We understand that some players may want to make a unique take on an existing skills, whether by adding a drawback with an added benefit or mechanically flavor them in a way that better fits their character. The variant skills system allows players to do just that! By adding drawbacks to their skills they can add additional benefits, as well as flavor them in such a way as to better fit their characters. 

Variant skills must be unique takes on existing skills, and they allow players to explore more potential possibilities for what they're capable of. That said a system with such freedoms comes with a few limitations, one being that skills must encompass a focus in combat as hobbyist skills and things stemming from personality like intimidation would not fit into our skills system! That said maybe your character draws a strength buff from getting angry, and only when they get angry. That would allow you to incorporate a part of your character's personality into their variant skill without being reliant on how you RP the character!

Another example of a variant skill is a combination of two existing skills into one! Perhaps your character uses a weapon during their martial arts, or maybe their martial art is synonymous with their weapon! For these instances the variant skills system would cover that, though for every skill you add to your variant skill it grows weaker in comparison to the dedicated skills!

Variant skills must be written with all four ranks in mind upon creation, as to make upgrading them as smooth as possible, as well as for easy listing of skills upon the variant skills list. To do this we ask that variant skills be approved via a the Variant Skills Index, using the template found there! If you are unsure about the balancing of all four ranks of your variant skill you can DM a moderator, or leave the other ranks blank for a moderator to fill in upon going for a Variant Skill approval!

Variant skills much like quirks will be critiqued as to keep a sense of balance among the site, and variant skills will also be archived within this thread as to help players from creating variant skills that already exist within our system! So if you're feeling uncertain about a variant skill you are creating, feel free to ask for help from moderators and don't feel discouraged if it has to be edited before approval! This list of variant skills is open to all other players to use as well, though the flavoring might have to be changed to fix your character if it doesn't seem to fit quite right, these pre-approved variant skills will always be open.

A rule of thumb when it comes to designing variant skills is that if your variant skill is stronger than the original skill there has to be a drawback to reason it! Good examples of drawbacks would be perhaps your skill is tied to a cooldown or maybe you have to charge up to use your skill! Feel free to experiment with your variant skills however and see what fits within your RP'ing style and what best fits your character! As for how strong skills can become, I'd say a good rule of thumb that with a drawback your skill can be one rank higher than an existing skill! So if your Bronze strength skill was tied to a single downside than it could be capable of Silver strength skill feats! This system isn't rigid and feel free to experiment with what's allowed!