Trees and Skills
Your XP goes almost entirely into your two Trees. A Tree is a plate: a grid of Skills joined by lines, with a core in the middle carrying its name.
You have two, an Archetype’s and a Domain’s. The Archetype says how your character acts, the Domain says what with.
A Berserker and a Marchand are two Archetypes; Feu and Terre are two Domains. These are only examples: the list of published Trees lives and changes. The trees index carries the current one, and that is what counts, not this chapter.
Every Tree has its printed plate, downloadable from its page. When a Tree changes, its plate changes with it: there is no edition to buy again, and nothing waits for a supplement.
Reading a plate
Each node is a Skill, and its shape gives its type: a circle for an active Skill, a rounded square for a passive one, a concave shape for a special one.
The border carries the Skill’s Domain or Domains, which gives its colour. A Skill with no Domain is Neutral. The gold token carries its price in XP.
The lines join a node to its neighbours. They draw how the plate reads, they do not set prerequisites. Nothing in a Tree forces you to buy one node before another: the price is the only barrier.
Buying a Skill
Each purchase costs 5 to 100 XP, in steps of 5, and the price is printed on the Skill.
Buying a Skill means learning it, not memorisingRule wordMemorisedSaid of a Skill you carry and can play. You can change yours during a rest. it. A Skill you have learnt is yours for good. What is limited is how many you can carry at once, and your MemoryRule wordMemoryThe number of Skills you can have Memorised at the same time. is what says so.
A Memorised Skill is a Skill you carry and can play. It takes 1 Memory, except in the cases listed under “Where your Memory goes”.
Levels
Some Skills carry Levels, bought separately and in order. A Level is not a new Skill: it is the same one, doing more.
A Memorised Skill takes 1 Memory whatever its Level. Raising a Skill therefore never costs you room, only XP.
Some Skills give rise to another, more specialised one, which appears as its own node joined to its base.
Tags
A Skill may carry tags, printed at the foot of its card. They group Skills of the same nature, so that another rule, an item or a state can name them all at once instead of one by one.
They read in this order, and a Skill carries only the ones it needs.
- Practice
- How the Skill is practised, such as SpellRule wordSpellA magical Skill. You need a Catalyseur equipped to activate a Spell, whether it is passive or active. or Manoeuvre. One at most.
- School
- The family its effect belongs to, such as Healing or Illusion. One at most.
- Special
- A particularity that carries a rule, such as Unleashed. As many as it takes.
The Skills index carries the current list: its Practice, School and Special filters show every value, and each tag gives its definition there.
Two Practices set a condition. You need a Catalyseur equipped, meaning a piece of equipment that carries the Catalyseur property, to activate a Spell, whether it is passive or active: without one, a Spell cannot be cast and a passive Spell stops applying. A Shout, for its part, only affects creatures that can hear it.
The Common Bank
Alongside your Trees, a list of Skills belongs to nobody: the Common Bank.
They are independent of one another. Any character may buy one at any time, whatever their Trees, for its price in XP and the PrerequisiteRule wordPrerequisiteA condition to meet to buy a Skill. some of them carry. The Species Skills a character did not keep at creation are bought there too, reserved to their Species by that Prerequisite. Nothing stops a merchant slipping into the shadows or an artisan catching their breath mid-melee.
What equipment grants
A piece of equipment or a set tier may grant a Skill. That one does not have to be bought, takes up no Memory, and leaves you as soon as the piece leaves its slot.
It is another way to widen what you can do, and it does not go through XP at all.
Where your Memory goes
Three things take up no Memory: your two Species Skills, the ones your equipment grants, and the basic Skills everyone has. Your two Species Skills stay Memorised and never change after creation, as the Species chapter explains.
Everything else takes 1 Memory per Memorised Skill. That is where the choice happens, and it is replayed at every rest.