Skills in Pirates and Traders II

You can view your skills in the character view under the traits. There are 16 different skills in the game, grouped under each of the four attributes: Agility, Brawn, Will, and Wits.

Skills (and some traits) represent your character's training and education over the course of their life. They cover a wide variety of topics and activities and the specific skills you chose for your character will usually reflect his personality and background.

Base Attribute
Each skill is related to a base attribute that represents the character's natural ability with a particular skill; even if your character has no training, s/he may still have some proficiency. To be a real expert, however, you will need to invest some training into the skill.

Skill Levels
Skill levels represent the amount of effort your character has put into learning a skill, either through formal education or hands-on experience. We abstract this training as experience points (xp); when you use xp to raise a skill level, it represents your character's spending the time used to gain the xp in training to raise the skill.

Your character's effective skill, is calculated by adding your skill level to the appropriate base attribute. You can purchase a number of skill levels equivalent to your character's skill aptitude for 10 xp each. Purchasing additional skill levels (up to level 6) is possible, but each skill level beyond your natural aptitude costs 20 xp. Skill aptitude is usually equal to the base attribute of the skill - however, personality traits can significantly increase or decrease your skill potential. For example, a character with the

Generally speaking, from a game perspective an effective skill of 5-6 is pretty good, and should be able to pass most normal difficulty challenges a majority of the time. 8 is exceptional - representing someone who has worked hard at a skill and with a natural aptitude for it. 10 and higher levels represent characters who would be considered among the best in the world at that skill.

Note that the first skill level of any skill is Skill Level 0.

Skill Checks
TODO: Describe how skill checks work.

Base Attribute: Agility
Blades represent proficiency with typical long-bladed weapons such as swords, rapiers, and long daggers. It is primarily used for combat with the associated wepaons.

Base Attribute: Agility
Sailing represents the basic knowlegde off and skill to carry out the tsks required to sail a ship. This skill is used in practically all actions related to dealing with ships.

Special traits are required for characters to use their skill effectively to carry out particularly complicated tasks such as ship building, repairs, etc.

Base Attribute: Agility
Shooting represents the proficiency of the character with all kinds of missile weapons, from hand-held firearms such as pistols, muskets and bows (but not thrown weapons such as javelins), as well as cannons.

Special traits are required for characters to use their skill effectively to shoot cannon.

Base Attribute: Agility
Stealth represents the proficiency of the character at concealment, stealth, sleight-of-hand, and other such unsavory actions. It is primarily used when trying to avoid being detected, thievery, smuggling, etc.

Base Attribute: Brawn
Athletics represents the athletic proficiency of the character beyond mere agility or brawn. It is used whenever the character needs to perform any actions requiring athletic ability such as climbing, swimming, running, jumping, or similar. It also covers thrown weapons such as javelins or throwing daggers.

Base Attribute: Brawn
Bashing represents the proficiency of the character at using hand-held weapons requiring more force than finesse. Examples of such weapons are axes, clubs, improvised weapons, and also heavy bladed weapons such as cutlasses.

Base Attribute: Brawn
Intimidation represents the proficiency of the character at persuading people using threats and menace. Anytime your persuasion is based on how scary or intimidating your opponent thinks you are, this is the skill used.

Base Attribute: Brawn
Unarmed represents the proficiency of the character at fighting in unarmed (or lightly-armed) combat such as boxing, wrestling, and brawling in general.

Base Attribute: Will
Bargaining represents the proficiency of the character at bargaining, haggling, and getting the deal that s/he wants. It is used for negotiations and during trading.

Base Attribute: Will
Leadership represents the proficiency of the character at leading people and commanding obedience. It is useful when you need to deal with crowds and groups of people.

Base Attribute: Will
Performance represents the proficiency of the character at entertaining people through performance arts such as acting, dancing, or singing. It also covers playing musical instruments, and similar. It can be very useful for social events, where such skills may be needed.

Base Attribute: Will
Persuasion represents the proficiency of the character at turning a phrase and getting other people to see a different point of view. It is used to charm people, and is the most important skill for social interactions.

Base Attribute: Wits
Learning represents the general "book" learning of the character; i.e., a person with a high effective skill in this has generally read a lot of books, and have a broad general base of knowledge. A high level of learning is required for many special knowledge traits such as medical sciences, etc.

Base Attribute: Wits
Gaming represents the proficiency of the character at mastering games of chance, knowing the rules of games such as dice, cards, etc., and figuring out the odds quickly. Used for gaming, duh!

Note that gaming will help you when playing games of skill, such as cards, knucklebones, and similar. It will not help with games of pure chance, such as, e.g., most dice games.

Player note: a dice game isnt by pure luck! If youre that one that throws the dice you can cheat at it by expertly throwingn it at corners or minimizing your throw accordingly but if you arent the thrower... you can atleast move the table as it goes...

Base Attribute: Wits
Performance represents the proficiency of the character at observation and general awareness; being able to see, hear, and perceive what is happening. It is used for searching and questioning.

Base Attribute: Wits
Survival represents the proficiency of the character at the basic skills of staying alive in the wilderness; such as the ability to hunt, forage, track, and other such skills. It is used for such tasks, and especially when moving through the wilderness.