Mastery Level

Mastery Level (ML) measures how good a character is at one particular thing — a skill, an attribute, a mystical ability. It is the number every test of that thing is measured against, and it is stated on a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 would be near-certain success. Nothing forbids an ML above 100; a character of legendary accomplishment may exceed it, and the rules that read ML go on working when they do.

An ML of 0 means the character has no mastery of the thing at all — they have never learned it. Whether an unlearned skill may be attempted anyway, and at what cost, is a matter for that skill’s own entry and for the GM.

Skill Base

A skill’s Mastery Level starts from its Skill Base (SB) — a number derived from the attributes that the skill draws upon. Climbing rests on Agility and Dexterity, Cookery on Perception and Reason, Weaponcraft on Dexterity and Strength. The attributes a given skill uses are named in that skill’s own entry.

Reducing those attributes to a single Skill Base follows one rule:

The first attribute named is the primary one; that is what the two-attribute tiebreak turns on, so the order a skill lists its attributes in matters. A Skill Base is never less than 0.

Skill Base does two things.

It sets where a skill opens. A skill a character has picked up begins at a multiple of its Skill Base — Climbing at three times, Cookery at twice — and the multiple is given in that skill’s entry. A multiple of zero marks a skill nobody acquires by living: it stays at nothing until deliberately studied.

And it caps the skill thereafter. However long a character trains, their ML in a skill can never exceed seven times its Skill Base (SB × 7). Talent sets the ceiling; practice decides how near it the character comes.

A skill whose Skill Base is derived from Aura is said to be Aura-governed, which matters when Fate is called on.

Attribute Mastery Levels

An attribute is rated on its own scale rather than being built from others, and its Mastery Level is five times its value. An attribute of 12 therefore tests at ML 60. Everything in this chapter that applies to a skill’s ML applies equally to an attribute’s: attributes generate an Index, produce success levels, and can be opposed or tested for Success Value exactly as skills are.

Index

The Index of a Mastery Level is one-tenth of it, rounded down — in effect the tens digit.

Index appears wherever a rule needs a small number rather than a percentage: it is the starting point of a Success Value, the target of a Secondary Roll, and the size of the bonus a helper contributes.

An Index is always taken from the unmodified Mastery Level. Bonuses and penalties adjust the Effective Mastery Level of a d100 test and nothing else; they never move an Index.

Effective Mastery Level

Circumstances rarely leave a character at their bare Mastery Level. Poor light, a wound, a rushed attempt, a well-made tool, a helper at their elbow — each shifts the odds. The Mastery Level with every applicable bonus and penalty applied is the Effective Mastery Level (EML), and it is the EML, not the ML, that the d100 is rolled against.

However the modifiers fall, an EML is normally held between 5 and 95. There is always at least a small chance of failure and always at least a small chance of success, however lopsided the circumstances. A GM who judges a task genuinely impossible or genuinely certain should say so and skip the roll, rather than letting the floor and ceiling pretend at a contest that is not there.

Assistance

A character may be helped. An assistant must have at least half the tester’s Mastery Level in the skill or attribute being used — below that they are more hindrance than help — and each qualifying assistant adds their own Index to the tester’s EML.

Assistance is capped at +10 in total, however many hands are lent. Beyond that, extra helpers crowd the work. Some tasks also have a physical limit on how many people can take part at once, and some — a delicate negotiation, a moment of recall — cannot be helped at all. The GM decides which.

Competence

Mastery Level also describes standing in a trade. Where a character’s professional competence needs naming rather than rolling, it is read from this scale:

These stars rate a character; they are not the Victory Stars that measure the margin of a single contest.

See also

• Success Tests — what is done with an EML once it is settled
• Secondary Mastery — how a second skill bears on a test
• Attributes — the attributes a Skill Base is built from