What skills give

The passive skills help you more the higher they are:

• Tumble adds to the Dodge part of your Defence, the one kind whose bonuses add up.

• Stealth makes your footsteps, and the doors you open and close, quieter (see Hearing). Your attacks are as loud as ever. It also helps you slip past a creature that sees in the dark: +8 at 100, +12 at 200.

• Listen lets you hear fainter sounds. Your hearing threshold drops by the number shown, but never below 1.

• Balance takes away some of the slowdown of a heavy load (see Burden). A burdened master is slowed by a tenth, not a quarter. It also saves part of the time rough ground adds to a step (bush, reeds, rubble, ice): 60 % of the extra at 100, all of it at 200. Water and marsh are Swim’s, not Balance’s. And it saves part of the extra time a staggered action costs: half at 100, three quarters at 200.

• Music makes your songs last longer: a degree more at 50, at 100, and every 100 after. It also makes them harder for those they are sung against to shake off: +4 to their difficulty at 100, +8 at 200. Its two rows in the table below are its ladders. Every song trains it.

• Athletics makes you quicker in everything you do: a twentieth at 100 and a tenth at 200. It adds to the quickness of talents such as Fleet-footed and Quick. Your load slows you on top of it. It also helps you kick doors in. Besides kicks, it trains now and then when you act under a load that slows you, on journeys on the overworld, and when you climb out of a pit.

• Escape artist slips bonds without being asked. When being Held, Webbed, or Pinned stops what you try, the better of your Strength and Dexterity plus the skill is checked as part of the attempt (see Slipping bonds): +8 at 100, +12 at 200. Untrained, a web or a pin just stops the step. It also shortens the climb out of a pit: half from 50, none from 100. And it lets you wriggle past someone who will not make way. Every such check and climb, and half the wriggles, train it.

• Survival makes your journeys on the overworld quicker. It does nothing for your steps in a local area or a dungeon. It also lets you forage in the wild, finding food more often the higher it is (see Foraging).

• Swim makes you quicker through water and marsh: of what wading adds to a step, 60 % is saved at 100 and all of it at 200. The Swimmer talent saves all of it at once. When you plunge through the ice, you make a check on your Toughness plus the table’s points against 11; if you make it, you lose half the hit points. Swim is also what lets you into deep water at all.

• Negotiation gets you better prices in shops: you pay less and are offered more. A healer or a sage who sells a service asks less too, though a temple never haggles. A deal made (goods paid for, your own sold, or a service paid) trains it now and then.

• Appraise now and then tells you what something you carry or wear really is.

  • Every hour of game time (resting too), if you carry anything you do not fully know, you have a small chance to learn one of those things, picked at random. That covers an unidentified magic item, a scroll of a kind you have not identified, or a wand whose charges you do not know. The chance is 2 % an hour at 0, 12 % at 100, 20 % at 200 (see the table below; items of Appraisal raise it). Only those trained in Appraise get it at all. Each thing learned this way trains it.
  • Appraise also has an eye for food. An hour at a time, a trained eye may tell how fresh a corpse or food is, in words (fresh, old, or rotten), in the eat list and when you look at it (see Food). Survival gives the same eye, and with both the chances add up. Appraise gives 25 % at 0, 60 % at 100, and 80 % at 200. Survival gives 15 %, 35 %, and 50 %. Rotten food is easier to tell, 25 points more, and no chance is above 95 %. Eating food whose freshness you could tell trains Appraise now and then.

• Alchemy and Enchanting look the same way, each hour, each at its own things. Alchemy tells a potion or flask whose kind you do not know (“You recognise your fizzy scarlet potion: a flask of fire.”). Enchanting tells a magic thing whose magic you do not know: an unidentified weapon, armour, ring or amulet, or a wand or rod. Each gives 5 % an hour at 0, 25 % at 100, and 40 % at 200, trained only, besides Appraise’s own chance. Neither trains by it.

• Mining lets you dig at all: untrained, you cannot. It makes digging quicker: each turn does 25 % more work at 100 and 40 % more at 200, on top of what talents and a Delving tool add. Alberich in Fyrdelf teaches it for gold.

• Herbalism may find a herb besides on a forage that finds something (see Foraging). You need it to gather herbs from the glowing fungus, and it finds one more herb there for every 50.

• Search helps you find secret doors and other hidden things when you search (s, Alt+s). A master’s search reaches one cell farther (see Searching).

• Spot lets you notice hidden things in passing at all, except traps. The higher it is, the more you notice.

• Detect traps does for hidden traps what Search and Spot do for everything else. It helps you find them when you search and lets you notice them in passing at all. The higher it is, the more of them you find. Thieves and kobolds start trained in it.

• Open lock lets you pick locks at all (the Pick lock ability). The higher it is, the more often a try works (see Doors).

• Steal lets you steal at all. The higher it is, the likelier your hand goes unnoticed (see Stealing).

• Bluff lets you feint at all (Feint in the abilities menu; see Feinting), and lets you talk your way past some parties met on the overworld. The higher it is, the harder your lies are to see through: the Willpower check they ask is 8 harder at 100 and 12 at 200 (at most 20).

• Heal lets you bind your bleeding and tend your poisons and diseases at all. The higher it is, the more often a try works (see Treating yourself).

• Knowledge is knowing your enemy.

  • It adds to your check against a creature’s drain, a disease its attack carries, or its hold when you struggle. It helps only against creatures whose level your Knowledge stands above, and more the farther above (see the table below; at most 6).
  • Standing above a creature’s level by even 1 also tells you in look mode what its kind resists, is immune to, and is vulnerable to, in words. That is lore about its kind, so it says nothing of what this one wears or has drunk, and it earns no marks.
  • It earns marks whenever you gain discovery experience (a first kill of a kind, a new place that pays), and now and then whenever you roll to resist such a power, whatever comes of it.
  • A creature’s level is in its table.

• Sneak attack adds d6s to a hit on a foe that has not seen you, or is surprised.

  • You get 1d6 once you are trained at all, one more at 25, 50, 75, and 100, then one more every 50 (5d6 at 100, 7d6 at 200). The dice come after Protection, a critical never doubles them, and they add to the dice of talents such as Ambusher.
  • A blow counts at any reach. A shot, a throw, or a spell that rolls to hit counts only within 6 cells (Long reach: 9). Nothing without vitals takes the dice.
  • It also makes those you catch unawares slower to gather their wits: their initiative check is 8 harder at 100, 12 at 200.
  • Each sneak attack that hits trains it half the time.
  • Two weapon abilities trigger on a sneak attack that hits: Knife in the dark (Daggers 5) leaves the foe bleeding, and Hunter’s shot (Marksman 6) pins it for one or two actions. Neither triggers without the dice.

  The whole rule is under Surprise and sneak attacks.

• Initiative helps you keep your wits when something falls on you unseen: +8 to the initiative check at 100, +12 at 200. When you are surprised all the same, your next action loses less time: half the extra at 100, three quarters at 200. Every such check trains it.

• Intimidate lets you threaten one foe (Intimidate in the abilities menu; see Intimidating). It makes your threats and your War cry (the berserker’s) harder to stand against: the Willpower check they ask is 8 harder at 100 and 12 at 200 (at most 20). A threat also frightens longer the more the skill adds. Every threat and every cry trains it, whatever comes of it.

• Spellcraft steadies your casting. Every spell you cast with your own mana makes a check after it goes off, and a failed one is a miscast. The skill adds to that check (+14 at 100, +22 at 200, +40 at 999) and makes a miscast milder (10 off the miscast table’s total at 100, 20 at 200). Untrained, you still cast, with nothing added.

The numbers

Skill focus makes one skill you are trained in count 25 higher in the table below, the way a magic item’s bonus does. It works past 100 too, since 100 only slows a skill’s growth and is no ceiling. It stacks with Master of none and any magic item. Your Skills screen still shows the value you trained. On most skills the +25 is worth 2 points of what the skill gives below 100, and 1 past it. On Stealth’s quiet, it is 15 % less noise below 100 and 7 % past it.

The table has one row for each thing a skill gives, the skill named on its first row. The columns are the skill’s value, from 0 to 200. Between two columns the benefit grows a little at a time, never down. “—” means it gives nothing yet at that value.

See also: Using your skills, Abilities, and Experience and levelling up.