Skills are how critical events are resolved. A critical event is one in which the lives or health of the protagonists hang in the balance or one which represents a dramatic turning point for the story. Can our hero dodge the incoming fire, or can the unskilled human activate the FTL jump sequence on an unfamiliar starship before the pirates can complete their boarding action? These are the sort of situations in which skill rolls are made. Bob driving to the market to buy radishes is not (unless bob dosen't know how to drive and suffers a seinior moment).
How do skills work?
A character's Skill Rating is the sum of his knowledge, intuitive ability, training and native tallent. Skills may total up to 200%. When a challenge occurrs, the player rolls a percentile die and the Game Director may modify it to account for especialy easy or difficult circumstances, substandard or masterwork equipment or unfamiliar systems. The modification takes the form of a + or - to the ROLL a player makes (remember high is bad, low is good). the player then compares the modified roll to his Skill Rating and if it is lower or equal to the Rating, he suceeds. Critical (01-03%) sucesses allways suceed, no mater what the situation.
Learning new skills.
During character creation there are two groups of skills that a character automaticaly has access to; Species Skills and Societal Skills. Species skills include things that are a part of the species' inate abilities (like Balancing and Climbing in humans or Shifting and Psychic Ability in the Xe'phandi and the native language for each species respectively) and are learned as a part of growing up.
Societal skills are the skills that one learns as a product of growing up in your society. These skills are affected greatly by the Technology level of your planet. TL 10 human Societal Skills include; Drive: Automobile, Craft: Food, Unarmed and Knowledge: Mathematics.
Background skills are aquired from the character's background, wich include school or technical training, military training and any careers the character may have had prior to begining play. The background section details how many points and what skill selections may be taken.
While the lists of Species, Background and Societal skills varies from planet to planet, and species to species, the number of point available for the starting skill of remains the same (relatively). The average of a character's Agility, Cleverness and Insight, result in the number of points that are available to be placed in the Starting category of the character's inital skills.
Once play has begun, a new skill may be purchased for a one time cost of (100 - the cleverness secondary) in experience points. This requires the character to find a trainer to educate her in the basics of the skill, and requires 1 day for every point of experience required to learn the new skill. This results in the character gaining 1D worth of points in the starting column of the apropriate skill.
Increasing skill ratings.
Whenever a character uses a skill, either sucessfully or unsucessfully, he places a tickmark next to it. At the end of the scene, the player rolls %D verses the charcter's skill rating. If the roll is greater than the rating, the player may add 1D% to the skill (in the experience column). If the roll is equal to or lower than the skill rating, he has learned nothing new, and does not increase his skill.
Alternatively, the player may pay an experience point cost equal to the current rating +1 to increase the skill rating by 1 point. This increase takes effect in a number of days equal to the experience point cost.
As you can see, it becomes increasingly difficult (and expensive) to increase one's skill the better you get.
Category skills vs. specific skills
Some skills are category skills. That is, all of the skills that fall under that category are governed by it. Someone with training in piloting, understands the basic principles needed to steer both sail boats and motor boats. The character's skill in a category skill may never exceed the lowest skill rating of the lowest rated skill a character is trained in, in that category.
Some category skills are listed as such only because they belong to no other catgory. Examples of these skills include Psychic Ability and Mental Focus.
Some skills are sub-category skills, and are the category skill for a group of skills that also fall under a broader category. An example is Knowledge: Planetology: Specific Planet.
