Characters have 18 Attributes in Cybercore, this is slightly more than your average role-playing game, but we felt you couldn’t represent the wide varieties of creatures held in the multiverse with a mere 5 or 6.
These attributes are grouped into 3 Categories, Physical, Mental, and MetaPhysical or just ‘Meta’ for short.
| Physical | Mental | Metaphysical |
|---|---|---|
| Agility | Intellect | Allure(+/-) |
| Fortitude | Logic | Foresight |
| Health | Persuasion(+/-) | Glamour(+/-) |
| Mass | Stability | Grit |
| Speed | Tenacity | Perception |
| Strength | Wisdom | Reactions |
Attributes in Cybercore are the sum total of your bonuses from your Ancestry, Background, Training, Feats, and Equipment. While your Race and background provide a generally static bonus, talents and feats gained through training specializations can improve your attributes as you gain experience over your adventuring career.
The Sum of the abilities under each category forms your Physical, Mental, and Meta 'Saving throw' bonuses. You may be called to roll against one of these if the situation calls for it, generally a check against a category, is one where the GM just wants to make sure the character doesn't 'roll a one' and totally wreck something that was tricky under duress, but not difficult.
Challenges however come up far more frequently, and it's more likely that your will be called out to roll a save or success check against one of your stats.
Unlike most other RPG’s skills in the Cybercore universe do not have a fixed key attribute, in-fact you get to decide (or at least beg) if you can use an attribute to complement a skills failure.
You will generally do this after you completely wreak a skill roll, you can ask your GM if you can recover by rolling against an attribute to see if you raw prowess can get you out of the hole you currently find yourself in.
Doing so is a flat
You can be as creative as you like, as long as you can justify it to your GM. for instance if you want to Use Allure to save you from an Engineering mishap,maybe there is another Engineer around that you can convince to do/fix it, or set up to take the fall for your failure...
In these instances like the one above, where the player wishes to use an Ability to recover from a skill that is outside the norm, feel free to be creative.
In Dire situations, when the last escape pod's jammed it's jettison junk, and a player really has to succeed at a roll, before the roll they can also request to bump there skill check with there Ability Bonus, as in Falling Forward while this gives you a good bonus to the roll you then deduct one from that attribute until you take some R&R, though likely if you failed under these circumstances, you got permanently promoted into the Dead Book.
Before we dive into a character's Attributes, we need to call out the more social attributes. These are Persuasion(+/-), Glamour(+/-) and Allure(+/-).
These Social attributes are used with either a positive or negative bend. For instance, Persuasion as a Negative covers deception, Glamour(-) covers intimidation, and Allure(-) would be frightening.
In such an advanced society, it is far too transparent when you are a generally persuasive person trying to be deceptive or beautiful and Alluring but trying to be Frightening. When you generate your character, choose whether each social skills is Positive(+) or Negative(-). You can only use these social skills with this bend unless you have a feat such as Two Faced, allowing you to use them in their positive and negative contexts.
We will leave it over to Drill sergeant Jarvis (Ironass) to explain the core tenets of the abilities found in the Cybercore universe.
“Hey, that’s Master Sargent Ironass berk!”
“Ok, you intergalactic bacterial spore samples! Welcome to the Core! We are here today to evaluate your lard asses for enrolment in the Mercs! Now the Mercs and most of the other crappier organizations you could join recognize 18 key attributes in performance. Don’t you even dare think about pissing off to one of those other Orgs will I’m drilling ya! you lousy runts, we all use the same intergalactic recruitment agency and so we all just photo-dupe the same damn enrolment form.
To save you whiny ass looser’s having to listen to the same drivel over and over I’ll cover the lot now, besides it means this will take longer and we all like standing out in the rain now don’t we.
“Sir! Yes Sir!”
Represents aim and coordination and assists with the amount of damage dealt when striking unarmed.
“Right Health, we check you, scan you and probe you before you get in past the front door. What? No recruit you are still standing out here in the rain, No you are not at the front door yet, are you! No that was the Janitor, that was not part of the official medical and yes he is a dirty alien when you get to the medial bay ask for the blue pill.”
Now the more Health you have the fewer pills you will need to take when you are shot clean through with an Assault Carbine. Yes recruit that happens, Yes it hurts, here I’ll show you.” “Zap, Arrrghhhhh!” “See, kicks like a Bavarian-combat-sow doesn’t it? Hey you’re still alive, slightly impressive, you pass the Superior Health Orienteering Training, now MEDIC!! Get this guy cleaned up and over to medical. Remember recruit when ya get there ask for the blue pill.
Not a requirement for the Mercs unless you want to do special Ops, You lot all fail this one anyway, just for turning up for recruitment when it’s raining. However, if you want to be a Space Jockey, Engineer or a combat Tech you going to need some brains and probably a few implants to boot.
Mass represents your weight, the more massive you are the more weight you have to throw around, this is useful if you have to wrestle a Bovarian-combat-sow. It also ensures a quicker death when you attempt to re-enter a planet’s atmosphere without a re-entry suit.
Humans generally have a starting mass score of 2. This represents 100kg’s. Every point of Mass is worth 50kg. Mass synergizes well with Strength and the combination of the two determines if you can weld large or oversized items. For every point in Mass, you can lug another 25kg.
“Oh for plasma’s sake, Pick that sack of iron ore back up recruit, Ya don’t faint on the first day of training you whinny, you got nothing to be afraid of, you won’t be wrestling any Bovarian Sows until you are well into your training. Tomorrow. If you survive the entry exam. Yes, that’s ‘entry’ as in re-entry you berk.”
“Oh just leave him down there, he will probably wake up when it starts to hail”.
Right recruit’s, Perception this skill is used
People can hear you from up to 20 m away for normal chatting, 100 m for shouts, 10 m for whispers. As a rule of thumb, open the Map and 10 squares is 20m the max chatting distance.
Speed, this attribute is simple it determines how fast you can move. Ahh here’s my jeep. We can test this now. “Release the Combat Sow!”
“Hey, they aren’t half bad with a little motivation.”
You there, down the end, I said stand up straight!, I don’t care that you come from a Grav .1 Planet you gelatinous blob of Fungus, you stand up when I’m talking to ya and you stand even straighter when I’m yelling at ya!
Strength represents your physical strength, it assists with the amount of damage you might deal when striking unarmed or with a melee weapon.
Strength helps you pansies stand up in the rain on a Grav 5 planet like this one. We still like that rain don’t we recruit!”
“Sir! Yes, Sir!”
“Very good, now let’s move on, I’m sure you would all appreciate being issued with your slug resistant combat vests before it starts to hail.”
Tenacity is a measure of the character mental endurance. There ability to throw off mental fatigue and carry on with the task at hand no matter how boring or repetitive.
This represents a characters comprehension and intuition, It encompasses their ability to pool all their knowledge and sift through it looking for insights and empathy into the meaning of events and the actions of others. Thus allowing them to draw the best course of action surrounding their current situation.
You might roll a Wisdom check to understand an Aliens intent regardless of language barriers or a Wisdom Save to avoid external forces trying to manipulate you into acting outside of your characters normal behavior.