Yes, but its more out of the way than I'm willing to go.
Equipping different armor pieces gives you different skills. For example, my Akantor set gives me
Reckless Abandon +2 (Increases damage of critical hits by quite a bit)
Sharpness +1 (Weapons have improved sharpness, allowing cutting through tougher monster hides)
and Earplug. (Some screams have no effect on my character.)
There's a skill I can work towards called Adrenaline, which increases my attack majorly when I'm almost dead. Problem is though, I just spent 10 hours getting the Gunner's set of Akantor, so I really don't have the motivation to make anything else. Akantor armor is incredibly time consuming and difficult to get.
There's another skill called "Felyne Heroics", which does the same thing as Adrenaline. Except this skill you get from cats.
There's a race in this game called "Felynes", which are tan-colored cats. You usually see them in towns as merchants or whatever. Sometimes you can even see them hunting in quests. (The black kitties are called the "Melynx", and they steal from you. I hate those.)
Anyways, you can hire Felyne to cook for you. And every Felyne specializes in different ingredients. One cat may speacilize in Fish & Wine, while another Meat & Bran. So if you order a meal using those ingredients, they have a chance of giving you a special skill. One of three they have. And which one you get is completely random.
One of these cats have the Felyne Heroics skill. The problem with this is I'm not even garunteed the skill, so I could waste thousands of Z (money), and what few patience I have.
So I'll just wait 'till my buds are HR6, and hopefully they help out. They need to do Fatalis too. Just not the White one that I want.