Optional Mechanic: Rare Skills
This article introduces the mechanic of rare skills to Level Up: Advanced Fifth Edition, and details four new rare skills, collectively known as the elemental skills. Mechanically, rare skills function exactly like normal skills except that a character can only attempt a rare skill check if a feature explicitly grants them access to the skill. (See the end of this article for new features that grant access to rare skills.) A character with access to a rare skill is not necessarily proficient in it, but if they have access they may cultivate that skill like any other, such as choosing to gain proficiency in a rare skill when a feature offers the chance to gain proficiency in an unspecified skill. Narrators can give rare skills to monsters and NPCs without changing their CR.
Skill-Specific Rules
The following rules apply to the elemental skills introduced in this article, but not necessarily to rare skills introduced elsewhere.
- Under normal conditions, you may only use these skills to affect a target or area no greater than a 5-foot cube and no more than 30 feet away from you, although you may sense beyond these limits on a particularly high roll. Doing so requires an action. You may only move an object you target up to 5 feet in any direction as an action.
- You must have a clear path (no total cover ) between you and the target or area you affect with these skills, and you must be able to see or otherwise know the precise location of the area or target you affect.
- Some environments may limit how you can use these skills. For instance, being in mid-flight high above the ground or standing on an ice floe would make geokinesis nearly impossible, strong winds may complicate aerokinesis or pyrokinesis, and hydrokinesis would be difficult in the desert.
- Effects created with these skills last until the start of your next turn if physical conditions would not otherwise support them (such as supporting a boulder in midair), although you may end them early at any time without an action. However, they persist if you use your action on the following turn to either maintain or further the effect (such as gradually moving a boulder across a chasm). However, doing so requires concentration like a spell, and the Narrator may call for a Constitution saving throw as per the rules for a forced march for each minute you maintain this concentration after the first.
- These skills are considered magical and cannot be used where magic is suppressed, such as in an antimagic field. Although they are not spells, they are considered cantrips for the purposes of counterspell , dispel magic , and similar magic.
- It is normally impossible to directly manipulate an unwilling creature’s breath, body heat, blood, bones, etc. using the skills in this article, not only because a clear line of sight is often unfeasible, but also because such elements take on a new essence when incorporated into a being with a creature type. This applies even to creatures such as elementals or constructs that may be entirely composed of a pure element. However, Narrators may rule that a willing creature can be affected by certain uses of these skills, such as using Pyrokinesis to warm a creature.
New Rare Skills
Under specific conditions, characters can gain proficiency in the following rare skills. Creatures can’t make a check for a special skill unless they have proficiency in it. Like all skills, the Narrator determines which ability score is called for in a given situation.
Aerokinesis. A character makes an Aerokinesis check to mystically attune to and manipulate the air, atmosphere, and potentially other air-adjacent phenomena such as sound and weather. The most commonly used ability score is Wisdom. A character might use Charisma to amplify their voice or Dexterity to manipulate a glider.
Specialties: odors, pressure and vacuums, sound, transportation, weather
Geokinesis. Geokinesis represents a character’s ability to mystically attune to and manipulate earth in the form of stone, sand, silt, clay, and potentially earth-adjacent materials such as metals or magma. The most commonly used ability score is Wisdom. A character might use Intelligence to identify a fake gemstone or Charisma to sculpt a statue.
Specialties: gems, magma, magnets, metals, mud, sand, seismic activity
Hydrokinesis. Hydrokinesis represents a character’s ability to mystically attune to and manipulate water, ice, and potentially other water-based substances such as acids and sap. The most commonly used ability score is Wisdom. A character might use Constitution to hold back a crashing wave for a long period of time or Intelligence to identify impurities in water.
Specialties: acids, condensation and freezing, dowsing, evaporation and melting, purification, sap
Pyrokinesis. Pyrokinesis represents a character’s ability to mystically produce, attune to, and manipulate fire and heat, and potentially other fire adjacent-phenomena such as light and lightning, at the Narrator’s discretion. The most commonly used ability score is Wisdom. A character might use Charisma to put on a pyrotechnic display or Intelligence to deduce how long an object will burn unassisted.
Specialties: heat, light, lightning, pyrotechnics, smoke
Example Ability Check DCs for Elemental Skills
| Aerokinesis | |
| 10 | Create white noise to hide a conversation; clear a smoke-filled room |
| 15 | Throw your voice to another position; fill the sails of a small boat |
|
20 |
Generate a heavy fog; cushion a fall from a great height |
|
25 |
Uproot a small tree; anticipate where lightning will strike |
| Geokinesis | |
| 10 | Compact sand into a stable surface; carve a message into brick |
| 15 | Convincingly falsify a creature’s footprints; sense a tunnel below a city street |
|
20 |
Levitate a large boulder; bridge a narrow chasm |
|
25 |
Warp a steel blade; predict an earthquake an hour in advance |
| Hydrokinesis | |
| 10 | Change water into ice or vice versa; keep yourself dry in the rain |
| 15 | Dry a soaked book without smudging its text; intuit a safe path over a frozen lake |
|
20 |
Keep the ocean from filling a breach in a ship’s hull; purify water of invisible contaminants |
|
25 |
Create a safe space in a tsunami; sense the nearest body of water in a desert |
| Pyrokinesis | |
| 10 | Restrict a flame to the center of a piece of paper; create recognizable images in a fire |
| 15 | Create a safe path through a burning building; perform a professional-grade pyrotechnics show |
|
20 |
Quickly and cleanly burn through manacles; keep a campfire lit in pouring rain |
|
25 |
Change a lava flow into rock or vice versa; bend torchlight away from your hiding place |
Establishing Elemental Skill DCs
Rare skills offer alternative methods of approaching a problem, but these methods aren’t necessarily easier than conventional ones. Lifting a boulder with Geokinesis is just as hard as it is with Athletics and lighting a fire in a storm is impressive whether you rely on Survival or Pyrokinesis. When setting a DC for a rare skill, it is helpful to think of comparable means of accomplishing the same effect with mundane skills. Often, the DC should be the same.
Note that the DC is typically higher to interact with or manipulate a substance or phenomenon the further it is conceptually from the base element. For example, it is easier to warm an object with Pyrokinesis than it is with Aerokinesis, but it is more difficult to cool with Pyrokinesis than with Aerokinesis. Likewise, it is fairly easy to manipulate soil with Geokinesis, but harder to manipulate metal.
Elemental Ability Check Criticals
These tables apply to all of the elemental skills.
Critical Success
1. Breakthrough. Choose a specialty in the triggering skill closely associated with the intended effect. If this is your first time getting a critical success with that specialty, you have a key insight into its underlying essence. Write down the specialty. After you have rolled this result with the same skill three times, you permanently gain that specialty.
2. Effortless. For 1 minute, you can maintain effects caused by the triggering skill as a bonus action instead of an action. This does not apply to causing a new effect with the triggering skill.
3. Elemental Ward. You gain resistance to the energy type associated with your use of the triggering skill (such as acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage), as determined by the Narrator, for 1 hour.
4. Receptive Locale. For 24 hours, the range at which you can use the triggering skill doubles.
5. Restorative Energy. You regain 1d4 exertion points, a 1st-level spell slot, or 2 pact magic points. If you cannot benefit from this, reroll.
6. Unity of Substance and Soul. Until your next short or long rest , you can choose to use Wisdom for ability checks that would otherwise use Strength or Dexterity, or vice versa.
Critical Failure
1. Choke. For the next hour, When you make a check with the triggering skill and the d20 shows a natural result of more than 10, you must count the d20 result as being 10.
2. Collateral Damage. A creature or object of the Narrator’s choice within range takes 1d4 damage of a type associated with the triggering skill, (such as acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage) as determined by the Narrator.
3. Lose Center. You channel power in ways you are unprepared to handle and become confused for until the end of your next turn as you regain your composure.
4. Menacing Mephit. Your actions awaken and disturb a nearby mephit or other thematically appropriate creature of CR 1/2 or less. At some point in the next 24 hours, they take an impish action to noticeably frustrate, annoy, or otherwise inconvenience you.
5. Misdirected. Instead of affecting your target, the effect manifests in another location of the Narrator’s choice within range.
6. Taxing. You lose a number of hit dice equal to half your proficiency bonus as though you had expended them. The number of hit dice you have cannot be reduced to less than 0 this way.