TEXT: RULES CHANGES
  SKILLS 
  STRUGGLE only allows for unarmed 
  ﬁghting and wielding melee weapons 
  with a damage bonus of +3 or less. 
  Players must buy additional skills to 
  allow the use of other weapons. 
  RIDE, CARTER or SAIL (player’s 
  choice) is the default Speed skill 
  rather than Drive. 
  LORE is a default Mind skill rather 
  than Education. Players are encour-
  aged to tailor this skill to their back-
  ground (farmers have nature lore, 
  mercenaries have military lore, etc.) 
  as few people have broad educations. 
  New skills which may come in 
  handy: 
  ARMOUR (Body) – know how to 
  don and remove armour & bear the 
  weight of armour without tiring. If 
  you fail a fatigue check you can ﬂip-
  ﬂop the roll as long as the resulting 
  number is under your Armour skill. 
  SHIELD (Speed) - use a shield (or 
  perhaps, a grabbed opponent) to 
  block attacks. Up to the max of your 
  Shield skill, different size shields 
  impose a negative shift on attacks. 
  UNKNOWN AGES
  Based on mod by Bailiwolf @ RPG.
  net
  Tweaked and playtested by voidstate. 
  Example of play can be found on 
  RPG.net Play By Post forum.
  UA recast as a Fantasy game - in this 
  case, a brutal savage Sword and Sor-
  cery prehistory (or perhaps, previous 
  history) in which sly slinky catlike 
  sorceresses utter unspeakable Names 
  in order to beguile the hulking brutes 
  and killers she uses to warm her bed 
  and wet her crimson-stained alter. In 
  which brutish - yet devilish clever 
  - barbarians from the North adventure 
  and whore and kill and steal and live 
  free, despite the so-called laws of 
  civilized man. In which ancient fallen 
  orders of the Elder Races linger at the 
  fringes of the world - a world haunted 
  by demon and fell beats and walking 
  dead. A world teetering on the edge 
  of oblivion, destined to be wiped 
  away and remade, less then dust. 
  Unknown Ages lost in the forgotten 
  murk of deepest time. 
   
  ARMOUR 
  Armour is rated based on three ques-
  tions: 
  Is it Rigid? Is the armour made of an 
  unyielding material such as metal? 
  Is it Covering? Does the armour 
  cover more than half your body area 
  and include a helmet? 
  Is it Heavy? Is the armour thick and 
  sturdy? 
  Each ‘Yes’ to an above question adds 
  3 to this protection, but imposes a 
  -10% shift to all actions involving 
  Speed, including Initiative, all body 
  checks involving movement and all 
  checks to resist fatigue. These pen-
  alties increase to -30% each when 
  underwater. 
  Additionally, helmets add a -10% 
  shift to notice rolls. 
  For example, a suit of jointed plate 
  armour with all three questions an-
  swered YES, would thus stop 9 points 
  of damage per attack while giving 
  -30% to all actions involving Speed, 
  Body checks involving movement 
  and fatigue checks, and a -10% to 
  notice skills. 
  Donning and removing armour re-
  quires one successful Armour check 
  per +3 of protection and each check 
  takes a separate action. 
  Fatigue: Wearing armour is tiring. 
  The GM may call for fatigue checks 
  for armour wearers at intervals de-
  pendant on the environment (at least 
  once per 4 hours in perfect condi-
  tions). 
  A fatigue check is a Body roll modi-
  ﬁed by the character’s armour and 
  shield penalties. Each failure imposes 
  a cumulative -5% shift to all Speed, 
  movement and fatigue checks. These 
  penalties return at the rate of 5% per 
  hour once the armour is removed. 
  Character’s whose General Athlet-
  ics skill is reduced to zero or less can 
  no longer walk due to the weight of 
  their armour. Riding, however, is still 
  a possibility, as the penalty to move-
  ment-based Body checks doesn’t 
  apply when mounted. 
  SHIELDS 
  The maximum shift a shield can pro-
  vide depends on it’s type. 
  Small Shield: -10% vs. melee; -5% 
  vs. ranged 
  Medium Shield: -15% vs. melee; -
  
  MELEE WEAPONS 
  Attacks may do rolled damage on a 
  matched success or critical if suf-
  ﬁciently powerful. Melee weapons 
  do rolled damage against opponents 
  whose armour bonus is less than the 
  attacker’s weapon’s bonus. E.g. An 
  attacker with a club (+3) only does 
  ﬁrearms damage to opponents in no 
  armour. 
  MISSILE WEAPONS 
  Bows are Large, Penetrating, and/or 
  Leveraged (+3 damage for each) and 
  arrows can have armour piercing tips 
  (-3 damage, ignore armour). 
  Reloading (knocking an arrow, bal-
  ancing a sling bullet, etc.) is a sin-
  gle action and requires a successful 
  Archery check. 
  Missile weapons do damage equal to 
  the sum of the dice rolled. They auto-
  matically kill on a critical (01). 
  Crossbows have a +6 damage bonus 
  (penetrating and leveraged). Their ac-
  curacy allows a +10% shift to hit but 
  they require 2 successful Crossbow 
  skill checks to reload. Heavy cross-
  bows also count as large, giving them 
  a +9 bonus, but require 4 successful 
  checks to reload. 
  10% vs. ranged; -5% to Speed, move-
  ment and fatigue checks 
  Great Shield: -20% vs. melee; -20% 
  vs. ranged; -10% to Speed, movement 
  and fatigue checks 
  You can also attack with a shield 
  using that skill, adding +0/+3/+6 for 
  damage. Shields never do ﬁrearms 
  damage. 
  SHIELDS PENALTIES AND 
  ARMOUR 
  No shield can give a larger shift to 
  opponents’ attacks than the wield-
  er’s shield skill. However, shield is a 
  Speed skill so is effected by the pen-
  alty given by armour, larger shields 
  and fatigue. 
  Thus, to use a great shield at maxi-
  mum efﬁciency, a character wearing 
  articulated plate armour would need 
  a shield skill of 60% (-30% from ar-
  mour & -10% from the shield reduces 
  their shield skill to 20%). And, as 
  they are at -40% to all fatigue checks, 
  the penalty may well increase the 
  longer they wear the armour (by 5% 
  per failed check), requiring the shield 
  skill to be even higher to remain ef-
  fective. 
  Slings give a +3 damage bonus (their 
  momentum means they count as lev-
  eraged). 
  Cherries: Characters with Archery as 
  an obsession skill may pick cherries. 
  These can be chosen from the Martial 
  Arts list or made up, as usual. 
  
  BLACKEST MAGIC 
  Magic is still based off a Soul skill 
  which must be the Mage’s Obsession 
  skill. It still involves charge-building 
  rituals and a body of related effects. 
  The Schools of magic are much less 
  symbolic and post-modern, and don’t 
  generally involve a strong internal 
  paradox… here it’s more like irony. 
  Here is the basic skinny on some pos-
  sible schools: 
  DIABOLISM 
  Domain: the summoning and binding 
  of Demons and other Eldritch Horrors 
  from Beyond 
  Minor Effect: Summon a Minor 
  demon to perform service. Banish a 
  Minor demon. 
  Minor Charge: Sacriﬁce food, drink, 
  drugs, and valuables of signiﬁcant 
  value; make living sacriﬁces of ani-
  mals. 
  Signiﬁcant Effect: Summon a Sig-
  niﬁcant demon to perform service, or 
  summon half a dozen Minor demons. 
  Banish a Signiﬁcant demon, or half a 
  dozen Minor demons. 
  Signiﬁcant Charge: Make living 
  human sacriﬁces; sacriﬁce goods of 
  POWER OF THE GODS 
  Avatars are basically given god-
  names for the fantasy setting and used 
  without change. People who channel 
  divine force are considered Clerics, 
  Divine Madmen, Priest-Kings, saints, 
  and holy warriors. The conception 
  (whether right or wrong) isn’t that 
  reality is created bottom-up based on 
  patterns of human behaviour, belief, 
  and thought, but human behaviour be-
  lief and thought are created top-down 
  by divine beings who capriciously 
  toy with the lives of mortal men. The 
  gods are mostly selﬁsh absentee as-
  sholes.
  The gods are known by different 
  names in different places. They care 
  little for worship although priests 
  are unlikely to admit that. Priests are 
  generally using religion to further 
  their own power by gaining inﬂuence 
  among worshipers and the beneﬁts of 
  following the avatar’s path. Tis leads 
  them to interpret their gods edicts in 
  as many ways as there are priests. 
  Thus, they are mostly as much selﬁsh 
  assholes as the gods they represent.
   
  unique priceless value. 
  Major Effect: Summon a Major 
  Demon to perform service, or sum-
  mon up to half a dozen Signiﬁcant 
  demons, or a dozen Minor demons. 
  Utterly banish a similar number of 
  demons. 
  Major Charge: Sacriﬁce your loved 
  ones or hundreds of other living 
  human beings. Sacriﬁce artifacts of 
  singular power and magic. Sell your 
  soul to a Demon Kahn. You can only 
  do this last one once… and then you 
  are subject to the Kahn’s every com-
  mand (resisting is a Rank-10 Self and 
  Unnatural check). 
  Blast Style: None exactly, but Minor 
  demons inﬂict +3 melee damage, 
  Signiﬁcant demons inﬂict rolled value 
  damage, and Major demons pretty 
  much instantly kill people. Being at-
  tacked by a demon will often lead to 
  both Unnatural and Violence checks. 
  Taboo: If you ever break your Con-
  tract with one of your demons, all 
  the rest of your bound demons will 
  get testy and try and break their pacts 
  with your (your metaphysical author-
  ity is weakened every time you break 
  a Pact). This requires a Magic skill 
  roll vs.. the Demon’s Soul stat. If it 
  wins, it’ll likely do it’s damnedest to 
  eat your face off. 
  Notes: Unlike most schools, Diabo-
  lism lets you build the charges needed 
  to work the magic either before or 
  after you actually summon up a 
  demon. If built before, you spend the 
  charges and roll the dice normally, 
  and use this energy to feed the demon 
  and secure the Pact. If you charge 
  up after - essentially summoning on 
  credit - then the Demon (and thus, 
  the GM) gets to specify the charging 
  conditions under which will pay for 
  the spell. This is how most Diabolists 
  get into real trouble (well, this and 
  sacriﬁcing people). The cost of a spell 
  depends on the power of the demon 
  you summon. This also determines 
  the time it takes to summon the de-
  mon - generally an hour per charge 
  spent. 
  Here is the skinny on demon sum-
  moning: 
  Basic Demons: Your basic demon has 
  the following stats, and will perform 
  1 service with a duration no greater 
  than 1 day. This service can be fairly 
  complex- “Find and slay Agoth the 
  Northman” is just ﬁne. As is “Carry 
  me upon your back to the High Peak 
  of Shelas.” You can sometimes bribe 
  a demon to perform services beyond 
  those in the original Pact - but at dou-
  
  to the pact of a Signiﬁcant demon. 
  +1 Major Charge: Add 50 Stat points; 
  add 1 extra Major unnatural effect; 
  increase duration of service by 1 
  month; add one command to the pact 
  of a Major demon.
  ble the normal cost in Charges and 
  a Magic roll. The unnatural effects 
  a demon can produce are one-shot 
  deals. They will one perform a ﬁnite 
  number of such magical feats for you, 
  though offering more charges can in-
  crease their numbers. They can have 
  Body skills which reﬂect their demon 
  physiology though - such as Flight or 
  Burrowing. 
  Minor Demons 
  Stats: 200 
  Attack: +3 damage 
  1 Minor unnatural effect. 
  Signiﬁcant Demons 
  Stats: 250 
  Attack: rolled value as damage 
  1 Signiﬁcant unnatural. 
  Major Demons 
  Stats: 300 
  Attack: instant death 
  1 Signiﬁcant unnatural. 
  +1 Minor Charge: Add 5 Stat points; 
  Add 1 extra Minor unnatural effect; 
  increase duration of service by 1 day; 
  add one command to the pact of a 
  Minor demon. 
  +1 Signiﬁcant Charge: Add 15 Stat 
  points; Add 1 extra Signiﬁcant un-
  natural effect; increase duration of 
  service by 1 week; add one command 
  DRUIDISM 
  Domain: Life and nature, fertility and 
  growth 
  Minor Effect: command an animal to 
  perform simple service; heal a minor 
  wound, increase fertility; hide easily 
  in natural setting 
  Minor Charge: Feed blood to the soil 
  and the roots of sacred trees (at least 
  10 Wound points worth, though it 
  need no be yours) 
  Signiﬁcant Effect: command many 
  animals to perform minor service, or 
  one to perform complex service (such 
  as ﬁghting for you). Heal signiﬁcant 
  wounds, increase fertility dramatical-
  ly, become one with natural settings. 
  Signiﬁcant Charge: Feed great 
  amounts of blood to the soil - at least 
  100 wound points worth, at least 10 
  of which MUST be yours. 
  Major Effect: Cause many animals 
  to perform complex tasks, bring the 
  dying back from the threshold of 
  death, cure any ailment, travel almost 
  instantaneously through a natural set-
  ting
  Major Charge: Feed the life’s blood 
  of one or more beings - at least 300 
  wound points worth. This leaves the 
  sacriﬁces dead. 
  Blast Style: Turn the wilderness 
  against the victim- birds swoop and 
  attack, limbs fall on him, vines trip 
  him, trees fall and crush him. A 
  Druid’s Blast doesn’t hit immedi-
  ate, but lingers until he is in a setting 
  where it can do the most good. Such 
  Blasts hang around for as much as a 
  week before hitting, as circumstances 
  dictate. 
  Taboo: allow harm to come to natural 
  settings under your protection (be-
  yond the normal cycle of tooth and 
  claw and predation). Further, adopt-
  ing too many of the ways of civiliza-
  tion will cause Taboo- dressing in 
  loom-woven cloth, wielding weapons 
  of steel, or wearing armour made 
  from anything but hide and leather 
  will Taboo a druid. Also note that 
  using natural creatures from your wil-
  derness to Charge is instant Taboo… 
  those civilized men who wander in 
  your wood should beware. 
  Notes: The magic here is pretty 
  straightforward, but the irony is that 
  the Druid gains power over life by 
  ritually sacriﬁcing life. 
  
  part through ritual sacriﬁce while 
  meditating (self-castration is popular 
  in the East). Deny your body’s needs 
  while surrounded by temptation for 
  weeks (starve yourself while sitting 
  at a table loaded with your favourite 
  foods until you are almost dead). Lots 
  of Self and Helplessness checks here. 
  Blast Style: Mystics reach inside the 
  minds of their victims and scramble 
  their thoughts and fry their nervous 
  systems. A victim blasted by a Mys-
  tic has no idea where the attack is 
  coming from, and if slain, leaves an 
  unmarked corpse behind. 
  Taboo: Indulge the ﬂesh for pleasure 
  (eat more than required to keep you 
  alive and healthy, have sexual rela-
  tions for a purpose other than to pro-
  duce an heir, bathe more than basic 
  health demands, or dress in clothing 
  more sumptuous than the needs of 
  climate or modesty). 
  Notes: Mystics are often these crazy 
  dirty old men living in caves on the 
  top of mountains. They generally 
  have a great deal of insight (from all 
  that mind-reading and astral projec-
  tion) but are usually in poor health 
  from their self-denial. The other side 
  is the Eastern mystic - the humble-
  seeming court advisor or minister. 
  Often a Eunuch, this Mystic is a 
  MYSTICISM 
  Domain: power over thoughts, the 
  mind, and perception 
  Minor Effect: read surface thoughts, 
  create minor illusions, shock a per-
  son’s mind, put a person into light 
  hypnosis 
  Minor Charge: deny the ﬂesh, focus-
  ing on the mind (go without food or 
  sleep, or expose yourself to the ele-
  ments while meditating on the higher 
  mind). 
  Signiﬁcant Effect: control thoughts, 
  read secret desires, create fantasy illu-
  sion scenarios, travel the astral plane, 
  blast a person’s mind to chaos. 
  Signiﬁcant Charge: mortify the ﬂesh, 
  ignoring pain and need to invigor-
  ate the mind (inﬂict ritual injuries 
  while mediating for several hours - 10 
  wounds per charge at least) 
  Major Effect: transfer your mind to 
  another body; swap minds of two or 
  more subjects, read a person’s mind 
  utterly and completely, make some-
  one your total and utter slave, utterly 
  destroy someone’s mind. 
  Major Charge: permanently reduce 
  the ﬂesh- loosing a signiﬁcant body 
  devilish schemer who uses his powers 
  to further his ambitions. 
  NECROMANCY 
  Domain: power over the dead and 
  undead 
  Minor Effect: cause minor withering, 
  raise spirits, commune with the dead
   
  Minor Charge: contemplate death and 
  the dead- preferably in particularly 
  morbid environment 
  Signiﬁcant Effect: cause signiﬁcant 
  withering, raise corporeal undead, 
  command spirits to your will, steal 
  life like a vampire 
  Signiﬁcant Charge: Ritually enact 
  your own death & burial and spend 
  night sleeping in your own tomb; 
  construct a monument to Death; 
  engage in perverse ritual mockery of 
  life (plant a ﬁeld with gravel as if it 
  were seed, have sex with a corpse, 
  bind another person’s wounds with 
  infected bandages and maggots etc) 
  Major Effect: raise an undead army; 
  become undead yourself; slay hun-
  dreds 
  Major Charge: die and rise from your 
  own death; celebrate death on a mass 
  scale (on the order of the Pyramids)- 
  turn a society to Death. 
  
  WIZARDRY 
  Domain: wizardry is the power of 
  words, spoken or written, and the way 
  words can persuade, awe, or domi-
  nate. Words can be used to change a 
  person’s whole world view. 
  Minor Effect: Make a suggestion 
  which the target will accept as rea-
  sonable. Curse or bless a target in 
  such a way as to affect his fortunes in 
  a limited way. 
  Signiﬁcant Effect: Issue commands 
  which targets will ﬁnd hard to diso-
  bey (Mind check with minimum of 
  the wizard’s magic skill and rank-8 
  Self check if successful). Curse or 
  bless a target in such a way as to af-
  fect his fortunes in a broad way. 
  Major Effect: Utterly entrance targets 
  with your words, altering their core 
  belief systems (you can rewrite their 
  Obsessions and Triggers). Make ter-
  rible curses or wondrous blessings. 
  Blast Style: The Wizardry blast 
  doesn’t inﬂict damage, but is does im-
  pose overwhelming awe and majesty. 
  This causes both Fear and Unnatural 
  stress checks in those who the Blast 
  is directed against. Rank-4 for Minor 
  blasts, Rank-8 for Signiﬁcant blasts. 
  This Awe can affect more than one 
  Blast Style: Withering Touch. Cheap 
  (1 charge per blast) but requires a 
  touch to work. Causes victim’s body 
  to wither and age, bursting open with 
  puss and maggots. Quite nasty. 
  Taboo: Act in such a way as to cel-
  ebrate life (have sex, plant crops, tend 
  to another’s wounds, etc). 
  Notes: Necromancy is a great school 
  if you happen to be a Stygian priest-
  king or something. You can use you 
  power to create a great necropolis, in 
  which people live in tombs and sleep 
  in cofﬁns. Mad charges to be reaped 
  from such an arrangement. 
   
  person easily if they can clearly see 
  and hear the Wizard who uses it. 
  Taboo: Wizards must always be care-
  ful with what they say - their words 
  carry power even if they don’t intend 
  them to. They don’t charge up like 
  normal mages, but rather once they 
  have used their words to carry power, 
  they become carriers for accidental 
  magic. Each use of Wizardry CRE-
  ATES a charge (or charges) which 
  hangs around, waiting to discharge 
  at the GM’s discretion based on what 
  the Wizard says. For example, an 
  angry wizard who utters “Damn you 
  eyes, why can’t you keep up!” could 
  accidentally Curse one of his com-
  panions with blindness (or at least 
  a big negative shift to Notice rolls). 
  These charges work high to low, so 
  Major charges erupt ﬁrst, then signiﬁ-
  cant, then minor ones. Wizards are 
  known for their taciturn natures and 
  their tendencies to speak in riddles 
  for good reason. To speak too clearly 
  courts disaster.
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Unknown Armies [multi]/Unknown Armies [1st & 2nd ed]/Unknown Armies Unknown Ages.pdf