Scholar
Ever chasing the next discovery, Scholars balance the confidence to pursue their ideas alongside the humility to pivot when needed.
Starting Skill: Lore. If you choose Scholar as your starting path, gain a free skill rank in Lore.
Erudition (Scholar Talent)
Prerequisite: None.
Activation: Special Activation
You’ve conditioned your mind to quickly assimilate, archive, and recall information. After a brief but intensive study, you can navigate your newest areas of focus with
impressive proficiency.
When you acquire this talent, you become adroit at mental organization. Choose one cultural or utility expertise you don’t already have, and choose two different cognitive skills that aren’t Resonant skills.
When you make a test, you count as having the chosen expertise, and you count as having one additional rank of each of the chosen skills.
You can use this talent to gain skill ranks even if they exceed your usual maximum for skill ranks. This talent’s expertise and skill ranks are temporary and don’t count
toward prerequisites.
After a long rest during which you had access to a library, you can reassign any expertises and skill ranks granted by this talent. Follow the same rules to choose them as you did when you gained this talent.
Inventor
Strategist
Composed
Prerequisite: Strategize
Activation: Always Active.
Through practiced composure, you push your limits without becoming distracted or losing track of threats.
When you acquire this talent, your maximum and current focus increase by a number equal to your tier. When your tier increases by 1, your maximum and current focus do as well
Leads to: Contingency, Deep Contemplation
Contingency
Prerequisite: Lore 3+; Composed
Activation: Reaction
History is strewn with the debris of those who failed to learn from the past. You’re determined not to join them, so you prepare for anything that might derail your plans.
After an ally you can influence within 20 feet of you rolls a Complication, you can use this reaction and spend 2 focus to remove a Complication from their test.
Leads to: Turning Point
Deep Contemplation
Prerequisite: Lore 2+; Composed
Activation: 2 Actions
You methodically search your mental archives for facts and information to help resolve your current situation.
Reassign up to 2 of the skills and expertises gained from your Erudition talent.
Leads to: Keen Insight
Keen Insight
Prerequisite: Deep Contemplation
Activation: Always Active
Everyone has weaknesses—and you have a knack for uncovering and exploiting them.
After you succeed on a test to Gain Advantage, you exploit one of your target’s crucial traits, strengths, or flaws. Unless the target resists your influence, they gain a disadvantage on their next test during this encounter.
Know Your Moment
Prerequisite: Deduction 2+; Mind and Body
Activation: Always Active
Conflict follows its own beat, rising and falling as powers struggle for dominance. Your knowledge of strategy, rhetoric, and history guides you on when to act for greatest effect.
After the beginning of each round, each of your defenses increases by 2 until the start of your turn.
Mind and Body
Prerequisite: Erudition key talent
Activation: Always Active
You expand your intensive studies to include martial arts and fitness in addition to the cerebral arts.
When you acquire this talent, your Erudition talent grants you an additional skill, and you can use Erudition to choose physical skills that aren’t Resonant skills. Additionally, gain one weapon expertise of your choice.
Leads to: Know Your Moment
Strategize
Prerequisite: Deduction 1+; Erudition key talent
Activation: Special Activation
You carefully observe and assess your problem from novel angles, creating a cunning plan to remove an obstacle, gain the edge, or counter a foe’s next move.
After you succeed on a test to Gain Advantage using a skill gained from your Erudition talent, you can choose an ally you can influence. That ally gains the benefits of your Gain Advantage action instead of you. When you use this talent, you can also spend 2 focus to prevent the target of your Gain Advantage from using reactions against the ally you chose until the end of your next turn.
Leads to: Composed
Turning Point
Prerequisite: Deduction 3+; Contingency
Activation: 2 Actions
Battles often pivot on a single crucial moment. Through studying the history of warfare, you learn to identify such opportunities and gain the upper hand.
Once per scene, you can spend 2 focus to find a weakness in an opposing group’s strategy. Make a Deduction test against the Cognitive defense of the top-ranking enemy leader in this scene; to target this leader, you must be able to sense them. If you took a slow turn, you gain an advantage on this test. On a success, you and your allies you can influence gain an additional action on your next turns.
Surgeon
Anatomical Insight
Prerequisite: Field Medicine
Activation: Special Activation
Your anatomical knowledge aids you in striking vital points to incapacitate enemies while minimizing permanent harm.
When you hit a target of your size or smaller with an unarmed attack, you can spend 1 focus or Opportunity to apply the Exhausted condition to your target. The penalty applied by this condition equals half your ranks in Medicine, rounded up.
Applied Medicine
Prerequisite: Lore 2+; Collected
Activation: Always Active
You’ve studied chemistry, anatomy, social behavior, and much more. Thanks to this broad foundation, you practice the complex art of healing with flexibility and confidence.
When you cause a character to recover health, they recover additional health equal to your ranks in Lore.
Collected
Prerequisite: Emotional Intelligence
Activation: Always Active
You remain mindful of your immediate goals without losing sight of your deeper value, staying even-keeled amid chaos.
When you acquire this talent, increase your Cognitive and Spiritual defenses by 2.
Leads to: Applied Medicine
Emotional Intelligence
Prerequisite: Erudition key talent
Activation: Always Active
You hone your intuition and understanding of others, enabling you to spot easy-to-miss signs of hidden symptoms and complicated feelings.
When you acquire this talent, your Erudition talent grants you an additional skill, and you can use Erudition to choose spiritual skills that aren’t Resonant skills.
Additionally, you gain a utility expertise in Diagnosis.
Leads to: Collected
Field Medicine
Prerequisite: Medicine 1+; Erudition key talent
Activation: 1 Action
You treat a comrade’s minor wound by bandaging their wound, applying salves, or resetting a dislocated joint.
Spend 1 focus to make a DC 15 Medicine test to treat a conscious willing character within your reach, and roll the target’s recovery die as part of this test. You gain a
disadvantage if you’re treating yourself. On a success, your target recovers health equal to the result of their recovery die + your ranks in Medicine. On a failure, your target only recovers health equal to the result of their recovery die.
Leads to: Anatomical Insight, Swift Healer
Ongoing Care
Prerequisite: Lore 3+; Swift Healer
Activation: Special Activation
Medical care can be an arduous process that requires patience and periodic reassessment. You’ve studied the connection between physical and mental health, learning to support both on the long road to recovery.
You can forgo the usual benefits of a short or long rest to instead spend that time treating an ally within your reach. After that rest, make a DC 10 Medicine test, increasing the difficulty by 5 for each injury the target has beyond the first. On a success, you remove a single condition or similar effect caused by one of the target’s injuries (but the injury itself remains until healed).
A target can’t benefit from this talent more than once every 24 hours (or 1 day).
Additionally, when you acquire this talent, gain a utility expertise in Mental Health Care.
Resuscitation
Prerequisite: Medicine 3+; Swift Healer
Activation: Special Activation
You efficiently treat a mortally wounded creature, seeking to pull them back from the brink by applying a tourniquet, administering an antidote, or even restarting failed organs.
You can use your Field Medicine talent to attempt to resuscitate a fallen character. When you do, spend 3 focus (instead of 1) to target a character within your reach who is Unconscious or who died within a number of rounds equal to your ranks in Medicine.
That talent’s test DC increases by 5 for each injury the target has beyond the first. On a failure, the target doesn’t recover health. On a success, the target recovers health as usual for that talent, and if they were dead, they return to life. If they were Unconscious, they can choose to remove that condition.
Swift Healer
Prerequisite: Medicine 2+; Field Medicine
Activation: Free action
Your practiced hands quickly dress wounds, even as the tides of battle ebb and flow around you.
You can use your Field Medicine as Free Action.
Additionally, when you acquire this talent, you become more skilled in healing. When you use an ability that restores health to another character, they recover additional health equal to your ranks in Medicine.
Leads to: Ongoing Care, Resuscitation