Skills & Proficiency
What a person can do lives in their skills. Every skill is rated 0–10, and the rating belongs to the person — the same Swordsmanship 4 that passes for a town guard is the village's finest blade.
The rank ladder
| Rank | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | Untrained — raw talent and hope |
| 1–2 | Novice — taught the basics |
| 3–4 | Journeyman — honest working competence |
| 5–6 | Expert — paid to do this, good at it |
| 7–8 | Master — among the best in a region |
| 9–10 | Legendary — the name travels farther than the person |
Making a roll
Roll a d20, add your rank, add your attribute modifier, and subtract your pain penalty. Beat the difficulty:
- 10 — routine for a trained hand
- 15 — hard; a journeyman earns it half the time
- 20 — heroic; masters fail here, legends don't
Untrained (rank 0), you roll attribute modifier only — and the GM may forbid the attempt outright. On the character sheet, the number beside each skill's dots is your roll bonus: rank plus attribute modifier, already computed.
Skills in combat
Combat skills are the exception that touches the wound rules directly: Swordsmanship adds its rank to attacks made with blades, Archery to bows and crossbows, Unarmed Combat to fists and grappling. Blocking adds its rank to your Defense while you carry a shield or a parrying weapon — the buckler stops being a lid and becomes a skill.
Skills out of combat
Social skills oppose each other: your Persuasion against their Deception, your Intimidation against their Resolve, your Seduction against their Wisdom. Knowledge and craft skills answer to the GM's difficulty — Medical makes field treatment take (see the wound chapter), Herblore tells the draught from the poison, Economics reads a market or cooks a ledger, Warfare reads a field of battle or commands a wall.
Learning
Ranks are bought with living: months of honest use, a master willing to teach, and time between adventures. The GM prices rank-ups by the ladder — the road from novice to journeyman is cheap; the road to master is a story.