LARCENY
Description: The Larceny Skill entails familiarity with the tools and techniques of the professional criminal. You can pick locks, forge documents by hand, crack safes, hotwire cars, break into places, and run a mean game of three-card monte. Larceny doesn’t just cover breaking systems and picking pockets — it’s also used to set up “unbreakable” security, notice pickpockets, and deduce where thieves broke in. The Skill doesn’t extend to computer forgery, or to advanced security systems like video surveillance and alarm systems — those fall under the auspices of the Computer and Technology Knowledges, respectively.
This Skill entails familiarity with the tools and techniques for the sorts of physical manipulation typically associated with criminal activity. Picking locks, manual forgery, safecracking, simple hotwiring, various forms of breaking and entering, and even sleight-of-hand all fall under the auspices of Larceny. Larceny is useful not only for theft, but also for setting up “the unbeatable system” or deducing where a thief broke in. This skill does not confer any aptitude with advanced security or anti-crime technologies such as video surveillance or alarm systems — those are covered by the Technology
Allowed Specialties: Forgery
- The Forgery specialty allows you to falsify permits, cards and documents. When falsifying such forms, you usually have to know what you’re doing before you start, have the right materials at hand, and check your work before putting the papers to the test. Given the prevalence of magnetic strips, holographic designs, and microscopic inserts, it’s really hard to perfectly fake anything but the most basic items.
- In game terms, traditional forgery requires two rolls: An Intelligence + Streetwise roll to falsify the appropriate details, and a Dexterity + Streetwise roll in order to create usable copies.
- The difficulty of the rolls depends on the subject, the forger’s familiarity with the appropriate knowledge, and the materials he’s using to make the forgery. Faking the handwriting of someone you know is simple, while creating false passports from a foreign government is challenging at best. A decent forgery might require a few dots in Law, Technology, and possibly Computer if the documents involve holograms or magnetic strips. Sophisticated documents cannot be faked without the proper equipment. The days when you could hand-forge a hundred-dollar bill are over.
- When creating the copies, the player can use only as many dice on his Dexterity + Streetwise roll as he had successes with the initial roll. Jape, for example, could use only three dice if she rolled three successes on that Intelligence + Streetwise roll. Each success reflects a higher level of quality: one success creates a sloppily passable fake, while three successes produces a document that would fool most casual observers and five successes crafts a dazzling forgery. Failure reflects an obvious fake, while a botched roll creates a forgery that looks good until someone important examines it.