7.4 Awareness (Per)
The Awareness skill represents your ability to observe things which you might otherwise fail to notice. It can be used to observe hidden creatures and traps, as well as to identify fleeting or subtle sensations.
The Awareness skill governs the result regardless of the specific sense or senses used. It is most commonly used with sight and hearing, though other senses can be used, such as smell or touch. Whenever you make an Awareness check, you roll only once, and most creatures have the same Awareness modifier with all of their senses. However, the difficulty value of the check, and the information granted by success, can be very different between senses. For example, it is impossible to see through walls or without light, but that does not make hearing impossible.
7.4.1 Common Awareness Tasks
Notice Ability Usage: If you succeed at an Awareness check, you can notice a creature using an ability. Unless otherwise noted in an ability’s description, any active ability has some combination of visual and auditory effects that require a difficulty value 0 Awareness check to notice. If you beat the DV by 10, you can also determine which creature used the ability. If the ability requires verbal components or somatic components, you only have to beat the DV by 5 to identify the ability’s source.
Notice Hidden Creature: If you succeed at an opposed Awareness vs. Stealth check, you can notice a hidden creature (see Stealth). Success with a sight-based Awareness check means you can see the creature perfectly. Success with any other sense just means you know its exact location, and are still partially unaware (-2 defenses) of it.
Notice Sleight of Hand: If you succeed at an opposed Awareness vs. Sleight of Hand check, you can notice a creature’s attempt to use the Sleight of Hand skill.
Read Lips: When you see a creature speaking, you can make an sight-based Awareness check to read its lips. The difficulty value is 10 for ordinary conversation, or up to 20 if the speaking creature makes an effort to avoid moving its lips. You must be able to understand the language spoken. Success means you can understand what is being said.
Notice Personal Effect: Whenever an ability is used on you, you can make an difficulty value 5 Awareness check to notice it. This doesn’t tell you what the ability does, which requires an Analysis check (see Analysis). You can make this check even if the ability has no effect on you, such as if it fails to beat your defenses. If the ability is Subtle, the difficulty value increases to 15 + twice the ability’s rank.
This check is only necessary for non-damaging abilities. If you take damage from an ability, you automatically notice it.
7.4.2 Common Awareness Modifiers
While sleeping, you take a -10 penalty to the Awareness skill. You gain a +20 bonus to notice the presence of creatures and events that directly touch or damage you, such as a creature shoving you or making a strike against you.
There are three common circumstances that can make Awareness checks more difficult: obstructions, distance, and similar background sensations. Minor obstructions, short distances, and slightly similar backgrounds increase the difficulty value by 2. Significant obstructions, long distances, and very similar backgrounds increase the DV by 5 or more. If a sensation is difficult to detect for multiple reasons, the difficulty modifiers stack.
The difficulty value of non-opposed checks changes depending on the size of the sensation. The difficulty value increases by 5 for each size category larger than Medium, and decreases by 5 for each size category smaller than Medium. Multiple sensations of the same type can also be treated as a single larger sensation, which makes them easier to detect. Non-visual sensations may not have a literal size category to rely on, so the GM can decide how this modifier applies.