Abilities

Abilities are specific areas of knowledge or skill that characters can apply to their actions.

Abilities will be arranged into categories, allowing bonuses and penalties to categories as well as to individual skills.

Categorized List

 * Athletic Skills
 * Acrobatics
 * Dodge
 * Martial Arts
 * Melee
 * Throwing
 * Academic Skills
 * Economics
 * History
 * Languages
 * Politics
 * Religion
 * Science
 * Strategy
 * Social Skills
 * Deception
 * Diplomacy
 * Leadership
 * Performance
 * Technology Skills
 * Cybernetics
 * Engineering
 * Hacking
 * Vehicle Skills
 * Mechanics
 * Navigation
 * Pilot

As yet uncategorized

 * Crafting
 * Detonation
 * Firearms
 * Gunnery
 * Investigation
 * Medicine
 * Nature
 * Stealth
 * Survival

Specialties
Before taking the fourth level in any ability, players must choose a specialty - a more focused area of expertise within what is covered by the skill in order to maintain realism. For example, a specialty in Science might be Chemistry. While a chemist will have a good working knowledge and intuition of many scientific fields, it doesn't make sense for them to have the same dice roll in a situation directly related to their field as they would on, say, a matter of geology.

Specialties will have progressive tiers that give corresponding bonuses. A player can take a new tier of the specialty for each level of the skill beyond level 3. A level 4 skill can have a tier 2 specialty, a level 5 skill can have a tier 3 specialty, etc.

Each tier will cost the same as ability level 4.

Each tier will equal one unit of bonus. The bonus can be given either as extra dice or as altered roll conditions at GM discretion (Tier 2 bonus would resolve as two extra dice, or a difficulty or target number reduced by 2). Unless stated otherwise by the GM, this will be determined for each roll. The GM may use this to create an instance of automatic success if they deem it appropriate for the situation.