Abilities

Abilities represent raw capability, prowess, and effort. (In published Cortex Prime materials, these are called "Attributes." I renamed them for this game because "athletic ability" sounds more like a typical conversation than "athletic attribute." Confusingly, Cortex Prime has a different concept call "Abilities" that are not used in this game.) They rarely offer an insight into a character's experience, training, or external circumstances. Abilities are broad areas of performance, but they can be refined and clarified with (in order of preference) Distinctions, trait statements, and SFX.

Using Abilities

All tests and contests fall into one of these broad areas:

Academic: Knowledge and facts, memorization and recall
Athletic: Speed, reaction time, hand-eye coordination, and endurance.
Interpersonal: Interacting with other sophonts, emotional intelligence, savoir faire, and social grace.
Perception: Mental acuity, alertness, and awareness of your surroundings..
Strength: Physical power and muscle.
Technical: Knowledge of and proficiency with complex systems, whether mechanical or electronic.
Willpower: Mental resolve, concentration, focus, force of will, self-control, self-discipline, mental fortitude, and confidence.

Note that Strength and Athletic ability are separate. Cardiovascular endurance falls under Athletic ability, while lifting and holding a log is the province of Strength.

Rating Abilities

Abilities usually have a rating from to , although there are exceptions. Everyone has a rating in all of them, and they default to a for the first three. If you have more than three attributes, the rest default to a . Higher rated attributes must be balanced out by lower rated ones. During typical character creation, no character should have any ratings lower than a or higher than a .

These ratings may scale differently depending on your game, but in general they follow this basic scheme:

	Poor: Notably deficient in this area
	Typical: An average degree of ability
	Excellent: Above-average performance
	Remarkable: Greatly above average
	Incredible: Peak levels of ability