Skill Scale Down 2021

This skill has been impacted by the Skill Scale Down. The impact of this for this skill is as follows:

• This skill remains.
• All knowledge is left as is.
• For how to deal with XP, please see the page Skill Scale Down 2021 for links, information, and a player guide.
• The scope of this skill has not changed. Please ensure that you take this into account going forward.

Overview

Detection is the primal ability of honing one's raw awareness of the physical world around them. There are many kinds of senses within this field, many of which help countless trades and situations. The typically accepted natural senses are:

• Sight: The ability to see distinctions within one's environment and through obstacles.
• Hearing: The ability to sense footfalls and general noise within the environment.
• Smell: The ability to sense distinctions within the air, or aromas of objects
• Taste: The ability to sense distinctions in flavor between foods and anomalous additives.
• Touch: The ability to sense differences in one's environment through tactile involvement.

While some have a natural predisposition to others, this is the process of refining one's abilities. A blind woman might be able to train herself to sense sound better than her friends, and a deaf man might be able to train himself to rely on his sight to be more aware of his surroundings.

Pattern recognition is an important facet to detection. Through a combination of senses, one may be able to feel that a door is heavier than usual and something may be weighted upon it, or that a floorboard is particularly loose as they step on it. It is the ability to see and otherwise sense disruptions in the flow of a room, or even forest floor. While it won't help matters covered by cryptography (like cyphers/codes/curtain patterns), it may be the tipping point in helping realize that something is out of place.

Sight

Sight is one of the most classically handy senses.

The raw information one might be able to gain from sight can vary. Someone might be able to discern that two supposedly similar objects are actually different, or that someone has been tailing you for the last few hours by catching glimpses of them in the shadows.

Training one's sight might make them able to see thin tripwires or even hidden traps. It may as well help them see someone trying to sneak on them or someone trying to hide in a crowd.

Hearing

Hearing is another classical sense that many take for granted.

Unlike sight however, there are more variables to training one's sense of hearing. The footfalls of a man versus an animal will be hard to tell the difference between unless one has experience. However with training one might even be able to hear things that are trying to stay hidden.

Training one's hearing might make them able to hear someone's footsteps in a house when they're trying to hide. It's also handy to eavesdrop and separate out voices.

Smell

Smell is a classical sense that some don't often consider.

With the raw information alone in smell, one might be able to pick up on scents before their partners. While it takes experience and at sometimes learning a trade to familiarize with an array of scents, it's something that's deceptively useful.

Training one's sense of smell might allow them to detect a rotting corpse faster or even be able to smell a poison or at least something wrong with a meal.

Taste

Taste is a classical sense that's often overlooked.

Sometimes some things just need to be tasted. While rarely used it is most useful in determining the age of various objects or even being able to tell what they're made of.

Training one's sense of taste might allow them to differentiate between a wide array of materials and food. Biting down on a piece of silver nell just to find out that it tastes like lead might just prove that the coins are a forgery.

Touch

Touch is a classical sense that is rarely considered.

The raw sense of touch is something that's used in everyday life. Touch helps determine how fragile something is and whether or not it's something to be grabbed in the first place. It can also tell you if there is a change in weather if you are aware enough. Even telling the difference in weight between two objects when held.

Training one's sense of touch might allow them to feel the difference between materials as well as their general physical properties.

Relevant Skills

Detection allows you to gather information for other skill. Because of this fact, there is not many skills that are not relevant to its use. Trade skills benefit from being able to from its use to study both their own and other's work. Combat skills benefit from the ability to see an opponent's attack. Social skills benefit from seeing physical cues.

The key to all of this is that Detection gives you raw information about the physical world. It is up to your other skills to piece it all together.

Detection factors into many existing skills. These are the ones that seem to rely on trained senses the most, but is by no means the full list:

• Appraisal: Helps with assessing quality and properties of an item
• Caregiving: Helping keep an eye on the changing condition of your ward
• Discipline: Helping see through supernatural illusions
• Etiquette: Helping with noticing the minutiae of expected behavior
• Hunting: Helping with tracking prey
• Investigation: Helps with finding hidden clues to be examined
• Medicine: Helps with noticing symptoms key to diagnosis
• Navigation: Helps stay on course during rough conditions
• Psychology: Helps with noticing physical tells and tics of a person
• Seafaring: Helping gauge distance and course while sailing
• Teaching: Helps with noticing things with your ward

Trade

All trade skills require a steady hand, a sheer focus, and a keen sense of what you are doing. Being able to feel how gently you need to make a weave, or how heavy a piece of dough is. It is up to your physical senses, and honing them through your trade that allows for true perfection.

Though someone not trained in the trade will still have no idea of what is going on. Even if you are a master of detection, you will not know just how much dough is needed for a bagel, or how much slack is needed for your fishing line. It takes a someone with skills in the trade to understand the information given though detection.

Combat

The flow of battle, the hum of the blade, and the varying steps in between. Combat is all about out doing your enemy, with skill or with knowledge. Detection is used to help read your opponent, where he is standing, how he is holding his weapon, even how he is breathing. All these can be used to your advantage.

Just because you can see what your opponent is doing, does not mean you know how to react to it. It takes honing your skill with the weapon to counter your opponent. Detection just gives you the raw information to work with, you will not beat someone from it alone.

Social

Detection is an auxiliary skill to many social approaches. While one can see the raw input from other people, the minutiae of culture, motive, deception, etc., will be lost on the person. These are covered by relevant social skills such as: Etiquette (Studying/Understanding culture), Psychology (Studying/Understanding motives and the mind), and so on.

Since detection is about gathering physical information it will not be able to tell if; Someone is lying, Someone is angry at you, Someone is learning well, or How someone should act. It is only used to gather tells for their appropriate skills.

Counter Play

While picking someone out of the crowd or out of the dark is something that detection is good for, combining methods to better hide one's self such as acting and disguise, can put off the perceiver as they have no means of pointing out that you are not who you say you are.

• Stealth: Physically hiding what you are doing
• Acting: Putting on an act to give false information
• Deception: Physical Deceptions such as sleight of hand, or distractions to remove focus

Skill Ranks

Novice (0-25)

A novice of detection is just learning how to comb for details from the world around them. They may be able to pick out a specific scent and partially follow it if it's strong enough, hear someone's conversation in a private room with a thin door, or be able to perceive the general characteristics of an object when touching and tasting it in relative good detail.

Competent (26-75) (26 - 50 for FT Skill)

At competent one's senses will begin to be more clear to the user, allowing for better understandings of their surroundings. They have a decent shot at picking someone out of a crowd, if that person isn't trying to be hidden. They are able to follow strong odors a small distance to their point of origin, and even catch traces of faded trails. At this competency, many are able to vividly get raw information for basic materials, allowing for specialist skills to step in.

Expert (76-150) (51 - 75 for FT Skill)

The expert of detection is someone who is keen on their surroundings. They may approximately half of the time, find the person that they're looking for in a crowd, eavesdropping in a noisy room is also possible. Well hidden traps may also be found by the senses. At this point in one's training they may as well be able to see those trained in stealth in clear conditions most of the time, and obscured conditions around a quarter of the time.

Master (151-250) (76 - 100 for FT Skill)

The master of detection is a person that carries with them a high degree of understanding of their environment. They are able to spot discrepancies in the environment that are likely traps or weaknesses, as well as eaves drop in a bustling room with little issue. Trace odors and remnants of objects can be detected without pause. The only obstacle to these folk are ingenious trap makers, highly trained stealthy individuals, high physical deceptions with slight of hand or camouflage, and highly obstructive weather such as pitch darkness or hurricanes.

Credit: Wald Loca

Progressing Detection

• Capstones
• Grandmasters
• Tier 2 PCs

Detection Knowledge

The collapsible below has examples of Skill Knowledge for this skill. If you are unsure of what Knowledge is, please check the Knowledge Primer for details. Please remember that our Peer Reviewers will be checking to make sure that your Knowledge claim is appropriate to what you have learned in the thread and ensuring that you are not duplicating knowledge.

A guide to knowledge can be found here (this link takes you to the site) and the person reviewing your thread will do so following the steps laid out in the Peer Reviewer Guide. If you wish to use one of these knowledge in your request, please ensure that it is appropriate to your thread.