Skills Summary

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Physical Skills

Athletics

Athletics allows you to outpace someone in pursuit, leap out of the way of an oncoming car, and climb and swim like a healthy, robust living person.

Brawl

Brawl enables characters to hit their target when they swing with fist, boot, or claw. As long as you have no weapon in hand, the attack constitutes a brawl, from elegant aikijutsu to dirty street fighting.

Craft

Craft broadly encompasses artistry, creation of items and utilities from the beautiful to the functional, and arts and crafts from throwing pottery all the way to building and reinforcing your own haven.

Drive

Anyone (except perhaps 500-year old vampires) can learn to drive a car. The Drive Skill connotes ability to drive fast and safely under adverse conditions or in stressful situations: to drive off-road, speed away from ambushes, win street races, and get out of chases with the Second Inquisition.

Firearms

Leaving a victim with holes in their throat: full-on Second Inquisition investigation. Leaving a victim with holes in their head: just another Saturday night in Baltimore. Cainites use Firearms not only for the human reasons (efficiency and thrill) but to preserve the Masquerade. This Skill comprises familiarity with small arms from holdout pistols to assault rifles. It also includes other trigger-operated weapons, such as crossbows and shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades. Finally, it includes cleaning, unjamming, and rapidly reloading such weapons.

Larceny

This Skill entails familiarity with the tools and techniques for picking locks, planting bugs, deactivating standard burglar and car alarms, manual forgery, hot-wiring automobiles, or even safe-cracking, as well as countless forms of breaking and entering. Characters also use it for setting up “unbeatable” security systems or deducing how and where systems failed in a break-in. Ventrue probably call the skill “Security.”

Melee

Use Melee to wield handheld weapons such as knives, chains, and baseball bats with prowess. A stake is a melee weapon, often found in the hands of would-be hunters.

Stealth

Stealth allows a character to shadow a target, making vampires with this ability superlative hunters. They benefit from the ability to spy, sneak, and blend in with crowds when needed.

Survival

Survival conveys the ability to exist in the wild and other adverse conditions, and to return to civilization again: navigate by the stars, establish a makeshift haven, and notice werewolf signs before it’s too late. Some of its related functions apply in parks, brownfields, and other wastelands of the urban jungle.