Combat Awareness Meta-skill

General Skills Rules: • Taking 10: If you are not threatened or distracted you can take 10 on a roll. • Taking 20: when you have plenty of time, 2 minutes or more and faced with no threats or distractions, you can take 20. This does not count as a ‘natural 20’ and indicate automatic success. Generally this takes 20 times longer than normal. You can’t take 20 on any check that has consequences for failure. • “1” Rolls: When you roll a natural 1 on a skill check, roll D20 again. SUBTRACT this number from your check. • “20” Rolls: When you roll a natural 20 on a skill check, roll D20 again. Add this number plus the 20 to your 
Combat Awareness (Meta-skill: Knowledge martial lore, spot, BA) (Knowledge martial Lore + Spot + Base attack/3 Retries: None Required: after a given amount of time of observing someone’s fighting style and ability, you may make a combat awareness check Or after 3 rounds of combat with them. The character must have line of sight and be able to see the opponent, must be within 60’. To start the action, this requires a free action. If the character does nothing but observe the opponent in combat with another foe, this requires 1d4 rounds before the information is gained. If the character is actually in combat with the opponent, melee or being targeted by the opponents ranged attacks, this requires only 1d2 rounds. Only one piece of information can be gained at a time, a new combat awareness must be used to learn something else.
Action and DC:

• Determine Approximate Base Attack CR+5 
• Determine Make up of AC CR+10
• Determine existence of Damage Reduction CR +3 
• Determine type of damage reduction CR +12
• Determine Martial Class CR +8

• Determine Approximate Base Attack: this gives a rough estimate of the creature’s fighting ability. A successful combat awareness check gives the character a estimation of its ability (as skilled as you, a lot more skilled then you) and the player a rough range of its Base attack (10-15, 15-20),.
• Determine Make up of AC: with a successful check the player and character understand the two biggest contributor’s to the opponents AC (Armor, deflection, natural, shield, dodge, etc).
• Determine existence of Damage Reduction: this is a yes or no question. It is not possible to know this until the creature is struck.
• Determine Type of Damage reduction: with a successful check you determine what kind of damage reduction the creature has. If it has more then one, you learn all of them.
• Determine Martial Class: you learn if the creature has had training in one of the adventuring classes (fighter, barbarian, warblade).