some way to cause you grief, pretend to still like you.

As a detective, you know police officers, with whom you may have a tense relationship. You may have a range of low-level underground contacts from whom you can get useful tips, either through bribery or intimidation. You likely have contacts among well-respected citizens and business people for whom you've done work in the past.

Leadership

Leadership is the ability to inspire and maintain loyalty in followers. It's primary effect is to attract followers, though it can also be used to determine the effectiveness of an organization you lead.

Default Attribute: Charisma

Unskilled Use: You can give orders to people you clearly outrank. You cannot just naturally assume command.

Physical Ability: You exude an air of authority. Those who recognize you as their legitimate superior will follow your orders to the best of their ability. Those who do not may follow you instinctively in a pinch, just because you seem to expect it. The difficulty of assuming a position in the chain of command in a group is generally the highest Leadership value in the group, while an Outcome equal to the leader's Charisma places you in command.

When acting on your direct orders, your followers can act using your Leadership value. You take a 3-shot action to give a command, and some of you underlings executes the order, using you Leadership Action Result. If the underling is unskilled, he can still only perform unskilled tasks.

You can attract followers and henchmen. Henchmen are named characters with abilities similar to your own, while followers are unnamed mooks, loyal and willing to risk their lives for you. The templates below are used to build followers and henchmen.

You can have a number of henchmen equal to half your Charisma, though only one is usually in action at any given time. Their base skill is equal to your Leadership, and they get improvement picks equal to your leadership too. If you recruit a henchman during play who's better than this, he keeps his values unchanged until you improve sufficiently to improve him. No follower or henchman can have a Leadership less than three points lower than your own.

Both henchmen and followers start with base attributes depending on their race and one primary skill at a fixed value. In addition, they have improvement picks, that can be used in the following way:

• Improve a primary attribute one point. One secondary attribute can be increased by reducing the others two points (total). Extreme attributes are discouraged.
• Get an extra skill. The first extra skill has a value equal to the primary skill, and each succeeding skill is one point lower than the preceding skill. You can restart the progression for one additional pick. Leadership value must be two points lower than your own.
• One schtick (sorcery and unique schticks cost double)

You can have lot's of followers, but only your Charisma score of them in play in one adventure. They have a primary skill equal to your Leadership -3 (with a minimum equal to your Charisma), and improvement picks equal to your Charisma. If you instead elect to have lots of followers, they have a primary skill equal to your Leadership -5, but then have a horde, and each sequence use a number equal to your Charisma (the rest are cheering you on from the sidelines).

Knowledge: You know a particular theory of leadership and discipline, whether it be the code of obedience of Ancient China, or the bureaucratic management manuals of the Buro. If it has a written component, you can quote it to the last punctuation mark.

Contacts: You know others in the leadership hierarchy you belong to or once belonged to. Depending on your current circumstances, your superiors may still support you or want you dead. Your former underlings will still revere you, even if they've been ordered to smoke you on sight.

Martial Arts

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 74.

Martial arts will give you the order you need in your life. Butt is kicked in an orderly fashion!

Default Attribute: Agility

Unskilled Use: You can hit people with your hands, or with basic tools such as clubs, swords and knives. You cannot use esoteric melee weapons such as whips, chains or nunchakos. You can climb, swim and do basic jumps, but no more acrobatic stunts than that.

Physical Ability: You can strike opponents in hand-to-hand combat, either unarmed or with close-up weapons such as swords, clubs, bicycle chains, nunchakos, telephones, lawn mowers, and so on. You can parry in hand-to-hand combat. You can fight with thrown weapons, from shurikens to daggers. You can throw other objects accurately.

Note that the term "martial arts" is used as a catchall to denote all hand-to-hand fighting ability. Your character may not have been formally trained at all, much less in a specific oriental fighting art. If so, you're a brawler, but you know how to get the job done. If you have a skill rating of 12 or more, you have moved beyond the mundane aspects of Martial Arts, and may learn Fu schticks.

Knowledge: The knowledge element of Martial Arts vary widely depending on whether you are a formal Shaolin student or a street mugger from the Bronx. If you are a formal martial artist, you know the history of your school, and of its great masters of the past and present. You have a less extensive but still-acceptable knowledge of the histories of rival schools. You know the philosophy of your school, both as it pertains to fighting and to life in general. If it has an oral or written code of conduct, you have memorized all of it. You know by reputation the great martial artists of your juncture. If you are a brawler, you know others in you neighborhood who can fight, either as colleagues or rivals. You can identify a good fighter, even if you cannot name his style. And you instinctively understand the many unwritten codes of street brawls, when it is OK to use weapons, when single combat is appropriate and so on.

Contracts: The contacts element of Martial Arts vary widely depending on whether you are a formal Budoka or a street fighter. If you are a formal martial artist, you know other practitioners and teachers of your school. You know members of rival schools, who may be your enemies. You know people involved in martial arts competitions, from judges to fans to patrons. If you are a brawler, you know street people involved in fights: ring managers, bar owners, gang members and little-old-ladies-with-sharp-eyes-in-need-of-protection.

Medicine

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 75.

Characters with a medical technology less than that of the year 1900 (sulfa, sterile surgery) are limited to a skill rating of 10 in this skill until they can undergo a training sequence in a modern or futuristic hospital setting. The GM must judge if this applies in each culture; ancient Arabians and Chinese were famous for their doctors, while certain native people are very good at using poison. Healers from a magical juncture usually are single-schtick magicians practicing the Healing sorcery schtick.

Base Attribute: Constitution. This might seem odd, but represents natural self-healing.

Unskilled Use: It is impossible to use Medicine unskilled, but your body will work to repair any injuries you take if there is no regular medical care available. Thus, your natural resilience can work like the Medicine skill, but only for your own benefit.

Physical Ability: You can heal the sick and wounded. You can diagnose injuries and illnesses. You can look at wounds and deduce what might have caused them. You know the drugs of your juncture, and in an emergency you might be able to find local substitutes.

If you take a pause between fights to apply first aid, you can make a Medicine check and erase that much damage from a patient. First aid can only be applied once between each fight or action scene.

A character who has failed a Death Test but not yet expired can be saved with a Medicine roll. The difficulty is twice the amount the death test was failed by, that is the same value that determines the time left until death on the Shuffling Off The Mortal Coil Chart, FS p 157. Unnamed character's who have been killed can also be saved. Read the weapon's damage value minus the patient's Constitution as the negative result on the Shuffling Off The Mortal Coil Chart, FS p 157.

A success indicated your patient is saved, but is bedridden and needs several days of care, followed by some period of recouperation. If you manage to roll twice the difficulty, the injuries weren't really so severe and the patient is up and kicking in no time; reduce his current Wound Points by the Medicine Action Result. A failed attempt reduces the time remaining until death by one category, just as if the character had been wounded again.

If your skill bonus is 12 or more, you can not only act as a general practitioner but may pick a specialty of medicine as a subskill. The subskill Surgery allows you to operate on patients, it is the most useful specialty in an action/adventure context. Forensic Pathology allows you to conduct autopsies and otherwise gather clues. Toxicology is an unusual specialty, but one with practical and lethal uses. This makes you a master of poisons.

If you want to pick some less practical specialty in order to establish your character's background, other specialties include Internal Medicine; Eyes, Ears, Nose & Throat; or those focusing on particular diseases such as cancer, arthritis, or diabetes. Extremely good doctors may operate in several specialties, though this is rare in real life.

Knowledge: You know human anatomy. You are familiar with chemistry, particularly biochemistry. You are an encyclopedia of poisons, drugs and medicinal substances. You know the latest medical advances of your juncture. You know the famous doctors in your field by reputation. You know the best hospitals in your area for the treatment of particular conditions.

Contacts: You know other doctors, nurses, and/or medics. You know patients from all walks of life. You know hospital staff and administrators, pharmaceuticals, academic researchers and lab technicians. Poison masters tend to be reclusive, but you know some of them, at least by reputation. If you are freelance, you know middlemen who can arrange contracts.

Note: A hospital is always assumed to succeed at Medicine checks. If a character is brought to a hospital before he dies, he is always successfully saved, unless the story needs him to die. Hospitals are notoriously poor at first aid, however, performing such tasks with a skill of only 10.

Scholar

A translation of the Torg skill of the same name, this is a generic skill for the character's scholastic ability and knowledge. It replaces the Feng-Shui Information skills.

Default Attribute: Perception

Unskilled Use: You know the common knowledge of your junction, such as who is the current champion of your favorite sport or which beers are popular in your home town.

Physical Ability: Though this is mostly a knowledge skill, it does include some practical elements. You quickly pick up the lore of any region or juncture you pass through. You can perform research in depth, collecting information from libraries and by field study. You can hold lectures, debate with other scholars and write scientific books. If you also have the Fix-It skill you are an experimental scientist, and can make blueprints and designs for others to implement.

Knowledge: You become very knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects. Naturally, your juncture and background will play a major part in deciding what you know, but even outside your field of expertise you often give loads of trivia. Whenever you fail a knowledge check for one of your other skills, you can always make a Scholar check to see if you didn't have some scrap of knowledge after all.

Contacts: You know mostly other scholars, but also some people who has aided your field research. This includes practical experts in your field of study as well as people who can arrange transportation, hire crews and other essentials.

Seduction

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 76. We allow Seduction to be used for general charm, not just sexual liaisons.

The ability to sway individuals through wit and charm.

Default Attribute: Charisma

Unskilled Use: You can use your Seduction in familiar cultures and situations, but an aborigine celebration or mob funeral is quite likely to spook you in a major way. You can seduce sexually, but there is a good chance you will fall for your own whiles and fall in love yourself. Your attempts at persuasion are always fairly obvious to others.

Physical Ability: You can sniff out opportunities to socialize even in completely unfamiliar environments, whether they be riddle games in a Zen monastery or poker in a pit of demons. You can try to make a threat situation into a social situation, but cannot generally end a combat except by surrendering. Of course, a true charmer is confident of his ability to gain friends and freedom once he has surrendered. This ability will not turn main antagonists into friends, but may make them say to much or waste time on "entertainment''.

You can manipulate others into feeling a powerful sexual attraction for you. Once you have done this, you can persuade them to abandon their usual inhibitions and commitments in order to please you. This never succeeds against a subject who is not attracted to persons of the seducer's gender, species or genotype; supernatural creatures may have this same problem with subjects who aren't up for sex with a zombie or whatever no matter how skillfully you come on to them.

You can also perform, on stage or otherwise. You have overcome any trace of shyness. With a little preparation, you can appear your very best, better than anyone who is merely beautiful.

Seduction is a subtle skill, that influences peoples' attitudes rather than their actions. The difficulty is generally the subjects Seduction or Willpower, but huge outcomes may be necessary, especially if you have very little time. This is also a very subjective skill; knowing your victim's quirks and tastes can be very important.

Knowledge: You know languages and customs, fashions and human nature. You also recognize taboos and can avoid faux-pas. You know a lot about human nature, especially as it relates to matters of the heart and/or mating rituals.

Contacts: This skill has a very impressive contacts element. Basically, you can know anyone who fits your social background. You have a little black book full of past conquests. Some of them still pine for you, and, in spite of their better judgment, would still do almost anything for you. Others have been deliberately putting money in a savings account; they plan to use this money to hire an assassin to kill you as soon as they get a clue as to your whereabouts. Although you think you are an expert on romance, you have no idea which contact fits into which category until you get in touch with them again.

Genre Skills

These skills are only appropriate in certain genres. Depending on your campaign, they may be available in certain junctures or not at all. Many of them (such as Gunnery and Arcanowave) are really developments of other skills In general, a skill that is used a lot in a certain genre might bear some expansion, in order to let characters set themselves apart from each other. Additionally, this makes genre-specific abilities more expensive (you must purchase several skills to learn an ability).

Gunnery

This skill is appropriate only in genres where vehicles and driving are very important, such as the Crimson Skies campaign, otherwise such weapons are governed by the Guns or Fix-It skills.

Default Attribute: Perception.

Unskilled Use: You can push the button, but not remove the safety or check the load.

Physical Ability: You can shoot vehicle-mounted weapons, where the movement of the entire vehicle must be taken into account. You can use Gun Schticks with Gunnery.

Knowledge: You know everything about vehicle-mounted weapons, and can go on talking about caliber and ammo types until everyone has left in disgust. You can identify heavy weapons by their sound and by their effects on targets. You know who can shoot what, and will recognize an ace by his swagger alone.

Contacts: You know other gunners, who will respect you but may hate your guts. You know mechanics and supply officers who work with ammo and guns. You may even know some people who are willing to supply such gear illegally, though government control over heavy weapons is immensely more strict than their control over regular guns.

Honor

In high fantasy, ethics have a power in themselves. This skill is specific to Aysle.

Default Attribute: Fortune

Unskilled Use: None

Physical Ability: Honor gives you a store of extra Fortune points. Use these fortune points just as your normal Fortune Points, but your Fortune rating is not increased. These Fortune points can also be spent on actions performed by others.

The drawback is that you tend to attract trouble. Just as Fortune tends to put you in favorable situations, Honor tends to put you in dangerous conflicts with the powers of Corruption. Honor is reflected in demeanor and bearing, so an Honorable character may add his Honor to Charisma when impressing crowds. This might seem beneficial, but attracts people with troubles they want solved.

This skill is special in that you can gain it spontaneously because of honorable deeds. At the end of a session in which the Gamemaster thinks you have worked hard for honor, you can make a Fortune roll, and if you match your Honor skill, you gain another point of Honor. If you lack the skill, you use your Fortune rating as the difficulty. If you achieved a breakthrough for honor, you gain a bonus dice. Great acts of heroic self-sacrifice might give two bonus dice. It is much easier to lose honor for corrupt actions. In such cases, make an Honor roll, adding one to three bonus dice for cowardice, treason and wanton cruelty. You lose one point of Honor for a success and for every full five points on the Action Total.

Honorable characters often get unique abilities that others lack. This means that honorable characters can purchase Fu schticks even though they have no teacher or master, one schtick per point of honor. You cannot teach others these schticks. This is the only way to learn Fu schticks in Aysle.

There is a mirror-image skill to Honor, Corruption. The same rules apply, but in reverse. A corrupt character will appear blackened and evil, which helps him to impress thugs and monsters. In areas where evil is ascendant, the Corrupt can confer their corruption onto the land. This lets them appear fair, but makes the land barren and hostile, full of monsters.

You have an intuitive feeling for what is corrupt and what is pure. When two people with either honor or corruption meet, make a roll using the sum of their skill values, if the total is 20 or higher, the characters notice each other and the ideals the other represents.

Knowledge: You may be a living legend, but you also know legends of other heroes and villains. These tales can serve as inspirations, and sometimes contain clues to the weaknesses of legendary opponents, or just give clues to things they are not susceptible to.

Contacts: Honor and Corruption attracts. Honorable people are trusted by almost anyone, and can request aid and information by common people. The corrupt attract one another, so you can easily find thugs and cutthroats willing to serve your nefarious purposes.

Powers

The ability to use any innate powers you have, including Arcanowave and Creature powers.

Default Attribute: Magic

Unskilled Use: None.

Physical Ability: You can use and stunt with your supernatural abilities. The stunts you are capable of are similar to those of Martial Arts, but look entirely different; instead of leaping over the burning oil, you slip over it, mysteriously unaffected by the flames. Regardless of what schticks you have, you can always use your skill to dodge and to make basic unarmed bashing attacks.

Knowledge: You know the inside story on supernatural creatures, their bragging and their deeds. You know of their abilities and weaknesses. You also know of magic cops and monster hunters, as well as haunted or holy places that affect the supernatural. If you are familiar with arcanoware, you know the basic theory behind such powers and the famous names of Arcanowave science.

Contacts: You know supernatural creatures, as well as victims, survivors and hunters, though your relationship with the later groups is not to good. You also know sorcerers, some of whom you hate for summoning and controlling you. You know how to get the gear related to the powers you use - whether this is kryptonite and omega rays, silver weapons or the latest arcanoware.

Shaping

Reality might seem fixed and unchangeable, but those with great wisdom know it can be malleable and soft. Unlike regular Feng Shui, where this is strictly a function of attuned Feng Shui sites, shaping is a skill in T3. Shaping is detailed in Feng Shui p 224 and the Shaping chapter.

Default Attribute: Fortune

Unskilled Use: Erratic at best.

Physical Ability: You can alter physical reality in your vicinity by pure strength of will. See the Shaping chapter.

Knowledge: You know a great deal about the netherworld(s) and the relationships between planes. You can instinctively find portals, and can sense Feng Shui sites when you see them. When you come to a new place or juncture, you can try to guess at the local setting rules and juncture modifiers.

Contacts: You can possibly know people from other junctures, and know the places where such people gather. The contacts element of this skill is rather weak, but almost independent of location; it is difficult to find a realm-runner in New York, but only slightly more difficult to find one in the Sixtieth Hell.

Sorcery

This is the skill of the same name, Feng Shui, p 76.

Only characters from a magical juncture can start play with this skill. The specifics of the skill varies depending on your magic tradition.

Default Attribute: Magic

Unskilled Use: You can use magical items designed for use by non-magicians.

Physical Ability: You can twist the chi energy of your environment to your will, creating magical effects through the use of ritual movements and chanting. There is an entire chapter devoted to the Sorcery rules. You can conduct magical research; given the time and the right equipment you can divine the purpose and other characteristics of magical phenomena.

Knowledge: You know all sorts of abstruse occult theory, either learned orally or memorized from dozens of dusty and obscure manuscripts. You are familiar with the principles of geomancy, chi energy, and occult ritual. This allows you to engage in lengthy discourse with other sorcerers, and to figure out what methods other sorcerers have used to create their effects. You know legends of the great sorcerers of the past. You know by reputation the famous sorcerers of your day, but note that many powerful sorcerers take pains not to be identified as such. You have read or heard about various artifacts of magical power, knowing tales of their creation and history. You also know how to destroy such items. Arcanowaves are beyond your knowledge, however.

If you are affiliated with a religion, you know the scriptures or myths of your religion. You have a grasp of the mystic significance of obscure elements of the religion. You also know of those who practice the religion, and their enemies.

Contacts: You know other sorcerers, especially those in your own magic tradition, and those who consult them. You also know investigators and scientists interested in mystic phenomena, as well as wannabees, hoaxes and profiteers. You know merchants who specialize in the sale of magical items and ingredients.