Academics represents formal education, the study of history, civics, basic math, politics, and cultures. While it doesn’t cover more esoteric information, this skill is useful for determining whether you know or can research any bit of information.
Recall Information
You can use the Academics skill to recall information you have learned through formal education and study. A successful skill check allows you to answer questions about the topic at hand.
| Obscurity | DC |
|---|---|
| Common Knowledge | 10 |
| Basic Questions | 15 |
| Difficult | 20 |
| Hard | 25 |
| Very Hard | 30 |
Academics covers information on topics such as basic math, history, people groups, royalty and nobility, nations, wars, founding of cities, heraldry, lineages, leaders, politics, civics, laws, customs, and other such information. It also covers any general information that would reasonably be recorded but isn’t covered by a specialized field of study.
Specialized Fields of Study
Academics covers all general information, but there are more specialized skills for certain fields of study, each with their own skill. You may use Academics to recall information in one of these specialized fields, but recalling information from a specialized field increases the difficulty class of the check by +10.
The specialized fields of study are Arcane Lore, Arms Lore, Engineering, Natural Lore, Profession, Psi Lore, Streetwise, and Theology.
Identify Creatures
With a successful Academics check, you can identify creatures that you have studied about based on their appearance or on clues they’ve left behind, such as tracks, refuse, or writings. The difficulty class to identify a creature is 10 + the creature’s Hit Dice. If identifying a creature based on circumstantial evidence rather than direct observation, the DC increases by +10.
Academics can readily identify humanoids, monstrous humanoids, and giants.
Other creature types are covered by a Specialized Field of Study. You can use Academics to identify other creatures, but the DC is changed to 10 + twice the creature’s Hit Dice.
Conduct Research
When attempting to gain information with a skill check, you may choose to conduct additional research to gain a bonus on your skill check. If you have a means of conducting research, such as access to a library, you gain a +1 bonus on your skill check for each hour you spend researching.
If you are attempting to conduct research related to a specialized field of study, you must succeed on a DC 10 Academics check with each hour of research to gain the bonus for that hour. The bonus gained from research may apply to the skill check from a specialized field of study.
You may not take 20 when conducting research. The information you seek might not be recorded where you are doing your research.
Memorize
You can attempt to memorize a long string of numbers, a long passage of verse, or some other particularly difficult piece of information (but you can’t memorize magical writing or similarly exotic scripts). Each successful check allows you to memorize a single page of text (up to 800 words), numbers, diagrams, or sigils, even if you don’t recognize their meaning.
If a document is longer than one page, you can make additional checks for each additional page. You always retain this information; however, you can recall it only with another successful Academics check.
Attempting to memorize information requires 1 minute of study and has a DC of 15. If you don’t understand the content you are trying to memorize, the DC increases by 5.