Law

You have general knowledge of the laws and legal systems of the world, making it possible for you to serve as an advocate in a courtroom situation or to perform the basic actions of a law enforcement professional.

Law can also be used in an attempt to change the attitude of an individual with whom you are interacting. 

A successful check can help you to avoid legal entanglements, understand court procedures, and have a working knowledge of the techniques and hierarchies of a particular society's law enforcers. 

When two characters attempt to compete on Law checks--say in a courtroom confrontation--rolls are always done sequentially, not simultaneously. One character initiates the legal action, and then the other responds to it. The alternating checks continue until one character either achieves a Critical Success, a Critical Failure, or the GM makes a ruling in the outcome of the case.

CREATE FORGERY (1 Day)

You create a forged document, usually over the course of a day or a week. You must have the proper writing material to create a forgery. When you Create a Forgery, the GM rolls a secret DC 20 Law check. If you succeed, the forgery is of good enough quality that passive observers can’t notice the fake. Only those who carefully examine the document and attempt an Awareness or Law check against your Law DC can do so.

If the document’s handwriting doesn’t need to be specific to a person, you need only to have seen a similar document before, and you gain up to a +4 circumstance bonus to your check, as well as to your DC (the GM determines the bonus). To forge a specific person’s handwriting, you need a sample of that person’s handwriting.

If your check result was below 20, the forgery has some obvious signs of being a fake, so the GM compares your result to each passive observer’s Awareness Check or Law Check, whichever is higher, using the success or failure results below. Once the GM rolls your check for a document, that same result is used against all passive observers’ DCs no matter how many creatures passively observe that document.

An observer who was fooled on a passive glance can still choose to closely scrutinize the documents on the lookout for a forgery, using different techniques and analysis methods beyond the surface elements you successfully forged with your original check. In that case, the observer can attempt a Perception or Society check against your Society DC (if they succeed, they know your document is a forgery).

INFLUENCE (1 Minute)

Through your understanding of the law, you attempt to improve the attitude of a law enforcement individual you are interacting with. Usually this is used to explain how you are not technically breaking the law, and how you're actually on the officer's side. At the end of this conversation, you make a Law check against a Resolve check of the target. 

RECALL KNOWLEDGE (1 Action)

You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding laws and legal systems. The GM determines the DCs for such checks.

RESEARCH (1 Hour)

You can use Research to learn information from books, the Internet, or other standard sources. Research allows you to navigate a library, an office filing system, a newspaper morgue, or the the Internet. It doesn't include talking to people and asking questions; that's handled by Interaction or roleplaying encounters.

Researching a topic takes time, skill, and some luck. The GM determines how obscure a particular topic is (the more obscure, the higher the DC) and what kind of information might be available depending on where you are conducting your research. Different locations will adjust the DCs, and allow you reroll a failed Research check.

Information ranges from general to protected. Given enough time (usually 1 hour) and a successful skill check, you can gain a general idea about a given topic. This assumes that no obvious reasons exist why such information would be unavailable, and that you have a way to acquire restricted or protected information.