Know Schticks (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

Adopted People

Inherent

You have very good relations with a people or subculture other than your own, to the point that you are considered a native, as honorable as a worthy member of this people, accepted as one of their own. You speak their language fully and fluently and have overcome any prejudice, reverse prejudice, or xenophobia. You can generally find solutions acceptible to either your own or your adopted people. Those outside of either of your two cultures react to you based on the culture they would most favor.

Archeologist

Basic Action

You are an experienced archeologist, able to explore and analyze ancient sites. You have an instinctive sense for the use of each item and location, can sense which pile of earth contains a treasure and which is just rubble, and where to look for secret doors, traps, and other fantastic remains. You also have a good grasp of history and can understand where your excavations fit in the grand scheme of things. Tasks related to archeology that would be Limit Breaks for others, such as Search and Research, are Basic Actions to you.

Art Appreciation

Limit Break

You have a great understanding of art and the psychological impact of art. You can tell a great deal about a person by observing the art they've created or collected. This is as revealing to you as interacting with that person in action, enabling tasks like Sense Motive and other empathic perception. You can understand a culture trough observing its art, reading developments in its history and sociology as well as making predictions about where it is headed. You can use art as if it was a reference work with Research, making deductions about any topic by studying art related to it.

You can also use art to impress and create a mood for a setting; make an opposed Know roll to set the emotion for a scene. Make a single roll and compare it against each of your guest'sKnow skill to see who you can affect. Interaction rolls that go along with the emotion you set become Routine against someone so influenced.

Canary

Inherent

You have developed a wide-band toxic resistance, and can use your Know skill in place of your Body when resisting poisons and in place of any Spot roll to detect them.

Deduction

Limit Break

When you are speculating as to the best course of action or about the motivations of a given character, you can have the GM tell straight out you whether your speculation is correct or incorrect. You must pose your question so that it can be answered very simply; yes, no, maybe, and irrelevant are typical GM responses. Deduction is not supernatural, the GM might refuse to answer if he thinks you have too little information to go on.

Expert

Trigger Action

Young man, I must mention that the coolant conductors in the thermonuclear reactor are not really suitable for climbing; their structural integrity is just 346 over 9. If you must use this delicate piece of machinery for ascension, use the illumination ducts. Those are the green cables, not the yellow ones.

You are the very best in your field of knowledge. You are an established master of your field, and your words would weight much more heavily in the academic world than those of an outsider. Define a field of study; it must be fairly narrow. Butterflies and ancient languages are both good examples. Within this narrow field, you are an absolute genius. You automatically make any knowledge rolls. If you can convince the game master that your area of expertise is somehow applicable to whatever you are doing, (fairly spoofy reasons are acceptable), the roll becomes Routine. If you advise someone else, you can give away this bonus.

This schtick also lets you design new schticks and powers. In genres where a type of designs are very important, such as Crimson Skies or mecha campaigns, this schtick lets you to create new designs and to push the envelope on technology, tough this is of course a lot of work.

Note that this schtick is not limited to the humanities, but can also apply to technological and supernatural fields. Great scientist need at least a basic understanding of the humanities (the Know skill) as well.

Forensic Medicine

Limit Break

The not-so-glamorous skill of examining bodies (mainly of the dead) to determine their medical history. Most often used in grim settings to determinethe cause of death and to investigate murder.

If you take the time to perform an autopsy, you can automatically identify the source of death and tell a lot about the dead person's last hours - level of activity, things he ate, if any violence was made upon him, if he had sex, things like that.

Identifying strange and/or unknown things may require a Know roll, even a poor result will generally give you good clues while a good roll gives odd and disquieting insights into the patient's last hours.

Linguist

Limit Break

You know all the common languages of your world. You have an amazing ability to piece together bits of other languages, sign language and other means of communication. Use this ability to learn to communicate in any one unknown language. At first, this will be at a pidgin level, it takes you a few weeks to become fluent. You might have to use this schtick again (another Limit Break) to understand arcane or archaic versions or different dialects of the same language.

This schtick does not cover adjusting to alien cultures, use Cosmopolite for that.

Logical Detachment

Inherent

You are not easily swayed by emotional arguments. You can use your Know skill in place of both the Charm and Impress skills when defending against stunts; any stunt having one of these skills as a difficulty lets you use Know instead. However, you become sensitive to reasoning and logical arguments; other people can use their Know skill in lieu of the Charm and Impress skills when interacting with you. You can also end up with a knife in your guts if you don't respond appropriately to intimidation; unlike normal interaction skill your learned arguments in no way impress those who fail to sway you.

Loophole

Basic Action

You have a knack for finding the wrinkles and exceptions in formal sets of rules, be it the the directive of the metropolitan police, an infernal contract, or a code of honor. Against people and organizations that have a formal code that you know of, you can cause them to hesitate with an opposed Know roll. A successful stunt reduces the opponent's shot counter by three. If the Outcome matches your opponent's Mind they suffer a Setback, often making the proposed action impossible for them to do honorably.

Medic

Basic Action

You can save lives and help natural recovery. This can be used to do First Aid as a Routine action. You can also substitute the patient's Body with your Know skill, for as long as the patient remains still. This can soak damage and help fight infections, poison, pathogens, and other dangers. You can administer medical procedures and generally function as a qualified doctor.

Poisoneer

Basic Action

You know and can administer poisons. When applied to a weapon doing Cutting or Piercing damage, a poison does +2 Infection or Neurotoxin Extra Damage. You can carry several poisoned weapons and change weapon after each attack. When used in food or as a contact poison, you must first apply the poison (which might be as stunt on some other skill) and the target gets a Spit roll against your Know to discover the poison at the last minute. If the poison is successful, you do Infection or Neurotoxin damage equal to your Know.

Power Domination

Trigger Action (Finisher)

You must use Power Suppression (a Know stunt) on your victim before you can use this schtick. As long as your victim remains power suppressed you can turn on and off his powers at will. This is a Trigger Action you can use anytime, and specifically when he is about to use a power. If you do not change Power Domination his powers remain as they were, either suppressed or not. The target always suffers from power loss with regards to you and to the power suppression (along with any restraints needed to maintain the suppression); you must specifically use a trigger action to allow each power use against you or against the power seal.

Profiling

Special: One attempt per scene

A method of suspect identification which seeks to identify a person's mental, emotional, and personality characteristics. You can analyze the habits and behavioral patterns and find common traits. This lets you construct a profile from very flimsy information; you can make educated guesses about someone's personality, abilities and motivations just by analyzing clues. You do this by analyzing evidence left at a scene where the person you are seeking has been active. You do not need to know who you are looking for, looking instead for the perpetrator of a crime or the instigator of an event.

Make one roll per appearance of the person sough from which you get reports; this is usually one scene in the game. Make a Know roll against the target's highest skill value. On a success, you gain a limited insight about the target; the GM can hand out appropriate clues and people using your profile to investigate the case get a bonus equal to your Insight. On an Outcome matching the target's Mind you get a complete profile; if the target is on file you can identify him, and you know his basic personality, skill set, and motivation.

It is possible for the target to interact with you through clues intentionally left for you to find, using normal interaction rules.

Psychology

Limit Break

You work with people to modify their mental state; to either cure or create psychological disorders. This requires a cooperative or restrained patient. Such disorders are generally considered Curses, and you can work with any purely mental or behavior-related curse. You can also substitute the patients Mind attribute with your Know skill while under your direct care; this can help against mental trials and assaults.

Sense Lineage

Trigger Action

You know a lot about lineage and tradition, and you know all the great families. When you meet someone, you can use the trigger action and roll Know against Charm to tell that persons social standing, family and lineage if it is at all noteworthy. You can only use this once per session against a particular person. A person with Blue Blood is positively radiant to you. In cases where others try to fool you concerning their lineage or social status, can make an active defense to use your Know as the difficulty of the deception rather than what skill you'd normally use, with a +5 bonus.

Speed Reader

Basic Action

You can read at incredible speeds, reading and digesting text much faster than a normal person. You can do Research as a basic action as long as you are checking one particular book; it does not help you find information in a library.

Surgeon

Limit Break

You can actually heal wounds and remove physical affliction or curses through surgery. Normally, this requires a complete surgical crew, specialized equipment and so on, tough in Action, you often have to work under much more primitive circumstances. After successful surgery, the patient has zero Hits and will need some bed rest, but is cured of most physical ailments. The GM is the final arbiter of whether Surgery can help but is encouraged to be generous; vampirism or a transformation into a mermaid is probably curable, especially in its early stages. Being turned into a ghost or a parrot might not be.

The difficulty of Surgery is the damage value of the attack that caused the damage or the skill value of who or whatever caused the problem. If the surgery is performed with adequate tools and assistance, the roll is Routine.