Academics

The Academics skill is a character's general academic ability. This includes memory, studying ability, and mathematics.

When To Use It

Academics is primarily used to recall learned information. The target number of the roll represents the obscurity of the information.

  • A target number of 1-2 represents an easy question for the subject, like knowing the location of a famous battle.
  • A target number of 3-4 represents a difficult question for the subject, like identifying an uncommon piece of architecture.
  • A target number of 5 or higher represents knowledge that only experts are expected to know, like trying to calculate the movements of stars and planets.
  • A target number of 10 or higher should only be used for information that is lost or forbidden.

The difficulty of the roll may be increased if the character is less familiar with the subject, such as for a character who grew up around explorers but never studied geography.

The Game Master gets the ultimate say in whether a character's familiarity with a subject even allows the player to make an Academics roll in the first place. Players should work with the Game Master when creating a character to determine what knowledge the character has been exposed to. This could be anything from growing up in a family of historians to having a life-long passion for foreign cultures. Most characters should have one or two broad areas of knowledge outside of anything reasonably explained by nationality and background. If your character has more knowledge than that, the character is probably a Scholar.

Characters with the Scholar background may make Academics rolls for any area of expertise. They do not suffer increased difficulty due to unfamiliarity with a subject, as they have been exposed to wide breadths of knowledge and have a chance of knowing nearly anything.

Primary Attributes

Intellect

  • Academics always uses Intellect.