Skills & Competence
A skill is what your character can actually do — established capability, not a role or a promise.
The canonical skills
Hearth & Crown uses exactly 35 skills. Common ones include:
Work of the land: Farming, Animal Handling, Hunting, Fishing, Forestry, Survival, Navigation Craft and making: Smithing, Carpentry, Woodworking, Masonry, Mining, Textiles, Leatherworking, Brewing, Cooking Trade and learning: Trade, Administration, Law, Scholarship, Literacy Body and travel: Athletics, Swimming, Riding, Boating, Sailing Fighting: Melee Combat, Unarmed Combat, Marksmanship, Stealth People: Persuasion, Deception, Etiquette, Performance, Medicine
Your group uses the exact canonical names. Local words ("swordplay," "healing," "haggling") all map to the real skill underneath — they never become separate skills.
The seven ranks
| Rank | What it means |
|---|---|
| Untrained | Little or no ability. Simple chores only, slowly, with help. |
| Novice | Basic familiarity. Simple routine work with guidance nearby. |
| Apprentice | Developing ability. Ordinary basics reliably; still learning. |
| Competent | Reliable working ability. Ordinary work independently. Most established practitioners live here. |
| Journeyman | Experienced professional breadth. Difficult ordinary work handled well. A measure of capability, not a guild office. |
| Expert | Exceptional capability from years of demanding experience. Rare. |
| Master | Rare, extraordinary command. Very rare. Never granted merely because time passed. |
If you have no entry in a skill, you are untrained in it. That is normal — nobody is trained in everything.
What rank changes — and what it doesn't
Higher rank widens what is plausible: harder tasks, more independence, earlier error-spotting, better judgment under pressure. It never grants tools, materials, a workplace, information, customers, or permission. A master smith without iron and a forge is still a master — just one who cannot work today.
Context matters enormously. The same competent craftsperson performs differently with familiar versus strange tools, good versus poor materials, rest versus exhaustion, and plenty of time versus none. Judge the task, not the label.
A narrow focus inside a skill — armor work within Smithing, spear-and-shield within Melee Combat — is a specialization: useful background color, never a second rank.
Growth
Improvement comes from believable development: practice, sustained work, instruction, correction, harder tasks, and real experience. There is no XP, no levels, no points, no bonuses, no dice modifiers. A single success never advances a skill, and time alone never does.
In Play
Two guards both "know the sword." One is novice — fine on watch, shaky in a real fight. The other is competent — steady, reliable, able to judge an opponent. Same job title. Different capability. Play will show you which is which.