Ride (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

Travel, Drive, Survival

You are a master of road and overland travel. You can ride or drive any vehicle or mount. You live on the road and relish the outdoors. Ride defaults to Reflexes and an outcome matching this attribute on a stunt directed against Ride will often result in a Setback.

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, but an unfamiliar ride can give you trouble on a Snakeyes roll. 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 ride. 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, trailblaze, and have general survival and maintainance skills.

Knowledge

You know intricate details about the history of the rides 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.

Make Camp

Limit Break

You can find a safe hiding place and rest spot. A camp can be a campsite, cave, hidden cove, safehouse, untraceable flophouse, abandoned attic, sheltered mausoleum... Whatever suits the story. You must be out of direct harms way and a reasonable distance away from the base of your enemies. Make a Ride check against the Spot among the oppositions; on a success your camp is hidden well enough not to be found except with extensive searching (which allows the opposition a Spot check against your Ride skill.

Pathfinding

Inherent

You can cut travel time by taking creative shortcuts. In a land without obvious paths, you might have to use this stunt to even navigate across some wilderness. Make a stunt roll against a difficulty determined by the terrain, or against the Ride of another pathfinder if you are competing on finding an objective.

Terrain	Difficulty
Familiar area.	0
Known area, good map, or good signs and markers.	3
Pathways exist but you do not know them, lack of roadsigns or a bad map.	6
Confusing pathways with no signs and no map.	9
No blazed paths, good terrain.	12
No blazed paths, broken terrain.	15
No blazed paths, dangerous terrain.	18

On a success, you save some time, arriving early by about 5% per point of outcome (but in no less than half the usual time except in very unusual circumstances). On a failure, you lose time and take about 25% more time per point of negative outcome. Only bother to roll if the situation is opposed or if a meaningful challenge exists; driving along a known highway does not call for this stunt.

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.	6
Obstacle course, rubble or other slowing obstacle, heavy traffic, riding a car on two wheels.	9
Jumps up to 3m in height, tightrope, congested traffic.	12
Riding on walls.	15
Riding on ceilings (at speed).	18
Riding on flames, smoke, or the missiles of a ranged attack	21
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.

Boating

Boats have their own set of obstacles, that you can avoid using skill and luck.

Piloting

In a similar way, you can move trough turbulence and other areal hazards.

Space Piloting

In space, no-one can hear your brakes scream.

Submersible Piloting

Submarines exist in their own highly dangerous environment. This also applies to digging devices.

Chase Stunts

A subgroup of stunts for the ride skill, that deals exclusively with chases and vehicle combat.

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.

Make an opposed Ride roll against the Ride or Maneuver of the target. If you succeed you gain an Advantage.

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. 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. A target reduced to zero shots shots way is evaded. 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, it will be easy for them to follow you unless you are also faster.

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.

Speed Push

Trigger Action

You can use this stunt to give your mount or vehicle a higher Move rating for one action. This is useful as a temporary speed boost and for keeping up with a chase in open terrain, there the Move of your vehicle would not enough to participate in a chase. If you fail any action to keep up with the case, you fall behind and cannot re-enter the chase unless special circumstances permit it.

Use this as a trigger action, triggered by whatever condition makes you need more speed. Make a Ride roll; for every 4 points you score on this roll, your effective Move is increased by one. A roll of 4 allows +1 Move, 8 allows +2 Move, 12 allows +3, 16 allows +4 and so on.