SKILLS IN THE REISA CAMPAIGN

Rules Cyclopedia General Skills System

Reisa uses the Rules Cyclopedia General Skills system with a curated list of allowed skills.

Skills do not replace roleplaying, problem solving, or class abilities. They represent background competence and lived experience.

Having a skill may:

• allow you to attempt something others cannot

• reduce the risk of an action

• provide useful context or information

• change the consequences of failure

Skills never guarantee success.

HOW SKILL ROLLS WORK

When the referee calls for a skill roll:

1. Roll 1d20

1. Succeed if the result is equal to or under the listed ability score

Difficulty is handled narratively:

• Standard difficulty: roll normally

• Really easy: roll with advantage

• Really difficult: roll with disadvantage

The referee may also rule:

• no roll is needed

• a roll is impossible regardless of skill

You do not ask to roll skills. You describe what your character does. The referee decides whether a skill applies.

HOW MANY SKILLS YOU GET

Your Intelligence score determines the number of skills known.

Reisa Rule: Any extra skills gained from high Intelligence must be chosen from the Secondary or Tertiary lists. Primary skills are limited and cannot be expanded by Intelligence alone.

SKILL CATEGORIES

These categories guide character creation only.

Primary Skills Skills with the broadest impact on play — they come up regularly, interact with danger and exploration, and confer meaningful advantage across many situations.

Secondary Skills Social, informational, and access-based skills. They open doors, change NPC behavior, and provide useful knowledge.

Tertiary Skills Background, profession, and flavor skills. Narrow and situational by design.

Character Creation Limits

• At least one skill must be Tertiary

• No more than two skills may be Primary

PRIMARY SKILL DESCRIPTIONS

Alertness (Dexterity) Allows the character to draw a weapon without losing time, avoid surprise, and awaken at the slightest out-of-place noise. Applies only when the character is actively watching or guarding.

Endurance (Constitution) Allows prolonged physical exertion. A successful check allows one hour of strenuous activity. Each additional hour requires another check with a cumulative +1 penalty. After completion or collapse, the character must rest for three times the exertion duration.

Escape (Dexterity) Allows the character to slip bonds or restraints. One roll frees the character from ties. A separate roll is required to open locks. Modifiers depend on rope quality, knots, lock complexity, and tools.

Stealth (choose terrain) (Dexterity) Functions like Move Silently but only in one chosen terrain:

• forest or taiga

• plains or tundra

• mountains or hills

• urban

• indoors/underground

A check is required when sneaking or risking detection. The referee may roll secretly.

SECONDARY SKILL DESCRIPTIONS

Acting (Charisma) Allows convincing portrayal of false emotions or alternate personalities over short periods.

Animal Training (choose type) (Wisdom) Allows raising, training, and caring for one animal type. Each type requires a separate selection.

Bargaining (Charisma) Secures the best available deal for goods, services, or information. Cannot compel generosity.

Bureaucracy (Intelligence) Knowledge of permits, records, procedures, and chains of authority. Especially useful in mandala cities and Church administrative contexts.

Caving (Wisdom) Allows reliable underground orientation while conscious. The character automatically knows the route taken through caves, caverns, underground rivers, and similar environments. Skill checks are required if disoriented or fleeing for long distances. Characters without this skill automatically become lost in such situations.

Deception (Charisma) Allows convincing NPCs of falsehoods. Failure means sounding unconvincing. Does not affect player characters.

Diplomacy (Charisma) Negotiates agreements and mediates disputes. Encourages cooperation but cannot override strong interests.

Disguise (Intelligence) Allows the character to appear as someone else. Each observer requires a check. Targets may oppose with Wisdom.

Engineering (Intelligence) The skill of planning, designing, and evaluating large structures such as houses, bridges, and dams. Structures built without trained oversight will eventually fail. The skill may also assess condition, age, and likely weaknesses of existing constructions.

Etiquette (choose culture) (Charisma) Deep knowledge of the behavioral protocols, honorifics, and social signifiers of one specific culture. Each culture requires a separate selection. Available cultures include: Velkari, Church, Elven, and others at referee discretion.

Etiquette goes beyond surface courtesy. A character with Velkari Etiquette knows the road bow and its variations, the correct way to approach a Rootstone Keeper, what it means to accept or decline butter-tea, when to offer a name and when to wait, how to interpret ankle stocks, and which violations are forgiven versus remembered. A character with Church Etiquette knows which administrative titles require deference, how to read vestment signifiers, and what formal requests must precede access to records or personnel.

Distinct from Diplomacy, which negotiates outcomes — Etiquette governs the preconditions under which negotiation can even begin. A character without the appropriate Etiquette who attempts Diplomacy with a formal Velkari elder or a senior Church official does so at disadvantage.

Funerary Rites (Wisdom) Knowledge of the ceremonies required to guide a spirit safely through the bardo period after death. Covers sky burial procedures, the 49-day acknowledgment cycle, how to address a recently deceased person's ghost before it becomes confused or hostile, and how to prevent a body from being possessed by a malevolent presence.

In play, this skill can resolve or prevent encounters that arise from failure to observe correct death rites — bardo wanderers, hungry ghosts, unattended sky burial sites, and bodies in danger of animation. A Cleric / Druid /  Mystic who also has this skill performs funerary ceremonies at full effectiveness. A non-Cleric / Druid /  Mystic with this skill can attempt the ceremony but cannot call on divine authority to turn any presences that resist.

Distinct from Mysticism, which covers living ritual practice. Funerary Rites covers specifically the threshold of death and what is owed to those who have crossed it.

Healing (Intelligence) Treats wounds and diagnoses illness. Restores 1d3 hit points once per wound set. A natural 20 inflicts 1d3 damage and prevents further treatment. Rolls of 18 or higher identify magical illness.

Knowledge (choose type) (Intelligence) Expertise in a narrowly defined field such as Arcana, History, Religion, or Geography. Provides expert commentary and professional competence.

Language (choose type) (Intelligence) Grants fluency in one language of the Mandala Kingdom, including reading and writing unless specified otherwise.

Leadership (Charisma) Grants +1 morale to NPCs under command and may convince NPCs to follow orders. Does not bully or antagonize.

Mysticism (Wisdom) Intuitive understanding of rituals, offerings, and behavior appropriate to spiritual traditions — including the Church, the Rootstone Keeper traditions, Wandering Tantrika practice, and Velkari folk observance. Reflects lived spiritual experience, not spellcasting.

A character with Mysticism recognizes when a site requires circumambulation, knows which offerings are appropriate for which presences, understands what acknowledgment a Water Weird or territorial hill spirit requires, and can read the significance of a Thread Cross or torma. Covers non-Church traditions explicitly. A character who wants to behave correctly at a ley site, a sky burial, or a Keeper ceremony without the relevant Etiquette or Funerary Rites skill can attempt it through Mysticism at standard difficulty, rather than at disadvantage.

Persuasion (Charisma) Allows NPCs to believe the speaker's honest statements. Success does not guarantee agreement or action.

TERTIARY SKILL DESCRIPTIONS

Strength-Based

Intimidation (Strength) Bullying NPCs through threats or implied violence. Does not affect PCs or NPCs of 5th level or higher.

Muscle (Strength) Grants +2 to Strength checks involving lifting, forcing doors, or directing heavy labor.

Wrestling (Strength) Grants +1 to the character's wrestling rating in unarmed combat.

Intelligence-Based

Alchemy (Intelligence) Identifies common substances, potions, and poisons. May create antidotes with referee approval.

Alternate Magics (Intelligence) Knowledge of nonstandard magical effects, monster powers, and extraplanar phenomena.

Art (choose type) (Intelligence or Wisdom) Creates art such as carving or painting. May affect NPC reactions.

Craft (choose type) (Intelligence) Professional skill allowing income and expert evaluation.

Labor (Intelligence) Represents proficiency in a specific form of manual labor.

Lip Reading (Intelligence) Allows understanding speech by sight if the language is known.

Magical Engineering (Intelligence) Recognizes principles behind magical devices and identifies common items, but not curses.

Mimicry (Intelligence) Imitates animal sounds and foreign accents.

Profession (choose type) (Intelligence) Expertise in a nonlabor profession.

Science (choose type) (Intelligence) Formal scientific knowledge, usually restricted to advanced cultures.

Shipbuilding (Intelligence) Designs and evaluates ships.

Signaling (choose type) (Intelligence) Creates and interprets coded signal systems.

Veterinary Healing (Intelligence) Treats nonhuman creatures. May be general or specialized.

Wisdom-Based

Bravery (Wisdom) Allows resistance to magically induced fear. On a successful roll, the character is unaffected by a single magical fear effect. Does not apply to natural fear from overwhelming danger.

Ceremony (choose Immortal) (Wisdom) Performs rituals and knows behavior pleasing to a specific Immortal.

Gambling (Wisdom) Wins money in honest games of chance.

Law and Justice (choose culture) (Wisdom) Knowledge of laws and judicial customs of a specific culture.

Omen Reading (Wisdom) The character has learned to read patterns — in dreams, in the behavior of animals, in seemingly random coincidences — as indicators of approaching harm or benefit. This is not magic. It is trained attention to what is already present.

On a successful roll, the referee provides one piece of accurate information about what is likely to go wrong (or right) in the current situation or location. The character cannot direct what the omen reveals — that is the referee's determination. The information is always true but may require interpretation.

Omen Reading fires when the character takes a moment to observe before acting: watching the behavior of birds before crossing a pass, noting which way the smoke is bending, listening to what the animals in camp are doing. It does not work on demand mid-combat. The referee may also call for an Omen Reading check when the character has been in a location long enough to absorb its patterns, offering unsolicited information the character could not have reasoned their way to.

Commonly found among Rootstone Keepers, Velkari elders, and members of the Forest Sangha. A useful complement to Mysticism for characters built around spiritual awareness.

Dexterity-Based

Acrobatics (Dexterity) Performs acrobatic feats and reduces fall distance by 10 feet on success.

Blind Shooting (Dexterity) Allows ranged attacks without sight if the target can be heard.

Cheating (Dexterity) Dishonest gambling. Limited to Chaotic characters.

Mountaineering (Dexterity) Climbs difficult terrain using equipment.

Piloting (choose type) (Dexterity) Operates one category of vessel.

Quick Draw (Dexterity) Grants +2 initiative when rapidly nocking and firing.

Riding (choose type) (Dexterity) Controls a riding animal under stress.

Constitution-Based

Food Tasting (Constitution) Detects spoiled food or water, but not tasteless poisons.

Charisma-Based

Music (choose type) (Charisma) Performs skillfully on a family of instruments.

Singing (Charisma) Earns income and influence through vocal performance.

Storytelling (Charisma) Captivates audiences through spoken tales.