Ok so I have always hated secondary abilities – its more crap to remember! I have as a rule stuck to primary abilities and not really worried about secondary abilities.

However, I decided to come up with a better way to run them I think.  If your character is taking the time and spending points to learn a secondary ability, it means they are REALLY dedicated to doing whatever it is they are doing – they are becoming a specialist.  The more you know about something, of course, the better you are at it!

So – for secondary abilities, what I am going to do is give you the following:

1) All secondary abilities automatically re-roll 10’s regardless of level.  For primary abilities you only re-roll 10’s when you have a skill of 4 or higher on something.

2) All levels in a secondary abilities will decrease your target number by 1

So for example: you took the secondary ability “scan” due to your knack of finding clues.  So as you go over the crime scene, normally you would roll your perception+investigation with a T8 to find that coin hidden behind the desk.  Since you have scan 2, your target number is automatically reduced to a 6 and you get to reroll all 10’s.   So lets say you have an investigation skill of 3 and a scan skill of 2.  Your scan skill is one die less than your investigation skill, but your target number is 2 less and you re-roll 10’s! Unless you are Alden with crappy luck on dice, thats a good deal!

Here are some good links to secondary abilities lists:

http://www.angelfire.com/de2/createvtm/secondary2.html