by Ispher
Some time ago, I had an idea for skills that could be learned by any hero class, kind of like the universal OL cards. The design was extremely simple: each skill added the smallest unit in each of the 4 main hero characteristics that appear in the 4 circles in the middle of each hero card, which are speed, health, fatigue and defense dice.Those universal skills were not supposed to be strong skills. They were supposed to 1) Give a little more variety to hero progression, since only 8 skills to choose from is not that much; 2) Patch up blatant hero weaknesses (the guy with 8 health who constantly gets knocked down is not that fun to play; neither is the snail with 3 fatigue); 3) Before the last quest, heroes sometimes have 1 XP left they don't have much use for (or no use at all if they already have acquired all their 1 XP skills); with these skills, they could acquire something that is at least a little useful; and 4) Help heroes a little in groups where the OL usually dominates - no need to play with these skills if heroes always win.
Thematically, the heroes go on a simple fitness training to acquire these skills, as the names suggest.
I kept postponing working on that idea because I wouldn't find the right fonts, or the card images, or the skill (the irony!) to do it well. Finally I decided to do it badly rather than not doing it at all, which is a questionable decision but then again not doing stuff is not that great either. So here is my bad work.
Track Running
Weight Lifting
Endurance
Self-Defense
Finally I had the idea of a skill that would encompass all these very basic skills with a discount of 1 XP:
Decathlete
To avoid potentially abusive combos with other skills, I would advise to limit these universal skills to 1 per hero.
I'll allow them to the heroes in my next Heirs of Blood campaign (unfortunately only starting in 1 year, as we are playing Shadows of Nerekhall first and only manage one campaign a year)
where I'll be the OL and see how it goes.