Skills and Abilities

Skill Abilities

Skill abilities are abilities your character unlocks by reaching certain (even) levels in skills. Check the section of this guide for each skill to see the abilities it provides.

Spell Prerequisites

Reaching certain (odd) levels in skills can unlock new spells and spell enhancements. You only gain new spells and spell enhancements from Arts that you know (see Spells and Traces for more information about learning Arts). Check the section of this guide for each Art to see what you can unlock, and what skills you need to unlock them.

Temporary Skill Changes

Some effects temporarily increase or reduce your skills. You retain any unlocked skill abilities even if the relevant skill is reduced below the required value for that perk, and, similarly, do not unlock new skill abilities from temporary increases. Skills cannot be increased above 9 or reduced below 1 (if they ever would be, they instead change to 9 or 1 and the rest of the increase or reduction is lost).

Skill Costs

Some abilities will require you to temporarily lose points in a skill in order to use them (e.g. "lose 2 Arcana to..."). You cannot use these abilities if the loss would reduce your score in that skill to less than 1. Some abilities cause your score in a skill to fall to 1. Similarly, you cannot use these abilities if your score in that skill is already 1.

Resting

There is only one kind of rest in this game, simply called a rest. The specifics of this will vary from world to world; it might be just eight hours of sleep for hard-core adventurers, but could extend to a full week of recuperation (or a hospital stay) for more realistic settings.

note

Some worlds may only allow rests between story arcs, or between real-world game sessions. Make sure you know how rests work in your world before your character gets hurt!

Resting resets all your skills back to their base values (their value on your character sheet, before any temporary increases or decreases). You also lose concentration on everything over a rest, and lose all your active potion effects.