RELACIONES ENTRE CONCEPTOS

To learn a Knack, a duck character must perform the following steps:

* Spend an Improvement Roll on the skill in question.

* Succeed the Improvement Roll, taking the skill’s rating to 60% or over.

* Spend two Hero Points.

* Add the Duck Knack to the character’s list of Special Abilities.

It should be noted that the character does need a mentor or teacher for these Knacks (unlike Legendary Abilities). It is assumed that the natural adaptability and pluckiness of the duck has shined through that particular skill, coming up with the Knack ‘on his own’.

Duck Knacks

The following are the Knacks available to duck characters, their descriptions and how they function in game terms.

Expert Faller Skill: Acrobatics

You learned the best way to fall down without hurting yourself. Your quacking and fl ailing might not look pretty to outsiders but it hurts a great deal less than landing like they would!

Whereas normal characters can pass an Acrobatics skill test to cut damage from falling by half, you can choose to either automatically only suffer half damage or roll the test to completely mitigate the damage from a fall of less than 30 metres. If you fail this roll however, you suffer normal damage!

Stamina Skill: Athletics

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You have discovered the finer art of reserving your energy over long periods of time, making you more likely to succeed in otherwise exhausting situations.

By taking twice the time it takes to perform an Athletics test, you can add +20% to the skill.

Leg Paddler Skill: Boating

You can make any boat go faster by using your own natural paddles to propel and steer it.

By leaning out of a boat and using your webbed feet to paddle or steer, you can add any racial bonus you have to Athletics (swimming) to your Boating skill check.

Improvise Skill: Craft

When having to put things together on short notice, you will sometimes use materials or ingredients that were not meant for your project.

By exacting your craft using substandard and potentially unheard of ingredients, materials or supplies, you can perform your craft cheaply. You may voluntarily choose to take a penalty to your Craft skill (symbolising the improvised materials), reducing the cost of the crafting project by an equal percentage. Thus, if a blacksmith duck wants to use salt instead of buffing sand on a rounded rock instead of an anvil, he could reduce his Craft (blacksmith) Skill Test by –20% in order to reduce the costs for the project by the same –20%.

Distracting Movement Skill: Dance

You know how to gyrate and cavort in a comical dance pattern that will often draw the attentions – and attacks – of your enemies, maybe giving your allies a chance to strike true.

By spending your Combat Actions to dance distractingly during a battle, all enemy combatants that can see (and would be distracted in such a manner) you must pass a Persistence Skill Test or be forced to attack you. Any enemy can choose to simply spend a Reaction to ignore you however but this must be chosen before they decide to make the Skill Test.

Camouflage Skill: Disguise

A duck is never going to be mistaken for anyone that is not a duck, so you instead know how to make yourself up to look like a fern, a rock or some such.

You can use your Disguise skill to appear as an object instead of a person, if you have the proper materials on hand to do so.

Ducking Dodge Skill: Dodge

You use your small size and expendable feathers to save your skin.

When you Dodge an attack successfully and you must Give Ground, you may do so in any direction you choose.

Foot Steerage Skill: Driving

You know how to hold the reins to your vehicle with your webbed feet, leaving your hands open to do other things.

You may choose to use the Driving skill with your feet, allowing you to use both hands for other purposes but a critical failure on a check in this manner will surely pull you from the vehicle by your ankles.

See it from Below

Skill: Engineering or Mechanisms

Your size and oily plumage allow you to get into and under projects that Big People cannot.

When dealing with the machines and devices of Big People you may add a bonus +5% to your Engineering or Mechanisms skill roll for each point your SIZ is lower than that of the machine or device.

Judgmental Skill: Evaluate

You have honed your snap-judgments and bitter appraisals to a remarkable clarity, often getting a good idea of what something is worth in an instant.

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If you choose to ‘snap judge’ an item, trade or proposition, you may roll an Evaluate Skill Test with a +10% bonus. If you do so however, you cannot alter the result of that roll in any way (not even Hero Points), as that your mind is made up.

Quick Patch Skill: First Aid

A little mud and a few feathers can make a quick bandage in combat but one that will need to be replaced later for fear of a worse infection.

You can use the First Aid skill as a single Combat Action with a –10% penalty, stopping bleeding and such. A normal First Aid skill check (1D4+1 Actions’

worth) must be taken on the same wound within 24 hours or the wounded Hit Location will take another HP of damage and the wound will re-open.

Grandmother’s Remedies Skill: Healing

You remember several of the duckling stories you were told growing up of what strange herbs and practices cured ailments.

When using your Healing skill for anything other than Surgery, you can pass a Lore (duck), Lore (Durulz), Lore (history), or Lore (Plant) Skill Test to add +20% to your Healing skill. If you pass the Lore check but still fail the Healing check, your

‘ancient remedy’ is actually going to worsen the situation somehow, likely causing CON loss in the patient from adverse reactions.

Mockery Skill: Influence

By mimicking an opponent’s actions and words with comical versions of your own, you can force them to make mistakes in frustration.

You may copy a target’s actions over the course of a combat round (or one minute, if outside of combat) and pass an Influence Skill Test. If successful the target must pass a Persistence Skill Test or fail in his next 1D3 skill rolls taken in your presence out of sheer frustration.

Mastery of Profanity Skill: Language (any)

Your command of the most socially unacceptable insults, obscenities and expletives can make a sailor blush, a debutante faint or cause a warrior to recoil in disbelief.

With a Language Skill Test that matches a known language of the target of your profanities and spending a Reaction, the opponent must succeed in a Persistence test or lose one Combat Action from the sheer shock of what horrible statement you concocted.

Quack-fu Skill: Martial Arts

A stylised form of fighting that is less a martial art and more an improvised form of dirty fighting, ‘Quack-fu’

is not taught or learned – it is made up as the duck goes along.

You have come up with a few good hand-to-hand (or bill, foot, elbow and so on) strikes that you have incorporated into your fighting style. You may add

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+1 to your Damage Modifier when attacking with the Unarmed and Martial Arts skills.

Unlike other Duck Knacks, this Knack may be purchased up to three times cumulatively.

Paranoia Skill: Perception

Although it might seem like you are constantly looking over your shoulder and checking to make sure doors and windows are latched, you are remarkably perceptive.

You are given an extra Perception Skill Test to avoid any sort of ambush, trap or notice someone following you.

Of course, the Games Master should have you make these frequently to represent your growing paranoia.

Stubborn Skill: Persistence

Canarda’s tenacity bred strongly down into your line and you can hold your position firmly against most arguments and debates.

Whenever you have the opportunity to make your mind up against a topic, course of action or decision you cannot be shaken from that stance. You must pass a Persistence Skill Test to ever change your opinion or course of action, even if by magical coercion, if you have verbally announced your position.

Off-Note

Skill: Play Instrument

By hitting a discordant note or rhythm that you have found your instrument capable of, you can cause others to lose their focus or prowess.

As a Combat Action you can make a Play Instrument Skill Test, forcing all who hear it within 10 metres to take a Resilience Skill Test. If they fail, they lose their next Reaction.

Never Give Up Skill: Resilience

There is something that you hold dear, something out there that you believe is worth living for and you will never fold your hand so long as it still exists.

You must pick a specific item, place or person that is dear to you. So long as you are aware (or believe) that your actions are helping to protect or defend it, you receive a +20% bonus to all Resilience rolls.

Sheltered Riding Skill: Riding

Whatever you are riding is probably a great deal tougher, physically speaking, than you are. You have mastered a technique that puts your mount in the way of most attacks aimed at you. It might not be brave or courageous but it will save your skin!

Whenever you are attacked while mounted upon a creature that uses the Riding skill to control properly, you may choose to spend a Reaction and make a Riding Skill Test in the same way as you would a Parry – except the mount suffers the attack instead of you if successful.

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Migratory Instinct Skill: Shiphandling

Although you cannot hope to ever fl y again, your natural instincts toward wind direction and long-distance migration make you useful in the crow’s nest of any sailing ship.

For the purposes of getting direction and keeping a steady wind in your ship’s sails, you are allowed to make a Shiphandling Skill Test at a bonus equal to one-half (round up) of your Survival skill.

Quack-along Skill: Sing

Reciting one of your catchiest old sing-songs from your duckling days over and over again, you can get the annoying tune stuck in others’ heads – much to their chagrin!

By spending 1D4+1 full Combat Rounds (or minutes) constantly singing the same song while performing your other actions, you can make a Sing test. If successful, all those that can hear the repetitive and annoying duck-tune must make a Persistence skill roll. If they fail, they will be unable to get the tune out of their heads, making it impossible for them to do anything that requires concentration (including some spells) for 1D6 hours.

Switcheroo Skill: Sleight

So long as you are placing something of a similar size and weight in something’s place, you can generally lift about anything off of anyone.

When you are making Sleight Skill Tests to pick pockets or steal in plain sight, you may add a +20%

bonus if you already have something in your hands of roughly the same size and weight to put in its place.

Most viewers see you putting something back and do not care to inquire further about the workings of a duck.

Opportunistic Vanish Skill: Stealth

You know how to use someone else’s actions and distractions to make your exit into hiding; perhaps leaving them to the enemy but definitely getting yourself a good safe place to lay low.

You may spend a Reaction in combat at the same time that someone else is spending a Combat Action to do something that would attract attention (casting a spell, attacking and so on) in order to make a Stealth Skill Test combined with a normal Movement in order to hide mid-combat.

Safety First Skill: Streetwise

You have been around the towns and cities of the Big People enough that you have a bill for sniffing out safe places to stay.

With a normal Streetwise Skill Test any character can find lodging in a city but whenever you do so it always seems that you find the most duck-friendly place in town to lay your head. Games Masters can choose to make your ‘safe place’ little more than a hovel in a dark alleyway but it will make for a safe night’s sleep nonetheless.

Prey Instincts Skill: Survival

When you are in the wild places of this world you are well aware of the sharp teeth and hungry appetites looking to get a piece of you. It is best to think like the prey they will treat you as and you will live a little longer.

As long as you travel at half normal speed and stay wary of dangers around you, you can add +25% to any Survival Skill Tests made to avoid natural predators and potential ambush points.

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Underhand Skill: Throwing

When you are throwing a weapon at a larger target you already tend to bring the weapon up from below them, but when you actually through it using a swinging underarm technique you guarantee it will strike their lower regions.

You may, at any time, choose to underhand any thrown weapon attack of ENC 1 or less. The attack will automatically strike them as if they were mounted and being attacked by someone on foot, limiting the number of Hit Locations potentially struck to just a few.

False Tracks Skill: Tracking

By knowing what good tracks look like, you are an expert at leaving meandering and false tracks to mislead others trying to fi nd your trail.

So long as you are the last person in a travelling line, you can choose to pass a Tracking Skill Test each day to make sure you are adequately covering your tracks. It requires a critical success on a Tracking roll to defeat this Knack unless any of the tracks are being covered are made my wagon or cart wheels – at which point it is useless.

Suckerpunch Skill: Unarmed

No one ever expects a duck to deliver the first punch in a fist fi ght – especially not one that hurts so bad as this one.

So long as you instigate the combat with an Unarmed or Martial Arts attack you may hit an unwary target automatically and roll twice for the Hit Location (choosing whichever suits you at the moment!).

Draw Without Threat Skill: Weapon Skill (any)

You are so used to the feel of your weapon in your hands that you can get it ready to wield without anyone really noticing, even if they are looking right at you!

So long as you (or something else) can keep them occupied, onlookers will not react to you drawing and preparing your chosen weapon (the one whose skill qualified for the Knack), so long as you can pass an Influence, Stealth, or Sleight Skill Test with a +10%

bonus. Of course Games Masters might feel this is impossible in certain circumstances (a stormbill drawing his greatsword in the Dara Happan cathedral, for instance).

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