This is a measure of your health. Add Athletics to your Rank and your species' Base Hit Points to determine your Hit Points. You will make skill checks with this skill to resist effects such as stunning or disintegration as well as for quickdrawing equipment or trying to get extra movement in a move action.

Unlike other skills, Athletics must be a minimum of 1. Professional Athletes wear white uniforms but you really shouldn't choose Athlete as your profession.

Use Athletics for:

• Running for extra movement (Difficulty 11)
• Quickdrawing a personal item (Difficulty 8 )
• Resisting Unsupported Life Support, Toxins, Disintegration, Stun, etc.
• Carry Capacity is determined by your Athletics x 10

The total mass of gear you can carry is determined by your Athletics x 10. Carry Capacity represents how much something affects you rather than a sheer weight cost. A cyber-chip doesn't actually weight ½ as much as a blaster but having something jammed into your head literally puts it on your mind.

You can drop things only during your turn. If you go unconscious or have a cyberlimb EMPed you are still holding the stuff in your hands. You just can't use it.

If, for some reason, you care carrying more than your capacity (you picked up a wounded comrade, or your skeletal enhancement was EMPed) your move value is reduced by one and any Active Skill Check you attempt is at a penalty of +3 difficulty.

If you are already overburdened and you want to pick up another object, you must make an Athletics check of 8 + 3 for each additional barrel-sized object you are already carrying.

(Athletics vs. 8 )

If successful, you may put a piece of equipment that is on your person ready into your hand as a free action (i.e. draw a blaster). You may still take your standard action this turn (either before or after readying the item) but it will be at a penalty of +3 difficulty to any skill check or -1 square if it is movement. Failure in this check expends your action with no result.

If you add a “pop” to a quickdraw action, you may not add a “pop” to the subsequent action but you will still suffer the +1 penalty.

You may add +3 to the difficulty of this check each to draw additional items.

Add +3 to the difficulty of this check to draw an item from the floor or the person of an unresisting adjacent character.

You could make an Athletics check of 11 to quickdraw your blaster, shoot it (at +3 difficulty) and then holster it.

The difficulty would be 14 if you wanted to pick it up off the floor, shoot and holster it.

Note that reaching into an occupied square entitles the occupant to make a free attack on you.

You may use these same rules to put something away or put something into somebody else's hand.