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. You know who is who, who did what, and when. You know art, culture, and history as well as laws and customs - all from a theoretical point of view. You understand the human sciences and can make educated guesses even about fields you have no direct experience with, such as alien cultures. Know also covers medicine, tough it takes schticks or powers to do more than basic first aid.

Know covers non-technical subjects and sciences, see Create for the technical stuff.

Know defaults to Mind and an outcome matching this attribute on a stunt directed against Know will often result in a Setback.

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 and penetrating news articles. 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.

Regardless of your Know skill, you can still use the knowledge elements of any other skills you have - this is not a part of the Know skill, but a replacement for it. If you have both Know and another relevant skill, you can roll for both.

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 have 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 Critically Hurt character you touch. This takes a DC 10 Know roll and must be done within one minute of the injury. It reduces the lasting effect of such damage, saving lives, reducing brain damage and helping future recovery. It does nothing for the immediate situation.

Lore

Basic Action

You can make a focused attempt to remember something out of your background and education, such as a particular name, date, or simple fact. The difficulty depends on the obscurity of the fact and how it relates to your background and experiences. Basic information is difficulty 5, advanced topics difficulty 10, specialized topics 15, obscure information 20 and up.

You get only one chance per scene at recalling something with Lore; if you do not remember it at once, you will have to use Research or wait until later.

Mental Focus

Basic Action

You can use this stunt to focus your concentration and mental faculties, temporarily increasing your Mind 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.

Mental Push

Trigger Action

You can use this stunt to focus in order to function at a higher Mind rating for one action. This is useful with a lot of powers whose effect derives from Mind.

This is a trigger action triggered by whatever action you needed greater mental power for. 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.

Power Suppression

Limit Break & Trigger Action (Finisher)

This stunt allows you to capture power-users, preventing them from using their powers. The result is that you can actually keep a powered character as a prisoner instead of having to kill them.

All Traditions have weaknesses and flaws that can be used to suppress power use. But beside those limitations severe enough to become Methods or Power Loss Limitations, all traditions also include smaller flaws, not significant enough to count as one of the above, but which can still be used to temporarily suppress power use. Exactly how this is done depends on the situation, tradition, and the gamemaster's whim.

This stunt has two parts. First, you must determine a method to suppress the target's powers - this is a Limit Break, but does not involve any roll. The target need not be present, but the less you know, the harder step 2 becomes. With this action, you prepare the seal or other power dampener you are going to use later.

The second part is a Trigger Action (Finisher) to actually apply the power suppressor, and requires that you make an opposed Know roll against the target to see if the calculations you made in step one were right. If you succeed, the target suffers from Power Loss. You do not know the result of this roll, so you cannot be sure you managed to suppress the target's powers. This roll is modified depending on how well you know the target's powers and tradition.

Condition	Modifier
Unknown tradition	-10
Strange tradition, observed but not studied	-5
Strange or foreign tradition you have limited experience with	-2
Common tradition	+0
Well-known tradition	+2
You have successfully power-suppressed this individual before	+5

Normally, this kind of restrain involves an object, talisman, sigil, or seal placed on the target. This is fairly easy to remove if you can manipulate it, which means the target must generally be restrained and kept under watch to make sure the seal is not broken.

Research

Limit Break

You can find information in reference books; from small handbooks like a travel guide or Woodchuck guide to whole libraries. These are limited mainly in the number of attempts you can make in them; a small reference work is exhausted after one attempt, the congressional library is good for years of research on almost any subject. Certain libraries are especially good in some fields, and make research in these fields easier. Make a Know roll to find the actual facts you seek; the difficulty is generally half that of the corresponding Lore check.

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 normal common sense to see through, but which are at least superficially logical and can fool logical automatons and others lacking common sense. 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 Logical Detachment.