Character Improvement

All character can improve over time. Improvement can be undetaken in several areas:

• Increasing existing skills
• Increasing characteristics
• Increasing passions
• Learning new skills
• Learning new magical abilities

Experience Rolls

The mechanism for most character improvement is the Experience Roll. GM's dispense Experience Rolls at an appropriate juncture in the campaign: at the end of scenarios or storylines, or perhaps after a few sessions of gameplay if the story is a long one which will take time to complete. The number of Experience Rolls players get when they are granted usually ranges between two and four, depending on how long it has been since the last time they were given out.

Generally, all players in a party will receive the same number of Experience Rolls, though players can receive more or less based on their Experience Modifier. The modifier only should be applied in stiuations where the cahracter can put their influence to good use, or suffer its consequences, such as returning home at the conclusion of a scenario. Thus it is not intended that the bonus should be applied at the end of each and every session, especially when the characters are isolated or exploring off in the wilderness.

Experience Rolls do not need to be used at the moment they are granted, they can be reserved for future use at the player's discretion. The main rasons for reserving use of a roll are:

• To increase Characteristics
• To buy new Professional Skills
• To put towards developing new magic

Increasing Existing Skills

Any skill on the character sheet, Standard or Professional, can be increased by spending one Experience Roll

• The player rolls 1d% and compares it to the skill being increased. The character's INT is added to the roll.
• If the number rolled is equal to or greater than the skill being improved it increases by 1d4+1%
• If the number rolled is less than the skill selected, the skill still increases but only by 1%

If a character fumbled any skill since the last time they gained Experience Rolls, the fumbled skill gains a free increase of 1%. Multiple funmbles of the same skill do not stack.

Usually, the players have full discretion over which skill to improve, no matter their location or circumstances. There are scenarios where it may be inpractical for a character to practice a skill, such as practicing Lockpicking in a survival scenario where the character has no access to locks or other people. In a case like this, the GM may request the play only attempt to increase skills they have recently used, or for which the situation exists to practice them.

Increasing Characteristics

A creature's rolled characteristics are regarded as its peak natural development, a combination of its birth and environment as it was growing. Thus just as some horses are bigger, stronger, and tougher than others, sapient species can grow up to exhubit fairly diverse physical and mental characteristics.

Characteristics can, like skills, be improved thorugh Experience rolls, which represent training regimes. However, such increases are artificial boosts which normally atrophy after the training exercises cease, characteristics dropping back to their natural levels wheteher the workouts were dailt calisthenics sessions to increase CON or memory tests to enhance INT.

To achieve and maintain characteristic increases requires that a character reduce their regular allotment of Experience Rolls by one or more points. This represents the continual and intesnive effort spent to push their body beyond its normal capacity.

Each Experience Roll sacrificed in this manner boosts the trained characteristic by one tenth of its rolled species maximum (rounded up). When a characteristic inceases, all skill derived from it increase too. For example, increasing STR enough might increase the Damage Modifier.

No matter how much training is undertaken, no characteristic can exceed its species maximum -- which is simply the highest possible result from the characteristic roll. Once the character decides to cease their exercise regime, their trained characteristic drops by one improvement step the next time they recieve Experience Rolls, and again the following time, the atrophying continuing until the characteristic has returned to its normal value.

SIZ is the exception to the above rules. It cannot be increased through mundane means.

Increasing Passions

The value of a passion may be increased with Experience Rolls in the exact same way as a skill. If supported by play, the GM might even allow a passion to be reduced by the use of an Experience Roll.

Learning New Skills

Some characters may wish to study new Professional Skills which they never had the chance to learn from their culture or career. Before they can start investing Experience Rolls they must first find a source of knowledge from which to learn. This could be as prosaic as a professional tutor. Alternatively it may be a more exotic source of exucation, an ancient and crumbling training scorll, or an ancestor spirit bound to the communitiy's sacred stone tiki.

Once a source of education is found, the character must spend an entire month of study and practice to garner a basic grounding in that skill. This costs 3 Experience Rolls plus whatever in game costs are required to pay the teacher and purchase whatever equipment and tools are needed.

Training

Skills can be improved without expending Experience Rolls, through help of a mentor; either a trainer or a teacher.

Characters must spend one full week in training to benefit from a training increase. At the end of the training period the skill being trained improves by the die roll indicated in the Training Improvement table below, with any modifiers due to the Teach skill.

How much a mentor for their services depends very much on the campaign and setting. They might even accept alternatives to hard coin such as manual labor or favors. Generally, a week's traiing costs 1 sv for every 5% the mentor has in the skill they are training. If they also know how to teach, this amount incease by 1 sv for each 10% they have in the Teach skill. So a mentor with 70% in Lore (History) could charge 14 sv or 19 sv if they also had Teach 50%.

Training Improvement Table

Degree of Difference	Skill Improvement
21-30%	1d2
31-40%	1d3
41-50%	1d4
51-60%	1d6
61-70%	1d6+1
71-80%	1d6+2
81-90%	1d6+3
91-100%	1d6+4
Each 10%	+1

Trainers

A trainer is someone who works with the character, helping them to practice a particual skill hoping, through coaching and mentoring, to improve the character's skill. Characters can act as trainers for other characters but it is usual to seek out someone who, through years of specialized study and greater experience, has more benefits and insight to offer.

A trainer must have at least 20% more than the character in the skill being trained, and the degree of improvement rests on the difference.

Teachers

A teacher is a professional trainer who posses the Teach skill, using it to improve the quality of their tuition. They utilize the same Training Improvement Table above, but modify the amount increased according to the result of a Teach roll:

• Critical Success: Skill improvement increases by two steps
• Success: Skill improvement increase by one step
• Failure: No effect on improvement
• Fumble: Skill improvement decreases by on step, which may result in the character gaining no improvement through the training

Limits to Training

Training comes with some limitations:

• Only one skill at a time can be trained
• A trained skill must be next improved by an Experience Roll; it cannot benefit from the training procedure again until it has been increased this way
• Trainers can only tutor a single student at a time, whereas teachers may educate multiple students at once. As a guide, divide the trainers Teach skill by 10 to determine how many students the teacher is prepared to train at one time