Game Master Handbook

A new Skill is designed in this order: what it is, what it costs, what it does, then its price in XP. The prose comes last, otherwise it invents mechanics to justify its sentences.

Type and activation

There are three types.

Active

Deliberately activated, it costs a unit of action time.

PassiveRule wordPassiveA Skill that applies without costing an action.

Applied deliberately, continuously or automatically.

Special

Its own text defines how it works, because it fits neither Active nor Passive.

The activation says what it takes: an ActionRule wordActionThe main action of your turn. You have one per turn., a Bonus ActionRule wordBonus ActionA quick action taken during your turn. You have one per turn. Usually reserved for Skills that say so., a ReactionRule wordReactionAn action played outside your turn, in response to a trigger. You have one per turn. with its trigger, a time in turns, a time in minutes or hours, or nothing for a passive.

A Reaction states its trigger in the first sentence of its description, never in its activation.

Tags

A tag is a balance lever: another Skill, an item or a state can target at once every Skill that carries it. For each of the three slots, Practice, School and Special, ask whether the Skill needs it, for balance, for its flavour or for a combo. If the answer is no, the slot stays empty. Basic Skills carry none.

Choose among the existing tags. Inventing one for a single Skill opens one more combo across the whole game and brings nothing to the table. A new tag is justified by a real gap, or by a mechanic shared across several Trees, like the Shout.

Not every School accepts every Practice: a Manoeuvre stays within the Schools of combat, a Shout within what a voice can carry.

The Unleashed tag marks an unleashed Skill in the sense of the effect budget, below: the player composes its effect at the moment of playing it.

The effect budget

The unit of comparison is the Effect Unit. It is a design tool; it never appears in text a player reads.

One Effect Unit is roughly one damage die, 1d10 by default, or one die of healing or temporary HPRule wordHPHit Points, what a creature can take. At 0, it falls into Agonie., 1d4 by default, or one standard secondary effect. A secondary effect may replace a damage die, or drop its size by one step.

The budget depends on the freedom left to the player:

• an unleashed Skill, whose effect the player composes when using it, produces X Units for a cost of X;
• an ordinary Skill, with its effect fixed in advance, produces X + 1 Units for the same cost.

The gap pays for the constraint. An effect decided in advance is worth less than one chosen at the right moment.

The default resource is EnergyRule wordEnergyThe reserve that pays the cost of Skills.. A rule may use HP or KarmaRule wordKarmaPoints granted by the GM. By default, a point can add an Advantage or a Disadvantage to the Roll of your choice., which weigh more: Karma comes back at no rest.

Ranges and areas

The reference ranges are contact at 1.5 metres, reach at 3 metres, and distance at 9, 12 or 18 metres. Another value is allowed when the Skill warrants it.

An area gives its shape and dimensions in multiples of 1.5 metres. Its budget depends on how many targets it should reasonably catch, not on its exact surface.

Resisting, and lasting

A Skill that can be resisted states four things: the target’s exact defensive RollRule wordRoll2d12 + one Characteristic + one Aptitude, measured against a DC, an AC or an Opposed Roll., the exact DCRule wordDCThe difficulty a Roll has to reach, set by the GM or by a rule. formula, the effect on a success, the effect on a failure. “The target only takes half damage” is part of the budget, not of generosity.

An effect over time spreads its dice across several turns without raising their total. Its text says when it applies, for how long, whether it renews and whether it stacks.

A Skill that applies a state with Intensity buys the higher Intensities out of its budget. Intensity 1 should stay comparable to what ordinary fiction would produce without a specialised Skill.

The price in XP

Each purchase costs 5 to 100 XP, in steps of 5. A Species Skill is worth 25 XP by default.

The price accounts for impact, frequency, action efficiency, flexibility, persistence, synergies and limitations. The final decision belongs to the designer, who records the departures and watches them through testing.