Mastery & Professions

A concept you will encounter often is the idea of Mastery. Mastery is levels – instead of saying what level are you, you will give your degree of mastery. Degrees are collections of levels, because the darn game uses the word “Level” for far too many things.

Each Degree includes several Levels, and a level still reflects your experience and improvement. There are distinct kinds of Degrees according to different factors in play. Mastery is about knowledge and the world around you. Discipline is about your personal growth and the ability you have to deal with it. Difficulty is about how hard something is to do. Complexity is about how challenging and complicated magic is.

Mastery is the primary form of ranks and has an impact on many things you do.

Discipline is used when your effort results in a development for you, on your terms.

Spells are grouped by complexity of the spell and difficulty in “containing” it.

Degree of Ability		Degrees of Mastery		Degrees of Discipline		Degrees of Complexity
Tier 1	1 to 4	Novice	1 to 4	Novice	1 to 5	Simple	Cantrips/0th to 1st Level
Tier 2	5 to 7	Yeoman	5 to 8	Competent	6 to 10	Rudimentary	2nd to 3rd Level
Tier 3	8 to 11	Adept	9 to 12	Experienced	11 to 15	Intermediate	4th to 5th Level
Tier 4	12 to 15	Master	13 to 16	Expert	16 to 20	Advanced	6th to 7th Level
Tier 5	16 to 20	Grand Master	17 to 20			Expert	8th to 9th Level
Tier 6	21 to 25
Tier 7	26 to 30

Degree of Ability reflects the distinct tiers of capability of a person based on an ability score. This applies to Primary, Derived, and Societal Scores. The greater your mastery in, say, Renown, the more influence and power one has within the guild, in society, in your profession, leading to better and more choice assignments.

Degrees of Mastery play a role throughout the character development process and in navigating the world as you play. One degree of mastery is awarded every four levels. Mastery is how you navigate the world around you on the world’s terms. Degrees of Mastery are like the Tiers of Play you may be familiar with from the Player’s Handbook. They are the way the rules of the world affect you.

Degree of skill influences NPCs – non-player characters – heavily, but also influences how you engage with them and what new skills and abilities you gain as you rise in levels.

Degrees of Discipline are akin to the points and places where you push yourself to a greater point, crossing and passing an undefined sense of your ability to challenge the entirety of the world. This is your personal ability to navigate the broader world, on your own terms. They are, then, more about Agency. One degree of discipline is awarded every five levels. You gain Ability Score improvements according to Degrees of Discipline.

Degrees of Complexity are ways of defining how challenging and involved a spell is, and how much effort must go into the knowledge behind that spell, the foundations, and approaches to creating it. Those who put the greatest amount of time and effort into mastering the intricate mental whorls and whirls of highly complex spells do not have a lot of time to devote to other efforts and may often spend hours concentrating and doing little else, while those who push through in other areas may not be able to fully grasp the intricacies of a complex spell but could easily manage a rudimentary one and struggle only a bit with an intermediate one.

In practice, people will refer to themselves and others using titles of mastery, and each degree of Mastery has impact on the classes and play. So, a 17^th level Wizard is referred to as a Grand Master Wizard, and a 7^th level Bard is a Yeoman Bard, while a 10^th level Warrior is an Adept Warrior.

Wyrlde also uses mastery to determine degree of challenge and difficulty. Mastery gives us both a way to talk about characters in game, and a way to measure their ability to handle and deal with different threats and challenges that come along. Mastery also gives us a point of reference within the inspirations for Wyrlde, and so brings us closer to the goals of the setting.

Wyrlde has two ways of moving forward, with the one used dependent on your DM. The first is a traditional use of Experience Points. The last is a slightly more complex milestone point system, which is the default used in the Wyrlde campaign.

Points in both forms are awarded at the end of each session if any point has been gained, normally – but if you pause in combat, they may wait until later.

As your character goes on adventures and overcomes challenges, he or she gains experience, and advances in capability. This advancement is called gaining a level. When your character gains a level, their profession grants additional features, as detailed in the profession description.

Some of these features allow you to increase your ability scores, increasing your choice of score by 1 or 2 points, because you gain 2 points each time and can spend them how you see fit. In addition, every character’s proficiency bonus increases at certain levels.

Each time you gain a level, you gain 1 additional Hit Die. Roll that Hit Die, add your Constitution modifier to the roll, and add the total to your hit point maximum. Alternatively, you can use the fixed value shown in your class entry, which is the average result of the die roll (rounded up).

When your Constitution modifier increases by 1, your hit point maximum increases by 1 for each level you have attained. For example, if your 7th-level fighter has a Constitution score of 17; then when he reaches 8th level, he increases his Constitution score. He now gains additional hit points.

Different Aspects have different degrees of Mastery. The bulk of them follow the normative path explained. Some follow different paths, but all have a particular way of going about it and none have any effect beyond when you get certain things.

Leveling Table

Level	Mastery	XP	MS	PB	Skill	Forte	ASI	Maxims	Precepts	Mysteries	Orders	Esoterica
1	Novice	—	0	0		Yes				Simple	First
2		2,000	3	0	Yes							Yes
3		5,000	4	0			Yes		Yes
4		9,000	5	+1				Yes		Rudiments
5	Yeoman / Doyen	14,000	6	+1		Yes					Second
6		20,000	8	+1	Yes							Yes
7		28,000	10	+1			Yes		Yes
8		38,000	12	+2				Yes		Medial
9	Adept	50,000	14	+2		Yes					Third
10		64,000	16	+2	Yes							Yes
11		80,000	18	+2			Yes		Yes
12		98,000	20	+3				Yes		Advanced
13	Master	118,000	22	+3		Yes					Fourth
14		140,000	24	+3	Yes							Yes
15		162,000	26	+3			Yes		Yes
16		188,000	28	+4				Yes		Expert
17	Grand Master	216,000	30	+4		Yes					Fifth
18		246,000	32	+4	Yes							Yes
19		278,000	34	+4			Yes		Yes
20		312,000	36	+5				Yes

Improving Mastery (Leveling up)

Mastery requires a Rite of Mastery to be conferred at each major stage, within which there are minor stages, bits and pieces of improvement insight.

This requires that one goes to a Master of their profession and request a Rite of Mastery be performed. The Adventurer’s Guild often has Clerics on retainer for this. For those who scorn the Powers, the rite is performed by the Masters of the Guild. Higher level Adventurers may do it for each other.

The first time this rite is done, it is to move from an Apprentice to a Novice.

Leveling up in between those is more simply a matter of acquiring more experience. So, to go from 1^st to 2^nd level is merely a matter of getting enough experience in. It gets much harder to level up at each Degree of Mastery, and one of the reasons that the Milestone point system is favored is its effective way of accounting for that.

But for the Degrees of Mastery, you cannot move up until you have achieved both the requisite experience and the had the Rite of Mastery performed.

Thereafter, as you earn enough experience for each degree of Mastery, you must do it again for Yeoman, Adept, Master, and finally Grand Master degrees of mastery.

Rites of Mastery

The Rite of Mastery is performed either by your Guild or by the Faith.

Rites of Mastery require the normal sacred ritual stuff: A coven plus at least one Focal, consecrated ground, an altar, a day of fasting prior, and the ritual takes 12 hours to perform.

The material components are six carved ivory (or other precious material) forms, about three quarters of inch in diameter each, with four, six, eight, ten, twelve, and twenty sides respectively. They are re-usable until you become a Grand Master; then they are consumed to ash.

The typical cost is a donation of money and some sort of quest or favor to those performing the rite, often represented by either Hero Points or Milestone points.

Experience Points and Milestone Points do not have a direct connection. Experience points are awarded on the basis of encounters and challenges overcome; Milestone points are awarded for accomplishing something germane to the story of the group.

The table gives the amount of points needed to move up to that particular level for each case. So, to move from 9^th to 10^th level requires 130,000 experience points, or 13 milestone points. After each level, the total is reset to zero. Altogether, it takes 270 Milestone points and right around 3.7 million experience points to reach 20^th level.

Advancement is slightly faster using milestones but does require having a campaign where there are defined milestones, and thus a story that must be advanced.

Hero Points are worth ₁/^10th of a Milestone points – 10 Hero Points equals one milestone if the DM is willing to accept heroic actions as currency for advancement of story.

Multiclassing

Professions are a fundamental part of the game, and where the most fun can sometimes be had. It should be noted that when it comes to professions, multi-class characters are very uncommon among those few who go wandering out in the world. They do exist; however, one cannot start out multiclassed, even if making a new character at a higher level.

Multiclassing must be done in-game, and arise out of the needs, desires, or role playing involved in the story. Pretext counts, so do not think it is going to be hard, just be aware that part of the character’s story is why they chose to multiclass, and what it was that drove them to do so, and that it must happen during a session It is something your roleplay the basis for. Multiclassing is changing your mind about the direction of your life and starting over in earning respect and mastery, rediscovering things about yourself that you wanted to know. Multiclassing is a journey to find yourself.

To change a profession, you must have at least a score of 13 in all 3 primary abilities of both the profession you are leaving and the profession you are entering, and you cannot cross Affinity unless you already have the ability to do that as a Specialty (meaning you are already at least a 9^th Level Adept in your original profession).

You will need to apprentice under a master, typically for a couple years at minimum, and earn their passing you on to be a Novice in that class. Within the Adventurer’s Guild, there are many Masters who understand that making a living while apprenticeship requires going out, so they often will have you in cycles. You cannot level up to 1st level until you reach Novice.

During this time, you do not gain any additional growth in your original class, and often you may find yourself in trouble. Clerics may find themselves bereft of spells because they have told their Power that they are no longer serving them, and They take that poorly. Paladins will lose many of their abilities for breaking their oaths. Rangers may find the natural world does not respond as well or possibly with hostility. Nomads may no longer feel the Pale respond to their desire.

Sometimes some skills and abilities are transferable, but it is still very rare. Clerics may no longer be able to cast spells or may lose the ability to turn undead. They will still have the ability to wear armor if they gained such from their training for their deity, but they will still suffer from the armor reductions to rolls.

Once you reach Novice in your new class, you will be a 1st level character for purposes of abilities within that class, but your combined level as a character will still be your actual level. A 3^rd Level Cleric/ 7^th level Paladin is a 10^th level character. You will not gain any additional levels in your old class, though you may have access to some of the abilities there. Your DM will have final say over what abilities are lost or gained.

Note that the inability to cross Affinity does mean that a Wizard cannot become a Cleric. That a Bard cannot become a Paladin. This is why one of the Mysteries exists – someone has wanted to, and so found a way, and they keep that secret to themselves and the rare chosen few.

To fully understand this, it should be understood that while one can, actually, switch classes to those, they will not have access to the magical spell casting of that class until they are at least 9^th level, and then only if they take the Mystery that allows crossing affinity, which could cost them the ability to deeper mysteries later.

All of this severely limits the ways in which someone can multiclass over and above the interruption to their lives to learn it, but does not actually stop anyone from doing it, and sometimes the most interesting stories can be of the Wizard who became a Cleric and could not cast spells until they were granted a boon by their Power.

Or a witch who one day made a deal and became an ikon – which, really, is like a kind of cleric to my eyes. I mean, I know Arabesque isn’t exactly what I would call devout, but she seems to get by. And you know, those Powers That Be, they have a strange habit of breaking their own rules if someone is deserving of it.

Lastly, there is a certain kind of futility to multiclassing, as the system as a whole allows for a character to use the Aspects of Disciplines, Orders, Mysteries, Veiled Knowledge, and Esoterica to craft a unique character that in other worlds may not be possible. It is only the Fortes of the Professions that do not cross those lines, and often those are the things sacrificed by attempting to multi-class.