Traits
Attributes
Attributes don’t directly affect skill rolls. Savage Worlds treats learned knowledge and training as the most relevant and direct factors. A high attribute allows one to increase a skill faster and opens up options to Edges that greatly differentiate two characters with the same skill.
Every character starts with a d4 in each of five attributes:
Agility. is a measure of a character’s nimbleness, dexterity, and general coordination.
Smarts. measures raw intelligence, mental acuity, and how fast a heroine thinks on her feet. It’s used to resist certain types of mental and social attacks.
Spirit. is self-confidence, backbone, and willpower. It’s used to resist social and supernatural attacks as well as fear.
Strength. is physical power and fitness. It’s also used as the basis of a warrior’s damage in hand-to-hand combat, and to determine how much he can wear or carry.
Vigor. represents an individual’s endurance, resistance to disease, poison, or toxins, and how much physical damage she can take before she can’t go on. It is most often used to resist Fatigue effects, and as the basis for the derived stat of Toughness.
Using Attributes
Attributes are used to:
• Determine how fast skills increase during Advancement.
• Limit access to Edges.
• Derive secondary statistics such as Toughness or melee damage.
• Resist effects such as being grappled or counter spells, powers, or social attacks such as Taunt or Intimidation.
Skills
Faith, Focus, Psionics, Spellcasting, and Weird Science have all been removed from this setting.
An additional skill has been added for Stellarions and Stellaris: Crystal Channeling if your character is a Stellaris Agent they will start with a d4 in Crystal Channeling. It would be impossible to learn this skill without training at the Citadel and having a Harness.
Heroes have 15 points to buy skills during character creation. A skill that’s below the linked attribute (noted in parentheses beside the skill name) is cheaper to increase than one that’s at or above it.
Core skills are marked with a red square, and start at d4 for player characters.
Characters can attempt skills they don’t have but it’s more difficult. See Unskilled Attempts.
Academics (Smarts)
Academics reflects knowledge of history, languages, literature, philosophy, politics, and the soft sciences across Earth, the Commonwealth, and the wider galaxy. Use it to recall an old Earth treaty, identify a pre-Commonwealth symbol on a station bulkhead, or quote a piece of propaganda from the Azaran decline years.
🟥 Athletics (Agility)
Athletics combines coordination with learned movement: climbing, jumping, balancing, grappling, swimming, throwing, catching, and moving through hazards in low gravity. Characters who rely on physical power more than coordination can take the Brute Edge to link this skill to Strength instead of Agility.
Battle (Smarts)
Battle is a character’s grasp of strategy, tactics, and doctrine. Use it to evaluate battlefield layouts, predict enemy maneuvering, coordinate a boarding action, or lead forces during Mass Battles.
Boating (Agility)
Boating covers small watercraft and wet-environment operations: piloting skiffs, working river craft, handling lines, reading currents, and staying alive in heavy seas. In Astrabound, it most often shows up on ocean worlds, water stations, and amphibious colony operations.
🟥 Common Knowledge (Smarts)
Common Knowledge represents what you know about everyday life across your lived space: local customs, slang, factions, current events, common tech, famous ports, typical laws, and social expectations. Use it to know what a port authority cares about, what a Syndicate fixer expects, or what a Commonwealth citizen would assume is normal.
Crystal Channeling (Spirit)
The arcane skill used for Arcane Background (Crystal Channeling), with which one activates their socketed Crystal’s powers. Channeling is a mental exercise practiced with biofeedback techniques.
Driving (Agility)
Driving lets a hero control powered ground vehicles: cars, bikes, armored transports, and colony utility rigs. Characters in settings where vehicles are ubiquitous don’t need Driving for ordinary travel. Driving rolls are typically only needed in dangerous or stressful conditions, such as Chases, hostile terrain, combat driving, or failing infrastructure.
Electronics (Smarts)
Electronics is the skill for operating complex, specialized, or unfamiliar devices: ship sensor suites, industrial control panels, security grids, lab equipment, and alien interface standards. Common consumer tech usually does not require Electronics unless the situation is risky or unusual.
Fixing broken electronics uses Repair, but Repair is limited by the hero’s Electronics skill. Use whichever skill is lowest.
Fighting (Agility)
Fighting covers all hand-to-hand combat and melee weapons: unarmed strikes, knives, shock batons, boarding axes, monoblades, and close-quarters martial arts.
Gambling (Smarts)
Gambling covers games of chance, reading tables, managing tells, and keeping your nerve. To simulate an hour of gambling, agree on the stakes (credits, favors, cargo shares, or other). Everyone makes a Gambling roll. The lowest total pays the highest the difference times the stake. The next lowest pays the second highest, and so on. If there’s an odd one left in the middle, they break even.
Cheating: A character who cheats adds +2 to their roll. The GM may raise or lower this modifier depending on the game and the method. If a cheater rolls a Critical Failure, they’re caught. The consequences depend on the table and who noticed.
Hacking (Smarts)
Hacking is used to create programs, break into secured systems, defeat access controls, spoof credentials, and subvert automated defenses. It always requires a computer or interface.
Most tasks are a simple Hacking roll. Time required is the GM’s call, from a single action to hours, days, or longer depending on complexity. Success means it works as intended and a raise halves the time. Failure usually means another attempt is possible. A Critical Failure may trigger lockouts, alarms, trace routines, or countermeasures.
Healing (Smarts)
Healing covers medicine, triage, diagnosis, and treatment, from shipboard emergency care to frontier clinics. It also includes anatomical forensics.
Forensics: Healing can analyze trauma evidence: cause and time of death, angle of attack, tool marks, and similar details. Success provides basic information and a raise provides more detail.
Intimidation (Spirit)
Intimidation is the art of fear and pressure: making someone back down, reveal information, or hesitate. It is an opposed roll resisted by the opponent’s Spirit. In combat, this is a Test. Out of combat, success usually means the target backs down, gives up limited information, or yields space. A raise can mean they fold for the scene, spill far more than intended, or flee if possible.
A Critical Failure means the target is immune to this character’s Intimidation attempts for the remainder of this encounter.
Networking: Intimidation can also be used as a macro skill to simulate hours of working rough streets, breaking up trouble, or extracting favors through fear.
Language (Smarts)
Language is listed as Language (English), Language (Drakneri), etc. A character’s die type notes fluency. Characters start with a d8 in their own Language.
Language Proficiency
| Skill | Proficiency |
|---|---|
| d4 | The character can read, write, and speak common words and phrases. |
| d6 | The speaker can carry on a prolonged but occasionally halting conversation. |
| d8 | The character can speak fluently. |
| d10 | The hero can mimic other dialects within the language. |
| d12 | The speaker can masterfully recite important literary or oral works. |
🟥 Notice
Notice is general awareness: spotting danger, finding clues, detecting ambushes, noticing a concealed weapon, reading a room, or catching the moment someone’s story stops lining up. It includes sights, sounds, taste, and smell, depending on circumstance.
Success gives basic information. A raise gives more detail, such as direction, distance, or what a person is avoiding.
Occult (Smarts)
Occult reflects knowledge of Astra-related phenomena, strange entities, unusual relics, and the patterns of reality that most people ignore until it bites them. Use it to interpret Astra marks, identify a ritualized anomaly, or recall what certain remnant sites are known to do.
Finding information in archives, ship logs, network caches, or physical records uses Research. If the investigator’s Occult is higher, the GM may allow Occult instead when it makes sense.
Performance (Spirit)
Performance covers singing, acting, music, storytelling, public speaking, and any act meant to move an audience. It can rally a crowd, distract security, cultivate reputation, or win work in ports where favors start with a stage.
Raising Funds: As a general rule, a successful performance raises 20% of the setting’s Starting Funds and 30% with a raise. The GM can multiply this by the performer’s Rank if it fits the situation.
Deception: Performance can be used instead of Persuasion when the character is bluffing, disguising themselves socially, or selling a convincing role and the GM agrees it fits.
🟥 Persuasion (Spirit)
Persuasion is convincing others through reason, charm, incentives, negotiation, deception, or shared interest. Persuasion is not mind control. It can shift attitude, not rewrite core goals.
Support: When used to Support allies it’s an unopposed roll. If the target is resistant, it’s an opposed roll vs. the target’s Spirit. The GM should apply modifiers based on roleplaying, Edges, Hindrances, leverage, and circumstances.
Reaction Level: How cooperative someone is depends on their attitude. The GM can decide or roll on the Reaction Table below.
Success improves the target’s attitude one level and a raise improves it two. Further increases usually require time, new leverage, or changed circumstances.
Failure means the target won’t change their mind this scene or until the situation changes meaningfully. A Critical Failure reduces the target’s attitude two levels.
Only one roll should generally be allowed per interaction unless new information is revealed or leverage changes.
Networking: Persuasion can also be used as a macro skill, simulating hours of socializing to gain favors or information.
Reactions
| 2d6 | Initial Reaction |
|---|---|
| 2 | Hostile: The target is openly hostile. He may attack if possible, or otherwise betray, report on, or hinder the party at the first opportunity. He doesn’t help without an overwhelming reward or threat of some kind. |
| 3 | Unfriendly: The character isn’t interested in helping unless he has little choice and is offered a substantial payment or reward. |
| 4-5 | Uncooperative: The target isn’t interested in getting involved unless there’s a significant advantage to himself. |
| 6-8 | Neutral: The character has no particular attitude toward the group. He expects fair payment for any sort of favor or information. |
| 9-10 | Cooperative: The character is generally sympathetic. He helps if he can for a small fee, favor, or kindness. |
| 11 | Friendly: The individual goes out of his way for the hero. He likely does simple tasks for very little, and is willing to do more dangerous tasks for fair pay or other favors. |
| 12 | Helpful: The target is anxious to help the hero and probably does so for little or no reward. |
Piloting (Agility)
Piloting covers aircraft, gravcraft, jet packs, and starships. It includes maneuvering under pressure, docking in bad conditions, threading debris fields, and handling craft in combat.
A being with the innate ability to fly (wings, natural propulsion) uses Athletics instead.
Repair (Smarts)
Repair is the ability to fix mechanical gadgets, vehicles, weapons, and simple electrical devices. It also covers the use of demolitions and explosives.
Time required is the GM’s call based on complexity and available facilities. Success means the item is functional. A raise halves the time required.
Tools: Characters suffer a minor penalty (−1 to −2) without basic tools, or a major penalty (−3 to −4) if specialized equipment is required.
Electronics: Repair can fix electronic devices, but is limited by the hero’s Electronics skill. Use whichever skill is lowest.
Research (Smarts)
Research is knowing how to find answers in logs, archives, public records, private networks, libraries, data caches, and shipboard systems. It’s the skill of asking the right questions and recognizing what matters when you find it.
Riding (Agility)
Riding covers mounting, controlling, and riding beasts and beast-drawn vehicles where they exist. In Astrabound this is uncommon in high-tech space, but common on lower-tech colony worlds and in frontier cultures.
Science (Smarts)
Science covers the hard sciences: biology, xenobiology, chemistry, physics, geology, engineering theory, and lab practice. Use it to interpret data, identify substances, evaluate anomalies, and design solutions.
Success provides basic information. A raise provides more detail.
Shooting (Agility)
Shooting covers all ranged weapons: pistols, rifles, shipboard sidearms, energy weapons, and heavy ordnance. Thrown weapons use Athletics.
🟥 Stealth (Agility)
Stealth is hiding, moving quietly, and staying unseen. Against inattentive foes, a success avoids detection. Failure alerts them that something is wrong.
Once foes are alerted, Stealth is opposed by Notice. The GM should apply situational penalties for darkness, noise, distractions, cover, and Scale differences. Do not apply the same modifier to both rolls.
Sneak Attack: Sneaking close enough for melee always requires opposed Stealth vs Notice, whether the target is alert or not. If successful, the victim is Vulnerable to the attacker until the attacker’s turn ends. With a raise, the attacker has The Drop instead.
Movement: In combat, characters roll Stealth each turn as a free action at the end of their move or any action the GM thinks draws attention. Out of combat, roll frequency depends on the situation.
Survival (Smarts)
Survival is finding food, water, shelter, and safe routes in hostile environments. It also covers wilderness navigation, hazard judgment, and knowing what is safe to eat or touch.
A successful roll provides enough food and water for one person for one day, or five people with a raise.
Tracking: Survival can detect and follow tracks. Each roll generally covers following tracks for one mile, adjusted by the GM. The GM should assign bonuses or penalties based on target, environment, and time.
Taunt (Smarts)
Taunt attacks pride through ridicule, cruel jests, or one-upmanship. It’s an opposed roll resisted by the opponent’s Smarts. In combat, this is a Test.
Out of combat, success may make the defender back down, slink away, or start a fight. A raise can leave them cowed, make them storm out, or push them into reckless action. A Critical Failure means the target is immune to this character’s Taunts for the remainder of the encounter.
Thievery (Agility)
Thievery covers lockpicking, safecracking, pickpocketing, sleight of hand, disabling traps, sabotage, subterfuge, and physical misdirection.
For simple unopposed actions, success opens or disables the device. A raise can do it faster, quieter, or without alarms. If watched, Thievery is opposed by Notice.
The GM may assign penalties for difficult circumstances. Failure usually means the attempt is spotted or takes too long and can be tried again. A Critical Failure triggers alarms, sets off the trap, alerts the target, or jams the device.
Limited: Using Thievery on an electronic device such as a keypad is limited by the thief’s Electronics skill. Use the lowest of the two skills.