Know Skills

Know skills represent information your character has acquired, things they know. They play a less dramatic role, but are often critical for helping your character solve mysteries, understand situations, and figure out what to do.

Points assigned for Active and Know skills are not interchangeable. If you decided to take away points from a Know skill during character creation, you may only apply those extra points to another Know skill.

Know: [Field]

  • Type: Know, Field

Know skill represents your accumulated knowledge in a field of work, study, or interest. Know skills are loosely grouped into four types: academics, arts, interests, and professional training.

Academics

  • Linked Aptitude: Cognition

Academic fields cover all of the disciplines of scientific knowledge and advanced study. They include theoretical and applied sciences, social sciences, transhumanities, and technology.

Use Academics to call upon your education. For example, Know: Chemistry could be used to identify a particular substance, understand an unusual chemical reaction, or determine what elements are needed to nanofabricate something that requires exotic materials. The GM may choose not to allow defaulting on some Know Tests, as only someone who has been educated in that subject is likely to be able to tackle it.

  • Sample Fields: Archeology, Astrobiology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Astrosociology, Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Computer Science, Cryptography, Economics, Engineering, Genetics, Geology, History, Law, Linguistics, Mathematics, Memetics, Nanotechnology, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Xeno-archeology, Xenolinguistics, Zoology
  • Specializations: As appropriate to the field

Arts

  • Linked Aptitude: Intuition

Art fields include various modes of artistic expression and evaluation. This is a particularly useful skill in economies and clades where creativity and vision can be a key component of your reputation.

Use Art fields to bring your imagination to life, create a work of art, critique an artist’s style or performance, or appraise an artistic project’s worth.

Note that Art fields should not be used in place of Active skills to directly deceive, influence, or sway others. Crafting a realistic augmented reality illusion requires Program skill, incorporating a hidden message within a public song or speech would rely on Deceive skill, making a speech to convince a panel or rally a crowd requires Persuade or Provoke. However, Art fields may be used as complementary skills in such cases.

  • Sample Fields: Architecture, AR Design, Criticism, Dance, Drama, Drawing, Music, Painting, Performance, Sculpture, Singing, Speech, VR Design, Writing
  • Specializations: As appropriate to the field

Interests

  • Linked Aptitude: Cognition

Interest fields includes specialized knowledge in any topic that might be considered a hobby, recreational pursuit, social topic, or other obsession.

Use Interest fields whenever you need to recall or use knowledge related to that particular subject.

  • Sample Fields: Celebrities, Conspiracies, Factors, Exhumans, Exoplanet Colonies, Gambling, Hypercorp Politics, Lunar Habitats, Martian Beers, Morphs, Reclaimer Blogs, Scum Drug Dealers, Spaceship Models, Strategy Games, TITAN Tech, Triad Economics, Transhuman Factions, Underground XP, VR Games
  • Specializations: As appropriate to the field

Professional Training

  • Linked Aptitude: Cognition

Profession fields cover knowledge and training in the practices and procedures of various legal and extralegal trades.

Use Profession fields to recall specialized knowledge available to someone trained or experienced in that particular industry: notable figures, common practices, apps and gear used, logistics, scheduling, accounting, terminology, legalities, internal politics, trade history, ethics standards, major locations, influential hypercorps/cartels/collectives, and so on.

  • Sample Fields: Accounting, Administration, Asteroid Mining, Body Bank Ops, Bodyguarding, Cool Hunting, Con Artistry, Data Processing, Ego Hunting, Emergency Services, Entertainment, Fencing, Field Science, First-Contact Ops, Flight Crew Ops, Freelancing, Gas Mining, Gatecrashing, Habitat Ops, Instruction, Investigation, Journalism, Lab Ops, Medical Services, Military Ops, Morph Design, Nanofacturing, Network Engineering, Police Ops, Racketeering, Scavenging, Security Ops, Service Work, Smuggling, Social Engineering, Social Services, Spycraft, Surveying, System Administration, Terraforming
  • Specializations: As appropriate to the field

Using Know Skills

It may seem like Know skills have fewer in-game applications than Active skills, but they should not be underestimated. They have three major uses, the first of which is analyzing clues and solving mysteries. Many Eclipse Phase scenarios are based around technological dangers, alien encounters, and scientific phenomenon, and so characters will need a good balance of Know skills to unravel the problem and find solutions.

Just as importantly, Know skills are valuable in helping the characters — and the players — understand the world of Eclipse Phase. In particular these skills can be used to assess a situation, identify strengths and weaknesses, make plans, evaluate worth, make comparisons, forecast probable outcomes, or understand the applicable science, socio-economic factors, or cultural or historical context. In this regard, Know skills can be a valuable tool for GMs to assist the players, prompting for Know skill rolls to help flesh out details of the game setting that might otherwise be overlooked or not readily apparent.

For example, a group of players new to Eclipse Phase might not fully grasp the fine distinctions between different factions, the cultural relevance of certain technologies, or the potential impact of a new scientific breakthrough on the setting — and might not even think to ask. GMs can and should call for Know Tests to help impart the relevant information.

In a similar vein, a group of characters looking to break into a facility could use Know: Security to evaluate the defenses, Know: Architecture to identify covert points of entry, Know: Sports to plan their infiltration at a time when the guards are likely to be distracted, Know: Triads to identify a local crime group that can sell them breaking and entering gear, and Know: Administration to help identify a top-level exec who will have the security codes they need. When used appropriately, these skills can be just as beneficial as the Active skills used to break inside, if not more so because the plan is more likely to succeed as a result of this preparation.

Finally, Know skills help bring flavor and character to the setting. While Know: Martian Beers might not seem that useful at first, an enterprising character could use that expertise as an opening to talk to a potential source at a bar, to convince a suspicious Barsoomian cell they are not an off-world spy, or simply to amuse the others at the table with anecdotes about how certain exhumans strangely reek of Olympus Stout or the perils of consuming too much Pilsener Red Lager in zero g.

The Knowledge Behind Active Skills

You are assumed to be familiar with the background lore surrounding each of your Active skills. For example, if you are skilled in Guns, you likely know quite a bit about makes and models, manufacturers, and possibly even their history. Likewise, your Hardware: Robotics skill means you know a lot about synthmorphs and bots, who makes them, etc. This associative knowledge does not go quite as deep as someone who has studied or trained in that field, however. A character with equivalent scores in Know: Weapons Dealer or Know: Robot Designs will have more in-depth and specialized knowledge. To represent this, GMs should apply a negative modifier of −10 to −30 when using Active skills in place of Know skills, depending on the situation and the depth of the knowledge required.

Complementary Skills

In certain cases, Know skills can aid Active skill tests with a complementary skill bonus modifier. This should only apply to situations where the Know skill provides information that would not normally be encompassed by the Active skill. For example, Know: Religious Cults could be applied as a complementary skill when trying to Persuade a religious brinker group, but Know: Engineering is not complementary to a Hardware: Industrial Test to repair part of a habitat, because the Hardware skill already incorporates such engineering knowledge.

The bonus for a complementary skill is based upon its rating, as noted on the Complementary Skill Bonus table.

Complementary Skill Bonus Table

Know SkillModifier
40–59+10
60–79+20
80++30