Task List
JIRA Issue
The skill system is still being fleshed out and developed for this game. The JIRA ticket for the top-level skills issue is listed below.
Skills
Skills are abilities that a character has that are often checked against opponents. Skills and Feats form the backbone of a character's primary actions in the game. A skill has a rank, key ability, description, and opposed skill check. To increase your ability in a particular skill, you would purchase ranks in that skill. Skill points are gained when a character increases their career level. Skills encompass most everything that a character would do in a game. For instance, if a character is attempted to sneak past a guard, the game would roll skill checks using the player's Stealth.Sneak skill against the Perception.Notice skill of the guard, if the guard isn't actively looking for the player, and if so, then it would use the guard's Perception.Search skill.
Notice how the skill is listed with the dot (".") operator: <Skill family bundle>.<Skill> This says that <Skill> skill is contained in a bundle of skills that share commonality called skill family <Skill family>. You can purchase points directly in any given skill or you may purchase points in a skill family. Skill family points cost more, but can affect more skills. For instance, you may wish to purchase points in the Skill Family Acrobatics which affects several skills directly or you may wish to purchase points in, say, Tumbling, or Falling. Purchasing ranks in skill families cost 2 points per rank while purchasing skills themselves cost 1 skill point per rank. Purchase of non-class skill ranks is 2 points per skill and 3 points per skill family. You may also put your skill points into skill sub-specialties called fortés and these are covered in the next section.
Secondary Skills
When performing skill checks, the character benefits from his ranks in that skill, the bonus of the skill's key attribute, possible feats, etc. One of the driving forces in the design of the Government Sanctioned RPG is the enhanced and extended ability for a player to customize her character to differentiate it from every other player. Secondary skills is another mechanism that supports this design requirement.
In many RPGs, especially d20, checks against a character's innate ability or attributes involves only that attribute; it doesn't gain the benefit of other bonuses and modifiers that could be customized like skills and professional feats. This is the role of secondary skills. They take the place of the attribute check found in other RPGs. That is to say, when you want to try to break down a door, you don't just roll the check using the STR attribute, but instead use a secondary skill for this purpose. This secondary skill benefits from player customization just as much as primary skills do, so players could make a character that was especially good at, say, breaking down doors, or holding his breath, or being hyper-aware of his surroundings, or even making saving throws.
Like primary skills, characters get a certain number of secondary skill points at character creation and at each level of advancement. Secondary skill points cannot be used to purchase ranks in primary skills nor can primary skill points be used to purchase ranks in secondary skills. They are completely separate pools.
Secondary skills have two cost tiers. For professions that share their key attribute with the key attribute of the secondary skill, the cost is two points per rank. All other secondary skills cost four points per rank. Unspent points are carried over to the next level. So, for professions that have WIS as their key attribute, all secondary skills whose key attribute is WIS will cost the character two points to improve in rank while all other secondary skills will cost the character four points per rank improvement.
To get further information and a comprehensive list of all secondary skills, visit the Secondary Skills page.
Skill Mechanic
There is a preliminary skill mechanic to succeed at a skill check.
 | New Skill Mechanic Skill rank = R [0..11]
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The variables in determining skill success are as follows:
- The player's rank bonus (not their actual rank), R, from 0 to 11.
- The player's key attribute bonus of the skill being used, A, from -1 to 10.
If a player's key attribute bonus is -1, then it removes one die from the player's allowable dice pool to a minimum of 0 dice. - The difficulty level of the attempted skill, L.
This represents the level of craftsmanship or overall complexity of the item upon which the skill is being attempted. In rolling, L represents the number of dice that must have a value of C or greater and is ranged 1 to 4. - The skill's difficulty, C, which represents the true, absolute difficulty of the skill check attempt.
This value is the number on the face of each die that must be met or exceeded. It is ranged 1 through 20. Compare this with L. - The roll of a random number of d20 dice.
The first thing you will notice is that a player's skill and his attributes go into making a successful skill roll. If a player doesn't have a high skill bonus he may have a high attribute bonus and this represents the idea that good/high attributes can sometimes outweigh skill in some matters. For example, you may have low skill ranks in jump so your jumping skills are laughable, but you are a stout, strong fellow, so you may be able to get by with your strength alone.
On the other hand, if you have no skills and low to no attribute bonus, then you have a virtual 0% chance of accomplishing the skill task. That is, a person with 0 ranks in computer use and a +1 INT bonus has virtually no chance of success on a skill level 2 DC 10 computer hack attempt. This doesn't necessarily mean that they can't try it, it just means that they'll never succeed. While another player with 0 computer use but with a +8 INT bonus may have a good chance of succeeding even without the skills because they are generally smarter than average and can use their intelligence to figure some things out.
Success chart
The number of dice that meet/exceed or fail a skill check determines what kind of success or failure the skill check is. Some skill checks offer added benefits for spectacular successes or dreadful failures. Check the section on skill checks for more information on this topic. Remember, the value of σ is the number of rolls that meet or beat the DC of the skill challenge and L is the number of σ needed for a total success.
Success Chart
Roll | Outcome |
|---|---|
σ < L by 3 or more | Critical failure |
σ < L by 1 or 2 | Failure |
σ = L | Success |
σ ≥ L by up to 3 | Critical success |
σ ≥ L by 4 or more | Olympian success |
Let's look at an example:
Skill check example
VIPER, an Intruder, has been called in to help a team with neutralizing an enemy compound's security system. She first tries to disable the CCTV surveillance system. The camera has a DC of 8 and is of level 1. VIPER has a +3 skill rank bonus and a +3 INT bonus giving her six d20 dice to roll. Since the level is 1, this means she must roll 6 d20 and at least one of the die must be eight or higher. She rolls 1, 2, 5, 8, 13, and 19. She has three successes. Consulting the success chart, this means she has just made a critical success and gains the benefits of a critical success as listed in the skill check description.
Skill tags
Some skills require other conditions to be observed or met in order to accomplish the skill. For instance, in order to intimidate someone you must be in visual range of the target (and the target must be able to see you). These extra conditions are called skill tags and are indicated along with each skill check that requires them.
Skill Tag | Abbreviation | Description |
|---|---|---|
Armor check penalty | acp | If a skill lists this tag, and the character is wearing any armor with an AP (armor penalty), the value of the armor's AP is subtracted from the player's roll. |
Bribe | brb | Instead of making this skill check, the character may opt to use Bribe, Bureaucracy, or Crime to complete the check. |
Complex task | cmt | This is a complex task. |
Concentration | cnc | This skill check requires extreme concentration. It causes the character to be flat-footed. If:
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Crowd | cwd | This check may target 10 or more standard NPCs as the target. |
Disposition | dsp | This check is influenced by the target's disposition toward the character. |
Flat-footed | flt | If a character making this skill check fails, he becomes flat-footed. |
Gear | ger | This skill check requires a piece of gear or a set of gear to adequately perform the skill. If the specified gear is not in the character's possession, he makes the skill check with a -4 penalty. |
Gear-only | gro | In order to successfully make this skill check, a piece of gear or set of gear must be in the character's possession. If all of the listed gear is not in possession the skill check is an automatic failure. |
Grasp | gsp | This skill requires the character to be able to grasp or hold (or otherwise touch) the object upon which the skill check is being made. |
Hands on | hdo | This skill requires the use of both hands. The character suffers -4 to check if only using one hand. |
Hearing | her | This skill requires the character to be able to hear his surroundings. A deafened character cannot perform this skill. |
Language | lng | This skill requires that the character and target speak the same language, or share at least one common tongue. If not, the skill check is performed at -10. |
Vision | vis | This check requires the character to see what he's doing. In some cases, it requires that the target be able to see the character. All modifiers for lighting and visual range apply. A blinded character cannot perform this skill. |
Skill forté
Some skills have further specialties called skill fortés. These operate differently than skill checks. For instance, Firearms.*ServicePistol is a forté that specializes in service pistols, in particular out of the Firearms skill. Note the slight change in notation between a skill (<skill family>.<skill) compared and a forté (<skill family>.*<forté>). Skill checks are still made with the Firearm skill, but ranks in a forté provide other bonuses that apply to the subject of the forté. Taking our above example, look at the tables below for the list of fortés in our example of Firearms and their bonuses provided by applying skill points to ranks in the forté.
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 | You will probably have noticed that the rank cap on fortés is 50. When allocating skill points to fortés, if the skill family is a profession skill, 1 skill point = 3 ranks in the forté. If it is not a profession skill, the cost is 2 skill points = 3 ranks. |
Check out the list of skill families and skills for a complete list of supported skill fortés and their bonuses.
Skill Rank and Bonus
As previously mentioned, the highest rank attainable in a skill is 200 for a profession skill and 100 for a non-profession skill. Skill fortés have a cap of 50 for both profession and non-profession skills. In calculations using skill checks, the skill rank isn't used directly, but is used instead as an index into a skill rank bonus table. The table below shows the relationship between skill rank, the bonus it provides, and its counter bonus.
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See that while skill rank costs remain constant regardless of the skill rank, the bonuses are increasingly more costly, representing diminishing returns of a skill rank; the better you want to be, the harder you have to train. To offset the diminishing returns, skills have a counter bonus. At the point where the skill's return on investment starts diminishing, another bonus is gained. This makes deciding whether to generalize or specialize even more detailed, further customizing the abilities of each individual character.
So what are these bonuses, you may ask? The skill bonus applies directly as a bonus to the skill check for that particular skill, while the counter bonus provides an alternate bonus to a different statistic. Take the Acrobatics.Dodge skill. The skill bonus is added to skill checks or other calculations (like chance to hit, for instance) requiring a dodge skill check. The counter bonus for the dodge skill is defense. That is, at higher levels of the dodge skill the character learns how to use their dodge to shave off damage from attacks that manage to hit them.
Skill Difficulty DC
Skill challenge DC is an organic statistic in Government Sanctioned. That is it's not simply an absolute value, say DC25, but instead takes a base DC and modified it based on the character's career level. This ensures a "terribly difficult" action remains "terribly difficult" from first to 200th level. This has the side effect of also saying that an easy skill check is just as easy for a highly skilled character as for a lowly skilled character. To combat this and to model the notion that a highly skilled character should be able to succeed more often at easy tasks than a lower skilled person and to model the ability for highly skilled characters to have stunning successes there is the notion on sliding scale exploding dice.
 | The mechanic to calculate the actual DC is: |
Difficulty | DC |
|---|---|
Trivial | 1 |
Easy | 5 |
Average | 10 |
Tough | 12 |
Challenging | 14 |
Formidable | 16 |
Epic | 18 |
Nearly impossible | 20 |
Opposed Skill Checks
 | Opposed skill checks are still being mechanically balanced and specified, so material in this section is subject to constant change until the mechanics are solidified. Check back often! |
Opposed skill checks are essentially the same as the normal skill check against a set DC except instead of having a set DC it is replaced by the opponent's skill rank/bonus. Many skill checks have directly opposed skill checks. For example, a player attempting to sneak past an unknowing guard pits his sneak skill against the guard's notice skill. If, however, the guard is on alert looking for the player or opponents, then the player's sneak skill is opposed by the guard's spot skill, instead.
However the opposed skill is determined, the resulting skill check is the same. The opposed DC is equal to the opponents skill bonus plus the skill's key attribute bonus, so the guard with a spot +3 and WIS +2 yields a DC of 5. If the player has a hide +2 and DEX +1 he has a bonus of +3 to his dice roll.
TODO to be continued...
Maximum Skill Levels
For class skills, the maximum rank in a given skill is your career level + 5 (or 200). For non-class skills, your maximum rank is half that.
Sliding Scale Exploding Dice
When a player rolls his d20's on a skill check, if any of them fall within their critical range, the dice is considered to have "exploded" and another dice is rolled and added to the result. Starting out, the threat range is simply a natural 20, but as you greatly increase in skill ranks, your threat range widens allowing for highly skilled players to get significantly better results at a skill at which they are highly skilled. The levels at which this range increases is still being balanced but tentatively at skill levels 75, 140, and 200.
This means a player with a skill level 75 has a threat range of 19-20, while a player at skill level 140 has a threat rang of 18-20 and a player who has maxed out his skill at 200 has a threat range of 17-20.
Skill Families
For the current list of skill families, check out the skill families page.
Skill Properties
Skill Family: the skill family this skill belongs to
Skill Name: the name of the skill
Key Attribute: the attribute governing this skill
Description: a description of the skill
Uses: examples that are common for the use of this skill
Synergy: any synergistic skills, if any
Skill List
These skills are pulled directly from the in-game database and should all be in effect for gameplay. Check the skill check page for an up-to-date pull from the database.
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