Skill & Ability Section

Smoke & Sovereigns is a d100 system, which means that it operates on a percentage table. As a person about to embark on an adventure, you begin with a base 20% in the core abilities. What you choose for faction, class, archetype, and profession will then play into the final percentage as well as the point-buy.

Ability Section

In Smoke & Sovereigns abilities are the broad, fundamental traits that define your character’s innate talent and broad competencies. Instead of juggling dozens of individual skills every time you roll, abilities simplify gameplay by grouping related skills under a single, meaningful umbrella.

Each ability represents a distinct aspect of your character’s physical, mental, social, or mystical nature. When you attempt actions in the game, your ability score is the starting point, and skills then add specialized flavor and expertise on top of that.

Every skill you have falls under one of these seven core Abilities. When you roll, you usually combine your Ability score with a relevant skill level, but if you lack that skill, the Ability alone determines your baseline chance.

• Might is the pure physical powerhouse group.
• Agility includes all fine motor skills, speed, and ranged weapon use.
• Wit covers all technical, scientific, and tactical thinking.
• Guile is all about social interaction, influence, and manipulation.
• Lore is your deep knowledge and occult skills.
• Instinct reflects survival and environmental awareness skills.
• Creativity focuses on artistic expression and design-based skills.

In table format it looks like this:

How to Determine Ability Scores

During character creation, you distribute points or assign values to these seven Abilities to represent your character’s natural aptitudes and life experience. And you have control over how life has affected your character.

For example:

• A battle-hardened warrior might have high Might and Instinct, but lower Creativity or Guile.
• A clever diplomat might excel at Guile and Lore, but have less Might or Wit.
• An inventor or tinkerer would favor Wit and Creativity.

You can, naturally, deviate from the stereotypes, but please communicate with your GM about your reasons why.

Modifiers from Character Choices

Factions, Classes, Archetypes, and Augmentation each provide broad modifiers to Ability scores, reflecting the character’s origins and role.

These modifiers stack and apply before skills are calculated.

Each character choice also provides minor skill bonuses or penalties (±5%) to represent specialization or weakness.

Faction Modification

Class Modification

Archetype Modification

Augmentation Modification

Formula for Applying Modifiers:

1. Start with Base Ability scores (20%)
2. Distribute your 70 points
3. Add Faction modifier
4. Add Class modifier
5. Add Augmentation modifier
6. Add Archetype modifier
7. Apply Level 1 cap of 75% — if total exceeds 75%, mark it down to 75%. Later levels can utilize the higher score.

Why Use Abilities Instead of Skills?

• Streamlines Gameplay: Abilities act as the backbone of your character's capabilities, making rolls quick and intuitive. When you don’t have a relevant skill, you still rely on the ability for a baseline chance.
• Supports Versatility: Skills add specialization, but abilities ensure all characters have a meaningful chance to act, even outside their expertise.
• Guides Character Growth: As your character trains and develops, improving an ability enhances all related skills, encouraging broad development and roleplay.
• Clarifies Outcomes: Abilities help the Game Master quickly assess how tough or skilled a character is, shaping challenges and storytelling.

Skill Section

Skills are the fine-toothed gears of your character’s capabilities, the specific expressions of your broader Abilities. While Abilities define your general potential - raw strength, quick thinking, or social cunning - skills show how that potential manifests in the grit and grind of Varnaxis and beyond. A skill roll comes into play whenever the outcome of an action is uncertain, risky, or opposed: persuading a suspicious Guildmaster, navigating the toxin-choked rivers of the Shattermarch, dismantling a clockwork turret under fire, or reading the sigils on a relic dredged from the ruins.

Each skill is tied to a Core Ability (as defined in the tables below), but your training, profession, and experience can make you expert in certain ones, turning ordinary rolls into signature moves. In this world of steam, soot, and scheming, skills aren’t just numbers on a page, they’re the difference between walking away with your prize or never walking away at all.

How to use Skills in play

Skill % = Final Ability Score + Skill Modifiers

• The Ability score is the base score for all skills related to that ability. That means you only need to roll once if you’re making, e.g. a general “Might” check.
• The Skill score is where your character differs from others, shaped by past experiences and professions.
• For example, a “Research” check would start with your Lore ability base, modified by any relevant skill bonuses.

There are three types of Skill modifiers in this system:

• Score bonus, as stated by your Character Choices
• Proficient: You add +1d10
• Expert: You add +2d10

Skill Sets

The Skills fall under the umbrella of the corresponding Ability, but there are also other ways to categorize the skills.

You have MIGHT and AGILITY, which are the Physical skills. The things you do with your body and how good you are at them. It is your agility, your strength, stamina, your hand-eye coordination, and how well you can endure certain situations and environments.

GUILE refers to your Social Skills which are a must to navigate the politics and relationships with other people. These skills determine how others see you, or rather, how you manage to make yourself look and be perceived.

Knowledge is power, but can also be a death sentence if you happen across the wrong scroll or relic. These LORE skills inform how you handle and retain information, both book-wise and perceived by you in the world around you.

Your WIT are the skills that pertain to the technological and mechanical part of what you can do with the knowledge and experience you have, as well as tactical thinking.

In Varnaxis, your INSTINCT is key to your survival. These are crucial skills for any adventuring party who are tossed into the unknown and the wild.

Lastly, it is somewhat of a truth that the right story can start a riot, a crafted token can open a guarded door, and a well-timed flourish can buy you the heartbeat you need to survive. Your CREATIVITY skills aren’t just “soft skills”, they are weapons, tools, and currency in a city where every faction knows the value of spectacle.

Professions

In Smoke & Sovereigns, your past experience matters for the present. Your profession(s) make you an Expert in certain skills. Past profession gives you Proficient, current profession gives Expert. If both match, you start with Expert in that skill right away.

How To Play

When you attempt an action, you roll against a target number based on your Ability + relevant Skill level.

If you lack the skill, you roll based on the Ability alone, this represents a basic competence or natural talent. This balance means your character always has a chance to succeed, but expertise makes success more reliable.

Abilities also influence resistances, defense, attacks, attempts, and define your overall health (HP) and ability to withstand stress and fatigue.

What's next?

With the work you've done in Character Generator you got the narrative skeleton of your character. With your Abilities and Skills defined, you know have the mechanical portion locked in. How well they act, react and adapt in the shifting dangers of Varnaxis.

You are ready to take on Varnaxis!

If you haven't already, now is the time to head over to the Handbook for Players to read over the rules, the d100 system and familiarize yourself with the way this system differs from others you may know.

The Handbook covers everything from making d100 rolls, to how Conviction, Stress & Fatigue works, to the ebb and flow of combat, downtime, training and progression. This is where the world stops being just ink and become a living, unpredictable machine and one you'll have to navigate, influence, and survive in to carve out your story and fate.