Every character has the opportunity to improve with time. Improvement can be undertaken in several areas:
Increasing existing skills
Increasing characteristics
Increasing passions
Learning new skills
Learning new magical abilities and spells
The mechanism for most character improvement is the Experience Roll. Games Masters dispense Experience Rolls at an appropriate juncture in the campaign: at the end of every successful scenario or storyline; or after perhaps two or three sessions of play if the story is a long one which will take time to complete. The frequency is at the Games Master’s discretion. A high frequency of Experience Rolls will lead to the characters developing at a faster rate.
There is no right or wrong time to give Experience Rolls, but natural breaks in the story may suggest suitable times. The Games Master is, however, always the decision maker here. Whilst players cannot demand Experience Rolls, they have a right to expect them at certain times – as their characters will not be able to develop with out them.
The number of Experience Rolls awarded is also determined by the Games Master. However, a good rule of thumb is 1-3 Experience Rolls per session since the last time they were awarded.
Any skill on the character sheet, Standard or Professional, can be increased by spending one Experience Roll.
The player rolls 1d100 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 during the course of the preceding session(s) – i.e., between the last set of Experience Rolls and the present one – the fumbled skill gains a free increase of 1%. It is a truism that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes, and this represents the reflection a character undergoes following a disastrous failure. Multiple fumbles of the same skill do not stack.
Games Masters can, if they wish, increase the dice step if they want to have skill progression move at a faster rate without giving Experience Rolls on a frequent basis: so, instead of increasing by 1d4+1 skills increase by 1d6+1. If adjusting the default dice roll in this way, Games Masters should set the expectation at the start of the campaign and not veer from it.
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 somi are bigger, stronger and tougher than others, krinn and other sapient species can grow up to exhibit fairly diverse physical and mental characteristics.
Characteristics can, like skills, be improved through 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 whether the workouts were daily calisthenics sessions to increase CON or memory tests to enhance INT.
To achieve and maintain characteristic increases requires that a character reduce his regular allotment of Experience Rolls by one or more points. This represents the continual and intensive effort spent to push his body beyond its normal capability.
Each Experience Roll sacrificed in this manner boosts the trained characteristic by one tenth of its rolled species maximum. Thus a krinn who engaged in regular weightlifting to build up his STR could, at the cost of reducing his normal allotment of Experience Rolls by one, gain +2 points to his Strength. A Sulkar on the other hand would gain +3 points to Strength as his species maximum is 24.
When a characteristic increases, all attributes and skills derived from it increase too (if the characteristic increase is enough to create an attribute change). Thus, increasing STR by one point will also increase each skill that uses it as a component by one point too. In addition Damage Modifier may also increase if the new STR value moves the character into the next Damage Modifier band.
Sulkar on the other hand would gain +3 points to Strength as his species maximum is 24. 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 his exercise regime, his trained characteristic drops by one
improvement step the next time he receives Experience Rolls, and again the following time, the atrophying continuing until the characteristic has returned to its natural value. SIZ is the exception to the above rules. It cannot be increased through mundane means.
As described under Passions, the value of a passion may be increased with Experience Rolls in exactly the same way as a skill. If supported by play, the Games Master might even allow a passion to be reduced by the use of an Experience Roll.
For example, constant spurning from an unrequited love might eventually wear down the passion of even the most ardent lover, especially one who wishes to pursue a relationship without the ghosts of the past haunting them.
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 such those provided by cults or brotherhoods. Alternately it might be a more exotic source of education, an ancient and crumbling training scroll or an ancestor spirit bound to the community’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 (if one exists), and purchase (or rent) whatever equipment and tools may be needed.