3.4. Exploration Box
While exploring and interacting with the world around you, look to the Exploration Box on Page 1 of your Character Sheet. The Exploration Box lists your Exploration Stats, Exploration Skills, and helpful References of your character's capabilities and limits.
Exploration Stats
Each character has a different balance of Exploration Stats that help you navigate the world and interact with it. You will use your Exploration Stats as the Modifier for most of your Ability Tests. You will also use your Exploration Stats when performing Saves against Abilities that target you.
The Exploration Stats are:
Might
- The front-line force of the group. Favored stat of skilled strikers, bulky athletes, and seasoned warriors.
- Save using your fortitude and determination against poison, exhaustion, cold, blunt trauma, grapples, getting knocked back, getting knocked down, being swept downstream, etc.
Artifice
- The back-line specialist of the group. Favored stat of skillful snipers, dexterous fighters, and nimble-handed craftsmen.
- Save using foresight and cunning against projectiles, traps, attacks targeting weak-points, sudden environmental dangers, tricky illusions, etc.
- Get the jump on others at the start of an Encounter.
Tuning
- The magical conduit of the group. Favored stat of Dark mages and enlightened sages.
- Save using your mental fortitude against psychic attacks, magical charms, magical fears, possession and more.
- Maintain spells that require Concentration.
Exploration Skills
The Character Sheet divides the Exploration Skills into a grid with a column for each Exploration Stat and a row for each Exploration Skill category. The three categories are:
- Perception Skills - Gathering information about the world.
- Covert Skills - Remaining undetected as you move and interact with the world.
- Knowledge Skills - Recall information about the world to help you perform specialized tasks.
Perception Skills
The Perception Skills help you learn more about new locations you explore and can help you detect and avoid danger before it happens.
The Perception Skills are most often used with the Investigate Ability. When you use that Ability, the Skill you choose determines which questions you can ask. In this way, each character's own perceptions may reveal different information.
Aside from the Investigate ability, the GM may have you make Tests using the Perception Skills while you are diving deeper into what you have found in the world.
Below are the three core Perception Skills and examples of the Tests a GM may call for:
Recon
- Secure a campsite.
- Determine the weak and strong points of security. Predict security features, protocols, spells, etc.
- Keep watch or scout ahead to detect sights and sounds of nearby creatures that may be using Sneaking.
- Identify leadership and hierarchies. Identify lower members of a group that may be more susceptible to attacks, be that physical or rhetorical.
- Gather details that may help determine a character's rank or threat level (though a creature's magical or unseen capabilities may require a Conjuring or Enchanting Tests.)
Analysis
- Tracking an enemy's movements after-the-fact. While in an Encounter against a Sneaking enemy, you can determine the route that an enemy traveled.
- Look over specific objects or phenomena to gather clues with speed and care. Determine how a non-magical mechanism or trap works.
- Search for info or a specific item with speed an care.
- Note: This skill will not involve altering the subject in any way. For alterations, dissection, or dismantling, use Subtlety Skill instead.
Sensing
- Sense the presence of Invisible beings, magical auras, or magical effects in the area (though you will not learn their exact location.)
- With a High Score you may be able to see auras. You may also be able to see the afterimage of magic cast within the last hour and gain clues indicating whether it's Conjuration or Enchantment magic. You may also learn clues pointing to what spell it is (The GM may require other Conjuring or Enchanting Skill Tests to fully identify the Spell and recall its specifics.) Note: A skilled magic users can use Abilities like Cryptoarcanology to disguise or hide their magic use from your Sensing Skill. As such, you may not want to always trust what you see with your Sensing.
- With a Mixed Score you may feel a general presence of magic with no clear location or direction. You may also miss dormant magic items or dormant magical effects.
- On a Low Score you may miss magic that is there or get incorrect information about the magic in the area, though the GM could also tell you the truth. Be careful, as this could lead you into a magical trap!
Covert Skills
Below are the three core Covert Skills that help you avoid detection. The GM may use these Skills in other ways, but you will generally roll them during covert operations (as discussed in 2.7. Covert Abilities.)
Sneaking
- Use Movement without others hearing or seeing you.
Subtlety
- Use Abilities or improvise actions without others hearing or seeing you.
- Pickpocket or perform up-close magic.
Hiding
- Hide or camouflage yourself, other creatures, or objects.
- Bend awareness away from yourself to avoid unwanted attention.
Knowledge Skills
Knowledge Skills represent all other areas of skill that your character has.
Below are the Knowledge Skills and example use cases for each:
Athletics Skill (Might)
- Perform more demanding or hazardous feat of sport, like acrobatics, climbing, swimming, wrestling, etc.
- Climb or hold on to a slippery, unstable, or hazardous surface while something is trying to knock you off.
- Say afloat in difficult waters or while something is trying to interfere with your swimming.
- Lift or carry heavy objects. You can freely lift and carry objects that are your same size and weight or less. If the object is up to double your size and weight, you will need to perform a Test to try to lift and carry it. Anything larger or heavier and you will not be able to lift it without help that, with combined weight and size, can once again beat the object's own weight and size.
History Skill (Might)
- Recall oral stories, legends, customs, religions, or other historical info that existed or occurred more than 5 years ago. This knowledge can include battles, heroes, politics, etc.
- Recall beliefs of religions more than 5 years old.
- Recall and perform traditions or traditional ceremonies with accuracy and the acceptance of those familiar with such rites.
Rumor Skill (Artifice)
- Recall current events (within the last 5 years.) Recall modern prominent figures. Recall modern customs, conspiracies, secrets, and the inner workings of governments, factions, and new-age religions.
- Blend in with the locals or conform to etiquette. When interacting with a class of society with which your character has little experience, you may need to roll with Disadvantage.
- Search a town for trustworthy merchants, local establishments, or leads on info about a subject. Find a fence or secret group located in the area.
Tinkering Skill (Artifice)
- Craft, alter, dissect, or dismantle things at a physical level.
- Disarm or alter a trap or mechanism.
- Craft small, crude constructions from raw materials or perform unskilled or crude surgeries. (More complex tinkering in these areas may require specialized tools and supplies. The GM may also ask that you Pass more than one Test.)
Conjuring Skill (Tuning)
- Recall information about conjuration magic. This includes spells that: evoke elements from thin air, summon entities from beyond, conjure images in the mind.
- Recall information about animals, plants, and other creatures and their innate, natural or magical abilities. This includes gods and primordial beings, such as elementals, demons, fiends, celestials, and arch-fey, provided they did not rise to their position.
- When inspecting an active magical effect or the afterimage of a Spell cast within the last hour, you may learn what sort of creature or magic item cast the Spell.
- Analyzing Spells beyond the Investigate Ability may put you in harms way. You could cause the spell's echo to affect you in some way or trigger a magical trap.
Enchanting Skill (Tuning)
- Recall information about magic that involves enchanting creatures and objects. This includes spells that buff or debuff existing objects and creatures. It also includes charms and the process of creating magic items.
- Recall information about unnatural creatures, such as aberrations, cursed beings, and unnaturally ascended beings. This includes gods and other entities warped or modified from their natural state.
- When inspecting an active magical effect or the afterimage of a Spell cast within the last hour, you may also learn what the target of the Spell or magic item was.
- Analyzing Spells beyond the Investigate Ability may put you in harms way. You could cause the spell's echo to affect you in some way or trigger a magical trap.
When recalling knowledge of gods and their realms using Conjuring or Enchanting, you will not, by default, recall the customs or beliefs of a cult tied to the god, nor the cult's customs or followers. For that, you'll need to use History or Rumor.
The differences between Conjuring and Enchanting can be hard to tease out at first. Try to do your best.
Often a creature could fall into both categories, but the Enchantment or Conjuration information you could glean would differ. For example, studying a fairy may lead a Conjurer to facts about that fairy's origins, what types of Conjuration magic it can wield, along with natural weakness or strengths. An Enchanter studying the same fairy may instead learn of alterations that the void has made to the fairy, Enchantment Spells that the fairy likely knows, or unnatural weaknesses or strengths that the fairy has gained.
Again, do your best. Try to stay consistent and keeps the two Skills balanced.
Note that some knowledge -- like History and Rumor -- may be unclear to new Adventurers. If an Adventurer guesses the wrong skill, direct them to the correct Knowledge Skill rather than punishing an Adventurer's naivete.
Next Up: 3.5. Wealth Box