User:MisterSinister/Asher (3.5e NPC)/ToP

Arcana

The Arcana skill represents dedicated study into the workings of arcane magic. While that study manifests itself most strongly as the ability to better understand and recognize arcane magics, those who study Arcana also learn the underpinnings of creatures created and maintained with those magics, namely constructs and the undead. Characters with substantial training in Arcana can even use arcane spell trigger and spell completion items containing spells not normally accessible within their class, as well as ignore attribute requirements on magical items.

Key Attribute: Intelligence

Minimum Rank 2 Uses

Creature Insight

While learning more about how arcane magic functions, you've also learned more about what makes some of the most common arcane creations and allies, constructs and the undead, "tick". Constructs are solid, lifeless creations animated by magic bound to their frames. The undead are the remains of once living creatures, animated to serve even in death or to grant a form of immortality. You know enough about the basic working of these creatures to recognize what abilities any individual member might have, even those you’ve never seen before.

Identify Magic

When you run across magic, it’s nice to know if it’s magic that will help you or flay you alive. The Arcana skill primarily deals with the esoteric magic of wizards, though it can be used to identify spells or effects from any source. This ability allows you to identify a spell as it is being cast, identify a standing magical effect, identify magical residue after an effect ends, etc. Additionally, it allows you to learn the spell stored within an arcane spell completion or spell trigger item. However, you must have detect magic or an equivalent spell active, or else wield an etheliometer to learn anything with this ability.

Minimum Rank 4 Uses

Arcane Item Affinity

A little knowledge about obscure arcane magical theory goes a long way. With it, you can attempt to use arcane spell trigger or spell completion items even if you lack the ability to normally use the spells within them. But your skill with the arcane doesn’t stop there. Arcane magic is based on tricking the world into doing what you wanted it to do all along, and some of those tricks work to coax magic items into working for you even when you lack the prerequisite attributes. If a magic item requires a certain ability score to function, you can try to ignore that requirement as well.

Bluff

The Bluff skill is a social skill involving the art of trickery. With it, you can convincingly lie, hurt the image of others, and take on the identity of another individual. Those with advanced training in Bluff can even lie to spells and effects that would determine their information without giving the target a chance to lie about it.

Key Attribute: Intelligence

Minimum Rank 0 Abilities

Innuendo

Words and glances can mean different things to different people. You know what to say and how to say it, and can use that to pass secret messages to others during public conversations.

Lie Convincingly

You generally want people to believe that you are telling them the truth, especially if it isn’t the truth. You know how to craft lies well, so that they are more likely to be believed by those you are telling them to.

Minimum Rank 4 Uses

Combat Distraction

If you just need to buy yourself a moment to escape, it’s hard to beat the old “Hey, what’s that behind you!” You can attempt a similar distraction, buying yourself a bit of time to start on your escape.

Minimum Rank 6 Uses

Mock and Deride

Anyone can heckle a speaker or slander a public figure, but you can do it with style. When others speak and attempt to garner favor for themselves, you can twist their words and otherwise cause them to err. This allows you to counter the Improve Rapport ability of the Affability skill, blunting the goodwill they would gain or even causing them to lose it entirely.

Minimum Rank 8 Abilities

False Nature

Most people answer inquiries truthfully when those inquiries don’t use words. So you've learned how to conceal your alignment, and even wear a more appropriate one. You don’t want evil cultists to block you at the door because you don’t pass an alignment check, after all.

Minimum Rank 10 Abilities

False Thoughts

As with alignment, so too with thoughts. You don’t want the thought police to know what you really think of them, and you don't want magic to give away a skillful lie. You've learned to conceal the aura changes that give away falsehoods, as well as how to conceal your thoughts from inspection. You can even craft new ones to wear around.

Minimum Rank 12 Abilities

False Self

As with alignment and thoughts, so too with location. Those who know who you are can simply locate you, which is often inconvenient while you’re working a job as someone else. You've learned how to hide from these magical tracking abilities, and even how to throw them off your scent entirely.

Concentration

Concentration is a purely mental skill. Those trained in it can ignore distractions and focus on a complicated task and perfectly memorize complicated things. Those with a great deal of skill in concentration can even focus their way past spell effects that would paralyze or alter their minds.

Key Attribute: Wisdom

Rank 1 Uses

Split Focus

It’s tough to focus on two things at once, and if you're not careful, your lack of attention can cause you to perform poorly at a task. You know how to split your focus without either task suffering, and can better deal with or even ignore distractions while you work.

Rank 4 Uses

Get Out of my Head!

When someone else gets a hold in your mind, it can be difficult to block their influence. You can focus your mind on the task of fighting them off, and push back or eliminate any lingering effects from a failed Will save.

Manage Interruption

It's tough to disarm a trap while you’re trying to not be molested by plants, or cast a spell while you’re being stabbed in the side. These sorts of interruptions can ruin your attempts, but if you focus hard enough, you can work around them or block them out entirely.

Photographic Memorization

Once you’ve seen something, you can pretty easily recall it. You can attempt to memorize a written string of numbers, a long passage of verse, a street scene, or some other particularly difficult piece of information.

Intimidation

The intimidation skill is a social skill involving the threat of force, violence, and other unpleasantries. With it, you can scare people into helping or running from you. Those who practice intimidation intensely can scare off larger groups of people, demand obedience from others, and break fear’s grasp over people.

Key Attribute: Charisma

Rank 1 Uses

Coerce Assistance

Fear is a powerful tool in social interactions. If you have at least one minute to interact with someone, you may make someone temporarily more “helpful”.

Rank 4 Uses

Shake Resolve

With threats, gestures, and posture, you can make even the bravest foe cower. You may attempt to scare off an enemy rather than, or in addition to, trying to stab them in the face.

Rank 6 Uses

Shout Them Down

It's easy to project an air of confidence and menace when you know what you're doing. You can get multiple creatures to run from you instead of fighting.

Snap Out Of It

Intimidation is a skill all about making people afraid of you, and that fear can be used to break people free from the grip of inaction. Maybe you threaten them, maybe you just glare; the simple fact is that you can shake your friends (or your "friends", in some cases) free of [Fear] effects and the stun condition. You may only affect these conditions if their remaining duration is less than 1 hour.

Rank 8 Uses

New Orders

You’ve learned which tones of voice work best to get people to obey you without thought. Under most circumstances, you can make a target drop what they’re doing and follow your orders instead.

Rank 10 Uses

Cowards, All of You!

You don’t just shake the resolve of your enemies with your actions and combat prowess, but with your very presence. You don't even have to know a creature is present to make it run from you instead of fighting.

Rank 12 Uses

Go Jump Off A Cliff

Some tones of voice can override a person's natural sense of self-preservation. You have practiced these tones, and may use them where you feel appropriate.

Stealth

The stealth skill is a movement skill involving cover, concealment, and blind spots. With it, you can walk past guards without their noticing, sneak up on a sentry, or slip unnoticed through a crowd. Those who specialize in stealth can help carry their friends when stealth matters and even tip toe past a creature that sees everything touching the earth nearby.

Key Attribute: Dexterity

Special

You can hide behind a curtain, a well, or a hill and people on the other side of it can’t see you; they may not be able to hear or smell or otherwise sense you, either. This isn’t a skill or ability; it’s just what happens when something sits between people. While that’s useful, and not anything you should ever roll a stealth check for, sometimes you need to expose yourself and break cover to check out the people on the other side. That’s where the avoid notice or detection abilities of stealth are useful.

For the purposes of a stealth check, you are treated as being only as big as your exposed parts. If you are walking in the open casing a joint, the whole of you is exposed. If you are simply performing reconnaissance from cover, your exposed parts are generally three or more sizes smaller than your environment, and so you probably gain a substantial bonus on this check as indicated on the table above. You likely gain a similar bonus for traveling slowly with a very dense crowd, as only your head may be uncovered by the press of bodies. In general, the more you have to surround yourself with and the harder it is to pick you out of a crowd, the better the bonus you get to your stealth checks.

Untrained Uses

Avoid Notice

Anyone can keep their head down and their hood up when they have to. If someone is searching a crowd for you, or you are being generally observed but haven’t been specifically picked out, you may make a stealth check to continue to avoid notice.

Rank 4 Uses

Avoid Detection

You know enough about slipping away from attention to be pretty good at it when you need to be. There is no limit to your check result with the Avoid Notice ability.

Rank 6 Uses

Team Player

Sometimes you have to bring the team with you into the shadows, and they may not have any idea what they’re doing. You know how to help keep those who lack your knowledge of stealth from bringing the team down.

Rank 8 Uses

Foil Senses

When you hide, you can even mask your echo and vibrations. You show poorly against tremorsense and blindsense, and creatures must make a Perception check to locate you with these abilities.

Rank 10 Uses

Foil False Sight

Even the keenest of senses must work to find you if you don't want them to. In addition to tremorsense and blindsense, you also show poorly against blindsight. This otherwise functions as Foil Senses.

Rank 12 Uses

Fade Into the Background

People have a really hard time keeping an eye on you, even when they know you’re there. You can attempt a stealth check after someone has spotted you without first breaking line of sight or otherwise losing your pursuer, or while you are under any other sort of direct observation.

Survival

Survival is an active skill related to the great outdoors. With it you can bind foes or prey, set minor traps in the wilderness, find food while traveling, and tie some impressive knots. You can also recognize the creatures you encounter in the wilds, and thus know whether to fight or flee them. Those who learn the secrets of survival can fashion protective gear from natural resources, predict the weather, hide their own trail, use their knowledge to survive on other planes, and even find any location they have ever visited.

Key Attribute: Wisdom

Untrained Uses

Bind Adversary

The ability to bind objects and tie knots is extremely helpful when attempting to survive outside the bounds of civilization. You can apply that knowledge to binding adversaries, even if your knowledge is pretty rudimentary.

Rank 1 Uses

Creature Insight

Knowing how to get by in the uncivilized world means you also need to recognize the threats and creatures within it. Animals are the most common example of these creatures, and your knowledge of them includes rare, exotic, and even dire varieties. Magical beasts are those animals who have been enhanced by magic. Dragons are ancient and powerful creatures, the largest of which tend to shape their territory in ways important to one traveling through it. Oozes are creatures with neither spine nor nervous system that know neither mercy nor hatred, only hunger. Plants are no less dangerous, however, and you are familiar with plants that walk around and plants that swallow men whole.

Hunter’s Traps

Hunting in the wild is as much about setting an ambush or trap for a quarry as putting an arrow through them. You can set traps for creatures, for eating or other reasons.

Live Off the Land

When you’re between towns and have lost all of your food to bandits, you have to find more if you want to eat. You are able to find sustenance almost anywhere you are.

Rope Tricks

Fancy knots and special rope tricks are not particularly impressive, but are sometimes very useful. You can use some special knots with your rope as well as properly set a grapple.

Track Game

You know how to spot the signs that an animal has passed by. Conveniently enough, people and monsters leave lots of the same signs. You can find and follow any trail with a DC of 15 or less. Locating or following any trail more complicated requires the Tracker feat.

Rank 4 Uses

Navigate Wilds

It’s a big world out there, and lots of it will kill you if you get lost or don’t know what you’re doing. You can guide yourself through that big world with landmarks and generally avoid getting lost or killed by natural hazards.

Rough It

If you have to spend a long day on the ice planes braving deadly icicle storms in sub-freezing temperatures, it's nice to do so in clothing that protects you. And at the end of that long day, it's nice to be able to return to a nice warm structure where those things can't affect you. If you find yourself unprepared for these conditions, you're well equipped to make your own gear. You can turn natural flora and fauna in an area into protective clothing and shelters for yourself or others.

Rank 6 Uses

Dead Reckoning

You are so used to making your way in the wilderness that you seem to have a compass installed in your head. As long as there is a "true north" or similar cardinal direction on your current world or plane you always know which direction it points in. Always.

Weatherman

You know what that soreness in your bones means. You can be pretty accurate about the future weather in your area.

Rank 8 Uses

Break Trail

Being pursued is not fun, especially when they're using your own trail against you. You can mask the passing of an entire group of people, even if they continue moving at full speed.

Rank 12 Uses

Infinite Adaptations

The multiverse is a lot larger and a lot more varied than the little world you call home. You have learned how to apply your survival tricks to other environments, and can survive pretty much anywhere.

Rank 14 Uses

The Long Road Home

You have a sort of sixth sense about distant places you have visited before, as well as places where the world is thin and you could step across to another. With a bit of time to scan the horizon, you can determine direction and approximate distance to any location you have ever visited on your current world or plane. You can also determine the direction and distance to the nearest portal, conduit, or other magical link that leads to any other plane or world.

Thaumaturgy

The Thaumaturgy skill represents communion and study of the divine magics that flow through the world. While that study manifests itself most strongly as the ability to better understand and recognize divine magics, those who study Thaumaturgy also learn about faith and belief as well as gain an understanding of the creatures who often serve the divine or spring from ideals: demons, devils, angels, and other non-elemental outsiders. Characters with substantial training in Thaumaturgy can even use divine spell trigger and spell completion items containing spells not normally accessible within their class and ignore alignment requirements on magical items.

Key Attribute: Charisma

Minimum Rank 2 Uses

Creature Insight

Your communions and learning about faith, religions, and the afterlife also includes knowledge of the most common servants of the divine and those who would share the afterlife with them. Collectively referred to as outsiders or exemplars, this group also contains the Demons, Devils, Angels, and more who act as the embodiment of belief and faith in the planes.

Identify Magic

When you run across magic, it’s nice to know if it’s magic that will heal you or drag your soul to the Abyss. The Thaumaturgy skill primarily deals with the divine magic bestowed by the gods on their priests, though it can be used to identify spells or effects from any source. This ability allows you to identify a spell as it is being cast, identify a standing magical effect, identify magical residue after an effect ends, etc. Additionally, it allows you to learn the spell stored within a divine spell completion or spell trigger item. You must have detect magic or equivalent spell active, or else wield an etheliometer to learn anything with this ability however.

Minimum Rank 4 Uses

Divine Item Affinity

A little knowledge about faith and the power of belief can help you to call upon those powers when you need a boost. With it you can attempt to use divine spell trigger or spell completion items even if you lack the ability to normally use the spells within them. But your skill with thaumaturgy doesn’t stop there. Divine magic is based on a strong and unyielding belief, one that can reshape the world around them or force others to follow along at times. If a magic item functions differently for a particular alignment, you may attempt to force the item to respond as if you had such an alignment for a short time.