Skill points are essentially a unit of currency allotted to a character at startup and again with every experience level they gain to be used in the purchase of skills. Skill points can be used in the “purchase” of new skills or increasing the degree of skill in skills they already possess.

Each character is allotted ten skill points to start with and gains three more skill points as they level up. (This is also mentioned in the Experience Levels section.) Skill points can be used to add a new skill or they can be used to level up a particular skill. To avoid confusion, we call these skill levels “degrees”.

Skill degrees simulate how proficient a character is in a certain skill or group of skills. Skill degrees are determined based on the number of dice of a particular skill, be it attack skill, defense skill, or attribute. It is assumed that one die in a learned skill is equal to a first degree proficiency in that skill. Degrees of proficiency become progressively harder to attain, so a second degree of proficiency is one die + two dice or proficiency or three dice. That isn't to say that a character can't have two dice toward a particular skill, but they are still only considered first degree proficient. This simple table shows the first several degrees of proficiency and how they are calculated, but essentially the degrees never actually end.

+ Degree of Proficiency + Dice Required + Calculation +

Becoming proficient in a skill (first degree) costs one skill point. It's purchased in exactly the same way one might purchase a sword or a backpack, just using skill points rather than currency. There's generally no learning curve involved unless the players and the GM agree to such, but there are no actual Dice Mob rules in place to govern such, and it is generally discouraged as it makes things more complex than it needs to be.

Advancing from first degree to second degree costs two skill points. Moving from second to third, three points. The number of points a degree costs are equal to the number of the degree. But obviously you can't just buy the third degree of a skill without buying the ones below it, so the degree from non-proficient to some degree of proficiency is actually the sum of the degree desired plus all the degrees below it.

For example, if you wanted to create a new character who is already a second degree swordfighter, you would add the degrees together (one plus two equals three). That means three of a character’s initial ten skill points have gone towards swordfighting. A fourth degree swordfighter would be four plus three plus two plus one or ten skill points, which is all of the points generally available to a new character.

Initial degrees are fairly easy to obtain. Moving into higher degrees of proficiency, a fifth degree swordsman or a seventh degree healer, requires a lot of skill points.

So why would someone want to spend two points moving from a first degree swordfighter to a second degree swordfighter rather than learning two new skills? For multiple reasons. First each degree of skill adds an additional two dice. A proficient (first degree) character generally rolls four dice. Second degree, six dice. Third degree, eight dice. And so forth. (As a rule of thumb, it’s “two for trying” and two for each degree of proficiency.) And that doesn’t even count the sword itself. But that’s not all. Additional degrees also allow characters to do things they couldn’t do as lower degrees. But we’ll discuss that more in other sections.