Base Chances, Uses & Critical Effects
Each skill below is listed with its base or starting chance — the ordinary competence anyone in the Young Kingdoms has by default — followed by what the skill actually covers. There's no upper limit to a skill percentile; expect trained specialists to regularly exceed 100%. A critical result should accomplish something distinctly better than an ordinary success, and a fumble something distinctly worse than an ordinary failure — the specific examples given below are just a starting point for the gamemaster to riff on, since the best critical or fumble outcome usually depends on the exact situation in play. Gamemasters may also want to keep some roll results secret until their consequences play out naturally.
Extra, unlabeled skill spaces exist on the adventurer sheet for any new skill a gamemaster wants to introduce; only the gamemaster can define what a new skill covers.
Covers only the pursuits nobility would recognize as genuine culture: conversation, courtly manners, reciting poetry, formal dance, song, storytelling, torture, or playing a portable instrument such as a lyre or flute. Anything that works up a sweat — tumbling, juggling — is considered beneath refined taste. To pass as a cultured person, a character's own Art skill needs to sit within about 30 percentiles of whoever's judging them; too far above is as suspicious as too far below. An adventurer can hold more than one Art.
Critical: the performance is unusually memorable or entertaining. Fumble: it draws groans, protest, or open anger from the audience.
The skill of negotiating and convincing. When the gap between two sides is slight, whichever party rolled lower generally gets their way. Where the gap is wide, other rolls — Charisma, Fast Talk, Oratory, or a well-timed Insight — can help close it, and each success at one of those raises the following Bargain roll's chance by ten percentiles. Bargain is meant for concrete disputes like the price of a horse, not abstract philosophy; use Fast Talk instead for outright deception.
Critical: forges a friendship, saves money, or wins favorable terms. Fumble: the reverse, possibly at real cost to the adventurer.
Unarmed combat using every natural weapon available — kicks, bites, head butts, gouges, forearm smashes. Halve the effective percentile when fighting an armored opponent. Since no dedicated martial-arts skill appears in the saga, a Brawl skill of 101% or higher adds an extra 1D3 damage to reflect refined technique. Brawl can also combine with Cestus or Iron Claw once both reach 101% or better, using whichever percentage is higher alongside the combined damage.
Critical: an unarmored target may be knocked unconscious, an armored one stunned for a round. Fumble: the brawler pulls a muscle or cracks a rib, losing 1D3 hit points.
No roll is needed for short, easy climbs; longer or hazardous ones (night, rain, wind, a slick surface, full armor) apply a 10–20 percentile penalty per complication. A failed Climb allows a Dexterity or Luck roll to avoid falling. Climbing quietly means succeeding at both Climb and Move Quietly — succeed at one but not the other and the climber either makes noise or falls silently, depending on which skill failed.
Critical: the climb goes unusually fast, or something extra can be carried along. Fumble: always a fall, with a loud, unmistakable landing.
Hides an item using other objects, debris, cloth, secret panels, or a change in appearance. A success hides anything palm- or knife-sized under clothing without a telltale bulge; larger objects are harder to hide, and anything truly enormous can't be concealed by one person alone. This skill only conceals — hiding a person in plain sight is Disguise instead.
Critical: the object becomes undetectable except by magic or a critical Search. Fumble: the hiding place draws attention instead.
Covers practical trades and pleasing handiwork alike, subject to the gamemaster's approval — armorer, boat-builder, brewer, carpenter, mason, weaver, and so on, along with sculpture, painting, jewelry-making, and most musicianship. A few entertainment-craft specialties get their own notes: sleight-of-hand for cards, pickpocketing, and small vanishing tricks; wire-walking for balance at height; acting, juggling, and tumbling as time-honored performance arts (tumbling plus wire-walking makes a trapeze artist); and card-reading and palmistry, which grants no real psychic insight but is handy for putting people at ease (pair with Insight to read a face well). Blank Craft spaces exist on the adventurer sheet for whichever specialties a character picks up.
Critical: the result is more durable, memorable, or attracts a patron's interest; at 101% or better a Craft use can even mend an item better than new. Fumble: a fall, a blunder, or a shoddy product.
Changes posture, costume, or voice — theatrical makeup and dim lighting both help. Passing for a specific person, rather than just a type of person, halves the effective skill and only works at a distance. A successful Charisma roll from either party shifts the odds of detection by ten percentiles.
Critical: the disguised adventurer can issue convincing orders or fool even people who know them well. Fumble: onlookers immediately grow suspicious.
Lets an adventurer instinctively evade a seen blow, or open and close distance with an opponent. It's a free action usable whenever attacked, freely combinable with Parry, and can be used more than once per round — though each additional use in the same round drops the effective skill by 30 percentiles. A fallen fighter who dodges successfully can also get back up without being hit. Dodge cannot be used against a Parry (Parry only triggers in response to an attack), but works normally against any other attack, including missile fire (which can miss, but can't itself be dodged in the usual sense). See the reference table below for how a Dodge result interacts with an attacker's own result.
Gives a solid estimate of an item's worth — a gemstone, an old sword, a horse — though apparent worth and actual worth aren't always the same thing, and worth ultimately depends on finding a buyer.
Critical: the adventurer grasps an item's true value and significance. Fumble: they overpay, undersell, or miss clear evidence of value.
A quick, small-stakes success gets the target to go along with something briefly — lending a little money, sharing minor gossip — until a private moment and a successful Idea roll lets them come back to their senses. Fast Talk works on a handful of listeners at most (use Oratory for a crowd) and doesn't work on someone already convinced (use Bargain or Oratory instead). A successful Charisma roll adds ten percentiles to the chance of success.
Critical: the target stays convinced for longer than usual. Fumble: not only fails, but may anger the target or arouse their suspicion.
Reserved for creatures with an inherent flying ability — clakars, dragons, giant owls, winged Myyrrhn — who receive it automatically. No roll is needed for uneventful flight in good conditions; a roll is required for daring maneuvers, aerial combat, or flying in poor weather, and an extended nonstop flight calls for a periodic Constitution roll instead. Weather, worn armor, and stunt difficulty all stack as penalties (a difficult stunt in a severe wind while wearing light armor, for instance, compounds three separate reductions). Larger flying creatures (SIZ 40 or higher) resist wind penalties better, reducing the effective wind severity by one level for every 20 points of Size above 20. A flying creature's attacks and parries can never exceed its own Fly skill.
Critical: an especially skillful maneuver, a bonus to the next Fly roll, or extended time aloft. Fumble: a bad position in aerial combat, or an uncontrolled crash with no Jump roll allowed to soften it.
Requires some form of cover — bushes, rocks, shadow — to escape detection during pursuit, surveillance, or a sudden ambush. Moving any real distance while hidden also calls for a Move Quietly roll. A motionless adventurer who's mostly but not entirely concealed halves an observer's chance of noticing them.
Critical: negates an opponent's successful Search. Fumble: somehow draws attention instead.
Reads another person's character and motives after a few minutes in their presence. Genuinely skillful deceit can't be seen through this way unless something unexpected rattles the target's confidence.
Critical: the target's motives are laid bare, and the skill-user knows exactly the right thing to say. Fumble: the adventurer badly misreads the situation.
A standing adventurer can leap up to grab something one and a half times their own height, or leap down their own height safely; a running start extends a horizontal jump to twice standing height. A successful Jump while falling softens the landing, subtracting 1D6 from the fall's hit point loss. Jumping is impossible in cumbersome armor, and reduced by 25–50 percentiles in lighter or moderate armor.
Critical: the jump goes further or quieter than normal. Fumble: increases the damage from the resulting fall.
Understanding and interpreting the significance of sounds — a faint conversation, a snapping twig, a blade easing from its scabbard. Some sounds simply can't be understood no matter the roll.
Critical: makes out a conversation at unusual range, or the number and intent of people approaching in darkness. Fumble: misinterprets what's heard.
Knowledge of the wider multiverse beyond the Young Kingdoms, whose existence is treated as myth by all but scholars and sages. It grows through conversation with eminent sorcerers, astral travel, questioning beings from other planes, and scholarly research among grimoires and other lore. Many questions simply have no known answer, and even a successful roll may turn up nothing at all.
Critical: unlocks genuinely definitive information. Fumble: wrongly concludes something is impossible, or vice versa.
Moving with little or no sound — sneaking up on someone, slipping past a distracted guard. Halve this skill for any adventurer wearing plate or chain mail; running while wearing armor and staying quiet is essentially impossible, since armor squeaks, rattles, and clangs unpredictably.
Critical: the adventurer can even run in armor without noise. Fumble: extreme clumsiness — even distant guards come running.
General knowledge of animals, plants, sea life, and climate for regions the adventurer is actually familiar with. Halve the effective skill in unfamiliar lands, and reduce it to a quarter on another plane entirely — it reflects common knowledge, not everything that could theoretically be known.
Critical: identifies a rare creature or uncovers a natural secret. Fumble: misidentifies something, or misleads.
Sways a genuine crowd — for a handful of people, use Bargain or Fast Talk instead. An oration takes real time, twenty minutes to several hours, and a successful Charisma roll adds ten percentiles to the chance of success. A successful oration holds the crowd's mood for the rest of the day or overnight.
Critical: convinces the crowd for a week or more, with some persuaded for years. Fumble: the crowd turns to mockery, or worse.
Represents fluency in one specific language of the Young Kingdoms, gained by study or by living where it's spoken; there's no cap on how many separate languages a character can know. This skill also grants basic literacy if the language has a written form. An adventurer's Bargain, Fast Talk, and Oratory in a foreign tongue can never exceed their skill in that language itself, and 60% or better lets a speaker pass convincingly as a native.
Critical/fumble: shapes what's understood in a difficult, archaic, or dangerous text or exchange.
Every human adventurer starts with Common Tongue as a childhood language, usable without a roll under ordinary conditions; a genuinely archaic or difficult document might call for one. Use the separate Scribe skill for fine or elaborate writing rather than basic literacy.
Critical: greatly impresses listeners regardless of the situation. Fumble: listeners peg the speaker as a foreigner, impostor, or otherwise suspicious.
Covers reviving the unconscious, setting broken bones, treating burns, and basic human anatomy. It has little effect on ongoing disease and only a slight effect against most poisons. One successful use per ailment restores 1D3 hit points per separate attack or injury treated; a failed attempt means waiting roughly an hour before trying again (though a different healer can try immediately).
Critical: restores 2D3 hit points. Fumble: the bad treatment costs the patient 1D3 hit points instead.
Young Kingdoms locks tend to be simple, since magic guards anything of real value; a set of metal picks is needed to work heavy wood or iron mechanisms. The skill extends to opening secret drawers without damaging them, and to breaking and restoring seals. (Cutting purses or picking pockets instead falls under Craft: Sleight-of-Hand.)
Critical: the lock opens immediately and silently. Fumble: the lock jams shut or breaks noisily.
Recognizing, compounding, and dispensing the Young Kingdoms' pharmacopoeia — philters, infusions, poisons, antidotes, hallucinogens. Potions requiring no sacrifice of magic points are non-magical and can affect any human; finding the right ingredients may itself require a good Natural World roll. Skilled brewers (101% or higher) can always find and use the correct ingredients except on a roll of 00; less skilled brewers who fail a Luck roll must substitute, with reduced effect (see the potion-duration table below).
Critical: the brew is unusually strong, or made faster or more cheaply than normal. Fumble: the potion turns out harmful.
Lets any adventurer fix or build simple equipment, tack, rafts, and boats, given the right tools and materials — though only magic can fix magic. This skill's success chance never improves with practice, only with a change in Dexterity; if the adventurer has a relevant Craft skill higher than Repair/Devise, use that instead.
Critical: the repaired or built item is as good as one made by a true craftsperson. Fumble: the item breaks or fails at a crucial moment.
Applies to horses, donkeys, and mules, and covers animal care, riding gear, using a mount at speed, as a pack animal, and through rough terrain or weather. If a mount shies, rears, or bolts, the rider's chance of staying safe equals their Ride skill; a fall costs 1D6 hit points (a successful Jump roll saves that much instead). A mounted adventurer's attacks and parries can never exceed their Ride skill. Halve this skill for unusual mounts like camels or elephants; a genuinely rare mount, such as a dragon, needs a wholly separate skill started at 01%.
Critical: evades pursuit, keeps a spooked mount under control, or pulls off a difficult maneuver. Fumble: the mount is disabled, tack breaks, or the rider is thrown.
Understanding how smaller poled, oared, and sailing craft behave in wind, storm, and tide, including spotting hidden obstacles and reading the weather. Sailors of 101% or higher can maneuver an oceangoing vessel to reduce damage from natural or non-magical harm much like a fall is softened by Jump. Larger vessels need a captain (101% Sailing or better) and ideally a first mate (90% or better); their rolls generally decide the ship's fate in a crisis.
Critical/fumble: in ship-to-ship combat, typically represents an extra edge gained or lost in maneuvering rather than triggering a wholly separate effect.
Recognizes a particular scent or taste after only brief exposure — detecting poison or drugs in food or wine, or identifying a perfume or lingering animal scent. A pretender to refined culture should have 50% or better in this skill.
Critical: might expose a poisoner from traces on hand or clothing, or identify every wine at a banquet. Fumble: exposes the adventurer to danger or embarrassment.
Creates polished manuscripts, plans, grimoires, navigation maps, and similar documents, and can duplicate or forge existing ones — the higher the skill, the harder the forgery is to detect.
Critical: produces a flawless map, unmistakable orders, or an undetectable forgery. Fumble: produces something sloppy enough to be mocked, or dangerous enough to cause real trouble.
A visual, specific skill — spotting a secret door, an assassin behind a tapestry, or metal glinting in a distant grove. It requires some idea of what's being looked for; for a general sense of a town or landscape, use an Idea roll instead.
Critical: detects something very difficult to notice. Fumble: misses something obvious.
Keeps an adventurer afloat and moving through water; a roll is only needed in surprising or life-threatening situations. Failure begins drowning, with a fresh Swim roll each round to recover. A swimmer moves at roughly a quarter of normal land speed (up to half for short bursts), and can tow a buoyant object up to their own Size+2, or carry a sinking object up to their Strength in weight. Most armor heavier than leather makes swimming very difficult to impossible; leather and barbarian armor stay light enough to swim in until soaked through.
Critical: notable speed or strength of stroke. Fumble: begins drowning and disorients the swimmer, who may fight off rescuers or head toward deeper water.
Picking something up and hitting a target at range. Larger stones and blocks need both hands and travel a yard per point of Strength exceeding their Size; a balanced hand-sized object travels further still. A palm-sized stone does 1D2 damage, a head-sized stone 1D4+1, and a torso-sized boulder 2D4+3 — all increasing further if dropped from height, and boulders half the target's Size or larger can kill outright when dropped from above. Armor defends normally against thrown attacks.
Critical: extra damage or some other benefit to the thrower. Fumble: incidental damage to a bystander, or the thrown object breaks.
Follows the sign of a person, animal, or vehicle over soft ground while the trail is still fresh; the chance of success drops by 30 percentiles for every 24 hours that pass, and tracking is impossible over water, stone, or (in most cases) at night. A successful Search or a critical Track can pick up a trail that's been broken or deliberately obscured.
Critical: continues tracking where it normally couldn't. Fumble: follows a false trail confidently, or walks into an ambush.
Builds and disarms mechanical dead-falls, spring-loaded devices, pitfalls, and similar mechanisms — though not potions, demons, or magic. A success means the trap works as built, or is disarmed as intended; detecting someone else's trap generally needs a successful Search roll, and a trap hidden with Conceal Object may only be found by a critical Search.
Critical: only another critical roll can disarm this trap. Fumble: an accident occurs while building or disarming it.
Knowledge of the peoples, history, and lands east of the Young Kingdoms. Natives of the West begin at zero in this skill and must learn it through play; natives of the Unknown Kingdoms themselves start at 00% in it but at 15% in the equivalent skill covering the Young Kingdoms, reflecting where each group's blind spot naturally lies.
Critical: the adventurer deduces or learns an important secret or source. Fumble: fails to make an obvious connection, or forgets something already known.
A grappling attack aimed first at subduing rather than injuring an opponent; it can be parried with Wrestle or Brawl, or discouraged with a counterattack in the grapple's first round only. A successful, unparried Wrestle lets the attacker choose from several options: immobilize the target (an opposed Strength roll on the Resistance Table), automatically knock them down, attempt a knockout, disarm them across consecutive successful rounds, injure or kill them (which needs a second successful Wrestle roll and costs the target 1D6 hit points plus damage bonus per success), or strangle them, after which the target follows the normal drowning/asphyxiation rules without further Wrestle rolls needed.
General knowledge of the peoples, histories, and legends of the Young Kingdoms and of Melniboné, drawn from memoirs, chronicles, gossip, and folk tradition of varying reliability.
Critical: deduces an important secret or turns up a valuable chronicle. Fumble: fails to connect the dots, or forgets something already known.
Injuries, diseases, poisons, and potions that affect skills in a general way tend to cluster along a few natural lines:
| Agility | Brawl, Climb, Dodge, Move Quietly, Jump, Swim, Throw, Wrestle, all weapons |
| Communication | Art, Bargain, Disguise, Fast Talk, Oratory, Other Language, Own Language |
| Knowledge | Evaluate, Insight, Million Spheres, Natural World, Navigate, Potions, Unknown Kingdoms, Young Kingdoms |
| Manipulation | Conceal Object, Craft, Hide, Pick Lock, Physik, Ride, Repair/Devise, Sailing, Scribe, Trap |
| Perception | Listen, Search, Scent/Taste, Track |
| A few seconds–1 round | Attacks, parries, Brawl, Dodge, Hide, Jump, Physik, Ride, Scent/Taste, Throw, Wrestle, Young Kingdoms |
| 1–5 minutes | Bargain, Climb, Conceal Object, Evaluate, Fast Talk, Insight, Move Quietly, Other/Own Language, Pick Lock, Ride, Sailing, Swim, Unknown Kingdoms |
| 5–30 minutes | Art, Disguise, Natural World, Navigate, Oratory, Pick Lock, Repair/Devise, Ride, Search, Trap |
| 30–60 minutes | Million Spheres, Oratory, Ride, Scribe (ordinary), Track |
| 6 hours–many days | Craft, Ride; extended research with Million Spheres, Potions, Scribe, Unknown/Young Kingdoms |
| Art 05% | Insight 15% | Physik 30% | Search 20% |
| Bargain 15% | Jump 25% | Pick Lock 05% | Swim 25% |
| Brawl 50% | Listen 25% | Potions 00% | Throw 25% |
| Climb 40% | Million Spheres 00% | Repair/Devise DEX×4 | Track 10% |
| Conceal Object 25% | Move Quietly 20% | Ride 35% | Trap 05% |
| Craft 05% | Natural World 25% | Sailing 15% | Unknown Kingdoms 00%/15%* |
| Disguise 15% | Navigate 10% | Scent/Taste 15% | Wrestle 25% |
| Dodge DEX×2 | Oratory 05% | Scribe 00% | Young Kingdoms 15%/00%* |
| Evaluate 15% | Other Language 00% | ||
| Fast Talk 15% | Own Language INT×5 |
*Natives of the West start at 00% Unknown Kingdoms / 15% Young Kingdoms; natives of the Unknown Kingdoms start the reverse.
When Conceal Object, Disguise, Hide, Move Quietly, or Trap is pitted against someone else's attention, what matters is whether the observer is casually looking on or actively watching. A casual observer generally notices nothing at all unless the skill-user fumbles outright. An active observer (a watchman, say) notices on any skill-user fumble or failure, and can still catch a success or even a critical success with a matching critical or success on their own Evaluate, Insight, Listen, Search, Scent/Taste, or Track.
For negotiation-style rolls (Bargain, Fast Talk, Insight, Oratory) against a target: a critical moves the target to immediate agreement or action, provided no countering roll is appropriate; an ordinary success persuades or closes the deal, sometimes needing a supporting roll first; a failure simply means no deal and no clear read on the target; and a fumble can backfire outright — an unexpectedly costly bargain, a badly misjudged read of the target's intentions, or a persuasive attempt that provokes exactly the opposite reaction intended.