You also have a Meta-skills category which rates your meta-skills. These aren't proper skills, but represent relationships, personal motivations and obsessions. So you could take a meta-skill like "Hates Olaf the Mighty" or "Loyal to Count Morgren". Augustus would have "Hatred of Necromancers".
Meta-skills are priced just like skills, but are limited to a maximum rating of +3. You can include them as a bonus in any skill test or stat roll that they would apply to. Occasionally, they'll be applied as a penalty, such as your Hatred of Olaf the Mighty making it harder for you to heal him. But mostly they're positive ratings.
Since you buy them separately, you can get a nice, substantial (and fairly cheap) bonus that's cumulative with your skills. The +3 max keeps them from getting out of hand. Starting PCs will probably only get 6 points worth of meta-skills... enough for 6 +1s, 2 +2s or a single +3. It might be acceptable to allow meta-skills to be increased up to +5 with XP... but I think that would have to be playtested, since they overlap with regular abilities and can thus give you a big bonus.
Meta-skills cannot represent an obsession with a particular skill (no "Loves fighting with swords"). It must involve specific people... if the person you were using your skill against could be swapped out with a completely different person and you'd still get the bonus, then it's not an appropriate meta-skill.
The "person" can be somewhat general, such as a specific race or a group... Defender of Carpathians would work, since you could replace Carpathians with another nationality and lose the bonus.
Posted by Kiz at January 9, 2005 06:15 PMCommentsPost a comment