AdvancementChapter the Seventh

Advancing your character

Characters grow through experience. The GM awards experience at the end of each session, usually 1 or 2 points (see Awarding experience in chapter 13), and players spend them between sessions to improve their characters. Costs depend on the character's current career. Experience can be spent in three main ways.

Raise a characteristic

Each advance adds 1 to a characteristic. Its cost comes from your career's profile, the line of numbers under the career's name in chapter 3, Careers. Each advance costs the characteristic's number in that profile times the number of the advance being bought. Advances are recorded in the Career bonus row of the character sheet.

Number in career profile	1st advance	2nd advance	3rd advance
1	1	2	3
2	2	4	6
3	3	6	9

A 4th or 5th advance follows the same pattern: 4 or 5 times the number. Few characters need them, since the gap between a starting score and its cap is usually 3 or less.

No characteristic can exceed the species cap without buying the specific characteristic cap talent. This is a one time purchase that allows the cap to be raised by 1; see Cap talents in chapter 5, Talents. The caps for each species are in Characteristic caps by species, below.

When you raise a characteristic, remember to adjust your derived values, such as Wounds, Movement, Initiative and both Defences. See Derived values.

Raise a skill

Each rank adds 1 to every roll with that skill, from Familiar (0) up to Master (+3). Primary skills of your career are cheapest, secondary skills cost double, and basic skills outside your career cost triple. Advanced skills outside your career cannot be learned.

Skill	Familiar	Trained	Expert	Master	Total
Primary	1	1	2	3	7
Secondary	2	2	4	6	14
Basic, outside your career	3	3	6	9	21

Buy a talent

Talents cost 1 to 5 points, and the career Master talents cost 8. Each can be bought once. A talent's cost and prerequisite are shown in its table in chapter 5, Talents.

Experience is also spent on new spells and runes, covered below, and on changing career; see Changing career in chapter 3, Careers.

Characteristic caps by species

Each characteristic has a cap: the highest it can ever be raised. The caps for each species are shown below.

A cap talent raises one characteristic's cap by 1. See Cap talents in Talents.

Only a cap talent can raise a characteristic above the number in this table. There is no other way to exceed it.

Characteristic	Human	Elf	Dwarf	Halfling
Melee Skill	6	6	7	5
Ranged Skill	6	7	5	7
Might	6	6	7	5
Agility	6	7	5	7
Endurance	6	5	7	5
Intellect	6	6	6	6
Wits	6	6	6	6
Resolve	6	6	7	6
Presence	6	6	5	7
Appearance	6	7	5	6

Learning spells and runes

A caster can cast only the spells they know. Beyond the ones they start with, each new spell must be learned.

Tier	Experience	Rank needed	Suggested fee
Very easy (7)	1	Familiar	1 piece
Easy (9)	1	Familiar	3 pieces
Medium (11)	2	Trained	10 pieces
Hard (13)	3	Expert	25 pieces
Very hard (15)	4	Master	60 pieces
Nearly impossible (17)	5	Master	150 pieces

A source is needed

The spell must be learned from a caster who knows it or from a written source. Both are hard to find.

The source has its price

A source is paid for in coin or in favours owed to an experienced caster. The fees above are a guide; a favour is the more usual price, and a teacher may refuse coin altogether.

The rank

The rank needed is in the magic skill the spell belongs to.

Learning runes

A runewright can make only the runes they know. Runes are learned exactly as spells are, at the same experience cost, rank and fee for the tier, from a runewright who knows the rune or from a written source.

A new Runewright knows two runes from the Very easy or Easy tiers, and their starting device carries one of them.

Advancement examples

Example: raising a characteristic

Marguerite is a human Duellist. Her career profile reads MS 1 · RS 2 · MIG 3 · AGI 1 · END 3 · INT 3 · WIT 1 · RES 3 · PRE 2 · APP 1. She rolled Melee Skill 3 and took her free starting advance in it, raising it to 4. That free advance was her first, so her next is the second: Melee Skill is marked 1, so it costs 1 × 2 = 2 experience, and raises it to 5. A third advance would cost 3 and take her to 6, the human cap. Her Might, marked 3, would cost 3 for its first advance, 6 for its second and 9 for its third.

Example: raising a skill

Melee (Basic) is one of Marguerite's primary skills. She started at Familiar and used her free skill advance to reach Trained, so her next rank, Expert (+2), costs 2 experience. Ranged (Firearms) is a secondary skill for a Duellist, so taking her pistol skill from Familiar to Trained costs 2. Stealth is not on her career's lists at all, it is a basic skill, so she can still learn it, at 3 for Familiar.

Example: buying a talent

Marguerite's Melee (Basic) is at Trained, which meets the prerequisite for Strike to Injure, a combat talent costing 2. She spends 2 experience and notes it on her sheet. From then on, after each melee hit she can shift the location die by 1 either way. Lightning Parry is out of reach for now: its prerequisite is Melee at Master, so she must raise the skill first.

Example: learning a spell

Bess is a halfling Hearthwarden. Hearth Magic is a primary skill of her career, and she is at Familiar. She wants Break the Fever, a Medium spell, to cure the sickness spreading through her settlement. Medium spells need Trained rank, so she first raises Hearth Magic to Trained for 1 experience.

She then finds the source: an old midwife two valleys over who knows the spell. The midwife wants no coin, but asks Bess to deliver her granddaughter's child come spring, a favour owed. Bess spends 2 experience, the cost for a Medium spell, and adds Break the Fever to her known spells. Later she picks up Kitchen Physic, an Easy spell, for 1 experience from a recipe book of charms she bought for 3 pieces.