Special Rules

Hunter's Journals

Every hunter has his own journal, where he documents everything he knows about his profession inside, these books are incredibly valuable to hunters for the knowledge contained within them. These journals are written in using a cipher only the hunter knows, in order to protect potentially dangerous secrets from getting into the hands of those who might abuse such knowledge. This cipher has a DC 10+ the hunters Decipher Script skill to crack and takes two full days of study, at which point everything the hunter knows is added to the readers journal. A hunter may choose to teach another hunter something from his journal, of course he may charge for this right if he so chooses, that is between the two hunters negotiating.

Research

Hunters can research supernatural phenomena in order to try to discover what is causing them.
They may first compare signs with their journal to try to see if they have come across something similar before, which takes thirty minutes. Failing that they must do research to try and figure it our for themselves.
Research requires accessing volumes of religious and occult data to find out information on what is causing the events.

When a hunter attempts a research he makes a special research roll. He can make a basic role of 1d3, a score of 3 will result in some piece of information being discovered about the event, normally giving a fairly likely candidate for the cause of the event. They can instead choose to invest more time and money into the research and make a more informed descision.

Hunters may increase the size of the die rolled for research by investing gold and xp. 100xp and 100gp will gain one extra die.
Rolling a four will give a second possible cause and rolling a five or above will give a guaranteed cause of the supernatural problem.

You may research events or monsters a total of four times per day.

Researching Monsters and Fiends

Hunters may research monsters and creatures much the same way they research events. They may do in depth research into a monster and roll 1d3, a score of 3 will reveal a fact about the monster. Again a hunter may invest 100xp and 100gp to increase the size of the die thrown, and for every point above 3 they will learn an additional fact. These may include such things as a weakness the creature has, a way to protect or manipulate the creature or some of the creatures tell tale signs and habits.

Spells

Most people don't believe in magic. There are no dedicated spellcasters or clerics or paladins.
Instead you can learn spells in two specific ways: Experimentation and Discovery.

Experimentation:

By researching many many tomes on the occult and religion you many eventually come to discover an arcane secret or divine rite which will allow you to use a spell. This is both exhaustive and expensive however, costing you both experience and money to do so.

To research and experiment to find a spell you must spend 1000 times its level in experience and gold pieces. You may only learn spells 3rd level and lower.
Your research is stored in your hunters journal.

To cast a spell you must have memorized it and prepared it from your journal beforehand, taking 30 minutes per level of spell to read and memorize it, your inelligence score must be equal to 10 + the spell level.
You may memorize one spell at a time at 3rd level
two at a time at 4th level
three at a time at 5th level
four at a time at 6th level.

Discovery

Spells may also be discovered in unique tomes found during missions, or from successfully reading a hunters journal that contains a spell. Such spells are learned with no xp or gold cost.

Rituals

Rituals are extremely complicated and powerful magic and are often very specific. Rituals can be researched only by finding them in special tomes in missions or by learning them from other hunters. They are very specific and often have expensive compnents. They also take a lot of time to set up and some are quite dangerous.

An explanation on the research roll (plus example)

simply put research is a standard 1d3 roll

This represents a completely uneducated person making an attempt to figure out whats going on.

investing 100gp and 100xp will gain an extra size to the dice ie
1d3 -> 1d4 ->1d5

This represents someone spending a large amount of time and money in researching the subject, even a newbie can learn valuable information like this. Though there is an increasingly small chance that they will find out nothing still.

Half the knowledge skill is invested in a roll about a specific thing within the realm of that knowledge. So if the player has discovered a zombie is running amok and they have 4 points in the "knowledge: corporeal undead" section they get a bonus of 2 to the roll.

1d3+2

This in real terms is the fact that a hunter with at least some experience in the field of corporeal undead is likely to do good research into the zombie and figure out at least one established way to fight it.
Knowledge skills get invested in as hunters level up and can be considered to be a mark of how much they have experience facing the supernatural in specific areas.

It seems like a lot at once, but the most the bonus you will receive on the roll is likely to be is a +4, and only the most experienced hunters are going to get that.

Some particularly powerful and obscure nuggets of information are incredibly hard to find out and require extreme research into the subject. As such some information will only be revealed on very high rolls.

Basic information might encompass ways to repel or hurt a monster would be the kind of facts you'd learn for a 3/4/5 roll
Advanced information might involve things like sigils and markings that can be used to draw out or trap monsters would be the like you'd find from getting a 7/8/9
Rare information would have incredibly powerful effects, like perhaps a power word which repels the creature or a method which will quickly and effectively kill the creature as opposed to more difficult methods less fruitful research will leave.

Finally a small example roll.

Carroll Gunnman is a 5th level hunter.
He has 8 points invested in "knowledge:fey"
He has been tracking what he thinks is a dyrad, however when he got into combat with it, his usual method of dispatching dryads, a burning stake to the heart, had little effect and he barely escaped with his life.

He decides to research the subject.
He decides to spend 100xp and 100gp on research and has a knowledge bonus of 8 for fey.


Therefore his total roll is 1d4+4
he rolls a 2 giving him a total of 6

From his research he has learned that dryads grow stronger the longer they are left in a place of woodland antiquity, eventually they will become a dryad matron, a powerful dryad that can convert virgin maidens into dryads. This is a grave threat but he has also learned that a dryad matron can be reduced in power by burning her source tree. Doing so will allow him to stake the dryad as normal and end its reign of terror.

He will have to figure out its tree by himself however, as he found no way to indicate how to tell if a tree is a source tree.