Awareness
Overview
Awareness is your ability to physically spot and notice things happening or present around you.
Uses
Awareness is a skill that detects physical threats, such as a trap or an ambush. Unlike Willpower and Perception, Awareness is used to detect and call attention to potential physical harm (bodily damage or theft). It is used as a defensive Skill against Stealth.
Furthermore, it is often employed by GMs to determine if a character is able to detect or notice an event, trap, or detail.
Awareness is used when:
- Noticing an approaching, physical threat (Ex: A boulder rolling toward you. Jared approaching from behind, carrying a meme.)
- Hearing things out of the ordinary. (Ex. People walking around on the floor above you. A rumbling that's gradually getting louder.)
- Searching for evidence. (Ex. Footprints on the floor. A dustless spot left over from someone hiding the porn.)
- Spotting potions in drinks.
- Noticing traps.
- Finding people in Stealth.
- Pretty much anything else that uses the standard senses, but doesn't relate to social situations: Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch and Taste.
Awareness is NOT used for:
- Social situations. (Unless the thing noticed is purely physical, such as a gun under someone's coat or realizing that you'd seen someone before.)
- Noticing supernatural phenomena.
- Noticing subtle environmental cues. (Ex. Noticing that it's about to storm without a heavy wind front.)
- Noticing things without context. (Ex. Realizing that there should be a piano in the music room despite seeing no marks from it being moved or ever having seen a picture of the area before.)
Penalties
- Distraction: Characters who are distracted suffer a -15 penalty to their Awareness rolls against Stealth, traps, etc. (GM discretion.)
- Inebriation: Characters that have their judgment in some way impaired suffer a -25 penalty to their Awareness rolls against Stealth or traps. For example: being drunk, berserk, etc.
With MAX Awareness
When you have 100 Awareness besides modifiers, you get the following ability.
Instinct (Ability) :: Successfully defeating a Stealth check gives you an advantage when it leads to a battle. This includes when you immediately attack the character or when they immediately attack you (as in an ambush). In this case, you have initiative (first turn of the battle) and all of your Reactions in the first round are free except for Counter.
The Awareness Plus
The + in Awareness effectively raises your Awareness skill by 25.
Skills |
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Physical: Athletics • Stealth • Strength |
Mental: Awareness • Harvesting • Perception • Willpower |
Social: Charisma • Deceit • Speechcraft |
Craft: Blacksmithing • Chemistry • Enchantment • Engineering • Gunsmithing |
Special: Angelic Runes • Infernal Runes |