Magic is useful, but nothing beats a strong arm and old fashioned know-how.
— Rona, Weaver
Most people lack the magical talents of adepts, but can accomplish some of the same tasks without magic by using skills. Instead of requiring magic to learn and use, a character must invest time, effort, and money to acquire them. In this age of magic, skills are largely the domain of ordinary folk, though all adepts begin the game with a few skills and, over time, most adepts like to learn more skills to supplement their magical talents.
Skills function in the same basic fashion as talents and they serve as the primary reference for how to use skills with specifics and exceptions as relevant listed below.
There are four skill types:
Many skills have a magical talent equivalent and the difference between the two versions are described as part of the talent description.
Skills cannot have Karma Points spent on them in the same fashion as talents. If the adept has an ability that allows Karma where a skill could apply (e.g., Scout's First Circle Karma ability), they can be used as normal.
Some adepts know both the skill and talent versions of the same ability; in such cases, the player must decide which they're using before making a test — an adept will typically use a talent over a skill, but there are powers and spells that can suppress magic, including talents. Some adepts like to have a mundane “backup” skill, just in case.
Some knacks can be learned as skills. This is similar in principle to learning talents as skills, but there are some different considerations.
Because it takes good old-fashioned physical and mental effort, skills take more effort to learn than talents. A character must take the time to train and practice to learn a new skill or to improve a skill he already knows. Sometimes they need to spend money to pay an instructor.
Skill ranks assigned during character creation assume the character learned the skill during their formative years. To improve skills later, the character must find and learn from a suitable tutor. If your character has the Legend Points required for an additional skill rank and access to a tutor or other source of training, they can improve that skill. See Improving Skill Ranks, Player's Guide, p. 450, for more information.
Some skills represent abilities every character knows as indicated on the default skills list, though other skills may be added at the gamemaster’s discretion.
Despite the ability to default to an Attribute, the Difficulty Numbers for many skill tests make it difficult to reliably succeed when defaulting.
In addition, any requirements based on rank (e.g., duration or range) treat the skill as rank 1. This doesn't mean the skill is rank 1, only it can be used if rank 0 would otherwise make is unusable due to those factors.
Moran, a dwarf Air Sailor, is negotiating for a better price on an item he wants from a local merchant. After finding it, Moran attempts to bargain for the goods. He doesn't know Haggle, but it's a default skill, so he can attempt to use it. Moran gets one chance to make a successful Charisma test to negotiate a better price. Smiling, the merchant listens to the dwarf’s stumbling attempt at explaining why he should pay less for the item.
Of the four types of skills available in Earthdawn, Artisan skills are the least commonly used. They serve primarily to help define a character and as a way to show they're not influenced by Horrors.
General skills are a catch-all and where talents available as skills generally fall. These allow a character to do more things, such as using Acrobatic Defense to get an edge in combat, or Conversation to worm vital information from someone. Characters often end up in situations where they want to use a General skill — assuming they have the time and money necessary to acquire it, of course.
Gamemasters may want to incorporate practical knowledge into Artisan and/or General skills, allowing them to be used as Knowledge skills. For example, they may want to make basic knowledge of melee weapon design available to all characters who know the Melee Weapons skill, or allow all characters with the Singing skill to know a little about music, without requiring separate Knowledge skills be learned.
To implement this, the character simply determines an impromptu Knowledge skill Step by adding the appropriate skill's rank to their Perception Step — the character is using their skill as if it is a Knowledge skill. The character then makes a test as normal.
The gamemaster should limit the applicability of these practical knowledge skills by only allowing them to cover knowledge related to the subject.
Krarg knows Dancing rank 5 and has Perception Step 6. He's an accomplished dancer and has practiced many dances, but is now in a situation where a Cathan tribe from the Servos Jungle invited him to join in their fertility dance — one he hasn’t done before.
The gamemaster allows him to make a Knowledge test at Step 11, allowing Krarg to use his knowledge of dance to look for typical rhythmic patterns and steps performed by Namegivers. The gamemaster judges Krarg’s skill to be closely related, but as the Cathans’ tribal dances in general are unfamiliar, requires at least two successes — Krarg needs a result of 11 to succeed.
This procedure is only recommended for skills, not talents. Talents don't represent a learned aptitude, but rather an instinctive and magical ability.
For adepts, Half-Magic (Player's Guide, p. 81) covers most subjects of knowledge pertaining to their Discipline and its talents.
Your character has lived in the world of Earthdawn for their entire life, and knows more about it than you possibly can. Knowledge skills represent that experience. They serve two main purposes:
In a game session, Knowledge skills can come into play when something your character might know would help you make an informed choice about what to do next. Your character may know a tremendous amount about the world, but you, the player, only learn that knowledge when the story dictates the need.
Language skills allow a character to speak, read, and write different languages. All characters begin the game with ranks in the Speak Language and Read and Write Language skills. Each rank represents a language the character knows.
None.