Perks are special tricks that your character has up their sleeve. You start with two. They may help you survive a bit longer, but usually at a price, so using them is a calculated risk. Each perk has a couple of names. When you write it on your character sheet, choose the one that best fits the sort of character you’d like to play.
Once you have used a Perk, it is “burned” — gone forever — and may not be used again. Your Perks are one-shot deals, so don’t waste them frivolously, because you only get two. That’s not “two per level” or something, it’s just “two.” For the whole game. You may take the same Perk twice, but you can’t take the same name for it twice, so choose wisely.
Professor / Idiot Savant
You’re incredibly gifted in a single area of study or activity. No matter what happens to you, you can perform this action instinctively and calmly. Choose one particular and specific action such as “shooting animals” or “debating” or “hacking computers.” You may perform this action once and only once after the related skill reaches 0, so long as all your other skills aren’t at 0. When you do, you get a +75 Determination bonus for that skill roll. When you burn this perk, the GM may not oppose you with additional Threats — your roll stands. Yeah. You’re that good.
Jack of All Trades / Liberal Arts Major
You never really focused on any particular area of skill, but you know a lot about many different activities. When you burn this perk, you may simply make Luck rolls in place of all other skill rolls for the rest of the day. Oh, and you get +10 Determination for burning this Perk. Pretty good, eh?
Priest / Cult Leader / Bullshit Artist
Once you had a flock of devoted followers who hung on your every word, whether it was about a god, a demon, or merely tithing on time. Now you wander the wastes, hoping for a single moment of redemption where you can tell others about your beliefs. When you burn this perk, you may convert one of the GM’s Threat Tokens to your belief system with a successful Talking check, provided that Threat Token represents a living, breathing character. If you do, that character becomes your follower and has whatever skill percentage the GM committed to them. You may command them to perform tasks in the name of your beliefs, and they lose skill points for using their skills. You can still use your skills as you like, or you can have them use skills for you and suffer all the ill effects. Effectively, you get a second character. However, when your Talking skill reaches 0, your flock of one will turn on you as a Threat with two times their original Threat strength.