Ride (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

Travel, Drive, Survival

You can ride or drive any vehicle or mount. Anything goes, as long as you can have a chase scene in it. You live on the road and relish the outdoors.

Unskilled Use

Ride defaults to Reflexes. You can manage basic non-emergency, non-stunt driving of a vehicle or mount common to your area. You know the basics survival tricks of your home region.

Use in Action

You can drive vehicles and riding beasts like there's no tomorrow. Chase stunts are second nature to you. You may drive any vehicle once you figure its controls. You can make basic repairs and care for any vehicle you are familiar with.

When driving, you can use your Ride skill as Dodge, both for yourself, your passengers, and your vehicle. The normal Dodge skill is not applicable to a seated rider.

You are comfortable traveling and can set up a safe camp on the trail.

Knowledge

You know intricate details 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 to the dot. You are not quite as knowledgeable about vehicles you haven't used, but you have a good working knowledge of anything that moves. 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. You know every nook and cranny in your home region and have a general familiarity with geography and trails. You can read a map and find a trail by landmarks.

Contacts

You know mechanics, other expert drivers and vehicle sales people. In the case of mounts, you know riders, livery stable employees, breeders and owners. You know people involved in racing. These might include fans, sports writers, touts, and groupies of either sex. You also know many odd passengers, from limo-driven CEOs and rock stars to poor bus-riding single mothers. You know travelers and road people, from truck-stop owners to end-of-the-road survivalists.

Stunts

List of specific stunts the skill can be used for, and rules for each using the standard power format.

Aggressive Driving

Basic Action

You use this is combat to get a momentary advantage. It represents such maneuvers as outflanking, getting a positional advantage, and driving someone off the road. The roll will be heavily modified depending on how well you describe your stunt and use available props.

Make an opposed Ride roll against the Ride or Maneuver of the target. If you succeed, add the Outcome as a modifier to your next skill roll against this target. You can also give away this advantage to someone else, effectively setting the target up for someone else's attack.

It you score an Outcome matching the target's Reflexes, you also inflict a Setback; the target suffers some direct penalty, as appropriate to the situation and how you described your outmaneuver. He might drop his weapon, fall over a cliff, temporarily show off his unarmored flank and so on.

Evasion

Standard Action

You can throw off pursuers by selecting a route they cannot easily follow. You need some terrain you can conceivably shake pursuit in, check out the Stunt Driving rules. Make an opposed Ride roll against the Ride or Maneuver of the target. If several people are chasing you, you still have to concentrate on shaking one at a time or use the multi-target rules. If you succeed, the target loses three shots or must give up pursuit. It you score an Outcome matching the target's Reflexes, he loses shots equal to the Outcome and has to give up the chase or suffer some Setback.

Schticks or powers can modify this stunt by +5 or even +10, as appropriate for the situation. For example, it is very hard for someone to catch up with you if you fly off and they can't fly, but in this case it is often quite easy for them to follow you at a distance unless you are also faster. In the same way, you can use your superior speed to outrun pedestrians, again depending on the terrain.

Dash

A short race is like a chase, only there is a definite goal everybody wants to reach and it is reasonably close. It takes place over a single sequence. Use the normal rules for aggressive driving, evasion, and terrain driving, as appropriate. When your shot comes up, you HAVE to take a Basic Action. When out of shots for the round, you are left in the dust. Positions are determined by reverse order of when you run out of shots; the last one to act in the round is the winner.

The goal, obviously, is to steal shots from each other at the end of the round and to set up for this in the beginning of the round, gaining whatever advantage you can.

Terrain Driving

Inherent

You can ride over hindering terrain, leap over hazards and difficult ground that would normally slow or hinder others. This is similar to Free Running but generally more difficult. The difficulty depends on the situation.

Obstacle	Difficulty
Off road but flat or within the expectations of an off-road vehicle.	5
Obstacle course, rubble or other slowing obstacle, heavy traffic, riding a car on two wheels.	10
Jumps up to 3m in height, tightrope, congested traffic.	15
Riding on walls.	20
Riding on ceilings.	25
Riding on flames, smoke, or the missiles of a ranged attack	30
You end your move still in the hazard (this requires you to maintain speed and continue the stunt on later actions).	+5

Failure at stunt driving means you hesitate. You can up the ante and try anyway (as a Standard action), but if you fail this second attempt you suffer a Setback.