Skills in Worlds Apart

Before I can really design in Worlds Apart, I need to have a skills list. Below is what I've done so far. I think it is (mostly) complete. Since this is such a long post, I'll talk more about skills and what they're saying about the game in the next one.

Admin
This skill covers bureaucracies and administration of all sorts, including the navigation of bureaucratic obstacles or disasters.

Advocate
Advocate gives a knowledge of common legal codes and practices, especially laws of the sea.

Agriculture
The character is trained in the planting, harvesting, and storage of agricultural products.

Specialties
•    Arid: The character knows how to farm in arid environments.
•    Temperate: The character can farm in temperate environments.
•    Tropical: The character knows how to farm in tropical environments.

Animals
This skill provides knowledge concerning the using, raising, and care of animals as well as for preserving them after slaughter.

Specialties
•    Riding: The character knows how to ride an animal that is trained to bear a rider.
•    Veterinary: The character is trained in veterinary medicine and animal care.
•    Training: The character knows how to tame and train animals.
•    Animal Husbandry: The character can grow, raise, slaughter, and preserve animals.

Athletics
The character is a trained athlete and is physically fit.

Specialties
•    Coordination: Climbing, juggling, throwing.
•    Endurance: Long-distance running, hiking.
•    Strength: Feats of strength, weight-lifting.
•    Flying: Species that fly gain this skill for free at level 0.

Art
The character is trained in a type of creative art.

Specialties
•    Acting: The character is a trained actor, at home on the stage, screen or holo.
•    Dance: The character is trained dancer and performer.
•    Oratory: Remembering and producing aesthetically pleasing and impacting oratories.
•    Instrument: Playing a particular musical instrument, such as flutes, lyres or drums.
•    Sculpting: Making artistic or abstract sculptures in a variety of media.
•    Writing: Composing inspiring or interesting pieces of text.

Broker
The Broker skill allows a character to negotiate trades and arrange fair deals.

Carouse
Carousing is the art of socializing; of having fun, but also ensuring that other people have fun, of infectious good humor.

Deception
Deception allows a character to lie fluently, disguise himself, perform sleight of hand and fool onlookers.

Diplomat
The Diplomat skill is for negotiating deals, establishing peaceful contact and smoothing over social faux pas.

Deep Ocean Navigation
This skill is for plotting the courses of voyager ships and calculating accurate journeys upon the Forever Sea.

Drive
This skill is for controlling and maintaining ground vehicles of various types. There are several specialties.

Specialties
•    Chariots: The character can operate and maintain a chariot.
•    Wagons: The character can operate and maintain a wagon.
•    Stagecoaches: The character can operate and maintain a stagecoach.

Dweomercraeft
This skill is the training, practice, and rituals associated with a particular style of magic. There are many different specialties, one for each different career. See the Magic chapter for a full description and details about this skill

Elemental Engineer
The Elemental Engineer skill is used to operate and maintain voyager ships.

Specialties
•    Maneuver Drive (M-Drive): Maintaining and operating a voyager ship’s water elemental.
•    Voyager Drive (V-Drive): Maintaining and operating a voyager’s fire elemental.
•    Life Support: Maintaining and operating a voyager’s air elemental.
•    Hull Integrity: Maintaining and operating a voyager ship’s earth elemental.

Gambler
The character is familiar with a wide variety of gambling games and has an excellent grasp of statistics and probability.
   
Gunner
The various specialties of this skill deal with the maintenance and operation of ship-mounted weapons on voyager ships.

Specialties
•    Ship-to-Ship: Operating ship-to-ship weapons on board a voyager ship.
•    Artillery: Using a ship’s weapons for island bombardment or attacks on stationary targets.
•    Screens: Activating and using a voyager ship’s elemental screens.
•    Capital Weapons: Operating bay or spinal mount weapons on board a capital voyager ship.

Heavy Weapons
The Heavy Weapons skill covers using and maintaining man-portable and larger weapons that cause extreme damage, such as ballistas, mangonels, and trebuchets.

Specialties
•    Ballista: The character can operate and maintain a ballista.
•    Mangonel: The character can operate and maintain a mangonel.
•    Trebuchet: The character can operate and maintain a trebuchet.

Investigate
The Investigate skill incorporates keen observation and detailed analysis.

Jack of All Trades
The Jack of All Trades skill works differently to other skills. It reduces the unskilled penalty a character receives for not having the appropriate skill by one for every level of Jack of All Trades.

Language
There are numerous different Language specialties, each one covering reading and writing a different language. All characters can speak and read their native language without needing the Language skill. Having Language 0 (no speciality) means that the character has a smattering of simple phrases in many languages. There are thousands of different languages that can be learned - the list below is far from expansive. A GM should create several other common languages for his individual campaign.

Specialties
•    Seso: One of the most common Trade languages reputedly derived from the languages spoken by Sea and Soil to the first beings.
Need more!

Leadership
The Leadership skill is for directing, inspiring and rallying allies and comrades.

Magic
The Magic skill determines how a character can use magic via talents. This skill is very complex compared to other skills. Unlike other skills a Magic 0 means the character can be trained to use magic, not that he can currently do such. Characters untrained in this skill at the end of character creation cannot learn to use magic. See the Magic chapter for a full description and details about this skill.

Magical Language
There are many ancient magical languages, unknowable by any that cannot harness the power of magic. A character must have at least a Magic 0 to gain any magical languages.

Specialties
•    Need more!

Mechanic
The Mechanic skill allows the character to maintain and repair equipment as well as repair or jury-rig simple mechanical devices or tools. When appropriate, a character can choose to use this skill or another (such as Drive, Melee Combat, Missile Combat, and Heavy Weapons) if attempting a maintenance check.

Medic
The Medic skill covers emergency first aid and battlefield triage as well as diagnosis, treatment, surgery and long-term care.

Melee Combat
The Melee Combat skill covers attacking and defending in hand-to-hand combat as well as maintaining the battle-readiness of various weapons and light armors.

Specialties:
•    Unarmed Combat: Whether it is trained martial arts or street fighting learned the hard way, this is the skill for using your body as a weapon.
•    Blade: Attacking with swords, rapiers, blades and other edged weapons.
•    Bludgeon: Attacking with maces, clubs, staves and so on.
•    Heavy Armor: The character can effectively use heavy armor in combat. Without this skill, subtract 2 from the Protection rating of any heavy armor.
•    Lance and Pole: Attacking with lances, pole arms or any other such weapons.
•    Natural Weapons: The favoured combat skill of wild animals, this covers fighting with
    claws, teeth, and other weapons that are a part of you.

Missile Combat
The Missile Combat skill covers using and maintaining a variety of ranged weapons.

Specialties
•    Thrown Blunt Weapons: Using thrown clubs, killing sticks, bolo, or boomerangs.
•    Thrown Edged Weapons: Using thrown daggers, axes, or shuriken.
•    Blowguns: Using blowguns.
•    Bows: Using bows.
•    Crossbows: Using crossbows.

Navigation
Navigation is the shore-side counterpart of Deep Sea Navigation, covering plotting courses and finding directions within sight of land as well as on the ground.

Persuade
Persuade is a more casual, informal version of Diplomacy.

Pilot
Pilot allows a character to captain a vessel. The Pilot skill specialties cover different forms of voyager sea craft or craft requiring 6 or more sailors to control.

Specialties
•    Large Ships: Non-voyager ships requiring 6 or more sailors to control.
•    Voyager Ships: The majority of voyager ships fall into this category.
•    Capital Voyager Ships: The largest types of voyager ships built for combat.

Recon
A character trained in Recon is able to scout out dangers and spot threats, unusual objects or out of place people.

Science
There are two separate Science skills – Natural Sciences and Social Sciences. Each science skill has a number of specializations.

Natural Sciences
•    Astronomy: The study of celestial objects.
•    Physics: The study of fundamental forces.
•    Alchemy: The study of matter.
•    Biology: The study of living organisms.
•    Earth Science: The study of material related to the world.

Social Sciences
•    Archaeology: The study of ancient civilizations. It also covers techniques of investigation and excavations.
•    Economics: The study of trade and markets.
•    History: The study of the past, as seen through documents and records as opposed to physical artifacts.
•    Linguistics: The study of languages.
•    Philosophy: The study of beliefs and religions.
•    Sophontology: The study of intelligent creatures.

Seafarer
The Seafarer skill provides knowledge concerning the sea, its creatures, swimming, fishing, and all manner of small boats that can be controlled by no more than 5 sailors.

Stealth
A character trained in the Stealth skill is adept at staying unseen and unheard.

Steward
The Steward skill allows the character to serve and care for nobles and high-class individuals.

Streetwise
A character with the Streetwise skill understands the urban environment and the power structures in society.

Strength Burn
This skill allows dweomercrafters to burn Strength instead of Magical Strength when using magical talents. Only those with the Magic skill can gain this skill. A successful Endurance Check allows the caster to spend Strength to fuel his magic, rather than Magical Strength. A failure results in spending Magical Strength as normal.

Survival
The Survival skill is the wilderness counterpart of the urban Streetwise skill – the character is trained to survive in the wild, build shelters, hunt or trap animals, avoid exposure and so forth.

Specialties
•    Arid: The character knows how to survive in arid environments.
•    Temperate: The character can survive in temperate environments.
•    Tropical: The character knows how to survive in tropical environments.

Tactics
This skill covers tactical planning and decision making, from board games to squad level combat to fleet engagements.

Specialties:
•    Military: Coordinating the attacks of foot troops or cavalry on the ground.
•    Naval: Coordinating the attacks of a ship or fleet.

Trade
A character with a Trade skill is trained in producing some useful goods or services. There are many different trade specialties, some of the most common are listed below.

•    Blacksmith: Producing metal goods, including some arms and armors..
•    Carpenter: Designing structures and buildings in wood.
•    Mason: Designing structures and building in stone and brick.
•    Shipbuilder: Building ships.
•    Weaver: Making cloth.