The capabilities of your character are multifaceted, drawing from various aspects of their background, innate abilities, and learned skills. Three primary factors contribute to a character's overall competence: hours of practice, natural talent, and honed instincts.

The time and effort a character has invested in training and perfecting their skills play a crucial role in determining their capabilities. This is represented by training ranks invested in a skill.

Some characters possess an innate aptitude for certain skills or abilities, granting them an advantage over others who might have to work harder to achieve the same level of proficiency. This natural talent can be a result of genetic predisposition, unique physical attributes, or simply an inherent affinity for a particular skill, and it is represented by your attributes.

Over time, characters develop an intuitive sense for how to react in various situations, especially those related to their area of expertise. This instinctual understanding allows them to make split-second decisions and react more effectively in the heat of the moment. As characters gain more experience, their instincts become more finely tuned, enabling them to perform at a higher level and adapt to new challenges more quickly. This is represented in game as skill improvements, or as traits that directly improve skills.

The combination of these three factors helps determine which actions are easy for a character to perform and which require significant training or experience to even attempt. By considering a character's practice, talent, and instincts, players can better understand their character's strengths and weaknesses, making informed decisions about how to develop their abilities and tackle the challenges they face throughout their adventures.

Over the course of your character's creation, and during play, you will often be given the chance to improve the training of a skill. This is represented by increasing that skill's training ranks. You will gain one training rank every level by default, though some classes may grant additional training ranks.

During character creation, no skill can receive more than two training ranks. If you are directed to improve a skill that already has two training ranks, you may not improve that skill. Instead, choose any other skill you wish, and improve that skill instead. If the skill that you were directed to improve comes from a pool of choices, you must choose a different skill from that pool, if possible.

After character creation, the maximum number of ranks that any one skill may have is given in the level table. Whenever you are directed to increase a skill, you may not improve that skill past the maximum number of ranks that you can have as dictated by your level. If directed to improve a skill past that level, you may instead improve any other skill.

If you have even a single rank in a skill, that skill is said to be Trained. If you do not have any ranks in a skill, that skill is said to be Untrained.

Every skill will have a skill bonus. This is added to the dice when you are asked to make a skill check. A skill's bonus will be the total of the following:

• The skill's training ranks;
• The skill's key attribute;
• Any specific bonuses granted by a class or feature.

Many rules allow the use of a skill as a defence or as a target number. To determine a skill's target number (TN), add 10 to your skill's total bonus.

To make a skill check, roll 2d10 and add your skill bonus. Then compare the total to your target number.

If you rolled equal to or higher than the target number, then your roll is a success.

If you rolled less than the target number, then your roll is a failure.

A special case for skill checks are attack rolls. If a rule calls specifically for an attack roll, then it refers to a skill check, made with a weapon skill, against a target's defence. Rather than success or failure, they will be listed as hit or miss. Other than that, they are just a skill check.

As a rule of thumb, if you are directed to roll a skill check, and that skill is Untrained, then you have slight on that check.

An action that states that its skill check must be made Trained will automatically fail if you do not have the skill Trained.

An action that states that its skill check may be made Untrained does not impose slight on the skill check when you roll it Untrained.