Improving Your Character
Between stories you get better. The fuel is the Experience Roll—a metacurrency the Games Master hands out when a session or arc earns it, typically on the order of 1–3 rolls per session since the last award (more or fewer at their discretion). Your Experience Modifier from CHA affects how readily peers and tutors support your growth when awards land.
What you can improve
- Existing Standard and Professional skills
- Passions
- New Professional skills (with a teacher or equivalent and downtime)
- New spells, and other abilities the campaign allows
You may bank Experience Rolls rather than spend them immediately.
Raising a skill
Spend one Experience Roll, pick one skill, roll 1d100, and add your INT to that roll:
| Compared to current skill | Gain |
|---|---|
| Result ≥ skill | Skill rises 1d4+1% |
| Result < skill | Skill still rises 1% |
Only one Experience Roll may feed a given skill per award cycle. High skills slow down naturally—that is intended.
Lesson from shame
If you Fumbled a skill since the last Experience award, that skill gains a free +1% (once, no matter how many Fumbles). Apply the free point before any Experience Roll you also spend on it.
Raising Passions
Same mechanic as skills when the growth matches the fiction. The Games Master may also shift Passions without rolls when treachery, oath, or heartbreak lands (see Passions). With permission you can spend a roll to cool a Passion on purpose.
Learning a brand-new Professional skill
- Find a source—guild tutor, training manual, patient mentor.
- Spend a month of study and practice.
- Pay 3 Experience Rolls (plus in-world coin, favours, or gear the Games Master prices).
- Gain the skill at its characteristic base value. After that, raise it like any other skill.
Learning a new spell
Magicians pay 3 Experience Rolls and a week of focused study with a teacher or proper text. You do not cast what you have not learned.
Training etiquette
- Ask when awards land; do not assume a roll appears at every cliffhanger.
- Spread growth if you want a flexible adventurer; spike one Combat Style if the campaign is a war story.
- Bank rolls before a planned montage (new Lore, Pilot, or spell) so downtime is real on camera.
- There is no purchase of raw STR with Experience Rolls in Imperative's basic loop—Characteristics are the bones you started with unless a power, ritual, or house rule says otherwise.
After the roll
Write the new percentage on the sheet the moment it lands. Mention it in play—"I've been drilling the outmanoeuvre"—so the fiction tracks the math. Improvement is not only larger numbers; it is proof you survived and learned something quiet rooms will not fix.