Athletics
Characteristic: Brawn
p. 105
A mountain to be scaled, a river to be swum, or a chasm that must be leapt: The Athletics skill governs these actions. Athletics serves as a measure of the character's overall fitness and physical conditioning.
- • Any aspects of climbing — including rappelling or swinging on a line — fall under the purview of the Athletics skill. The difficulty of these tasks is calculated by the surface and weather conditions during the attempts.
- • Characters who attempt to swim in difficult conditions must check their Athletics. Water conditions — particularly waves, current, and tides — dictate the overall challenge of any efforts to swim.
- • A character's vertical and horizontal jump are both determined through use of an Athletics check. Gravitational conditions and the distance required factor into the difficulty.
- • Any character can run, but sprinting or running for an extended time may fall under the purview of an Athletics check.
Athletics Difficulty
The difficulty of an Athletics check is set by the severity of the task and the conditions. Attempting to perform a routine task under normal conditions should never require a check.
A more challenging task — jumping more than a person's body length or staying afloat for hours — should require equal to the equivalent difficulty of the task. Adverse conditions — extreme rain, rough winds, or aggressive pursuit — could impose one or more A combination of these elements can make a check significantly more difficult. Extremely adverse conditions — hurricane force winds or a surface covered in oil — and superhuman feats may introduce one or more .
Athletics Bonus Symbols
- Success: Additional on an Athletics check can either reduce the time required to make the check or increase the distance traveled with that check.
- Advantage: on an Athletics check may be used to grant the character an additional Maneuver during the course of their turn that can only be taken to move or perform some sort of physical activity. Remember, characters can only take a maximum of two Maneuvers in their turn. Advantage can also generate bonus on other physical checks performed by allies that turn, or on physical checks the character performs later.
- Triumph: results on successful checks should allow the character to perform the check with truly impressive results — instead of heaving a boulder aside, they can hurl it bodily into the air, and instead of grabbing onto the edge of a hovering platform, the character could use their momentum to flip atop it, landing on their feet.
- Threat: Small amounts of may cause the character to suffer strain, while larger amounts of may cause the character to fall prone, or even suffer a wound from sprains and bruises.
- Despair: could even inflict a Critical Injury, chosen by the GM to be thematic or rolled randomly.