Athletics

Trait Description: This trait is important in combat. Athletics allows a character to move with grace and ease. A character skilled in this Ability can jump wide chasms, climb sheer cliffs, perform daring acrobatics and lift enormous burdens. It coves feats of strength, balance, coordination and reflexes.

Specialties: Climbing, Leaping, Lifting Heavy Objects, Running Over Uneven or Slippery Terrain

Trait Effects: Someone with Athletics 1 can probably keep her balance while walking on an ice-covered street. Someone with Athletics 3 can work as an acrobat in the circuses of the Realm. Someone with Athletics 5 can scale the glass towers of Chiaroscuro.

List of Athletics Charms

Dramatic Rules for Athletics

Climbing (Athletics)

Ascending a slope may be completed with a single (Dexterity + Athletics) roll at a difficulty based on the incline of the slope and the frequency of handholds. Success means the character climbs without incident, while failure means the character cannot find purchase and must start over. A botch indicates a fall, with the severity of the botch determining where in the ascent the character lost his grip. Storytellers can also choose to break a climb into an extended check for added drama. They can even use combat time to represent a high-stakes race between two or more characters. If a character is belayed, she shouldn't fall except in the worst possible botch.

Falling (Athletics)

Characters who fall onto a hard surface suffer levels of bashing damage equal to half the number of yards fallen, rounded down. This damage is considered piercing, though terminal velocity prevents damage from rising above 25B. Falling damage can be soaked normally, but a character soaks it completely, the minimum damage is simply reduced to one die rather than one level. Falling onto spikes, jagged surfaces and the like converts the damage from bashing to lethal. If the terrain is particularly soft or yielding, such as falling into deep water, halve the damage or (if the character is particularly lucky) assign no damage at all besides cosmetic bruising.

Latest Errata: Falling damage is not considered an environmental hazard, and cannot be defended against by Heavenly Guardian Defense or similar Charms (with the exception of Duck Fate); only damage negation (such as Adamant Skin Technique), effects which negate falling damage (such as the Air Aspect anima power), or not falling from a great height in the first place may protect the character from falling damage.

Players of heroic characters should receive a reflexive (Wits + Athletics) roll when their characters fall to save them from certain doom, typically by them grabbing onto the edge of a cliff or pit or snagging some outlying rock or flagpole on the way down. For a particularly long fall, a successful roll might mean the character bounces off the side of a wall and takes standard damage for falling that far but doesn't continue falling any farther.

Tumbling: If it is absolutely impossible for a character to grab hold of anything mid-plummet, every success on the roll provides an additional point of soak as the character tumbles and rolls to absorb the shock of impact. Minor characters seldom receive such protection.

Feats of Strength (Athletics)

Characters can heroically exert themselves to lift or break objects as a diceless action, comparing their (Strength + Athletics + appropriate specialty) total to the listed chart. Feats of strength involving breaking something take approximately a minute to perform or set up, so they cannot be done in the scope of normal combat time. Instead, characters who wish to break an inanimate object in battle must attack it (see Inanimate Targets). Characters can lift, pull or push objects as a miscellaneous action in Combat, enabling all manner of battlefield heroism.

Throwing a heavy object as a feat of strength requires a (Strength + Athletics) total five dots higher than is necessary to lift the object, and doing so sends the object hurtling a number of yards equal to the character's (Strength + Athletics). This action requires a Speed 5 (Dexterity + Thrown) attack roll to toss the lifted object, at a three-die Accuracy penalty. Penalties for throwing beyond range accrue normally (see Range Penalties). The base damage of a large improvised throwing weapon is the (Strength + Athletics) total in bashing dice needed to throw it, plus the attack's successes. This damage is considered piercing, as it crushes through armor. Animate objects cannot be lifted or thrown this way in combat unless they do not resist. Those who struggle must be clinched and then thrown (see Combat).

If the character uses a stunt or channels a Virtue, add the bonus directly to the total. Channeling a Virtue adds its rating directly to the total. Spending a Willpower point for an automatic success allows the player to roll Willpower and add successes to the total. Cooperation provides a limited bonus, with every assistant adding one point to the total (to a maximum of the leader's Athletics rating). All such bonuses affect only a single Strength check. In particularly gritty games, especially those involving mortal protagonists, halve the feats possible for a particular (Strength + Athletics) total, rounded up. Doing so profoundly alters the feel of the game, so Storytellers should carefully consider whether to alter the default epic tone.

Feats of Strength

(Strength + Athletics)	Lift (lbs.)	Sample Feat
1	80	Lift an anvil or suit of heavy armor.
2	160	Lift a full-grown man; break a wooden plank with a kick.
3	250	Punch a fist through a wooden door.
4	350	Lift a pony; carry a cotton bale on one shoulder; break a sword over one knee.
5	450	Lift a donkey; kick a wooden door to flinders.
6	550	Punch a fist through a heavy wooden door (i.e., oak).
7	650	Bend an iron bar with both hands.
8	800	Lift a horse; bend a horseshoe into a pretzel.
9	1,000	Pull a fully laden wagon.
10	1,200	Lift a camel.
11	1,400	Lift an unlocked portcullis; break down a brick wall over a half hour.
12	1,600	Kick a heavy wooden door to flinders; pull down a wooden bridge.
13	1,800	Lift a yeddim; punch a fist through an iron-shod door.
14	2,000	Snap iron manacles; rip a stone out of a castle wall.
15	2,200	Punch a fist through a stone wall; shatter an iron-shod door to flinders.
16	2,500	Lift a locked portcullis; smash any lock apart with a kick.
17	3,000	Punch a fist through a metal door; pull down heavy stone pillars.
18	3,500	Rip iron bars out of stone with one hand; tip over a loaded wagon.
19	4,000	Tear apart welded steel, such as the grating of a portcullis.
20	4,500	Lift a hippopotamus; punch a hole through a heavily armored fortress gate.

Jumping (Athletics)

Heroic characters often find themselves needing to leap great distances in a single bound, whether to cross a yawning chasm, to jump between ships at sea or to snag a swooping opponent as she ascends to apparent safety. Without the aid of magic, characters can jump straight up a maximum number of yards equal to their (Strength + Athletics) total. Spending a point of Willpower adds an additional two yards, while stunts or Virtue channeling add yards equal to the bonus dice normally added. Wound penalties and mobility penalties from armor both directly subtract yards from a character's jumping distance. The distance a character can leap horizontally is double the vertical range. In gritty games, halve the number of yards characters can jump, rounded up.

Running and Swimming (Athletics and Resistance)

If it is necessary to know a character's exact speed relative to the events playing out around her, the Storyteller should force the scene into combat time (see Time) and track the movement in the passage of ticks. The same applies equally for sprinting and swimming, with the rules for unsteady terrain applying as appropriate to both forms of locomotion. In standard narrative time, characters have however long they need to reach their destination, making the issue of speed a moot point. Movement rolls based on quickness use (Dexterity + Athletics).

In contrast, long-distance running and swimming is a matter of endurance rather than speed, using a pool of (Stamina + Resistance). This is handled like any other strenuous activity.