Tome of Prowess (3.5e Sourcebook)/Ciphers

Ciphers
Ciphers is an analysis skill. It is primarily concerned with the obscuring or discovering of meaning in written words whether they be encrypted or written in common, obscure, or dead languages. With it, you can piece together patterns in written work to translate foreign or ancient languages or crack codes that hide meaning, as well as create your own codes to hide meaning in your own correspondence. Those with a great deal of skill in Ciphers can even avoid triggering written trap effects or create special attuned books.

Key Attribute: Intelligence

Learn Written Language
The first ciphers to learn are the trivial ones that help you decipher the greatest amount of secrets – other written languages. For every odd rank in this skill that you possess, you know the written form of a language for which you already know the syllabary or alphabet. For every even rank that you possess in this skill, you may learn one additional alphabet, syllabic, or logographic system as well as the written form of a language that uses that system. The languages that you may learn are limited by your total ranks in the skill, as indicated below.

Untrained Uses
None. Sorry, you actually can’t do this stuff without a bit of training.

Decipher Text
Dusty tomes and ancient manuscripts are rarely written in the current common tongue. They may not even be written with the common letters. But they may contain useful information, and you have enough experience with other languages to glean meaning from them. With a bit of time, you can find meaning in the meaningless strings of characters of other, often older, languages. These are the first ciphers that you learn to decode, though with practice you will be able to find meaning in work that has been intentionally obscured.

The base DC for this check is 20, or the DC of any unknown encryption scheme used in the work, but it is modified by the difficulty of the language system, the type of material within the work, and the length of the work. As there are quite a lot of different texts to decipher out there, the DC can vary quite a bit from the base value, and you generally do not know what the actual DC to decipher a text is. The degree to which you understand the material is determined by your check result as indicated below. Understanding the material does not give you any special insight into it, however, and it is entirely possible that the meaning you uncover has a special coded meaning for a recipient that is lost to you.

Each check requires one minute per 100 words (the average handwritten book contains approximately 400 words per page, individual books and languages may vary ), which must be spent before you can make the check. You may, however, break up longer works into multiple checks if you prefer. As this will allow you to gain a sense of whether it’s worth the time investment to decipher a longer work, it can often be worth doing despite the higher DC.

Special: Once you have decoded 1000 words using a particular encryption scheme, you are considered to know that encryption scheme. You no longer suffer a higher base DC when you run across it, and may employ it in your own work as well.

Encryption
Aside from analyzing them, you can also create codes on your own or compose messages in codes that you understand. You can create codes with a decryption DC up to 20 + your ranks in Ciphers. It takes 4 hours to create a new code, less 1/2 hour for each 1 point less you accept for the decryption DC, to a minimum of 30 minutes. You can generate messages in any code that you have on hand or have analyzed, whether you created it or not, regardless of decryption DC. Material written entirely in an encrypted cipher, as opposed to hidden in a larger and otherwise normal message, is considered magical writing. It cannot be understood with comprehend languages unless the caster knows the cipher themselves or their caster level + 15 is equal to or greater than the code DC.

Rosetta Stone
You know your way around a text, even when it’s written in an obscure, insane, dead language. If you read enough of a dead language, you can eventually become fluent in it. Each successful use of your Decipher Script ability provides you a +2 cumulative bonus for works written in the same language. If this bonus reaches +10, you no longer need to make checks to read the language, and are actually fluent in its written form. You can even compose messages in it if you like.

You are unable to learn the spoken form of the language without a native speaker, however. If you have access to the spoken form of a language that you are fluent in the written form of, by listening to native speakers or magical recordings, you may learn the language even if it is normally restricted and they aren't actually trying to teach it to you. Learning a language in this way does not cost any skill points.

Defensive Reading
Familiarity with dead languages and codes alone won’t get you access to all of the secret writing in the world. There are many magical tricks to be prepared for, both those that might conceal truth and those that might harm you. You are familiar with these magical writings, including spells such as explosive runes, illusory script, sepia snake sigil, secret page, the various symbols, all of which you are prepared for them.

If you are about to trigger a magical effect by reading it, you are entitled to a Ciphers check (DC 16 + Caster Level) to avoid the effect. This check is treated like a saving throw, you either pass it and avoid triggering the effect or fail the check and trigger the effect. In either case you are aware of the effect after your check. If the effect is not triggered, but merely a standing effect that alters the page like secret page, you are entitled to a Ciphers check (DC 16 + Caster Level) to notice the effect.

Once you are aware of an effect on a page, you may use your Ciphers skill to disable it as if it were a magical trap. This check has a DC of 16+ Caster Level, and requires 1d4 full rounds to complete. The results of your work are listed on the table below.

Attune Pages
Your time with the study of symbols, written language, and codes has shown you one of their deeper secrets – that symbols will propagate on their own under the right conditions. With a bit of time and effort, you may prepare or maintain a page that is linked to another somewhere else in the world so that everything written on one page is instantly transmitted to the other.

When you write on a page that has been properly prepared, any mark that you make is instantly transmitted to the attuned page so long as the two pages are on the same plane. If the pages are on different planes, this transmission is delayed until such time as they are on the same plane again, at which time they immediately fill up with the writing on their attuned partner. The number of attuned pairs you may maintain is determined by your ranks in Ciphers, as described below.

Attuned pages are generally similarly sized to avoid rescaling issues. Each page may be up to 12” x 12” in size, and larger pages simply use up additional attunements. Maintenance of these pages requires you to work with one page from each attuned pair daily; you may meet the maintenance requirement for all pages with one 10 minute span if you desire. If you do not maintain a page from a set for over 30 hours, the set loses its attunement. Adding a new set requires 1 hour.