Skills and Skillsets

Under Maintenance

This feature is under active development and unreleased.

Skills

All skills work based on the Skill item and the related skill compendiums.

Skill Item and its types

Each actor holds their own list of skills available to them with their own set of skill items for base values.

However, skill items come in three flavors of 'skill':

• skill: The default type describes a individual skill, with all necessary values. This item type is fully functional on its own.
• group: A skill group implements the group rules of 5th edition. It provides a list of skills with a shared and connected rating. When added to an actor, skills listed must exist in the configured Skills Compendium
• set: A set of skills and skill groups, each with a rating, that in combination describe what an actor can do. All skills listed must exist in the configured Skills Compendium, while all skill groups must exist in the configured Skill Group Compendium. Both skills and groups will be copied from that compendium onto the actor when skill set is dropped on an actor.

Once added onto an actor skill groups and skillsets will be resolved into individual skill items. These will in turn be shown on actor system data under `system.skills` based on skill categories. There Active Effect changes can affect all values, without altering the skill item.

Skills and actor creation

When an actor of any type is created, the system checks the configured Skillset Compendium for a skillset with a name matching the type of the new actor. Skills and skill groups defined within it, will be copied onto the actor and are available to use.

Configuration

The different types of skill items are the main configuration that must be set. All else follows from that.

Skills

Any skill allows full configuration of what values are used when it's tested. This includes attribute, limit and opposing test.

Knowledge and language skills have their own set fields to configure, which will affect where on the actor sheet they are shown.

The name of the skill is special:

• By default it contains the skill name as in English. When using the system in any other language that english name is used for translation and must match the original name exactly. A custom skill name can be used but won't be translated.
• The name is used as the `system.skills.active` key (same for language and knowledge) and will be transformed to be used as such. Special characters will be removed to do so. International alphabet is supported (tested with South Korean).

Skill Groups

A skill group allows to define a set of skill names with a combined rating. The skill name is taken from the skill compendium.

Once dropped or created on an actor, skills within the group won't allow their individual ratings to be changed and use the group rating for any tests made.

Skillsets

A skill set allows to define a list of skills, each with a rating and a list of specializations, as well as a list of groups, each with a rating to be applied to an actor. Only a single skill set can be used per actor and skills from another skill set will be removed when doing so.

NOTE: With 0.33.0 there is no centralized synchronization of skill sets and actors using that skill set. Once you've added a set to an actor, that state will be copied. Any changes made on the original set, will not affect actors using that set.

Custom skills

The skill system is designed in a way to allow as much customizability as possible, without introducing too much complexity into the 5th edition system.

The system provides you with three skill compendiums:

• Skills: contains all skills as RAW
• Groups: contains all skill groups as RAW
• Skillsets: contains a skillset for each actor type, used to retrieve skills for them when creating a new actor

You shouldn't edit these compendiums or items within it, as each system update will overwrite changes made.

All three compendiums can be changed to a personal one, allowing a different set of skills, groups and skillsets. While you should provide each actor type with a skillset (named to match their type), you don't have to. If no matching skillset is found, new actors will start out without any skills on them.