Skills

Skills are different from Talents in that they require a certain amount of training or even an apprenticeship in order to advance. Also, different from Knowledges, Skills are acquired by hands on experience and constant feedback from peers. Because of this restriction, a character without a skill is always rolling at a +2 difficulty (maybe more for particularly dangerous or technical skills). Also a character cannot easily advance in a skill without both practice and a tutor. In addition to spending the experience points, a character wishing to increase a skill should be practicing the skill closely with someone else who already knows how to do it. This does not mean that the tutor must have the Instruction Talent in order to teach a skill to another character, but if they do, it may decrease the time or even the experience point cost necessary to raise the skill level. As a general rule, a good Skill tutor should have more dots in the skill than your character currently has. To fully master a skill a character will often have to invest in a school or training ground where many students may interact and learn together. These training areas may take the form of dojos or a barracks for combative skills, to technical schools or diagnostic centers for standard trades. Also keep in mind that unlike Knowledges, even a master can learn from a novice. This being said, the only type of character that cannot serve as a mentor for a Skill is a character that does not possess dots in the skill at all.