Rules

From Sky's Limit

Contained within this section are the rules that govern the worlds of The Sky's Limit. The rules below are split into segments according to topic.

Contents 1 Rounding 2 Skills 2.1 Skill Rolls 2.2 Skill Rolls without a Skill 2.3 Using Stats as Skills 2.4 Opposing Rolls 2.5 Bonuses and penalties 3 Time 4 Combat 4.1 Damage Alternatives 5 Falling, Drowning and other Environmental Damage 5.1 Falling 5.2 Drowning/Suffocating 6 Regeneration 7 Creatures 8 Experience 9 Languages 10 Vehicles and Mounts 11 Space Ships 12 Food and Drink 12.1 Alcohol 12.2 Rotten Food 12.3 Poisions 12.4 HP Recovery Items 13 Magic

[edit] Rounding

When working out some aspects, you may find you have to work out various fractions. Once these have been worked out, they must be rounded to the nearest whole number. Any fraction less than 0.5 is dropped. Any fraction equal or higher to 0.5 is rounded up.

[edit] Skills

Skills make up the bulk of rolls for The Sky's Limit, every time your character makes an action, there is a possible skill roll to be made. Many actions are considered to be an automatic success, such as walking, breathing, digging etcetera, but other actions, such as trying to pick a lock, or use a weapon, require a roll. Anything a unskilled adult human being here could be assumed to do, like opening a door, buying a hot dog, or eating with tableware, does not require a skill roll.

[edit] Skill Rolls

Skill rolls are rolled on a D100, or two D10's rolled together, one making up the first digit, the second the second digit. For any given skill, you must roll lower than your skill in it. For instance if you had 30 points in 'Speak Other Language [French]' and tried to ask where the bathroom is, you must roll under 30 on a D100. If you pass the roll, the action is successful. If you do not, the action fails and the game master bases the outcome on your roll. However, if you roll under half your skill in that area (i.e. under 15 for 'Speak Other Language [French]' from the previous example) you succeed and any opposing roll must be made with a penalty equal to the difference between half your skill and your roll (i.e. if you rolled an 8, and the opponents opposing skill was 25, they would roll the skill as 25-7, so they must roll under 18). Also, no matter what the skill, rolling under 5 is always a success and rolling over 95 is always a fail.

[edit] Skill Rolls without a Skill

With every skill roll and opposing roll, your GM will tell you which skills you need to use. If you do not have any points in that skill, then thee skill counts as half the linked stat. (i.e. if you had a PER of 24 and tried to use Ignore, you would have to roll under 12).

[edit] Using Stats as Skills

Some situations may call for rolls against stats, in which case you must roll under the stat in question, same as with a skill. However there is no bonus for rolling under half your stat.

[edit] Opposing Rolls

If a skill is used against you (i.e. aggressive social actions, combat actions, magical actions) the GM will make an opposing roll for you using the opposing skill. If you succeed, the strength of the action (damage done, severity of effects etcetera) is reduced. If you manage to roll under half of you skill in the opposing skill, the action is nullified.

[edit] Bonuses and penalties

Depending on the situation, the GM may wish to give either a bonus or penalty to a skill roll. Reasons may include: Poor visibility, exhaustion, weather, ground condition, speed et cetera. All bonuses are to the skill being used, and are as follows:

• For something that inhibits the skill only a small amount (walking into bright sunlight from a dark room, light mist, light confusion, slick ground, slight distraction, slight intoxication et cetera): Take five points from the skill for this roll.
• For something that inhibits the skill (Bright sunlight, darkness, light fog, confusion, wet ground, distraction, intoxication et cetera): Take ten points from the skill for this roll.
• For something that inhibits the skill a lot (blinding light, pitch black, heavy fog, complete confusion, complete distraction, extreme intoxication et cetera): Take twenty points from the skill for this roll.

• For something that helps the skill only a small amount (high ground, good light, stationary target, basic instructions et cetera): Add five points to the skill for this roll.
• For something that helps the skill (target stationary for a length of time, good instructions, surprising the target et cetera): Add ten points to the skill for this roll.

[edit] Time

Time in The Sky's Limit is dealt with using a system called Universal System Time or UST. One UST day is 30 hours long and this is split into five 6 hour segments called periods. Any ability that allows a number of uses per day is refering to a UST day.

Various planets will have differing day lengths, and for simplicity's sake this is always a multiple of six hours. The period is further split into turns, each lasting 15 seconds. In one turn you can make the following actions:

• 1 talk action
• Move 30 meters
• 2 hand actions

The turn is used when time is important, such as in traps, combat or various situations the GM will throw at you.

[edit] Combat

In The Sky's Limit combat is just a set of skills. Each weapon has an assigned skill, some may have 2 (i.e. a sword can be used with Long Blade and Parry and a spear can be used with Staff and Block). Each weapon also has a damage value, generally listed like '10+1D10'. Weapons can also have attributes which alters the way the weapon works.

There are four combat ranges in The Sky's Limit, Melee Range, Medium Range, Long Range and No Range. Melee range is 0-3 metres and any weapon can be used. Medium range is up to 10 metres and ranged weapons and staff weapons can be used. Long range is up to 15 metres and only ranged weapons can be used. Over 20 metres is No Range, only weapons specifically designed to be used at this range can be used.

To attack, your character must make a skill roll with the appropriate skill for the weapon they are using (or martial arts if they are fighting unarmed). If this is successful, then the defending character must make a skill roll with either Dodge or Parry or Block if they have a weapon that can be used to parry or block (which is shown in the weapons listing. If the opposing roll fails, the defending characters armour rating (if any) is removed from the damage and combat moves on. Unarmed attacks do damage equal to one tenth of the characters maximum HP plus 1D6, and on a critical roll and at GM discretion, the target is knocked out.

Ranged attacks also lose damage over distance, the amount of damage they lose over distance is shown in their listing in the Equipment section.

[edit] Damage Alternatives

In some situations, the GM may feel it is appropriate that damage done is not just the the form on HP. In these cases, the GM may remove or lessen the HP damage and add an effect, such as losing a hand action, half speed or what ever they see fit.

[edit] Falling, Drowning and other Environmental Damage

[edit] Falling

A character will only take damage from a fall if they fall in free fall for over 5 metres. For every 5 metres a character falls, they take d6 damage. If a character lands on something soft, this is reduced to d3 damage.

[edit] Drowning/Suffocating

Any character who is deprived of air for more than three minutes takes d3 damage per round unless they do not need to breath.

[edit] Regeneration

In The Sky's Limit, HP and MP regeneration occour at different rates. HP regenerates at a rate of 1HP per hour when you are hurt (although this can be changed by various abilities and drugs) and this regenerated HP is given when the character rests for a period of at least an hour (e.g. if a character is awake for 10 hours and sleeps for 2 hours, their HP will increase by up to 12 up to it's maximum).

MP regenerates differently. Each hour it regenerates 1/10th of the maximum MP. This is applied at the end of each hour, unlike HP.

[edit] Creatures

Creatures are generally non-intelligent wildlife, and you may encounter these when traveling outside of population centres on planets and moons or as peoples pets/companions. Creatures may use standard weapons but others will have natural weapons they can use, these are noted with the creatures stats. Some creatures can be tamed and every creature has a wild value. In order to tame a creature, you must a) have an animal lore skill higher than the creatures wild value and b) make a series of successful rolls against your animal lore skill (how many depends on the animal and is left up to the GM). After this, the animal is loyal to you and will do what you ask of it. Alternately animals can be purchased from various markets.

[edit] Experience

At the end of each session or time block/day (which ever is more appropriate) the GM will allot experience in the form of LP. The general rule of thumb is 10 LP per session, although this should be altered based on the pace of the game. On top of this, if a player reaches an objective or roleplays well, additional LP ranging between 1 and 25LP should be added. This experience can then be spent on abilities, skills or stats as shown in Character Creation.

[edit] Languages

In The Sky's Limit, all player characters must speak a language called Standard, this is considered to be their native language. However, if you go to other planets and stray out of larger cities, you may come across other languages. The main languages are listed below:

• English
• Chinese
• Standard
• Origin
• Faer
• Binary
• Qubit

Unless otherwise stated, all player characters have 99 levels in Standard, and if the character has Bilingual, they also have 99 in a second language. To see what languages are spoken where, look in the Places section.

[edit] Vehicles and Mounts

In The Sky's Limit, you can get to many places via public transport. Either through trams, trains or robotic taxis, you simply get in and get out at your destination. But public transport can only get you places within built up areas and in some cases, between them. Vehicles and mounts fill this gap.

When starting to use a vehicle, if you have a skill of over 50 in it, no skill roll is required. If your skill is under fifty, you must make a roll. If you fail this, you have failed to start the vehicle, fell off it or somehow didn't manage to start it and must try again. This also applies to mounts.

Once you have started, normal use (going over roads, decent ground) does not require skill rolls, although obstacles such as bad ground, sudden corners, surprises that require more concentration than normal will require skill rolls. Results of failing should be determined by the GM as appropriate.

[edit] Space Ships

See Ship Rules for rules on ships

[edit] Food and Drink

In The Sky's Limit characters need to eat and drink to maintain their strength. As a rule of thumb, characters need to eat one good meal per day minimum to keep up their strength. At any level less than this, all roles have a penalty determined by the GM until the character has eaten. Eating bad foods (rotten, poisonous or otherwise) have effects detailed below, as do alcoholic beverages (also detailed below) however most foods will have no sudden effects.

[edit] Alcohol

Alcoholic beverages affect most characters differently, and as a rule of thumb, it is up to a GM as to the penalties inflicted, but generally the more a character drinks, the more severe the effects ranging from penalties to rolls, loss of movement etc.

[edit] Rotten Food

Food must be stored properly otherwise after five days it goes off. If you eat gone off food, roll a d10. On a roll of 1 or 2, you take d6 damage over d10 hours (damage is done at the begining of the hour, if the number of hours is higher than the damage, do 1 damage every other hour or similar).

[edit] Poisions

When using a poison, roll a d10. This number determines the posions severity. Posions can be used on food, drink and non-plasma melee weapons. When the weapon hits or the item of food is eaten, the character affected must roll 2d10, picking the highest. If the character rolls higher than the severity of the posion, nothing happens. If the roll lower, the character loses an equal number of HP per round as the damage listed for the posion for the duration listed with it. Antidotes can be used and stop the effect of the poison however do not on their own restore lost HP. For an antidote to work, you must roll under it's chance of success on a d100.

[edit] HP Recovery Items

When a character consumes an item designed to restore HP, the character gains an equal number of HP to the items healing power for a number of rounds shown on the items listing.

[edit] Magic

Magic in Sky's Limit is like combat. It is merely another set of skills, however each magic skill has a set of spells that can be used with it. For the full magic rules, see the Magic Rules page.