Skybride has forty-nine Paths and six hundred abilities, and the whole structure rests on three numbers: three archetypes, six attributes, and a hard level cap of ten. If you are adding to this system — a new order, a regional tradition, a Path for a setting of your own — those three numbers are the contract. Everything else is negotiable.
This chapter explains what the Path structure is trying to do. The construction rules themselves — the cost bands, the level curve, the field-by-field checklist — live in @Missing file and @Missing file, where the Game Master can retrieve them mid-session. Read this first to understand why they say what they say.
The three archetypes are a resource contract, not a flavor label
archetype is the only field on a Path that the character sheet computes against. It decides both resource pools:
| Archetype | Mana | Stamina |
|---|
| Caster | level + casterKeyModifier | flat 2 |
| Martial | 0 | level + martialKeyModifier |
| Hybrid | ceil(level/2) + casterKeyModifier | ceil(level/2) + martialKeyModifier |
Read the Martial row again. It is not "low Mana." It is zero, at every level, forever. A Martial Path with a Mana-cost ability has a dead ability on its sheet, and the sheet will not warn you. Likewise the Caster's flat 2 Stamina: it exists so that a Caster can brace or dodge once in an emergency, not so they can have a Stamina toolkit.
The Hybrid is the one that catches people. A level-10 Hybrid with a +3 key modifier holds 8 Mana and 8 Stamina — sixteen points across two tracks — against a Caster's 13 Mana on one. That is more flexibility and fewer activations. If you price a Hybrid's abilities at Caster rates, the Path runs dry by round three. Price them a step cheaper, or push more of the kit into Passives.
The reason to keep exactly three archetypes rather than adding a fourth is that every one of them is a closed formula on the character sheet. Add a fourth and you are editing the _maxMana and _maxStamina expressions in characters.json, which every existing Path resolves through. It is doable. It is not a small change.
The level cap of ten is what makes the numbers hold
Most systems in this shape run to twenty, and their damage dice double twice on the way. Skybride does not. Look at the damage distribution across all six hundred abilities: 1d8 and 1d6 dominate the level-10 band exactly as they dominate level 1. The largest single expression anywhere in the project is 4d6.
This is deliberate, and it is the single easiest thing to break when you extend the system. Power at high level is expressed through cost, riders, action economy, and target count — never through dice. @Missing file is the clearest case: the Chrono Magus capstone deals no damage at all. It costs 6 Mana and gives you two consecutive turns. That is what a level-10 ability looks like here.
If you write "8d10 necrotic damage" onto a capstone, you have not made a strong ability. You have made every armor value, every wound tier, and every monster statblock in the project wrong at once.
The cap also sets the shape of a Path: ten levels, one to two abilities each, front-loaded at level 1. Roughly fifteen abilities total. That number is not arbitrary — it is what fits on a readable character sheet and what a player can actually hold in their head at the table.
Paths are archetypes of a life, not of a combat role
The roster is the argument. @Missing file sits beside @Missing file and @Missing file. The Baker is a Path. The Chatelaine is a Path. Roughly a third of the roster has no combat identity at all, and those Paths carry the same fifteen abilities and the same level-10 capstone as the @Missing file.
This is the design commitment that most distinguishes Skybride from the systems it borrows dice conventions from, and it is the one worth preserving if you clone the project into another setting. A Path answers "what is this person's life?" — not "what do they do in the third round of a fight?" A Path built only for combat will feel thinner at this table than a Path built for a life, because two-thirds of play is not combat.
Practically: when you design a new Path, write its level-1 kit before its capstone, and make sure at least two of those level-1 abilities are useful in a room with no enemies in it.
Extension points, in order of cost
Four fields exist so that unusual Paths do not require schema changes. Reach for them in this order.
Passives. The cheapest and most under-used tool. Passives are roughly a third of every ability in the project, they cost nothing, and they are what makes a Path feel like an identity rather than a spell list. Most "I need a new mechanic" problems are a Passive.
activeForms. An array of toggleable states — rages, shapeshifts, standing auras, avatar forms. @Missing file, @Missing file, and @Missing file use it. Each form is a key, a name, and a short reminder of what it does while active; the player toggles it on the sheet. Use this when the Path has a mode, not an ability.
bondedAlly. For a Path organized around a companion the player actually commands — @Missing file's beast, the Scion's Sworn Protector. The bar is whether the companion takes its own actions. If it is atmosphere, it belongs in the description.
usesPreparations. A boolean, for Paths that craft limited-use items during rests. Two Paths use it. It is the narrowest hook in the schema and the one least worth imitating.
Below all four sits the option nobody should take: manaFlatOverride and staminaFlatOverride. They exist, no Path in the project sets either, and setting one silently detaches that character from the archetype formula. Everyone finds out at level-up.
The Spheres are a closed set
coreSphere marks an Inherent Path — one born to a Sphere rather than trained toward it. Seven exist, one per Sphere: Pyr, Ge, Hydor, Aer, Skotos, Eros, Phos. All seven are Casters keyed on Charisma, and all seven share an identical ability curve.
They are a matched set, and that is the point. If you add an eighth Sphere you are adding a cosmological claim, not a Path — the Spheres appear in elemental resistance tables, in magic resistance, in monster design, and throughout the lore. Adding a Sphere is a project-wide change.
Adding an eighth Inherent Path to an existing Sphere is a much smaller thing, and the only rule is that it match the others exactly in shape. A ragged eighth reads as a mistake, not a variation.
A Path that studies fire is not Pyr. Forty-two of forty-nine Paths have no coreSphere at all, and omitting it is the default.
Reuse is the load-bearing convention
Sixty ability files in this project are shared across two or more Paths. @Missing file is the level-1 force cantrip for three separate caster Paths — one file, three entries in its sourcesOfAcquisition, each with its own level and its own note about the role it plays for that Path.
This is not a space optimization. It is what makes the compendium coherent and what makes a balance change possible later. The alternative — "Gravitic Bolt (Stormcaller)" living beside "Gravitic Bolt" — means every future correction has to be found and applied in a dozen places, and it means a player reading two character sheets cannot tell whether the two abilities are the same thing.
A well-built new Path is typically five to eight genuinely new ability files plus seven to ten reused ones. If you are minting fifteen new files, you have probably not searched.
Adapting the system to another setting
Most of Skybride is portable. If you are lifting the Path system into a world of your own, here is what carries and what does not.
Carries: the three archetypes and their formulas, the level-10 cap, the flat damage curve, the fifteen-ability shape, the reuse convention, and the commitment to non-combat Paths. Those are the system.
Does not carry: the seven Spheres, the specific Path roster, the key-modifier associations (Charisma for innate magic, Intelligence for textual magic, Wisdom for divinatory), and the assumptions in @Missing file about where magic may be worked loudly. Those are Skybride.
The one thing to decide early in a new setting is the key-modifier map, because it encodes what your world thinks magic is. In Skybride, Charisma casts because the Phoros are born to their Sphere and Intelligence casts because the Magi read their way in. Change that and you have changed the cosmology, whether you meant to or not.
