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 Snake eyes 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 which ones are a good buy. 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. If ride powers exist in your setting, you are familiar with the people who use and operate them. You know travelers and road people, from tourists to nomads to truck-stop owners to end-of-the-road survivalists.

Perception

You can recognize a good ride, even if it looks like junk. You understand travel routes and can quickly assess how much traffic they have - and how much they can take, both in quantity and weight. You instinctively know when you are being moved, and with a good roll you might be able to tell where you were moved. You can read maps and find your position, to and perhaps beyond the limits of your equipment. You can find hidden routes and shortcuts.

Stunts

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

Aggressive Driving

Basic Action

When you ride, you can use this 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 veer off the road, fall over a cliff, temporarily show off his unarmored flank and so on.

Camouflage

Limit Break

You can use local materials to create a hidden space. This works like Sneak except that it takes longer to do but allows you to hide such things as such as a creature, campsite, stash, vehicle, or even a small building. Moving the camouflaged thing breaks Sneak.

Cut Off

An hour to a day, depending on the travel times involved.

You can try to predict and intercept other travelers. This is something you do when the opposition is out of sight and you don't know where they are. Make an opposed Action check. If you have little idea about your opponents' direction or objectives, this check is Stymied. On a success you are generally right and can move to be in the vicinity, allowing you to make further Cut off checks later. With an Outcome equal to the Reflexes of the opposition, you manage an actual intercept.

Maintenance

Inherent

You can maintain your ride, whether animal or vehicle. You can use Ride for Repair and First Aid stunts applied to vehicles and domestic animals.

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 highest Recon 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 Recon check against your Ride skill.

Mount

Basic Action

It is a Basic Action to mount a ready ride, either as passenger or driver. The ride can be a vehicle, riding animal, or similar conveyance controlled by a driver. In Action startup time is generally ignored; warming up an engine or saddling a horse happens off screen unless the GM has a special reason for it to be shown.

Once a vehicle or mount is ridden, you can use your Ride skill as Dodge, both for yourself, your passengers, and your ride. The ride can use its own Dodge skill instead if better, but a ride usually has no or little Dodge. You can use abilities that affect Dodge on this virtual Dodge.

You are considered to fill the entire space of the ride fort the purpose of Shoot and Melee attacks. If the ride is open - like scooters and cycles of all kinds and most living mounts - attackers can target either you or the ride separately. If it is closed - most vehicles and some howdas - enemies can only attack the ride. While controlling a ride you can only attack targets ahead of you. Passengers, including gunners, have no such restriction.

When riding, you use the ride's Body and Move for vehicle-mounted weapons and attacks using the vehicle itself. Your effective Reflexes is the lower of your own and the vehicle's Reflexes. Most vehicles lack a Mind score and cannot be attacked that way, interaction stunts instead target the driver.

Passengers other than the driver in a closed vehicle cannot be attacked and gain your Ride skill as Dodge, but otherwise these rules do not apply to passengers, who use their own abilities normally.

When the ride takes a Hit you as rider can take that Hit instead—this is not an action. But if the ride suffers a Damage Setback you cannot absorb that. Since most rides are unnamed and have only one Hit, a Setback generally causes a crash and any riders might suffer a Setback as well depending on terrain and speed.

Natural Hazard

Inherent

You are good at avoiding natural hazards like quicksand, crevasses, entangling plants, flashfires, floods, geysers, lightning strikes, mirages, natural toxins, sinkholes, and more. In fantasy and science-fiction settings that natural hazards get more odd and extreme.

A natural hazard has a Hazard rating in the same range as skills. When a natural hazard triggers, make a Hazard roll against the Ride or Dodge of the victim(s), with the usual +3 bonus if the hazard is hidden. The effect can be an interaction stunt that, if successful, gains a +3 bonus to Outcome to see if it is a Setback, or an attack with damage equal to the hazard rating.

When you get near a hazard, make a Ride check against the hazard rating to realize what it is (this is not an action). A natural hazard can be found with Scan Once found, traps are much less effective as there is no surprise bonus and targets can take trigger action defenses. Knowing what triggers the hazard means it can usually be circumvented.

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.	6
Confusing pathways with no signs.	9
No blazed paths, good terrain.	12
No blazed paths, broken terrain.	15
No blazed paths, dangerous terrain.	18
Lack of map or rutter.	+3

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.

Ride Defense

Trigger Action (Defense)

When a Ride stunt is made against you, you can defend. This adds +3 to the Ride skill used as the difficulty for the current shot. In a situation where shots are not counted, defending means you are not fully participating - you play defensive rather than engaging in the situation - which means you can't initiate actions or make stunts of your own.

Sense of Location

Basic Action

You can sense when space and time is distorted, such as when you have been subjected to Teleport powers or when reality around you has been changed. This also allows you to sense the movement of a large vehicle you are riding, such as a ship or train. It can also penetrate trickery designed to make you think you've been moved when you actually have not. Make an opposed Ride check against whoever is causing the distortion - on a success you gain some idea of what really happened.

Note that even manipulations caused by skills other than Ride still require opposed Ride rolls: Ride is the skill needed to fool you and others skills used in for transport are crude by comparison.

You must consciously use this power, and do so soon after the event you are trying to detect; generally within the same scene.

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

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.

Air Piloting

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

Boating

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

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.

Vehicle 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, which is almost always there. 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. If you succeed, the target loses three shots. 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 a serious Setback such as a crash.

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.

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.

Track

Basic Action

You can retrace the path of other creatures. If those creatures were aware they might be tracked and are trying to avoid it, this is a roll against their Recon or Ride, otherwise the difficulty is their Reflexes. The roll is heavily modified depending on the situation.

Condition	Tracking Modifier
Each creature being tracked	+1
Each hour since the tracks were made	-1
Hard ground	-5
Traffic or interfering tracks	-5
Heavy Traffic	-10 to impossible

Tracking requires constant Basic Actions to stay on the trail, making tracking rather arduous and impossible to do when moving quickly. An actual roll is only needed every hour and at each obstacle, such as a stream, branch in the road, or other problem.

Trapping

Limit Break

Trapping is a means to catch animals for food or other use. Traps work best on small common animals such as rabbits and fowl. The most common and easily used trap is a snare, but pit and deadfall traps are useful for larger prey. The limit break for trapping involves either setting multiple small traps or one large trap. The traps are then left for a full day or night. Make a Ride check against the Mind of common prey animals (7 is a common value for this). You catch enough small animals to feed one creature per point out Outcome (minimum 1). If you were aiming for a larger animal, you need an Outcome matching the animal's Body to succeed. This assumes animals are in the area. These traps can work on intelligent creatures, as a Trap set by someone with a Create equal to half your Ride doing Physical damage of a type appropriate to the trap.