Advancing Along Your Path
Advancement through the ranks in a Path is not required, but it is rewarded. Although each character can develop new powers according to their keywords without gaining a rank, advancement allows you to increase a character’s Cinder pool and gain access to more keyword slots and abilities. For this, we have the advancement prompts.
The prompts are creative challenges. There is no one correct way to complete them, you find out how it would work for your character and use the dice to play it out. In order to fulfill a prompt, a character must utilize the Strike & Cinder system. This means that although ranking up and using the dice system is entirely optional, in order to gain ranks, you must use the dice system.
There are four different types of requirements: events, ability instances, encounters, and thread prompts. The first, ability instances, are uses of the dice system in a post (Strike or Cinder, for any occasion). There can be multiples of these per thread and each one can be counted towards the requirements, but they cannot be twice for ranking up.
The events and encounters are participation in admin or player-run events, or an encounter with a mod-requested monster. Success or victory is not required, just participation and engagement.
Thread prompts, are as the name implies - they are meant to be utilized in a thread, either as a starter or open or something that happens midway through a thread.
Prompts and ability instances can be planned or spontaneous, whichever works for your storytelling. The important thing is that your character has these experiences and the players have fun exploring their characters in these scenarios.
For a thread to count towards a requirement, it must be at least 10 posts, with at least 5 posts dedicated to the requirement if it is a thread prompt.
The prompts do not need to be fulfilled in the listed order, but once you use a thread for Advancement, you cannot use it again. Below is a list of when threads can or can't be used.
Event: Must be listed, but can be used again in Ability Instances and Encounters or Thread Prompts.
Ability Instance: Counts times an ability, Keyword, or particular dice roll is used in threads. The thread can be used for other Advancements (Event and Encounter or Thread Prompts), but only once.
Encounter: A single Encounter thread. If a thread is used for this, it cannot be used for a thread prompt.
Thread Prompt: A single thread fulfilling a specified prompt. If a thread is used for this, it cannot be used for an Encounter.
Mundane Skills: Similarly to Path Advancement, threads used for the various prompts to gain Mundane skills can only be used once, but they can be used if they've been used for Path Advancement, as the two are separate rankings. The Strike instances across those threads can be collated together, however.
Circlebreaker, Mischance, Dissonant, Sanguine, Reden, Ashen, Echo
Conjuror, Woe, Host, Touched, Hyrd, Duskborn, Shadow
None
Thaumaturge, Dolor, Imposter, Aberrant, Deor, Charnel, Phantasm
Participate in 2 Player-Run or Site Events
Augur, Misery, Invoker, Herald, Mundian, Reaver, Spectre
Participate in 3 Player-Run or Site Events
Magus, Scourge, Steward, Scion, Bewarian, Revenant, Mane
Coming Soon
Archmage, Calamity, Covenant, Apotheosis, Ferhweard, Cenotite, Eidolon
Coming Soon
Training mundane skills is fairly straightforward. Pick the Brawler, Melee Weapons, or Ballistic skills and show us your character working on the skill. The threads must make good use of the skill, so a happenstance use of a knife does not count.
You are can rank these up alongside each other, rather than focusing on one at a time. The tracks repeat for all three Mundane Skills, while the Unranked Skills can only be earned once.
Threads used from advancing along your Path can be reused for fulfilling the requirements for Mundane Skills, but you cannot repeat threads between Mundane advancements.
Players are permitted and encouraged to frame ranking up in different ways since it is an OOC framework and ranks do not exist in-game. For the characters, their growth will seem gradual and not everyone will experience it the same way. So, while the default is discovering new powers as the character gains experience, some players may like to try a different approach for their character concept.
This can include the character “possessing” all the abilities they will eventually obtain, but narratively being blocked off from utilizing them. This could be a mental block, a magic block, or anything else you might want to use for your storytelling.
Mechanically, these characters function the same way as a character who is discovering new powers as they advance. If you do not have the keyword, you cannot utilize the powers.
These are likely to change in playtesting and even have the potential to become more difficult as we work on balance. If a character has fulfilled previous requirements and ranked up, then they can expect to be grandfathered in. If they are two or fewer requirements away from ranking up, then they can also expect to be grandfathered in via previous requirements.
As always, feedback is welcome, as we're always looking to improve the fun and intrigue of the game. Thank you!