NOCH NICHT ÜBERSETZT

Skill sets

In How to be a Hero three types of skill sets form the basis for your character and its Abilities: Actions, Knowledge and Social.

These skill sets indicate your character's Abilities in a particular field of skills.

If you want to perform an action you never learned explicitly, you must attempt a roll on the value of the skill set to which the corresponding action belongs.

What do these skill sets mean?

A physical action is what your character actively does, usually with physical consequences. It doesn't matter if you want to cut down trees or ride a horse, all these skills are checked against Physical. 

Your character needs knowledge, for example, to understand a foreign language, to be able to classify political connections, to understand mathematical principles or to be able to differentiate plants and animals.

Social skills are particularly necessary when interacting with NPCs. For example if your character wants to haggle with a merchant, try to manipulate someone’s thinking or see if they are being lied to based on their knowledge of human nature.

You will find more details in the articles Actions, Knowledge and Social.

To look up

The values of skill sets are calculated by dividing the sum of the skill points used in a skill set by 10. It is rounded up commercially (i.e. from 5 upwards).
Example:
                             123 points spent in physical = 12 points in physical                             
                             129 points spent in physical = 13 points in physical

Physical

Skills of the action category are always physical, whether you are trying to lift a heavy object or are using fine motor skills to craft a wooden figurine from raw wood.

Here are a few examples of typical skills that are categorized as actions:

climbing
running
punching
kicking
shooting
tailoring
cooking
lifting
woodwork
fishing
carving
hiding

Knowlege

Abilities/Skills, which find their roots in the knowledge category, are often neutral and analytical.

Examples for this would be abilities, which make great use of knowledge and education, such as foreign languages, tracking and herbalism.

Here are some examples for skills found the knowledge category:

German
Polish
English
Latin
Fashion design
Geographics
Tracking
Politics
Mathematics
Literature knowledge
Herbalism
Plant knowledge
Animal knowledge
Programming
Perception

Soziales

Social describes abilities and skills that have to do with all things interpersonal.

That, for example, could be lying or manipulation, even more passive abilities such as profiling.

Other abilities, like trading, are also part of the Social category:

Trading
Lying
Profiling
Manipulating
Charming
Impressing
Smooth talking
Threatening
Convincing

Fähigkeiten

Abilities are, as the name suggests, skills that your character explicitly has learned or mastered. Instead of rolling for a skill set it’s always advantageous to use a suitable ability instead.

Abilities are always categorized in either of the three skill sets. If you are uncertain which ability belongs into which category of skill sets, the GM will decide for you.

The final value of your ability score will be calculated from the ability points you spent and the respective skill set score. The bonus you gain from the skill set score will be added to each ability, unless the player decides against it.

You can find detailed information on this in the exemplary character creation.

To look up:

The final value of the ability that is supposed to be rolled on consists from the points spent in the ability plus the values from the skill set score.

Example :
Hartmut spent 200 points in Actions ( actions = 20 ) and 50 of these in woodcutting ( woodcutting = 50. His final value in woodcutting is calculated as follows:
woodcutting 50 + actions 20 = woodcutting 70

Geistesblitzpunkte

Eureka points offer you the opportunity to take fate into your own hands. And here’s how it works:

Eureka points allow you to reroll a messed up check, as long as the initial roll was not a critical fail. Take your calculated basic value of each category Action, Knowledge, and Social and divide it by ten again. These are now your eureka points.

No cheating! You round to the nearest whole number e.g. if you have the basic value 12, you get one eureka point in this category. If you have a basic value of 15, you get 2 eureka points. They are only valid for their corresponding group.

This means you can’t use a point meant for Knowledge for a messed up running test (Physical). When a eureka point is used it is gone for the moment.

So, if you have just a single point in a category, think twice about when to use it.

Eureka points are valid for only one evening or adventure. This means that they don’t regenerate until you finish the adventure. Unused points are not transferable to the next evening or adventure! So if you start a second adventure with the same character, you will begin with full eureka points, no more and no less.

Your eureka points regenerate each new session. Should your adventure take longer than one evening, your eureka points regenerate.

Rechnerische Charaktererstellung

Preface

After all the explanations we have finally reached the actual character creation. If you want to look up any details, just take a look at the boxes labeled To look up that you can find on the Skill Sets and Abilities pages.

A short preamble: every human being is better - or worse - at doing certain things than others are. Some skills are easy to learn while others will be more of a challenge. As an example, if a person is physically fit, they are most likely working out in one way or another, and thus have more stamina than others.

A person who graduated from university usually has a broader range of knowledge and a stand-up comedian is probably good with people in some way.

Thus, the scores you get in your skill sets are based on the values in your Abilities.

Calculation

At the beginning every character starts with 400 ability points . First of all you should spend the points, in a way that suits your character, in your skill set. Thereafter count the points in the skill set subclasses and divide them by 10. A ability must not set to 0.

Here you should round.

Example:

                             129 Points in the Actions skill set = Actions 13

Once all your points are spent in your preferred abilities all what is left are two steps till your character is ( arithmetically) done.

Now we are about to calculate the eureka points. Take your points ability points and divide by 10.

Here you should round.

Example:

                             Actions 13 divide by 10 = 1,3 = 1 eureka points in actions
                             Actions 18 divide by 10 = 1,8 = 2 eureka points in actions

Abilities are also used to show how good or easy something is to be learned, therefore they have influence to the skills.

Take the ability value and add it to every skill belonging.

Example:

                            Woodcutting 50 + Actions 13 = Woodcutting 63

Now your character is ready!

Last but not least, your skills can not have more than 100 points. If you get higher during the calculation, take the surplus and spend them elsewhere in this given ability.

Here are two suggestions for maximizing the fun:

Avoid skills with low values. Spending one or even 5 points in every skill will not help you at all.
If a player wants this desperately, they can waive the ability bonus for certain skills.

Character creation in tabular form

Howkys character sheet (400 points):

Distribute first…

Add up…

Divide by ten to receive the values…

Divide by ten again to get the eureka points ...

and finally sum it up!

Lebenspunkte

Each character starts off with 100 HP. Once their HP drops below 10, the character falls unconscious and needs medical attention. Should his HP drop to 0, the character dies. When a character is badly wounded by a single attack and loses more than 60 HP at once, he passes out as well and is therefore no longer able to parry or attack.

He also needs medical aid in order to be able to fight and act again.

Vor- und Nachteile

Vor und Nachteile/en