Getting Better

There is no experience, no levelling, and no points to spend. Your character improves when the story earns it in front of everyone, and not one turn sooner.

How a tier goes up

A Feat rises one step when real growth happens on screen. A teacher who actually taught you something across a few scenes. An ordeal you came out the other side of. A rival who beat you once and did not beat you the second time.

It moves one step at a time. Low does not jump to High because a scene went well. And it is always tied to something the table watched happen, so nobody is ever surprised by a promotion.

Each Feat file has a card asking whether the ability can still be upgraded. It says Yes for every tier below Master, and flips to No once you reach Master, because at Master the thing is finished.

Growth is not only tiers

This one gets missed, and it is half the fun.

When what your ability actually does changes on screen, the Feat's description gets rewritten to match, even if the tier stays exactly where it was. Longer reach. A steadier hold. A new edge nobody had before. You do not have to move up a rung to become more dangerous, you just have to do something new with what you already have and have it stick.

New Feats arrive the same way

Try something you have never tried. If it matters and it lands, you now have a Feat file for it at Unranked, and it grows from there like everything else. Characters in this system tend to get broader before they get deeper, which is usually the more interesting shape.

What growth is not

It is not a reward schedule and it is not a treadmill. Nobody is owed a tier for surviving five sessions. Long campaigns here tend to end with a character who is Master at one thing, solid at two or three, and cheerfully Unranked at everything else, which reads a lot more like a real person than a full sheet of high numbers.