As an extension of core stats, abilities are used for more specific expertise. Abilities are mainly used to see if an action is successful or not (for example: finding a specific person in a crowded tavern). Each core stat helps the legend improve in one of three abilities.
Strength abilities
- Athletics - Performing physical activities like climbing, long-jumping and swimming upstream.
- Alteration - Efficiently altering physical objects.
- Overpower - Commanding control over others using physical power, either using overt threats or physical violence.
Intelligence abilities
- Physics - A systematic method of understanding and predicting the universe. Usually practiced in a highly specific topic.
- Sorcery - Embraces the unpredictable and sporatic part of the universe in magic, elemental beings and more.
- Civilization - Knowledge of the civilized world and history. This can include language, culture, deities.
Endurance abilities
- Fortitude - Determines the harm done by physical hazards like traps, torture, poisons and more.
- Willpower - Determines the harm done by magical hazards like magical traps, mind controlling magic and more.
- Recovery - Determines the speed you are able to recover from wounds, spells or sickness.
Agility abilities
- Acrobatics - Performing stunts like dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips and retaining your balance in tense situations.
- Nimbleness - Reaction time and stealthy actions to remain unseen.
- Trickery - Devious actions like lockpicking, wearing a convincing disguise and sleight of hand actions.
Sensory abilities
- Awareness - Allowing your instincts to act for you, passively keeping track of your surroundings. Impulses from awareness may not yield a direct answer, but will alert you when something is off.
- Investigation - Actively spotting a certain place in search of the odd and peculiar. Useful to find items of interest.
- Empathy - Increase the understanding of another based on social interaction and body language.
Luck abilities
- Fortune - Accounts for the unpredictable, how likely the hands of fate tend to act in your favor.
- Comfort - Communicate pleasantly in a one to one manner and the ability to delight a big audience with any form of entertainment.
- Persuasion - The expertise to change someones mind, likeliness of making a stranger take action towards your suggestion.
Ability scores
All abilities start on 0 and can be increased by using:
- Ability points - Can be spent to gain increase an ability of choice by 1. Level 1 grant six ability points, and the other levels grant 1 ability point.
- Core stats - each point in a core stat can also be spent on an associated ability of choice. This means that a point in endurance also increases either Fortitude, Willpower or Recovery by 1.
Using an ability
A player can act on his/her own. To do something, the narrator might ask an ability to roll from the player. This can come up in any situation, like in battle (possibly at the cost of actions) or in a busy tavern. Depending on the specific action that the player wants to do, the narrator will decide the appropriate ability. An ability roll consists of rolling a d20 and adding that to the ability score of the specific ability to get a result.
Determining success
Ability rolls can be used in two ways: either the narrator decides a fixed difficulty for the roll or there will be another ability roll involved, highest wins. Fixed difficulty This list is a general way to handle ability difficulties. On difficulty 6, the result of the ability roll has to be 6 or higher.
- 5: Very easy - Notice something that is right in plain sight (Investigation).
- 10: Easy - Let a drunk fess up a rumor (Trickery).
- 15: Medium - Sabotage a wheel from a wagon so it will break when it is used the next time (Alteration).
- 20: Hard - Open a quality lock quickly using but a few lockpicks (Trickery).
- 25: Very hard - Leap across a 6-meter Chasm (Athletics).
- 30: Nearly Impossible - Track a squad of orcs across hard ground after 48 hours of constant rainfall (Investigation).
Ability roll vs. ability roll
Competition ability rolls are not using the fixed difficulties, instead, you will compete against another ability roll. The highest total (using ability score + d20 roll) wins. On ties, the highest ability score wins. If those are also tied, the narrator can pick based on the situation.
- Pickpocket (Trickery), notice of being pickpocketed (Awareness)
- Grappling someone (Overpower), squeezing out of a strangle (Nimbleness)
- Amazing dance-off or sing-off in a crowded tavern (Comfort vs Comfort)
- Interrogating a target (Empathy), concealing a lie (Trickery)
- Arm-wrestling contest (Overpower vs Overpower)
- Catch the wedding bouquet (Nimbleness vs Nimbleness)
Abilities in battle
Between all the chaos in battle, Legends also have to option to use an ability roll. Abilities can help to tackle an issue in a creative, more role-play fashion. A successful ability roll can give any benefit, this chapter will go over examples where abilities can be used and how players can deal with them. Remember, all of this is free format, meaning it is up to the narrator to actually allow the use of ability rules in this way. But we think a good narrator should encourage these actions in combination with conventional actions to keep the battles clear yet interesting.