Skill | Engineering (Mind)

Engineering measures your ability to design, analyze, build, sabotage, and maintain structural and mechanical systems. This includes siege engines, fortifications, intricate mechanisms, and large-scale constructions. A skilled engineer understands both how to create and how to break—whether designing a bridge, rigging a deathtrap, or plotting the fastest way to bring down a castle wall.

How It Works:
Roll a d100 against your Engineering skill when attempting to understand, create, reinforce, sabotage, or disable mechanical or structural objects. Apply situational modifiers from the Difficulty Ladder as appropriate. Engineering may also apply to puzzles or tactical problems involving physical systems, such as rerouting water through a dam or disarming a complex trap.

Typical Uses:

• Constructing or modifying siege weapons (e.g., ballistae, trebuchets, mangonels)

• Operating heavy ship-mounted weapons like catapults or deck ballistae

• Analyzing and improving fortifications (walls, gates, towers, palisades)

• Identifying weaknesses in enemy defenses or siege platforms

• Building or reinforcing bridges, ramps, scaffolds, or barricades under pressure

• Assessing collapsing structures or unstable environments

• Creating or disabling traps, snares, or timed mechanisms

• Advising on safe load-bearing, impact redirection, or controlled demolition

Situational Modifiers:
Apply the Difficulty Ladder based on materials, conditions, time, and pressure:

• +50%: Blueprints, expert tools, optimal materials, no time pressure

• +40%: Familiar design, excellent workshop or stable environment

• +30%: Known design, decent materials, relaxed pace

• +20%: Clear plans, good tools, favorable conditions

• +10%: Simple designs or easy conditions

• 0%: Standard construction tasks with adequate resources

• –10%: Poor materials, tight deadlines, or field conditions

• –20%: Enemy fire, bad weather, improvised resources

• –30%: Unknown or fantastical designs, high stress

• –40%: Magical interference, battlefield chaos, severe instability

• –50%: Cursed sites, collapsing ruins, active sabotage

Untrained Use:
This is a barred skill. Engineering cannot be used untrained unless the GM rules the task requires only basic common sense (e.g., “That beam looks weak.”). Any technical feat beyond crude guesswork requires formal training.

Collaborative Work:
Engineering projects often benefit from teamwork. One trained character acts as the lead, while others may assist using the Lending a Hand rules. Large or long-term projects (e.g., siege construction or repairs) may be resolved with periodic checks, typically once per work phase (such as per hour or per day).

Narrative Examples:

• A dwarf saboteur rigs a trebuchet to misfire when triggered.

• A commander uses knowledge of fortifications to reduce incoming arrow fire during a siege.

• A rogue studies support beams and predicts that stress will collapse the ceiling.

• A party assembles a rope bridge across a ravine, reinforcing it as they build.

• A ranger recalibrates a scorpion ballista to adjust for wind and hits a distant ship’s mast.

• A cleric reinforces a wooden palisade with braces and sandbags in the final hour before an assault.

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File Created: 05/01/2025
Last Modified: 05/01/2025