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Old January 13th, 2008
soltakss's Avatar
soltakss soltakss is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Birmingham, UK
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The trouble is that if you do that and then move on to a normal game, the players will expect such high skills.

Personally, that isn't the way I'd go.

Give them normal skills but give each of them some special "Cinematic" abilities. Not all pirates are swashbuckling sowrdsmen or acrobatic gymnasts. Allow each pirate to choose 1D3 abilities, or choose a number if you don't want a random number of abilities. Sample abilities might be:
Incredible Acrobatics
Mighty Swordsman
Gift of the Gab
Infamous Lover
Luck of the Devil

or whatever - make your own up or use Legendary Abilities from RQM.

Don't give them skills to go with the abilities, but if they use a normal skill and can reasonably use the cinematic ability then don't apply a penalty rating.

So, Bart the Black is trying to flee Rogering Roderick and decides to desperately jump across a roof, catch a rope hanging neatby and swing over a large gap. Bart has Jump 80% and DEX 18, so his "Catch Rope" would be DEXx5% or 90%. Roderick has Jump 50% and DEX 13, so his Catch Rope would be 65%. The GM determines that the jump is quite tricky and is at -40% and that catching the rope is at -30% because it is dark. Rogering Roger has Incredible Acrobatics as a cinematic ability so Bart is at Jump 40% and Catch Rope 60% but Roderick is at Jump 50% and Catch Rope 65%. Bart jumps but fails to catch the rope, Roderick jumps and catches him. Bart now uses his Fast Talk to talk Roderick out of what he plans to do and has Luck of the Devil, Gift of the Gab and Fast Talk 70%, but the GM determines that Roderick is set on his action and gives a -50% Fast Talk penalty. Bart has a 70% chance of making the Fast talk because of his Gift of the Gab but rolls an 80, so he tries a Luck Roll (60%) to see if the City Watch are nearby and succeeds, so a watchman wanders by and Roderick runs off.

It might give you the style you are after without having extremely high skills.
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