Adventure! RPG - New Abilities

[BlueNinja]

Here's a list of abilities (mostly swiped from Ab and Trin) that would be perfectly applicable in Adventure! In fact, they're all on the character sheets I've made and apply to my game, so they should fit anyone else's game just fine. As always, the specialties listed are only suggestions, actual specialties are limited only by player imagination and storyteller approval.

Strength Abilities

Throwing

"He's getting away!" Fiona gasped breathlessly. "We can't keep up with him on foot."

Richard looked around quickly and bent to the ground, pulling up a fist sized rock. Tossing it up and down briefly, he reared back and threw it. They watched it arc through the air, until it connected with the Thuggee in the back, knocking him down. "Find me a few more rocks, and I can't make sure he doesn't go anywhere until we catch up to him - at a leasurely stroll."

Throwing with any kind of accuracy, or at extremes of range, is dependant on this skill. Whether you're throwing rocks, shurukens, or grenades, you always want to hit the target you're aiming at. A character can throw objects of less than 1kg up to (Might pool x5) meters. For each additional kilogram, reduce the distance by three meters (instead of the usual five).

Specialties: Rocks, Knives, Grenades, Shurukens, Improvised Items.

Dexterity Abilities

Demolitions

"What do you mean by 'That's bad,' anyway?"

"It means there's about a dozen sticks of dynamite attached to the underside of the couch you're sitting on, and if you get up, I believe you'll cause them to detonate."

"That's bad!"

Explosives in the 1920s are often crude chemicals, often set off with flames or sudden movements, rather than the precision electronics and inert compounds of the end of the century. Setting explosives (such as dynamite), making them, and disarming them all fall under this skill. Botches set off the explosives immediately, usually to fatal effects.

Specialties: Mining Blasts, Preparing Explosives, Disarming, Recognize Type.

Perception Abilities

Artillery

Cameron ran a hand down the barrel. "A six-incher, huh? Looks just the ones I used over in France during the Great War. But your sight's a little off."

World War I saw the first wide-spread use of artillery shells carrying something other than explosives, and is what truly made the war hell on earth. But thanks to the war, lots of veterans have at least a little experience aiming one. This ability lets the character adjust artillery pieces, morters, and similar ordinance for precision firing.

Specialties: Mortars, Observer, Tracking, Mustard Gas.

Intelligence Abilities

Analysis

Whitley stared at the photograph and the pile of letters. "Just from this, you can tell that she faked her own suicide? How in blazes did you come to that conclusion?"

Doctor Primoris smiled, and started shuffling through the stack of papers. "To borrow a quote, 'Elementary, my dear Watson.' If you see here ... "

Often times, solving puzzles and mysteries means characters have to have the skills and experience necessary to put together obscure pieces. Analysis is a skill much used by police officers, private investigators, and espionage agents to search through clues.

Specialties: Photographs, Doubletalk, Espionage.

Wits Abilities

Business

"But sir, if we keep giving away Model Ts at fairs, we're going to go bankrupt!"

"Nonsense! Just watch, within a year, we'll have twice the sales we did this year. By giving them away, we're making them a status symbol. Everyone will want one."

Running businesses, earning money in the stock market or by moving goods and providing services, investing in public works - all of them require similar skills in money handling to ensure the most bang for the buck. Business is what characters need to make money the old-fashioned way of working for it.

Specialties: Stocks, Merchandising, Sales, Regulations, Hiring.

Manipulation Abilities

Hypnosis

Houdini waved the gold watch at a carefully measured pace, listening to the woman count. "Now, madam, when I return the watch to my pocket, I want you to jump out of your chair and bark like a dog."

Sure enough, the audience gasped and applauded as he put her through a series of embarassing manuevers.

Hypnosis is a fairly new skill, one both condemned and lauded by the psychologists of the time. Using Hypnosis, you can insert subtle commands into a person's mind. To use Hypnosis, the character rolls Manipulation+Hypnosis, and the subject rolls Willpower to resist. Successes allow the character to insert a number of commands equal to half the successes rolled (round up), that last for a number of days equal to his score in Hypnosis. Unlike the Hypnotic Presence knack, this ability requires at least ten minutes for each command.

Specialties: Memory Recovery, Stage Tricks, Mole.

Gambling

Slim smiled as the other two folded, and he pulled the pot towards him. Who'd have thought he could get a hundred bucks on a lousy pair of fours?

Gambling is the knowledge of games of chance, and how best to bilk other people out of their money. It includes both knowledge of the rules, as well as how to spot the signs of cheaters. (Note that actually cheating requires Legerdemain to pull off.) Typically, all the players in the game roll Manipulation+Gambling, and the player with the highest number of successes wins.

Specialties: Spot Cheating, Bluffing, Poker, Craps.

[ezekiel]

Love the writeups! ::thumbup

The only skill I'm not sure about is 'Analysis'. Seems to me like that would be covered by "Investigation". But Analysis might be a better name for "Investigation"...

[Nullifier]

Analysis

Whitley stared at the photograph and the pile of letters. "Just from this, you can tell that she faked her own suicide? How in blazes did you come to that conclusion?"

Doctor Primoris smiled, and started shuffling through the stack of papers. "To borrow a quote, 'Elementary, my dear Watson.' If you see here ... "

Often times, solving puzzles and mysteries means characters have to have the skills and experience necessary to put together obscure pieces. Analysis is a skill much used by police officers, private investigators, and espionage agents to search through clues.

Specialties: Photographs, Doubletalk, Espionage.

This is a listed Ability in the Aberrant: Directive book (p. 55). However, the specialities listed are: Financial Records, Image Analysis, Audio Recordings, and Psychological profiles. In terms of espionage however there is an Ability, also on that page coincidentally enough, called Tradecraft which is essentially the art of spying. Specialities include: Codes, Long Distance Observation, Street Walking, and Traffic...

Have fun. ::biggrin