Significant milestones usually occur at the end of a scenario or the conclusion of a big plot event (or, when in doubt, at the end of every two or three sessions). Unlike minor milestones, which are primarily about change, significant milestones are about learning new things—dealing with problems and challenges has made your character generally more capable at what they do.
In addition to the benefit of a minor milestone, you also gain both of the
following:
• One additional
skill point, which you can spend to buy a new skill at
Average (+1) or increase an existing
skill by one rank.
• If you have any severe
consequence , you can rename them to begin the
recovery process, if you haven’t already.
When you spend your
skill point, it’s worth one step on the ladder. You can use it to buy a new
skill at Average (+1), or you can use it to increase an existing
skill by one step on the ladder—say, from Good (+3) to Great (+4).
Skill Columns
During character creation, you organized your skills into a pyramid. You don’t have to stick to that for character advancement. However, there’s still a limitation you have to deal with, skill columns. This means you can’t have more skills at a certain rank than you have at
the rank below it. So if you have three Good columns, you have at least three Average (+1) skills and at least three Fair (+2) skills to support your
three Good (+3) skills. The pyramid follows this rule already, but when you’re adding skills, you need to make sure you don’t violate that limit. It’s easy to forget that if you use a skill point to upgrade one of your own skills, you might suddenly not have enough
skill to “support” it at the new rank. So, let’s say you have one Good (+3), two Fair (+2), and three Average (+1)
skill .
At a milestone, you want to upgrade a Fair (+2)
skill to Good (+3). That’d give you two Good (+3), one Fair (+2), and three Average (+1): Great (+4) You see how that doesn’t work? You’re now missing the second Fair
skill you’d need to be square with the rules.
When this happens, you have one of two options. You can buy a new
skill at the lowest possible rank—in this case, Average (+1)—and then upgrade it in subsequent milestones until you’re in a position to bump the
skill you want to the appropriate level. Or you can “bank” the
skill point, not spend it now, and wait until you’ve accumulated enough to buy a
skill at whatever rank you need to support the move.
So in the case above, you could buy an Average (+1)
skill , promote one of your Average
skill to a Fair (+2), then bump the original skill up to Good (+3). That would take three significant or major milestones to do. Or, you could wait, bank up three
skill points, buy a new
skill at Fair (+2), then bump the original
skill up to Good (+3). It just depends on whether you want to put new stuff on your sheet or not in the interim.
Zird gets a significant milestone after the end of a scenario. He gains an additional skill point.
Ryan looks at his character sheet, and decides he wants to take his Notice up from Fair (+2) to Good (+3). He knows that’s going to screw him up with the rules, though, so instead, he decides to take Resources at Average (+1)—the PCs have been on a few lucrative adventures lately, and he figures that’s his opportunity to create a sense of stable wealth. If he waits two more milestones, he’ll be able to put one of his Average skill at Fair (+2), and then bump his Notice up to Good (+3) like he originally wanted.
He also has the opportunity to take one of the benefits from a minor milestone. He has been in a lot of fights this game so far, and feels like his Not the Face! is getting old, considering the number of times his character has been hit in the face. He replaces it with Hit Me, and There Will Be Consequences, to reflect his changing attitude about the violence he encounters.
You might notice that this means that the further you get up the ladder, the harder it is to quickly advance your
skills . This is intentional—no one is going to be able to get to the point where they’re awesome at everything, all the time. That’s boring.
GMs, strictly enforcing how the
skill work can be a pain in the ass sometimes. If you and the players really want to be able to upgrade a certain
skill in a way that breaks the rules now, simply ask that the player spend the next few milestones “correcting” their
skill spread, rather than making them wait. It’s okay. We won’t come after you.
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