Skills in Chronos are arranged into three tiers. Tier 1 skills have no prerequisites, and relate to a broad field of study or practice (e.g. “Biology” or “Athletics”). If you do not have the Tier 1 skill, then you are Unskilled in that area - i.e. no more skilled than the average person.
Tier 2 skills each require an associated Tier 1 skill (e.g. “Medicine” requires “Biology”) and relate to a more specific area within the field of the Tier 1 skill.
Tier 3 skills each require a Tier 2 skill (e.g. “Battlefield Medicine” requires “Medicine”), and relate to a specialisation of the Tier 2 skills.
Tier 3 skills will come with additional briefings (at the start of the game or during the game) to represent additional knowledge your character has. For example, if you choose to take the History skill in Turn 3, you will receive a briefing that highlights which events in the timeline are considered to be of particular importance, and if you choose to take Battlefield Medicine, you will get a briefing outlining some of your specialist knowledge and tools which could help you make the most of your skills.
At the start of the game, you may choose 8 (eight) skills, which must include the associated lower tier skills for any Tier 2 and 3 skills. For example: if you wish to take the Battlefield Medicine skill at game start, this will mean you must use up 3 skills out of 8 because having Battlefield Medicine requires having the Tier 1 Biology and Tier 2 Medicine skills. During the game, each turn you may (using an action) train one further skill which you have the prerequisites for (or a Tier 1 skill, which has no prerequisites).
Skill training will take effect immediately - unless there is a particular reason that one of your other actions must happen immediately after session, you will be able to use skills in the same turnsheet that you train them - however you will not be able to change your plans in response to any new briefs.
In general, you will receive more helpful answers from GMs on a topic if you have a relevant skill for the question you are asking. Skills cannot normally be used actively in session - e.g. if you have the “Bypass Security” skill, you could ask a GM about a security system, but could not disable the security present in session. This is primarily for ease of running the game, but if you wish to represent this as mild disorientation from time travel, then go ahead.
| Unskilled | You can recognise common animals and plants from your system, and could probably give a faltering explanation of genetics if pressed. You can spot common symptoms of disease (e.g. coughs, rashes, swelling, or pain), but can't make a much more accurate diagnosis than “something is wrong”. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Biology | You have a good understanding of the life sciences - you can spot diseases (but only treat very simple ones) and triage medical patients, and you can generally work out if a plant or animal is edible and what it might do. | ||
| T2 | Medicine | You can do basic first aid (up to putting a splint on a simple fracture), and diagnose most diseases. | |
| T3 | Surgery | You can do more advanced medical procedures which involve working inside the body, up to and including installation of cybernetic components. | |
| T3 | Battlefield Medicine | You can treat, or at least stabilise, most injuries as they occur, up to and including stopping traumatic bleeding, or stabilising a complex fracture. | |
| T3 | Epidemiology | You understand how diseases spread, what makes a disease more infectious, deadly, and dangerous, and strategies for mitigating or enhancing the spread and lethality of a disease. This includes viral, bacterial, and fungal infections. | |
| T2 | Ecology | You know how different organisms in a planetary environment interact, and how to ensure healthy biodiversity on a planet or spot the early warnings for biosphere collapse. | |
| T3 | Organism Modification | You know how to cause biological changes in an organism (including humans), whether by genetic modification, symbiosis with another organism, or other means. | |
| T3 | Habitat Maintenance | You know how to ensure a healthy biosphere even in non-planetary habitats (i.e. space stations), including the use of plants for food production, and the maintenance and design of life support systems using standard components. | |
| Unskilled | You can use common technology (e.g. standard communication devices and computers) or new devices which come with a manual, but when you get out of your comfort zone, you are likely to get lost and/or break things by accident. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Technology | You have a decent head for new technology - given something you have never seen before, you can probably take a decent guess at what most of the buttons do. If you have the chance to experiment, you can probably make it do what you want in a reasonably short amount of time. | ||
| T2 | Engineering | You can build just about anything if you have the blueprints and materials, and can come up with your own designs for reasonably simple devices (i.e. things that are not in the category below, and are not larger scale projects such as power plants). You can also fix the hardware of anything you understand (or have designs for). | |
| T3 | Weapon Development | You have an excellent knowledge of weaponry (including personal, planetary, and shipboard armaments), and can devise new designs for weapons, or adapt existing designs (e.g. to compensate for a lack of certain materials). | |
| T3 | Spacecraft Development | You have an excellent knowledge of the workings of spacecraft (including spacefaring vessels, free-floating space stations, and stations on asteroids, moons, or planets with hostile atmosphere), and can devise new designs for spacecraft, or adapt existing designs (e.g. to compensate for a lack of certain materials). | |
| T3 | Cybernetics Development | You have an excellent knowledge of cybernetics (including replacement limbs, external cybernetics, and cybernetics integrated into the body), and can devise new designs, or adapt existing designs (e.g. to adapt to a non-human subject). You only have a passing knowledge of the biology they interact with - unless you also have the Biology skill, and cannot install cybernetics safely without the Surgery skill. | |
| T2 | Hacking | Given a computer or computer controlled system you do not have access to, you can gain access and/or break the system. It will not be subtle (unless you take Subterfuge). If someone else has hacked a system, and does not have Subterfuge, you can find out what they have done and clues to who they might be. You can program an Optimisation Engine, and it will generally do what you want it to do - but there may be unwanted side effects. | |
| T3 | Counter-hacking | You can fix what another hacker has broken. You can find out what a hacker with Subterfuge has done in a system. In addition, you can secure a system so that it will be harder to hack in future, and can set it up to alert you if an attempt is made. | |
| T3 | Subterfuge | You know how to get in to a system and modify it or extract information without leaving obvious traces of your attempt. | |
| T3 | Software Development | You can create new software to perform specific tasks, including programming of Optimisation Engines with suitable goals that are likely to achieve the desired result. | |
| T2 | Piloting | If it has an engine, you can fly or drive it. You can navigate both in space and on planets, and know which readings on scanners are hazards to avoid and which can be safely ignored. | |
| T3 | Space Combat | You are adept at evasion and targeting at slower than light speeds (FTL combat is not possible), and can react quickly if your ship is knocked out of FTL by an interdiction. | |
| Unskilled | You are reasonably fit - unless you have other physical conditions, you could probably run a mile or two, but that would make you tired and you wouldn't be particularly fast. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Athletics | You are fitter, stronger, and more agile than average - you can generally outrun someone, carry heavy objects, climb a rough surface, or dodge out of the way of danger. | ||
| T2 | Fighting | You can keep a cool head in a fight, and are aware of your opponents. You are at least decent with both melee and ranged weapons. You will tend to win, unless your opponent has training in the weapon they are using, or is armoured against your weaponry. This only makes a difference when you are fighting personally - not if you are in a tank or starfighter. | |
| T3 | Melee Combat | If you can hit someone with it, stab someone with it, or cut someone with it, you can use it to win a fight. You are as good with your fists or an improvised weapon (e.g. a pipe) as someone without this skill would be with a purpose-built weapon (e.g. a sword), and with a purpose built weapon you can exploit the weak spots of armoured opponents. | |
| T3 | Ranged Combat | When armed with a gun, laser, or other ranged weapon, you can shoot further and more accurately than most people. | |
| T2 | Stealth | If you are sneaking through an area with cover, people will not notice you unless you want them to. You can evade basic security systems (cameras, low sensitivity microphones), but will still be caught by more advanced ones if you test your luck. | |
| T3 | Sleight of Hand | You can steal items that will fit up your sleeve without being noticed - and if no one is paying attention to you specifically, then you can pilfer football-sized items provided you have somewhere to put them. You can pick mechanical locks or pick the pockets of a nearby person who is not suspicious of you. This skill may not be used against players in session. | |
| T3 | Security Bypass | You can evade or disable most security systems - avoiding sensors, opening electronic locks, or just shutting down the system entirely. This is generally dodging lasers and being able to break into panels to disconnect wiring, rather than hacking the system software (which would be Hacking). | |
| Unskilled | You can pick up obvious hints, or spot something clearly out of the ordinary, but will often miss subtle information. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Investigation | You can spot patterns in data, and put together clues better than most. You are likely to see more relevant information in a situation, or get better hunches about the subtext of what someone is saying. | ||
| T2 | Social Investigation | When talking to people, you can steer the conversation towards certain topics, and they will tend to be more forthcoming than they might expect. You have a good sense of when people are lying to you. This skill and the associated T3 skills do not work on player characters. | |
| T3 | Interrogation | When directly questioning someone, you know how to ask the right questions to extract relevant information, and how to deliver the questions to get them answered. | |
| T3 | Gossip | When in a crowd, you can get a sense of the conversations going on, and a good idea of what is being discussed and the prevailing opinions. You will tend to pick out relevant information that others might miss. | |
| T2 | Physical Investigation | You are adept at picking up details from objects or scenes, spotting elements that others would miss. You tend to spot hidden objects, where items in a room have been moved, or where an object has been modified. | |
| T3 | Forensics | When examining a scene, you can reconstruct a good idea of what happened in your head - if there is any evidence to find, you will find it, and can reason through what must have happened there. | |
| T3 | Analysis | Given an item and suitable lab equipment, you can determine the nature, purpose, and potentially recent use of the item - e.g. given a vial which previously contained liquid and and a chemistry lab, you can determine what the liquid is, and how recently it was emptied. | |
| T2 | Scholarship | You can read through paperwork, especially academic writing, and pull out a summary of the most relevant information. | |
| T3 | Science | You have a good knowledge of physical sciences (chemistry/physics/etc. Not biology), and can interpret or sense check scientific data. | |
| T3 | History | You have a deep knowledge of history (particularly the last few decades), and can quickly study new historical periods you are not familiar with. You can pick out pivotal events which will have made a large difference to what happened, and their causes and consequences. | |
| Unskilled | When working with others, it goes fine so long as you all understand what you need to do - but if there is any disagreement or misunderstanding, you may not spot it until it is too late. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Management | When people are well disposed towards you and share the same general goal, you are good at organising them to do things - whether that means making sure everyone is working in tandem, or making sure that the work is suitably divided according to people's abilities. | ||
| T2 | Planning | Given an achievable goal, you can generally work out what steps will be required to achieve it, and what resources you will need at each stage. | |
| T3 | Logistics | You are adept at getting hold of resources, and getting them to the right place at the right time - whether those resources are physical, information, or people. | |
| T3 | Military Strategy | You can command anything from a small commando unit to a full scale operation involving both space and ground troops - and you will increase the effectiveness of the combatants on your side while doing so. You can quickly analyse and prioritise information about military engagements. | |
| T2 | Persuasion | You are good at convincing people to do things - when in conversation with a person or a small group, you can generally sway them to your point of view, or at least agree to disagree. This skill (and the associated T3 skills) do not work on player characters. | |
| T3 | Propaganda | You can craft messages which will sway the opinions of large groups, up to entire system populations, through a combination of speeches, advertisements, and carefully crafted gossip. You are also more likely to notice when popular opinion is more the result of propaganda than of natural debate. | |
| T3 | Diplomacy | You are good at the kinds of negotiation needed to strike deals between large groups (such as systems), able to come to an agreement which keeps all sides happy, while giving yours a nice advantage. | |