We’re taking a break from our usual exercises in imagination to do something a little more sober: a comprehensive breakdown of Troika’s skill system, its backgrounds, and the general distribution of abilities.
I’ve often wanted a list like this while writing for Troika. Not knowing where to find one, I felt compelled to write my own. Doubtless, keen-eyed Troika-fans will spot many errors, both minor and major. What can I say? I am only a fleshy thing, poor of eyesight and bad at maths. Please take the opportunity to demonstrate your intellectual excellence by correcting me.
Troika Skills
To begin, I went through each background, recording each skill as I encountered it. I listed the value of each advanced skill in brackets. Once I’d recorded the skills, I counted the number of appearances; you can see that number listed as a little x(whatever) next to each skill.
I’ve left them in order of appearance, rather than alphabetized, in case anyone would like to check the work. In the headings below, I’ve broken these into three tranches (general skills, fighting skills, and spells) and organized them a bit better to help with discussion.
But enough about that: here’s the raw Mess!
The List
Strength x9 (4) (3) (2) (4) (1) (2) (2) (1) (2)
Astrology x9 (3) (2) (2) (2) (1) (3) (1) (2) (2)
Run x10 (2) (1) (2) (1) (2) (2) (2) (1) (1) (3)
Climb x8 (2) (1) (1) (4) (1) (2) (1) (3)
Spell – Drown x1 (3)
Swim x6 (3) (1) (1) (1) (2) (1)
Spell – Tongue Twister x1 (2)
Spell – Undo x3 (2) (1) (3)
Spell – Web x2 (1) (1)
Sneak x9 (1) (2) (1) (1) (2) (1) (1) (1) (1)
Second Sight x10 (1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (1)
Locks x4 (2) (4) (1) (1)
Awareness x10 (1) (3) (2) (1) (2) (1) (3) (1) (3) (1)
Trapping x5 (1) (3) (4) (1) (2)
Knife Fighting x3 (1) (1) (1)
Crossbow Fighting x3 (1) (1) (2)
Fusil Fighting x1 (2)
Spell – Random x15 (2) (2) (1) (1) (1) (3) (3) (3) (1) (1) (1) (1) (2) (1) (1)
Golden Barge Pilot x3 (2) (3) (3)
Sword Fighting x6 (1) (2) (2) (1) (1) (1)
Language Kurgan x1 (6)
Maul Fighting x2 (3) (1)
Secret Signs Chaos Patron x1 (3)
Spell – Open x1 (2)
Spell – See Through x1 (1)
Spell – Lock x1 (1)
Language Abyssal x1 (5)
Spell – Blood Shroud x1 (3)
Bow Fighting x2 (2) (1)
Tracking x5 (1) (2) (1) (1) (2)
Sculpting x1 (2)
Painting x1 (2)
Metal Working x1 (2)
Construction x1 (2)
Fist Fighting x7 (2) (1) (2) (1) (3) (2) (2)
Wrestling x4 (2) (2) (2) (2)
Hammer Fighting x1 (1)
Evaluate x2 (2) (2)
Etiquette x5 (1) (3) (3) (1) (2)
Exography x1 (4)
Pistolet Fighting x3 (2) (2) (2)
Mathmology x1 (3)
Spell – Find x1 (2)
Hook Fighting x1 (1)
Tunnel Fighting x1 (4)
Club Fighting x3 (2) (1) (2)
Poison x1 (1)
Disguise x3 (1) (2) (2)
Greatsword Fighting x2 (2) (1)
Fighting in your nice Weapon x1 (3)
Ride x1 (3)
Gastrology x1 (1)
Healing x5 (2) (1) (2) (1) (1)
Mortuary Science x1 (2)
Relationship Counselling x1 (2)
Spell – Posthumous Vitality x1 (1)
Spell – Skeletal Counsel x1 (1)
Spell – Torpor x1 (1)
Spell – Protection from Rain x2 (2) (1)
Spell – Callous Strike x1 (2)
Spell – Quench x1 (2)
Spell – True Seeing x1 (2)
Axe Fighting x1 (2)
Jousting x1 (3)
Spear Fighting x2 (2) (3)
Shield Fighting x1 (1)
Spell – Ember x1 (2)
Spell – Firebolt x1 (2)
Spell – Flash x1 (2)
Great Axe Fighting x1 (2)
Spell – Exorcism x1 (1)
Gambling x1 (1)
Flying x1 (3)
Claw Fighting (sword damage) x1 (2)
Hoof Fighting (club damage) x1 (1)
Spell – Astral Reach x1 (2)
Spell – Teleport x1 (1)
Secret Signs – WItching Words x1 (4)
Sleight of Hand x2 (1) (1)
Spell – Jolt x1 (1)
Spell – Amity x1 (1)
Spell – Mirror Selves x1 (1)
Spell – Helping Hands x1 (1)
Spell – Purple Lens x1 (1)
Fighting Skill of your Choice x1 (2)
Grilling x1 (1)
Blacksmithing x1 (2)
Spell – Assume Shape x1 (2)
Spell – Thunder x1 (2)
Spell – Brittle Twigs x1 (1)
Cooking x1 (1)
Longsword Fighting x1 (3)
Vengeance x1 (1)
Fighting in your Chosen Weapon (Sword, Club, Longsword, Hammer) x1 (4)
There are some other skill boosts baked into the backgrounds that I haven’t included here. Thinking Engines can boost Run (4), Second Sight (4), or Spell – Random (3) using their attachment. Giants of Corda can get a Ruby Lorgnette for +2 Second Sight
General Skills
Run x10 (2) (1) (2) (1) (2) (2) (2) (1) (1) (3)
Second Sight x10 (1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (1)
Awareness x10 (1) (3) (2) (1) (2) (1) (3) (1) (3) (1)
Strength x9 (4) (3) (2) (4) (1) (2) (2) (1) (2)
Astrology x9 (3) (2) (2) (2) (1) (3) (1) (2) (2)
Sneak x9 (1) (2) (1) (1) (2) (1) (1) (1) (1)
Climb x8 (2) (1) (1) (4) (1) (2) (1) (3)
Swim x6 (3) (1) (1) (1) (2) (1)
Etiquette x5 (1) (3) (3) (1) (2)
Healing x5 (2) (1) (2) (1) (1)
Tracking x5 (1) (2) (1) (1) (2)
Trapping x5 (1) (3) (4) (1) (2)
Locks x4 (2) (4) (1) (1)
Wrestling x4 (2) (2) (2) (2)
Disguise x3 (1) (2) (2)
Golden Barge Pilot x3 (2) (3) (3)
Evaluate x2 (2) (2)
Sleight of Hand x2 (1) (1)
Language Kurgan x1 (6)
Secret Signs Chaos Patron x1 (3)
Language Abyssal x1 (5)
Sculpting x1 (2)
Painting x1 (2)
Metal Working x1 (2)
Construction x1 (2)
Exography x1 (4)
Mathmology x1 (3)
Poison x1 (1)
Ride x1 (3)
Gastrology x1 (1)
Mortuary Science x1 (2)
Relationship Counselling x1 (2)
Jousting x1 (3)
Gambling x1 (1)
Flying x1 (3)
Secret Signs – WItching Words x1 (4)
Grilling x1 (1)
Blacksmithing x1 (2)
Cooking x1 (1)
Vengeance x1 (1)
Would you change a thing?
Some changes I might make:
- Give Witches Witching Words!
- Burglars should get Sleight of Hand. Maybe that’s a 5e-ism, but it makes sense to me.
- Grilling, cooking, and Gastronomy cover similar ground. I love that the beefstake guy doesn’t cook (he grills), but in play, I’d probably use at least the first two of these skills interchangeably.
- A lot of characters get Astrology, but I don’t think that skill is getting used too much. Maybe in longer campaigns, where you’re barging between spheres on the regular, but not often mid-adventure. The most plausible use case is checking on the destination of a portal you’ve found; ,y advice is to give your Astrologist PCs a Blue Star Map of Corda so that they can use that feature if the chance presents itself.
Anyways, enough gum flappin’; let’s talk math!
Skill Rarity
Something like Second Sight or Awareness (a common skill, x10) has a ~27% chance of coming up for each character. If you have more than two characters in the party, you probably have Second Sight.
Contrast that to Ettiquette or Healing, with 5 instances. There’s a ~13.8% chance a character has the skill. In a group of 4, there’s a 45% chance someone has the skill. Not bad odds, but hardly a sure thing.
Those 22 skills that only appear once? It’s unlikely they’ll appear in a given set of four characters. One character would have a 2.7% chance of having a giving skill. What chance do four random PCs have of having, say, Mathmology as a skill? Well, I’m an idiot, but by my math, it’s about 10.7%. Slim! Very slim indeed.
That being said, suppose you took a selection of these niche skills, say Mathmology, Vengance, Jousting, Relationship Counselling, Grilling, and Gambling. Your chance that one of your four players will have one of these six rare skills is much higher; I make it as roughly 52%.
What am I saying here? Players want to use those niche skills; they work as a Chekov’s Gun, baked right into their backgrounds. Although any one skill is unlikely to show up in your party’s toolkit, one of six is very likely to. Grab a selection of these rare skills and work them into your adventures; your players will be stoked for a chance to trot out the skills they never thought they’d get to use.
Fighting Skills
Sorted by rarity and alphabetized. Skills like Hoof Fighting and Hook Fighting have been compressed into the weapons whose damage tables they use.
Fist Fighting x7 (2) (1) (2) (1) (3) (2) (2)
Sword Fighting x7 (1) (2) (2) (1) (1) (1) (2)
Club Fighting x4 (2) (1) (2) (1)
Knife Fighting x4 (1) (1) (1) (1)
Crossbow Fighting x3 (1) (1) (2)
Pistolet Fighting x3 (2) (2) (2)
Bow Fighting x2 (2) (1)
Greatsword Fighting x2 (2) (1)
Maul Fighting x2 (3) (1)
Spear Fighting x2 (2) (3)
Axe Fighting x1 (2)
Fusil Fighting x1 (2)
Great Axe Fighting x1 (2)
Hammer Fighting x1 (1)
Longsword Fighting x1 (3)
Shield Fighting x1 (1)
Other, Broader instances of Fighting Skills
Fighting in your Chosen Weapon (Sword, Club, Longsword, Hammer) x1 (4)
Fighting in your nice Weapon x1 (3)
Fighting Skill of your Choice x1 (2)
Tunnel Fighting x1 (4)
It’s interesting: lots of people get Maces, but no one has any training in using the damn things.
Also, Crossbow fighting is more common than Bow Fighting, which surprised me. Not counting thrown knives, ranged skills appear only nine times. Because targets don’t get to fight back, and they have to use the super-rare shield or dodge skills to resist, ranged attacks are quite powerful in Troika. Finding good ways to keep combats ranged (canyons, rifts, collapsing floors, etc) can really mix up a Troika combat; dust off those Cover rules if you get an intense Fusil Fighter in your party.
Pacifists and Knife Fighters
Some characters have no ‘fighting skills’. I’ve listed them here, along with their most plausible combat skills and tools. Keep in mind, everyone gets a knife!
- Ardent Giant of Corda – Strength, Unarmed
- Befouler of Ponds – Spell – Drown, Untrained Mace
- Epopt – Fist Fighting, Untrained Staff
- Fellowship of Knidos – Mathomology, Untrained Mace
- Member of Miss Kinsey’s Dining Club – Strength, Untrained Dentures
- Necromancer – ?
- Parchment Witch – Callous Strike, untrained Swordcane
- Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors – Astral Reach, Spell Random, Unarmed
- Sorcerer of the College of Friends – Jolt, Unarmed
- Thaumaturge – Spell – Brittle Twigs, Thunder, Untrained Staff
- Thinking Engine – Pistolet Fighting, but no Pistolet, Unarmed
- Zoanthrope – Club fighting, but possessionless
Some of these classes are quite deadly (looking at you, Ms. K), but others, like Necromancer, Fellow of Knidos, and Thinking Engine, might have a tough time with early combats. Consider what these characters will contribute to your combat encounters; if you start with an in-medias-res combat, maybe slip the Thinking Engine a gun. Personally, I love letting Mathomologists use that skill to turn the environment against enemies. Check out Murder at the Motel Zotel to see how we’ve used this idea in the past.
Spells
Here’s just the spells, sorted by rarity and then alphabetized. Spells available on the random list, as well as through backgrounds, are marked with an asterisk.
Spell – Random x15 (2) (2) (1) (1) (1) (3) (3) (3) (1) (1) (1) (1) (2) (1) (1)
Spell – Undo x3 (2) (1) (3) *
Spell – Protection from Rain x2 (2) (1)
Spell – Web x2 (1) (1)
Spell – Amity x1 (1)
Spell – Assume Shape x1 (2) *
Spell – Astral Reach x1 (2)
Spell – Blood Shroud x1 (3)
Spell – Brittle Twigs x1 (1)
Spell – Callous Strike x1 (2)
Spell – Drown x1 (3)
Spell – Ember x1 (2) *
Spell – Exorcism x1 (1)
Spell – Find x1 (2) *
Spell – Firebolt x1 (2) *
Spell – Flash x1 (2) *
Spell – Helping Hands x1 (1) *
Spell – Jolt x1 (1) *
Spell – Lock x1 (1) *
Spell – Mirror Selves x1 (1)
Spell – Open x1 (2)
Spell – Posthumous Vitality x1 (1)
Spell – Purple Lens x1 (1)
Spell – Quench x1 (2)
Spell – Skeletal Counsel x1 (1)
Spell – See Through x1 (1)
Spell – Teleport x1 (1)
Spell – Thunder x1 (2) *
Spell – Tongue Twister x1 (2) *
Spell – Torpor x1 (1)
Spell – True Seeing x1 (2)
Things I notice:
- Spells are extremely background-specific. Other than Undo, Troika’s counterspell option, only two spells appear in multiple backgrounds.
- Random Spells are clustered, with some backgrounds getting three random spells. It’s not as common as it appears; there are more random spell skills than there are spellcasting classes in total!
- A total of 11 class spells also appear on the random spells table. This means there are 25 spells that are only accessible to players through the random list.
The Secret Spells
There are 74 spells in the Troika corebook. 19 background-provided spells don’t appear on the random list. Added to the random list, there are 55 spells player characters can access, leaving 19 spells in the book not on the background list or the random list. Those spells are:
- Babble
- Coal Resolve
- Darkness
- Exchange Shape
- Explode
- Gills
- Ironhand
- Leech
- Life Line
- Natter
- Peace
- Poison
- Presence
- Read Entrails
- Read Stars
- Slide Skywards
- Starry Orb
- Thought Vapour
- Zed
Now, clearly, some of these spells should not be entrusted to player characters until fairly late in the campaign. I’m looking at you, Zed! Some, like Exchange Shape, would probably be a pain in the ass for players to have. Others, like Explode, are very high-powered, while spells like Gills can render adventure-shaping obstacles into irrelevant window dressing. Life Line is a good spell for a quest giver to have, but it could be open to abuse if used by players. Overall, many of these belong in GM hands rather than players’.
But that’s not universal! Darkness, Ironhand, Leech, Babble, Natter… these are great spells for players to have. Presence! Oh, how much do I love Presence. A perfect Troika spell in my book.
Next time you design a Troika adventure, take a quick peek at this list. Are there any spells here you want to pass along to your players? Remember, if you don’t find a way to hand them out, they’re completely locked away from your table.
An aside: as I was putting this together, I went to mark all the monster-only spells with an asterisk. It turns out the only such spell is Read Entrails, for the Harpy.
The Casting Class
Fourteen of Troika’s thirty-six backgrounds come with Spells. They are:
- Befouler of Ponds
- Cacogen (3 spells, all random)
- Chaos Champion (1 random spell!)
- Claviger
- Demon Stalker (only Blood Shroud)
- Fellowship of Knidos (only find)
- Necromancer
- Parchment Witch
- Red Priest
- Sceptical Lammasu (3 spells, all random)
- Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors
- Sorcerer of the College of Friends
- Thaumaturge
- Venturesome Academic (another 1 random spell guy)
Now, 14 out of 36 might sound like a lot, but note that four classes only come with one spell (2 Randoms, Blood Shroud, and Find). Not counting these semi-casters, there are only ten full caster backgrounds in the book.
Final Thoughts
Anyways, yap yap yap. What’s the meat here?
Simply this: use these lists to help guide what challenges you’re throwing your players’ way. Make use of Tunnel Fighting! Distribute those secret Spells! Find ways to weave those niche skills into your big finales!
Or argue with me about it in the comments. Am I bad at counting? Do I even know the alphabet anymore? Are these observations useless? Tell me below!
Hey, do you like Troika? You’ve read this far, so it’s either that or you have no self-control. Either way, check out our Troika scribblings and modules. Or see what we’ve got for other games!