Weapon skills

The more you fight with a kind of weapon, the better you get with it. Every kind of weapon is a weapon skill with a rank from 0 (untrained) to 10. Each attack you make earns marks in the skill it uses. When you have enough marks you gain a rank: “You feel more skilled with long blades.” A shield has a skill too, for bashing with it.

Each skill grows only by its own use. Someone who is good with a long sword is still a beginner with a short one until they practise with it.

The skills

Every weapon belongs to one skill (see the weapon tables in Combat and Ranged combat). Every throw trains thrown weapons, whatever you throw: a dagger thrown is not a dagger held. Unarmed covers fighting with your bare hands, and every kick at a creature, whatever you wield (see Doors).

No skill trains when your shield stops a blow. The Shield part of your Defence grows only with the shield styles, Sword and Board and Two Shields.

Shield bashing is an attack of its own. It bashes whoever stands in a direction with the shield you hold. It does the shield’s own damage plus your Strength, like every blow, and takes the time of a blow. You need a shield to bash with, and you bash only what is hostile to you. A shield bash is an ability: choose it from the abilities menu (a, see Abilities), then pick a direction. It has no key of its own by default. You can give it one in the Controls screen (“Bash with your shield”).

Spells have their own page. The caster styles are trained the same way, by casting, and a spell that rolls to hit aims with its caster style’s rank. They are on the Magic page, page 6.

Seeing your skills

W opens the weapon skills screen. It lists every skill by kind (melee, missile and thrown, shields), then your fighting styles. Each shows your rank and a faint bar of your marks toward the next rank. A • marks the styles you fight in now. Opening it takes no time.

Skills you know stand out, and untrained ones are dimmer. In a wide window the list is in two columns. In a small one it scrolls (↑↓). It is page 5 of the info pages, right after your skills and before the Magic page (6, named on its bottom line), where the caster styles are listed.

The game never tells you in numbers what a rank gives you. You see your ranks, and you feel the difference in a fight. The tables below are the exact rules.

Raising a weapon skill

You earn marks for every attack, and more for a hit. How much you learn depends on whom you fight. An opponent whose level is below your rank teaches you less, and eventually nothing at all. One at your rank or above teaches you the full marks, but never more. Past rank 5, a giant rat (level 1) teaches you nothing. To become a master you need masterful foes.

Every attempt earns 1 mark, and a hit 2 more. Against an opponent below your rank you earn 20% less for each level between you, down to nothing; against one at your rank or above, the full marks (100%, never more):

The aggressive stance and the berserker’s frenzy count the marks of every attack for a quarter more, rounded to the nearest: a hit earns 4 marks instead of 3, a miss still 1.

Marks you earn beyond what a rank needs count toward the next one. The first ranks come within a few levels. From rank 7 on, each rank asks for far more, and the last ranks take most of a career. Missile weapons need fewer marks than weapons up close. The caster styles, trained by casting, follow a gentler curve of their own (the Caster columns). You start every skill with no marks.

Talents that make you learn faster count each attack’s marks for more, rounded to the nearest. The warrior’s Weapon drill (a quarter more in melee skills) makes a hit worth 4 marks instead of 3, while a miss stays at 1.

Target dummies

The Weyfarers’ Gilde keeps a yard of training dummies in Cēaptūn, straw men on posts that never fight back. Walk into one to strike it, or shoot or throw at it. A dummy never moves, is never hurt, and never dies, so it gives no experience, loot, or quest credit, and the townsfolk do not mind you beating it. It is never caught unawares, and no attack on it is a sneak attack.

A dummy teaches only the weapon skill and fighting style of the attack, never a stat, and slowly: half the marks a level-1 opponent would give, rounded (2 for a hit and 1 for a miss at rank 0). It teaches blows, shield bashes, kicks, and throws up to rank 2, and shots with a bow, crossbow, or sling (and their style) up to rank 4. When a skill reaches that rank there, you are told “You have learned all the dummy can teach you.”, and it learns nothing more there. There is no daily limit: the time it takes is the price.

Missiles shot or thrown at a dummy stop there, hit or miss. One in four (25 %) is ruined; the rest drop on a free cell beside the dummy, to be picked up again. A missile that never breaks is never ruined.

What a rank gives

Each skill has its own benefits per rank, which apply while you fight with it:

• To hit and Damage add to every attack with the skill. Damage is added to every roll of the dice, so a critical gets it twice or more.
• Critical range widens the rolls that threaten a critical. A dagger that threatens on 20 to 24 threatens on 19 to 24 at one wider (see Criticals).
• Time takes that much off the time of each attack (a quick dagger). Reload time takes that much off reloading a crossbow.
• Parry adds to the Parry part of your Defence while you wield a weapon of the skill.
• Shield adds to the Shield part of your Defence while you hold a shield.

Rank 0 gives nothing. The first five ranks grow slowly. Ranks 6 to 10 grow much faster, above all in damage, with a wider critical range, quicker attacks, and more Parry. To hit rises only a little more. Rank 10 is mastery.

Daggers and knives

Short blades

Long blades

Great blades

Axes

Maces and clubs

Spears

Polearms

Staves

Unarmed

Bows

Crossbows

Slings

Thrown weapons

Shield bashing

What a rank teaches

Ranks can also teach an ability. You are told so with the rank (“You feel more skilled with long blades. You have learned the deep cut.”). The abilities menu (a) then lists it under Weapon skills, after the skill that taught it (“Long blades: Deep cut”).

Most of these fire by themselves. They cost nothing, take no time, and work whenever you fight with a weapon of the skill, so the menu shows them greyed with “fires by itself”. An ability names its skills: Deep cut belongs to any blade, at rank 5 in that blade’s skill. Creatures with the rank have the abilities too, by the same rules: a spearman of rank 5 braces against you as you come.

Active abilities (marked active in the table) are used, not fired. You pick one from the abilities menu and aim it as it asks: a direction for a blow, a place for a shot, nothing for a sweep or Shield wall. It costs two things, and only once it goes ahead. A refused use, with nobody to strike or nothing to shoot, costs nothing.

• Stamina (see Combat). The menu shows it: “Spears: Lunge 3 stamina, in a direction”.
• Time: the percentage in the table of the time the action normally takes you. For a blow with what you hold, that means your weapon’s speed, your style, and your stance all count. The action may also be a shot or a wait. No active is instant. The game never shows this time.

The menu greys an active out while you are short of stamina (“you are short of breath”), or while what you hold does not suit it (“your hands are not so held”). Lunge needs a spear or a staff in hand. A style’s actives need its grip: Shield wall needs a shield and a weapon, or two shields.

Each active is its own action. Three in three turns cost all three together, and the empty pool is the price. With a pool of 12 that comes back a point every 12 seconds, a 5-point active comes at best once every ten turns. A character without stamina gets a full pool from the first rank that teaches an active (“You learn to pace your breath.”). Creatures use no actives.

• Lunge strikes the first foe within 2 cells in the direction. The cell between must be empty and passable (a closed door blocks), and nothing on it is sprung. A foe struck across the empty cell brings no free blows (no riposte, no cleave).
• Piercing shot: a hit flies on along its line and attacks the next one there, whoever it is, once.
• Sunder and Gap shot ignore all Protection. Against a foe with none, they cost the same and do nothing more (the game never tells you a foe’s Protection).
• Shield wall (Sword and Board or Two Shields) leaves you Walled for 5 turns. Your Shield gets +3 on top of the shield’s own, and every attack you make takes a quarter longer. Walled and Hasted multiply.

The Early mastery talent teaches every one of them a rank sooner. So do the talents that make you fight as someone more practised (Stylist, Fencing). A status these abilities leave, such as Bleeding or Staggered, is a status effect like any other: a staggered foe’s next action takes half again as long. A brace and a point-blank shot are free blows, so they bring no free blows of their own.

Where your skills come from

You start with some skills from your race and your class. A warrior knows long blades, a ranger knows bows, and a thief knows daggers. Some starting ranks are dice (1d2 is one or two), rolled when you start. A berserker has learned either axes or great blades, and the dice decide which. Your race’s and your class’s ranks add up.

Creatures have skills too: the kobolds of the war band know their spears and bows. They do not get better (yet).

See also: Fighting styles, Combat, and Abilities.