Skill Proficiency (Proficiency)

Skill Proficiencies

Skill Proficiencies refer to a character's general ability to do things, to know things, to think about things, to observe things. Basically, Skills are the method with which the character can meaningfully interact with the world beyond attacking it, casting spells at it or moving around in it. Skills determine a character's capacity for succeeding and failing at all manner of things.

Skill Classes

Skills Class determines the capacity of a given Class to learn these skills. Each Class Type has Skill Classes it considers Class Skills - characters without Class Levels may also be considered to have Class Skills depending on the character.

Skill Classes are divided up as follows:

General - General Skills are elementary and accessible enough for anyone to learn readily or otherwise as trade skills such as Smithing or Pottery. These are Skills for everyone.

Mage - Skills dedicated to scholastic pursuits and the sciences. These are also known as Academic skills.

Priest - Skills dedicated to the consideration of the world around and of others. These are also known as Thoughtful skills.

Rogue - Skills dedicated to subterfuge, cunning and flair. These are also known as Cunning Skills.

Warrior - Skills dedicated to the needs of soldiering and survival. These are also known as Martial Skills.

Skill Types

Skill Types determine what individual Skills qualify as. As a result, a character may experience modifiers to all Skills of a given type depending on their circumstances - for instance, Visual Skills suffer a penalty when Visibility is poor. Furthermore, a Skill's Type determines how Skill Points gained from Attributes or Class may be spent on it.

The basic Skill types are as follows:

Art - Skills that create something chiefly aesthetic. Some overlap with Craft and Performance.

Craft - Skills that create something chiefly physical. Some overlap with Art.

Mental - Skills based principally on knowledge and conceptual understanding.

Performance - Skills based on performative art. Some overlap with Art.

Physical - Skills based on physical ability or that have been developed by it.

Sense - Skills based on perception and reading the world around a character.

Social - Skills based on understanding and interaction with people.

Sub-Types may exist as well; Sub-Types are not applied generally to the Skill but certain uses of it - these include things like Vision and Hearing for various Sense skills, Construction for several Craft skills and Writing for various Art skills.

Note, whilst a Skill defaults to a given type, it does not necessarily always qualify as it. For example, a character wishes to explain smithing to another character. They could talk about it from knowledge, experience or their general skill in the profession - whilst the first two would swap the usual bonus from Attributes for Intelligence or Wisdom, regardless of how they intended to explain it, the DM may judge this is not a Physical Skill when used as such and qualifies as a Mental or Social skill for the situation, changing what additional modifiers the character might receive.

Skill Points

Skill Points are appropriately enough points that can be spent on Skills or converted into Language Points. They also may be spent on Language Points and Traits. If a character gains Skill Points after creation, they usually may not spend Skill Points on Inherent Traits without DM approval.

For every Skill Point a character spends on a Skill, the character receives a +1 to Skill Checks that use this skill.

Class Skills

A character considers any Skill that is General or has their Class Type to be a Class Skill. All Class Skills receive a +2 Skill bonus at 1st Level. Every 3rd Level grants a further +1 bonus.

Specialties

Most skills can be, effectively, broken into Specialties. Specialties consist of narrower areas of expertise that still, fundamentally use the same skill. For instance, a character skilled in Smithing might be better at making swords than horseshoes, though they could do either in a pinch. This would manifest as them having a Proficiency in Smithing and a Specialty in Weaponsmithing.

A character can only take each Specialty once and only one Specialty can be applied to a given roll, but can take many Specialties for the same Skill. Some Specialties are Specialties on multiple Skills - for instance, Jumping is both an Athletics and Acrobatics Specialty.

A Specialty grants a +2 bonus to the Skill in situations that call for the specific Specialty.

Skill Point Generation

Characters begin with a number of Skill Points from general experience before they began their adventures. Whilst a character's Class will grant them some of their skill points, most are gained from personal experience.

Standard Generation

Standard Generation is straight forward - characters gain a set value of Skill Points and they may be freely spent on any Skill Type. The default value for this is 12.

Generation By Aptitude

Generation by Aptitude gives Skill Points according to Attributes. The character gains Skill Points equal to a given Attribute Score/5, rounded down. These Skill Points are given the same type as the Attribute and can be spent as follows:

Skill Points by Attribute
Attribute	Skill Types
Strength	Physical, Craft
Dexterity	Physical, Art
Constitution	Physical, Craft
Intelligence	Mental, Art, Languages
Wisdom	Mental, Sense, Languages
Charisma	Social, Performance, Languages

Any Skill point can be spent on a Trait, unless the Trait has a specific Type, in which case the Skill Point must have the same Type.

Generated by Trade

Skill Points generated by Trade gives Skill Points according to their Class Type, with more martial types being more physical and academic types tending towards mental skills. In the case of character with multiple-class types for skills (such as Bards, who are both Wizards and Rogues) or multi-class characters, they must add up the total Skill Points for each type they qualify for and then divide it by the total number of Class Types, rounding down. For example, a Bard has 2 Physical/Craft points from Wizard and 5 from Rogue. This rounds down to 3 for Physical/Craft skills.

Skill Points by Class Type
Skill Types	Warrior	Wizard	Priest	Rogue
Physical/Craft	8	2	4	5
Art/Mental/Sense/Language	4	11	5	5
Social/Performance/Language	3	2	6	5

Any Skill point can be spent on a Trait, unless the Trait has a specific Type, in which case the Skill Point must have the same Type.

Skill Caps

In Traditional Adventures, characters may spend up to 4 points on a given Skill at 1st level and an additional 1 point per character level. They may continue to spend Skill Points beyond this point at double cost or, if it a Class Skill, at normal cost but only receive a +1 bonus.

This does not apply to Languages or Specialties.