Know Schticks (Action)
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| 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.
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. 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), you get a free bonus die on your Action Total. If you advise someone else, you can give away this bonus.
This 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. 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.
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 knightly 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. You can substitute the patient's Body with your Know skill, as long as the patient remains still. This can soak damage and help fight infections, poison, pathogens, and other dangers. You can also administer normal medical procedures and generally function as a qualified doctor.
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 Impress 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.
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 all other ailments.