Weapons

Arms and armor are of course one of the most important features in a medieval-esque RPG. I have several goals in this area: first, most weapons and armor should be equally 'good'; second, I want to incorporate the widest variety of real-world equipment possible; and third, I don't want an excessive number of options. The first I'm going to skip for now; weapon and armor statistics will depend heavily on the scaling of Vitality. The second and third seem initially contradictory, but I think can be made to work together. Basically, wherever two weapons are similar enough that it's difficult to justify different statistics, they will be represented as a single weapon in the rules.

Training in weapons, represented in Pathfinder by Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and the fighter's Weapon Training, will be incorporated into a series of Weapon Training talents. Each talent will apply to a group of related weapons, such as axes or bows, granting numerical bonuses as well as abilities related to those weapons.

Without further ado, weapon groups and their included weapons (plus maneuvers). I'm not completely happy the way maneuvers are split up; I may make more of them distinct categories instead of including them with certain weapons.

Axes:
Greataxe: any two-handed axe weapon with a relatively short haft.
Battleaxe: a typical one-handed axe, like the ones Vikings are often depicted with.
Handaxe: a short-handled axe, like a hatchet; generally suitable for throwing.
Pickaxe: not technically an axe, but handles similarly; very effective against armor.

Blades
Greatsword: a long two-handed sword, such as a claymore, zweihander, or no-dachi.
Longsword: a long sword with an extended grip allowing it to be wielded in one or two hands, such as a bastard sword or katana
Broadsword: a one-handed edged sword, such as an arming sword or scimitar.
Short sword: a one-handed sword with a shorter blade, such as a gladius, wakizashi, or cutlass.
Rapier: a lightweight sword designed for stabbing.
Dagger: an even shorter blade best for close quarters or throwing.
Swordbreaker: a variant dagger or short sword with notches along the back for disarming and sundering enemy weapons.

Bludgeons
Greatclub: a really big stick, such as a tetsubo.
Club: a stick or some size, such as a baseball bat, lead pipe, or a quarterstaff wielded by someone without much training.
Spiked club: any spiked variant of a club, such as a stick with nails in the end or a morningstar.
Warhammer: a (relatively small), usually pronged hammer backed by a pick. Designed expressly for can-opening, where the can is an armored knight.
Greathammer: a large hammer requiring two hands to wield, such as a sledgehammer.

Bows:
Shortbow: slightly less powerful but also less cumbersome than the longbow; typically composite.
Longbow: more powerful but harder to use bow.

Close:
Dagger: see blades
Gauntlet: this could represent an actual gauntlet as well as brass knuckles and similar devices.
Unarmed strike: while there will be another talent for monk-style 'martial arts', this encompasses basic unarmed attacks
Grapple: maneuvers related to very close combat.
Reposition: a collection of maneuvers involving moving the enemy somewhere else (bull rush, drag, reposition)
Steal:  a maneuver that swipes something from an opponent in combat.
Trip: a maneuver that lets you trip your opponent.

Crossbows:
Heavy crossbow: a heavy-duty crossbow such as an arbalest.
Light crossbow: standard crossbow design.
Repeating crossbow: a variant crossbow that features a small clip and reloading crank, such as the cho-ko-nu.
Hand crossbow: a stealth-sized crossbow, also known as a pistol crossbow.

Flails:
Whip: Indiana Jones. Enough said.
Bladed whip: any sort of blade-on-a-rope/chain weapon. Scorpion whip, kusarigama, spiked chain, etc.
Meteor hammer: any sort of bludgeon-on-a-rope/chain weapon.
Heavy flail: a hinged weapon held in both hands.
Light flail: a hinged weapon held in one hand. Anything from a ball on a chain to nunchucks.

Improvised:
Training in this weapon group removes the penalties for using improvised weapons.
Dirty Trick: maneuvers that inconvenience your opponent, such as throwing sand in their eyes.
Feint: a maneuver that sets up the opponent for your next attack (might be removed)

Polearms:
Glaive: a sword on a stick.
Halberd: an axe on a stick, usually with a spike and a hook.
Guisarme: a spike and a hook.
Pole hammer: a hammer on a stick, usually with a spike and a hook.
Quarterstaff: a stick.
Dismount: a maneuver for unhorsing an opponent.

Shields:
Shield bash: allows attacks using your shield.

Spears:
Pike: a two-handed spear of excessive length.
Longspear: a two-handed spear 8-10 feet long.
Spear: a hand-and-a-half spear, usually wielded with two hands but sometimes thrown or used with a shield.
Shortspear: a one-handed spear designed for quick stabbing motions and/or throwing, such as a javelin or pilum.
Lance: a longspear modified for use while mounted.
Trident: a multi-tined spear.

Thrown:
Javelin/shortspear: as in spears.
Dagger: as in blades. Also includes various other small thrown objects, like shuriken or darts.
Handaxe: as in axes.
Net: used to entangle foes.
Bolas: three balls on a cord, used to entangle foes.
Sling: like David and Goliath.
Spear thrower: an implement to increase the range of javelins.
Blowgun: generally used for delivery of poison.

Weapon Maneuvers:
Demoralize: a maneuver to intimidate your foes with your prowess.
Disarm: a maneuver to disarm enemies.
Sunder: a maneuver to break enemy weapons or armor.

Let me know if you can think of any weapons that aren't represented here!

Critical Hits

This didn't quite fit in the previous post, but I recently had a thought regarding critical hits in my vitality/wounds system. I essentially want to define two types of critical hits. The first is a critical success--a concept borrowed from skill rolls. If you beat your target's DV by a certain amount (probably 5), you deal additional damage, probably equal to your weapon damage but possibly as high as double damage. Success by 10 could result in tripling. However, this damage is still all applied to Vitality unless it's the killing blow. The other type of critical hit is the one players of D&D are familiar with, the natural 20. This type of critical hit would deal wound damage. There's no need for a critical confirmation roll, because the scaling damage depending on how much you hit by already accounts for whether it's a solid hit (only needed a 10 to begin with) or extreme luck (you needed a 19).

This creates room for different weapon abilities related to critical hits. Some weapons could have better chances to deal extra damage--say when you beat the target DV by 4 or 8 instead of 5 or 10. Or they could have different effects on a critical success--maybe you don't get extra damage, but you do get a free trip attempt. Others could have better chances to cause wounds. There are a lot of possibilities, and should make for some nice flavor in the weapon selection.

Core Statistics

Advance warning: this post might be a bit hard to follow. I jump around quite a bit, and may not have explained everything fully. If something doesn't make sense, just let me know and I'll take another look at it. I just wanted to get everything down on paper.

Time to talk about some key combat statistics. This is a tricky part; I've made some changes, and might make quite a few more. I'll talk about the more certain bits first, and then discuss the harder sections.

Attack bonus = Strength + experience - size; compared against Defense Value (DV) = 10 + Dexterity + shield + experience - size

Maneuver bonus = Strength + experience + size; compared against Maneuver Defense (MDV) = 10 + Strength + Dexterity + experience + size

Initiative Bonus: Awareness + Dexterity + experience

For anyone unfamiliar with Pathfinder, maneuver bonus incorporates things like bull rush, trip, and disarm. Armor class has been renamed to defense value (DV) because it no longer includes armor (but does include shields). Actually, armor may grant small bonuses to DV in some cases, but Armor is a completely separate value that I'll come back to shortly.

Now, saving throws. First, I want to split Will saves into Will (mental resistance) and Insight (how hard to fool you are). This opens the possibility of certain Perception checks also being rolled into Insight, but I'm not sure about that. The bigger issue is whether to retain rolled saves (as in Pathfinder) or switch to static defenses (as in 4th edition D&D). I'm fairly attached to rolled saves, because for the most part they represent a character actively resisting an effect, and I feel this trumps consistency with the attack mechanics (where the attacker rolls).

So, going with rolled saves, we get:
Save DCs: 10 + relevant attribute + experience
Fortitude: Constitution + experience + size
Insight: Awareness + experience
Reflex: Dexterity + experience - size
Will: Willpower + experience

These should all work well enough. Now, one of the more significant changes I want to make. The two key resources for every character: vitality and energy. The hit point system of Pathfinder is quite abstract, to the point that it becomes really hard to describe in some situations. The most common solution for this issue is to implement some kind of wounds vs. vitality system, which first appeared in Star Wars d20. Such a system differentiates between real injuries and the type of damage normally represented by hit points--close calls, minor scratches, bruises, energy or luck expended in barely not losing your arm. The main difference in these types of damage is recovery--wounds are much harder to heal. Typically in such a system, wound damage is dealt by critical hits or failed saves, and a player has separate wound and vitality scores. This gives a nice clean measure of how much physical damage your character can take, but introduces mechanical problems where hit points can be 'shortcutted'. At first this seems like a feature, but it ultimately places too much emphasis on critical hits. Another issue I've always had with D&D is that hit point totals get excessive at high levels--as a player or GM, I don't want to deal with 100s of hit points. So, all that said, here is the solution I've come up with:

Vitality: function of both level and tier; you receive a small amount per level, and a larger amount when you enter a new tier. I'm not sure yet where Constitution is added--probably at the tier level to keep the totals reasonable. Lost Vitality is recovered after a short rest (5-10 minutes).
Wounds: When you take critical hits, roll a 1 on a save (maybe), or take vitality damage that would reduce your vitality total below 0, you take that damage as a wound. Your total wound damage is tallied up, rather than being subtracted from a score. If your current Vitality is lower than your current Wounds, the combined damage and fatigue overwhelms you and you fall unconscious. Unless you've taken a significant quantity of Wounds, however, you're not in any immediate danger. 

So in theory, you can take at least as many Wounds as your Vitality total; however, at this point you would be in extreme danger of death. I believe this should make a good balance of heroic survivability and believable damage-taking. Healing magic would distinguish quite a bit between them--in-combat healing would mostly be limited to Vitality boosts, while recovering Wounds requires long-term rest or slower, more powerful magic.

Speaking of magic, that brings me to Energy. I've favored spell-point systems, similar to mana systems found in most computer games, for quite a long time. I should note that there are many examples of poorly-implemented mana systems, such as 3rd edition psionics. However, years back I stumbled across an excellent suggestion to fix this problem--instead of giving a massively expanding pool of spell points to draw from, the spell point cost of spells is reduced as your skills increase. So a basic spell that costs 6 spell points for a 1st-level caster might cost only 2 or 3 spell points for a 10th-level caster. In most circumstances, a spell costs at least 1 spell point, so the character's spell point total places a reasonable limit on spells per day, while the sliding scale means that a character can always cast about the same number of their highest level spells. Most importantly, it does away with the awkward restrictions of traditional D&D spellcasting.

As a side effect of working with a classless system, I ran into the problem of how to handle limited-use abilities. This includes spells, but also abilities such as a barbarian's rage, a bard's song, or any ability that grants X uses per day.  All of these abilities are physically and mentally taxing, and so I decided to have them all run off of the same Energy pool. A character's Energy points will be determined similarly to Vitality--boosts by both level and tier, with bonuses from Willpower. My only issue here is linking it permanently to Willpower--it doesn't make quite as much sense for something like bardic music or barbarian rage as it does for spells (arcane or divine). One thought I had was to define a 'key attribute' for each ability that uses Energy, and have Energy determined off of the highest applicable attribute, but that seems a little convoluted.

Finally, to backtrack a little, I need to talk about armor. I intend to significantly rework the way damage types, resistances, and other related abilities are defined. There are two major types of damage--physical and energy. Physical damage is subdivided into bludgeoning or impact, piercing, and slashing damage, while energy damage divides into fire or heat, cold, electricity, and acid or chemical. A character can gain resistance to any of these damage types through various means, the most common being physical damage resistances from armor. I'm considering different armor types granting different amounts of resistance to each damage types. This seems complicated, but it would be simple enough to have a small box on the character sheet for resistances to each damage source. In such a case, weapons or effects that deal multiple types of damage would target the lowest resistance (at least within the categorization of physical or energy). So, for example, a spiked club that deals both piercing and bludgeoning damage would only be affected by the lower of the defending character's piercing and impact resistances. This mechanic replaces DR/- and DR/any weapon damage from Pathfinder; DR related to special materials (silver, adamantine) and related abilities like fast healing and regeneration will be reworked.

Luck and Wealth

I'd like to briefly discuss the subsystems I have in mind for Wealth and Luck. I've found over years of playing D&D that nothing actually gets tracked below a certain value threshold; food and drink, lodging, ammunition, and other mundane costs are typically ignored after character creation. Some versions of the game have included a monthly upkeep system, which covers that sort of spending depending on your character's lifestyle, but I don't think I've ever seen it used in a game. These issues, combined with my plans for a more early-medieval style setting, led me to consider different ways of handling wealth. In an excellent series of world-building articles written by Rich Burlew (of Order of the Stick fame), he proposed using the abstract Wealth system from d20 Modern for his medieval-level setting, and I found this to be quite an excellent suggestion.

The full d20 Modern Wealth rules can be found here, but I'll give a quick overview. Every character has a Wealth score, typically somewhere between 0 and 30. This value is a combined measure of their savings, credit, and income. For a medieval setting, credit would mostly be replaced by influence--it may be the only way to acquire a magic sword is for the king to grant you one, for example. Every item has a value measured by its "Purchase DC". When you want to acquire an item, you make a Wealth roll: d20 + your Wealth score; if it is higher than the Purchase DC, then you acquire the item. If the Purchase DC of the item is higher than your Wealth score (it is expensive relative to your resources), then your Wealth decreases by 1 or more points after the purchase. On the other side, if the Purchase DC is lower than your wealth score, you don't even have to roll--it's assumed to be well within your budget. There are a few additional details--you can make a Profession roll at level-up to gain additional wealth, for example--but that's the basis of the system.

Now for luck. This particular idea came from a house rule I saw posted on the Paizo forums. This group had a rule called luck or karma. Each character has a Luck score that starts at 10. Any time there's an element of chance (such as a wandering monster roll), the most appropriate character rolls a d20. If they roll higher than their Luck score, things go their way and their Luck score increases by one (making them less likely to get lucky the next time). If they roll lower, things don't turn out the way they want and their Luck score decreases by one. This seems like a fun way to handle this sort of thing, rather than by DM fiat, and so I'd like to give it a try. There's also potential for traits or talents based on manipulation of Luck scores, such as a character that could add 5 to their Luck score (resulting in future 'bad luck') in return for a bonus on a roll.

Setting Brainstorming

 This is just me throwing ideas onto a page regarding the campaign setting.

Overall setting feeling: tech level a bit lower than Pathfinder—late dark age/early medieval instead of late medieval/early renaissance. Strictly limit number of intelligent humanoids. Instead emphasize human cultural differences.

Elves: hyper-sensitive to environment. Can become ‘grey’ if they wander too much. Could be highly xenophobic due to need to remain in local environment. ‘Color’ change could be painful or dangerous? Or simply undesirable. Brought into world as a side-effect of spirit or faerie plot? Sudden arrival could make for interesting situations.

Mountain-dwelling pegasus-riders. Skilled engineers who use a complex system of terraces and aqueducts to feed their nation. Pegasus used for messengers, defense. Favor skirmish style combat.

Primary human culture—rulers consolidate power primarily by establishing walled towns—similar to Japanese castle towns or Chinese towns. Inner walls encompass a core government district, while outer walls encompass rest of town, even some farmland or forest in a newer town. Note walls ineffective against pegasus riders…could this be an issue? Numerous distinct nations. Lower nobility might be scholars, bureaucrats instead of warriors. Capitals are fairly fluid, leading to a lot of political fluidity.

Religion: main culture is a spirit-oriented religion, where spirits may resemble Pathfinder creatures like dragons, elementals, etc. Spirits may or may not be the same thing as fey creatures. Spirits are a source of magic—but probably not directly; instead, they could act as teachers. As such, most mages would worship the spirit that teaches their school of magic, but there is also room for rogue mages that have greater versatility but strained relations with the religious community. Secondary religion could be more oriented towards ‘fairy magic’—druidic or enchantment spells.

How do spirit world, fey world, real world interact? Spirits and fey should probably be two different types of creatures that originate in the same realm. Spirits can only be killed in their natural form—normally manifest a form in the material plane. So killing one typically requires a journey to the spirit plane, or the spirit to enter the material world directly (probably bad news).

Need some folklore regarding spirits and fey (may not all be true).

Wise and benevolent ruler backed by an order of ruthless spies and assassins?

Desert elf raiders…ride scorpion-like creatures? ‘Dark elves’ in black volcanic desert/wasteland?

Combat Actions

Alright, time to steamroll through some mental roadblocks. Action time!

Pathfinder shares the same action system as 3.5 D&D, with full-round, standard, move, swift, and free actions. What I intend to do is to merge the standard and move actions into one type of action, the single action. So I would have double or full-round actions, single actions, swift actions, and free actions. Most actions are single actions, such as moving, making an attack, drawing or sheathing a weapon, drinking a potion, or readying a shield. Double actions include options like charging and running. Swift and free actions are unchanged. Spellcasting is a bit special; spell casting times will be given in actions, typically in the 1-4 range. These actions must be taken consecutively and without interruption—so you have to keep the spellcaster safe if they’re going to pull off their mega-spell.

One part I’m still unclear on is how multiple attacks will function. In its simplest form, a character can make two attacks—each a single action—per turn. This could present problems at the high end of play depending on the hit point system, as there’s no way to add additional attacks. On the low end, damage output is significantly increased compared to Pathfinder due to the option for the second attack.

Another possibility would be to make the attack action ‘non-repeatable’. A character could make however many attacks they get as a single action, and would have the other action free for a variety of options such as movement or improved defense. In this system, characters would default to a single attack and would gain additional attacks either as a function of tier or through a talent, probably requiring a prerequisite of a certain number of other combat talents. This makes the talent absolutely required for anyone who wants to be competent in combat, which seems problematic; on the other hand, anyone who wants to cast magic has to take the same core casting talents, so maybe that’s just something that’s built into my talent-based system. Having a talent like that might also open up the possibility for a mage talent that unlocks various metamagic-type abilities.

A third option, somewhat related to the first, is to have a double-action full attack. By default, this would be identical to making two single attacks, but certain talents would allow extra attacks or other variations. Alternatively, the third attack could be gained at a certain tier. I don’t think I want to allow more than three base attacks per round; since they’re all at the same bonus, that’s quite a bit of potential damage output. And while there’s less of a speed issue than in Pathfinder due to them all sharing the same bonuses, damage will take longer because of comparison to armor values, and I’d like to keep combat quick.

Of all of these, the non-repeatable attack is probably my favorite. It’s a little unfortunate in that it basically reintroduces the standard-move action combo, but I think options can be provided for the second action that will make combat more interesting. There might be some weird interactions with spellcasting as well—it shouldn’t be allowed as the second action after an attack, but some attack spells will require attacks. This will require a second look at how touch spells are handled, but should be resolvable. I still would like a way to give martial characters more attacks, and that will be difficult to do cleanly.

Distracted

So I may have gotten slightly distracted by modding Shogun 2 Total War...so while I have been working on games all month, my progress on Telharis has basically stopped. That said, I do have some rules that are basically just waiting on being written up so I should be back on track soon.

Second Thoughts on Attributes

I’ve been thinking about attributes and I have to say I’m not really happy with the solution I settled on. While a modifier-only attribute system starting at 0 is very straightforward, it introduces two problems. First, even low-level characters have really high bonuses to everything, which definitely fails on the elegance front. Second, it creates major issues with a few aspects of the game math, such as hit points and damage. Therefore, I’ve realized that I really want a modifier of 0 to be typical.

To define a modifier of 0 as average, I have two options. The first is to go back to a score and modifier system, with the average score as 10 and average modifier 0. With a 1-to-1 correlation between score and modifier, however, the score itself is basically useless. The second option is to base a modifier-only system around 0. I avoided this on the first pass because I disliked the arbitrary negative score limit; but what if this limit applied in both directions? Attributes could range from -10 to 10, with an average at 0. This feels much cleaner to me, and satisfies my conditions of clarity, simplicity, and elegance.

But wait—I have another condition, verisimilitude. I’m going to look at a few test cases to make sure this system feels right. Most human attributes will be 0 +/- 2; this means that the difference between the best and worst of typical humans is a tier’s worth of experience or a training talent. This seems right—training and experience can overcome weakness, and someone with professional training should be on equal footing with a very talented amateur. Ranging farther out, an attribute of -5 could be defined either as a severe weakness in that area, such as extreme clumsiness (Dexterity) or social ineptitude (Charisma), or as a notable but non-crippling disability, such as a lame leg (Dexterity), lame arm (Strength), or a missing eye or ear (Awareness). An attribute of -10 indicates extraordinary weakness and/or severe disability, such as lacking an immune system (Constitution) or widespread paralysis (Strength/Dexterity). Going in the other direction, an attribute of +5 reflects standout ability, such as that shown by Olympic athletes or genius-level intelligence. An attribute of +10 represents near-supernatural talent and ability such as Herculean strength.

That all feels good for humans. What about creatures and monsters? There are more opportunities for extreme attributes here, but I think it is still workable. The strongest and toughest creatures are also large, which means they have a size bonus that can effectively increase their Strength and Constitution beyond the cap. On the mental side, creatures with superhuman Intelligence or Charisma could certainly exist; however, the upper 3-5 points of the scale are already defined as a supernatural level of ability, so these should work as well.

So there we are, hopefully for good this time. Attributes range from -10 to 10, and most humans have scores of 0 +/- 2. With that fixed, time to move on and discuss some of the system math.

Core Design Goals

I’ve touched on some of my design goals, but I haven’t set them out clearly anywhere. I’d like to do that before going any farther, so here goes. Roughly in order of priority:

1) Clarity: There should be minimal opportunities for the rules to be misunderstood. One key area that I’m targeting is overloaded words such as level and ability; wherever possible, rules terms should have unique names.

2) Simplicity: The game should be playable with minimal reference to the rules. Nothing breaks the tension like having to look up a rule or a modifier. My main target here is combat mechanics, though the skill mechanics could do with a good deal more uniformity as well.

3) Depth: The game should have a wide variety of meaningful options. This is one that requires a delicate touch. Too many options and you wind up with system bloat that impacts the goal of simplicity. Too few, and characters all start to feel the same. Spells, weapons, and armor are all areas that this goal is especially relevant for.

4) Elegance: This one has two meanings. On one side, it really overlaps with clarity and simplicity; the rules should be clean and easy to use. In addition, the system math should be clean and functional at all levels of play.

5) Verisimilitude: Realism is a problematic term when fantasy is involved, but at the very least internal consistency needs to be maintained. At low levels this can mean comparison to real-world physics and human ability, while at higher levels internal comparisons take over.

Now, back to design work!

Size Categories

The issue of creature sizes was an important consideration as I was determining the system math. In Pathfinder, creature receive bonuses and penalties to all of their physical attributes based on size. This creates problems in a few cases--for example, the Strength bonus given to very large creatures completely negates their size penalty to hit. In order to address this, I decided that for Telharis all physical attributes would be measured relative to a typical creature of that size. To compensate, size modifiers apply to more things. I've also inverted the size modifiers to minimize the number of calculations that involve subtraction; small creatures receive a negative size modifier, and large creatures a positive one. The size modifier is added to maneuver bonus, maneuver defense, damage rolls, hit points, and Fortitude saves. It is subtracted from attack rolls, defense, Reflex saves, and Stealth checks.

I've also adjusted the size categories compared to Pathfinder. Flipping through the Bestiary, I found that the Fine size category was effectively limited to creatures that made up swarms. Overall, the size modifiers seemed too low. After some tinkering, I came up with the following categories:

Size           Modifier     Space     Reach       Examples
Fine                -10           1 ft.         0            Mice, coins, a typical insect--little more than points.
Tiny                -5             2.5 ft.      0           Cats, rats, most birds.
Small              -2             5 ft.       5 ft.         Halflings, dogs.
Medium           0             5 ft.       5 ft.         Humans, black bear.
Large              +2            10 ft.      5 ft.        Horses, cows, lions, a small dragon.
Huge               +5            15 ft.      10 ft.      Elephants, a medium dragon.
Colossal         +10          25 ft.       15 ft.      The proverbial broad side of a barn.
Immense        +15          35+ ft.    20 ft.       Kraken? Really old dragon?

I should note, I don't foresee the Immense category getting much use, and when it does, it may require special mechanics--a creature of that size isn't going to be hitting anything with a -15 on attack rolls. On the other hand, a creature of that size's attacks are probably more like an area of effect that would require a Reflex save. I'll deal with that if and when I come to it.

Also, I should maybe explain my 'proverbial broad side of a barn' example. What I mean by that is that an average level 1 human literally could not miss an attack against a stationary object of that size.

That's all for now.

Skills

I gave a brief preview of skills while I was discussing attributes; I’d like to spend a little more time on them now. First, I will list the skills I intend to use and give a brief description of each:

Acrobatics: jumping, balancing, tumbling.

Climb: what it says.

Deception: misdirection, lying, and disguise.

Endurance: ability to run or fight for long periods, resist heat, cold, and fatigue. Distinct from Fortitude saves, which are used to resist poison, disease, nausea. Endurance lets you ignore affliction, Fortitude lets you resist it.

Escape Artist: escaping bonds, squeezing through tight spaces.

Handle Animal: train and direct animals.

Heal: what it says.

Intimidate: what it says.

Lore: any application of the Pathfinder Knowledge skill that doesn’t fit under an existing skill—e.g. history, legends.

Perception: how sharp your senses are.

Persuasion: what it says (replaces Pathfinder Diplomacy)

Profession: making money with your skills. Also includes crafting.

Ride: what it says.

Security: lockpicking, trap disarming, trapsmithing.

Sense Motive: opposes Deception; can also be used to make a gut assessment of a situation.

Sleight of Hand: stealing.

Spellcraft: knowledge of magic.

Stealth: what it says.

Streetwise: getting by in the city, gathering information.

Survival: getting by in the wilderness, tracking, general outdoor skills and knowledge of nature.

Swim: what it says.

I intend to emphasize that the key attributes listed for each skill are only the attributes that are most commonly relevant; in many cases, substitute attributes can and should be used. For example, what in Pathfinder would be a Knowledge: Nature check is in Telharis a Survival check using Intelligence instead of Awareness. Another example would be using a Strength-based Acrobatics check to jump.

One major difference in the handling of skills between Telharis and Pathfinder is that I have eliminated skill ranks. Instead, skill training will be part of the tiered talent structure. The first tier will grant a +4 competence bonus and unlocks trained-only uses of the skill. Additional tiers grant higher competence bonuses and various abilities. For example, high-tier Stealth might enable a character to actually turn invisible for short periods, or high-tier Perception might grant enhanced senses.

One final change is in terminology. I’m not fond of the term DC (difficulty class). I want many of my skills to utilize degrees of success, and I’d like a name that better reflects that. For now, I’m going to go with success threshold (ST); it’s clear and doesn’t conflict with any existing abbreviations.