Aptitudes

Aptitudes are a score all characters have in the Tarnished Tale system. They represent the realized potential a character had in seven areas of capability at the time of character creation. The Aptitudes a character possessed remain available as "brute skills" and inform various other properties the character has.

The Seven Aptitudes are, briefly:

• Strength, representing raw physical strength;
• Agility, representing finesse and fine motor control;
• Hardiness, representing physical endurance and capacity;
• Analysis, representing the mental capacity for study, inspection, inference, and the general application of "hard" logic;
• Presence, representing the mental capacity for "taking up" social space;
• Intuition, representing the mental capacity for leaps of logic, emotional intelligence, hunches, and the appearance of wisdom, and;
• Willpower, representing the mental capacity for emotional stability, endurance, and tolerance.

Each aptitude has two values: its actual value (called the Aptitude Score), and that value multiplied by 5 (called the Aptitude Check). This is to facilitate the use of aptitudes in checks.