Clarity on Skills

or, Those Damn Skills

What follows is official. From here on out, this is
how Skills work in SHADOW, SWORD & SPELL.

Basics
Before getting to the heart of the matter, here are a few things that should be kept in mind.
Ability
The stats that measure a character (which are typically called Attributes in other roleplaying
games) do not have Ranks, they simply have a value.
Rank
The term Ranks is used only with Skills, and is a measure of how skilled a character is with a
specific Skill. When a Skill is first purchased, it is said to have been purchased at the Base Rank.
Base Rank
Base Rank is defined as the starting rank of a Skill's starting rank, which is equal to the governing
Ability at the time the Skill was first purchased. This is a number that a player wants to keep track
of, as it will determine the cost of Skill Rank increases in the future. One cannot automatically
assume that a Skill’s Base Rank will always be equal to the governing Ability, as it is possible for an
Ability to change in value during the course of a game.
Skill Limits
A Skill cannot have more than 12 Ranks. Characters with Abilities at 10-12 are damn near demi-
gods, therefore, when they buy a Skill at Base Rank they are very near to, or at the top of their
game. Period.
If a character starts with an Ability at 10, this means that the player character cannot add more
than 2 additional Ranks to give his character a Skill with a Rank of 12.

Starting Characters
All characters begin with 35 Points which are used to purchase the five Abilities (Brawn, Quickness,
Toughness, Wits and Will).
All characters have 45 Skill Points which are used to buy Skills.
The reason for the lower total is due to the core assumption of  SS&S: BASIC: this is a game about
starting out; you create competent people that still have room for improvement. 

© 2010 Rogue Games, Inc. the Rogue Games logo, “Games so good they sneak up on you.”, Shadow, Sword & Spell, and their respective logos are TM and © 2007-2010 of
Rogue Games Inc.
Skills
A design goal underlying all 12° SYSTEM games is that characters will have only a handful of Skills in
which they are truly formidable, and a number of Skills in which they are of average proficiency.
Keep this in mind.
There are two types of Skills in the games, Untrained (marked as such in the rulebook) and
Trained (there is no such category as Trained in the game, but it helps for the purpose of the
following explanation, so it is best to think of them as such).
Untrained Skills can be used by anyone without the need to spend Skill Points on them.
Trained Skills can only be used by spending Skill Points on them.
An Untrained Skill for which a player has purchased Skill Ranks also can be called a Trained
Skill.
A Skill's Target Number (TN) equals the Skill's governing Ability + the Skill’s Rank.
See the above definition above for a Skill’s Base Rank.
Any character may use an Untrained Skill at any time, but with a -4 modifier to the Target
Number. Trained Skills may only be used by those who have purchased Ranks in them (therefore
they never suffer the -4 Untrained modifier to the Target Number).
Untrained Skills have a Base Rank equal in number to the governing Ability without the need to
spend Skill Points minus the Untrained of -4 (e.g. Brawn 10 = Melee 6 as an Untrained Skill)
Trained Skills have a Base Rank equal in number to the governing Ability only after the player
has spent a number of Skill Points equal to the governing Ability (e.g. Quickness 7 = Acrobatics 7 as
a Trained Skill only after spending 7 Skill Points).
A player may spend Skill Points on an Untrained Skill to increase the number of Ranks in it
(effectively making it a Trained skill). To do this, the player spends a number of Skill Points equal to
the governing Ability to purchase the Base Rank. In my the example above, I would spend 10 Skill
Points to make Melee a Trained skill, and its Rank would remain 10, the same as when it was
Untrained, with the difference being that the -4 modifier does not apply anymore as this is no
longer an Untrained Skill.
A player may spend Skill Points on a Trained Skill to increase the number of Ranks in it beyond
the Base Rank. Remember that Trained Skills can only be used after being purchased at Base Rank.
To increase a Skill's rank by +1, a player spends a number of Skill Points equal to half the Base
Rank for that skill (this is why it's important to record what a skill's Base Rank is). Note that
multiple Rank increases may be purchased at the same time, each costing the same.
To illustrate this, let's create a character.
I decide to create a new character, Johan the Dark, a young thief off the canals of Gravinia. I
spend my 35 Ability Points as follows:
• Brawn 6
• Quickness 10
• Toughness 7
• Wits 4
• Will 8
© 2010 Rogue Games, Inc. the Rogue Games logo, “Games so good they sneak up on you.”, Shadow, Sword & Spell, and their respective logos are TM and © 2007-2010 of
Rogue Games Inc.
 My Background is Civilized and my Modifier is Mercantile. From these two, I derive the
following bonuses:
Bureaucracy at Base Rank, Study at Base Rank, Native Language at Base Rank, +1 Action Point,
Bargain +1 and Diplomacy +1.
I now spend my 45 Skill Points to buy skills as follows (skills marked * can be used Untrained):
• Bargain (8 Base Rank [8 Skill Points Spent] + 1 Rank [Bonus
from Mercantile] + 2 Ranks [4 Skill Points for each Rank for a
total of 8 Skill Points spent]) = 11 Skill Ranks
• Bureaucracy (4 Base Rank [Free from Background] + 3 Ranks
[2 Skill Points for each Rank for a total 6 Skill Points spent])
= 7 Skill Ranks
• Diplomacy (8 Base Rank [8 Points Spent)] + 1 Rank [Bonus
from Mercantile] + 2 Ranks (4 Skill Points for each Rank for a
total of 8 Skill Points spent) = 11 Skill Ranks
• Study (4 Base Rank [Free from Background]) = 4 Skill Ranks
• Subterfuge (10 Base Rank [10 Skill Points Spent]) = 10 Skill
Ranks
• Native Language (4 Base Rank [Free from Background]) = 4
Skill Ranks
After all the math, my Skills and their Ranks look like this.
• Bargain [+11]
• Bureaucracy [+7]
• Diplomacy [+11]
• Study [+4]
• Subterfuge [+10]
• Native Language [+4]
So what would the Target Number ([TN)] for each Skill be?
Remember the formula = Ability + Skill Rank = [Target Number]
• Bargain (8+11) = [19]
• Bureaucracy (4+7) = [11]
• Diplomacy (8+11) = [19]
• Study (4+4) = [8]
• Subterfuge (10+10) = [20]
• Native Language (4+4) = [8]
Now, to compare, here are three Untrained Skills, with the TN already factoring in the -4
modifier for Untrained use:
• Dodge (10+6) = [16]

© 2010 Rogue Games, Inc. the Rogue Games logo, “Games so good they sneak up on you.”, Shadow, Sword & Spell, and their respective logos are TM and © 2007-2010 of
Rogue Games Inc.
 • Melee (6+2) = [8]
• Throw (10+6) = [16]

© 2010 Rogue Games, Inc. the Rogue Games logo, “Games so good they sneak up on you.”, Shadow, Sword & Spell, and their respective logos are TM and © 2007-2010 of
Rogue Games Inc.