Abilities represent what you can do.  They come in many varieties, from physical feats to intellectual accomplishments.  Abilities are ranked on a scale of 0-5, and also with X.  The ranks are as follows:

0 = Average.  If you don’t see an ability on your sheet, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means you’re not well trained in it.  Just because your character sheet doesn’t say you can Drive, it doesn’t mean you’re doomed to die a horrible death in a crash just because you get behind the wheel, just don’t expect to pull off any stunts.

1= Competent.  You’ve practiced this a bit, and can do pretty well, without any major mistakes.

2 = Good.  You know how to do it right, and know how to make it look good.

3 = Excellent.  You’ve got this down flawlessly, and are just impressive to watch.

4 = Outstanding.  You have mastered this particular field.  There are few who can stand up to you here.

5 = Incredible.  At this point, you have achieved perfection.  Enough said.

X = Poor.  Some people are just destined to suck at things.  This is what happens when a character just can’t pick up on something, whether because it just doesn’t make sense to them, or they just can’t physically do it.

In this game, every task you use an ability for has a difficulty rank.  In order to be succesful, your ability has to exceed the target’s difficulty.

For example, say you find a magical scroll, and decide to check your Magic Lore to see whet you can make of it.  If the appropriate staff member says you need a Magic Lore of 3 or higher to read it, and you only have a 2, then it just makes no sense to you.  If you would have studied just a little more, with a 3 in Magic Lore you could have read it just fine.

When using an Ability against another player, your difficulty is their rank in the opposing skill.

Let’s say you want to work your Seduction of 2 on someone your character has the hots for.  You go over to them, work your magic, and then find out they have a Perception skill of 2.  I hate to break it to you, but they’re onto your game, and it just doesn’t work.  Now, had you been just a little better in your choice of words and been a little less obvious about it, with a Seduction of 3 that person would already be eating out of the palm of your hand.  Unless of course they already wanted to, that is.