Specialities
The Specialities correspond to Skills at a particularly high Level on a quite precise field. Players are given quite a wide room to create Specialities for their Character, as long as they agree upon them with the Game Master, that's straight, and they follow the following two principles:
- A Speciality is necessarily defined from one of the Skills of the Character's Sheet. Hence, one can choose a Speciality such as Marine Guns from the Skill Popguns & Shot or a Speciality such as Rum from the Skill Parched Throat;
- A Speciality has to be covering only a limited field of application. Hence, as a Speciality from Pétoires et Grenaille, one can indeed choose a Speciality in Marine Guns but not in Fire Weapons because the field of application would be too wide.
How do Specialities work?
It is up to the Game Master to decide whether such or such Speciality seems to comply with the two principles above. He also determines precisely from which Skill a Speciality stems. At that moment, the Player can write down her Speciality in one of the reserved lines for that purpose in the corresponding Skill Section.
For instance, a Speciality in Hooks can be chosen (or become necessary) for the manufacturing or the skilled use of a Pirate's Hook. That quite specific item, which however can quickly become useful or even necessary to a Pirate, can as well serve for Brawl (see later on) as for a number of other activities. The Game Master however will take care to not multiply the Specialities associated to that single object and he'll preferably limit himself to one stemming from « DIY of All Sorts » (for manufacturing) and/or one stemming from « Brawl » or « Balance / Acrobatics » (for use). For the specific case of the Hook, the Mali linked to the use of the artifact should disappear as soon as the Speciality is added with a non-zero Level for one of those Skills.
Moreover, at the time of Character's Creation, no Player can take more than one or two Specialities per Skill Section. Also, no Player can create a Character with in total more than five Specialities…
The Level of a Speciality is actually a bonus which will be added to the Level of the Skill to which it is linked when an action requiring exactly the use of that Speciality will be undertaken by the Character. For instance, for a Character with a Speciality in Marine Guns, one will add the Level in Popguns & Shot and the Level in Marine Guns.
Please note also that some actions absolutely require a corresponding Speciality. In that case, the Character who doesn't possess the Speciality will still have the possibility to give it a try but suffer Mali for the Roll of D20 as if she had a Skill Level at zero.
Cost of Specialities at Character's Creation
The following rules apply to the points to be allocated to a Speciality at Character's Creation:
| Speciality Level | Cost for the Level: | Thus, total cost to reach it (from zero): | |||
| 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| 2 | 3 | 5 | |||
| 3 | 4 | 9 | |||
| 4 | 5 | 14 | |||
| +1 | +1 | Etc. | |||
The attentive reader will have quickly understood that the Speciality Levels are expensive! The advantages are however also high enough: one can thus achieve to surpass the limit of ten points for a Skill Level as soon as Character's Creation. Yet, on the other hand, the field of application of the Speciality is rather limited. Of course, Specialities have other advantages which will later appear, especially when Characters will start to gather Experience and will become stronger (see about that the chapter regarding Fame and Experience).
It will have become clear to the even more attentive reader that the Levels in a Speciality have a lower cost than the Skill Levels from the moment when the Skill is at a Level of seven… To know that allows for avoiding to uselessly spend too many points from the initial total to be allocated (well, unless it is a selected specific strategy…).