Know (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

I hate my interests. - Seymour in Ghost World

This is a generic skill for the character's scholastic ability and knowledge. It covers non-technical subjects and sciences, see Create for the technical stuff

Unskilled Use

Know defaults to Mind. You know the common knowledge of your setting, such as who the current champion of your favorite sport is or which beers are popular in your home town. You can also use the knowledge elements of any other skills you have - this is not a part of the Know skill, but a replacement for it.

Use in Action

Know is most often used to realize things about a person or setting, such as the weaknesses and strengths of creatures and objects. 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. By pondering the intricacies of a problem, you can often come up with a good solution, giving a bonus to other tasks. Know is also the skill to analyze and mitigate powers, governing Dispel powers.

Knowledge

You become very knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects. Naturally, your skills 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 Know check to see if you didn't have some scrap of knowledge after all.

Contacts

You know other scholars, some of whom are allies or enemies form old debates. They might not like you, but they do respect you, and they are all very knowledgeable. You know 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, provide security, and other essentials.

Stunts

First Aid

Limit Break

You can stabilize a Bleeding character. This normally takes a DC 10 Know roll.

Mental Focus

Basic Action

You can use this stunt to focus your concentration and mental faculties, temporarily increasing your Move rating. This is mainly useful in conjunction with powers based on Mind.

Make a Know roll; for every 4 points you score on this roll, your effective Mind is increased by one. A roll of 4 allows +1 Mind, 8 allows +2 Mind, 12 allows +3, 16 allows +4 and so on. The effect of the stunt lasts for the three shots it takes to take the action and for three short after that, allowing the next basic Action you make to benefit from this stunt.

Sage Advise

Basic Action

Decide upon a task and make a Know roll against the normal difficulty of this task. It doesn't matter if you know the skill that would normally be used. If you succeed, the next attempt to succeed at this task gets a +3 bonus. This lasts until used or until the end of the round. You can use the bonus yourself, or give others advice (and the bonus).

Spurious Logic

Inherent

You are skilled in debate and can create logical conundrums; tricks that can be simple for a normal person to see through, but which are at least superficially logical. In this way, you can bluff anyone who is immune or resistant to normal Charm, using your Know skill as tough it was Charm and bypassing any Charm resistance the target has. You cannot bluff ordinary people this way, only those with special resistances such as robots or those with the Logical Detachment feat.