Background Skills
Adventuring skills like Perception and Stealth are critical to survival, but they crowd out the skills that make characters feel like real people — the bard who composes ballads, the rogue who spent years as a sailor, the wizard who still keeps up her calligraphy. This system solves that by giving every character 2 bonus background skill ranks per level that can only be spent on background skills, leaving normal skill ranks untouched.
How It Works
Normal skill ranks can still be spent on background skills if desired — the bonus ranks just can't flow the other direction. Class skill lists are unchanged; any class that gains Craft or Perform as a class skill also counts Artistry as a class skill. Lore is always a class skill for every character.
Skill Categories
Purchased with normal skill ranks.
Purchased with the bonus 2 background ranks.
New Skills
These two skills can be used even without the background skills system — simply add them as normal skills if desired.
Like Craft, Artistry is a family of separate skills — each with its own ranks. Common categories include choreography, criticism, literature (including poetry), musical composition, philosophy, and playwriting. While Craft produces a physical object, Artistry produces an idea or concept: a new song, a poem, a philosophy. The paper it's written on is incidental; the creation is the work itself.
Some art forms (painting, sculpture) straddle the line between Artistry and Craft — the GM decides whether a specific Craft skill can be taken as Artistry instead.
Check: Create works of art and earn income from patrons.
| DC | Workmanship | Daily Income | Commission Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Pedestrian — odd jobs, repairs, copies | 1d10 cp | 1 sp |
| 10 | Pleasing | 1d10 sp | 25 gp |
| 15 | Impressive — local reputation | 3d10 sp | 50 gp |
| 20 | Memorable — national reputation | 1d6 gp | 100 gp |
| 25 | Masterful — distant/extraplanar notice | 3d6 gp | 200 gp |
Commissioned work: spend 1/4 the commission fee in supplies, then attempt weekly checks until the accumulated progress (check result × DC, in sp) meets the price. Masterwork tools provide no bonus — art is imagination, not equipment.
Lore is hyper-specialized knowledge — narrower than any Knowledge skill. A character might know Lore (elven history of Kyonin) without ranks in Knowledge (history), or Lore (taverns of Absalom) without any broader geographic knowledge. The narrower the scope, the deeper the expertise.
Lore skills cannot be used to identify monsters unless they specifically refer to a narrow creature type (e.g., Lore [frost giants] is fine; Lore [giants] is too broad).
Check: Same DC scale as Knowledge — DC 10 easy, DC 15 basic, DC 20–30 tough. With GM permission, a partially relevant Lore may substitute for a Knowledge check at a –5 penalty.
- A particular small city
- One district of a large city
- Taverns in a specific region
- Famous battles in a region
- The spice trade
- Drow matriarchs
- Frost giants
- A specific deity (Sarenrae)
- Settlements (in general)
- An entire large city
- Taverns (no region)
- Famous battles (no region)
- Commerce
- Drow (all)
- Giants (all)
- Gods (in general)
Bards: Lore is treated as a Knowledge skill for bardic knowledge and lore master (and similar abilities), but only for Lore skills in which the character is trained.
Converting Existing Characters
To convert a character already in play:
- Count total background skill ranks the character is entitled to: 2 × character level.
- Count how many existing ranks the character already has in skills that are now background skills.
- Refund those ranks as regular skill ranks (free to spend on any skill).
- Spend background skill ranks on background skills — any existing ranks already there use the background pool first; spend any remaining background ranks freely.
The GM may also allow limited retraining — e.g., moving ranks from Profession (poet) to Artistry (poetry), or replacing Knowledge (geography) with a specific Lore skill that better fits the character's backstory.