Assigning the Skill Levels of a Pirate
How to proceed?
Unlike Attributes, which generally do not or little change - attributes are characteristic of the Character - Skills may evolve while our friends Pirates get experience from the field or acquire new pieces of knowledge (see the section regarding the acquisition of Experience).
Apart from their evolutive nature - well generally cumulative, especially by younger Characters - Skills are quite similar to Attributes; be careful however, the Mastery Lavel of a Skill is in the range 0 to 10 and they are most of the time used in combination with an Attribute, more seldom by combining two of them together, so as to obtain a Mastery Level over a twenty-level scale for any undertaken action (see the chapter on the Gaming System for details). Quite logically, the more the Level in one Skill is high, the better the capability. The carefull reader will have remarked that the Level of a Skill can be equal to zero. It generally means that the Character cannot accomplish the actions which depend on it, well at least not without a significant Malus…
The Skills are thirty-eight, without listing the potential Specialities and, above all, they are spread to different sections on the Pirate's Sheet. Indeed, Zebra Island RPG is a game focused on the life of Pirates; thus, so that our friends young Pirates can find them more easily (not only for that, actually… see the chapter about Fame), they have been clustered in different groups, each corresponding to an important element of a Pirate's life: the Tavern, the Deck and the Hold (of a Ship), the Wardroom, the Harbour and the Desert Island (Oh, Lwa! One would like very much that that one doesn't exist! Unless some others haver there forgotten a shipment of Ol'Grog…). Two other sections are a little bit apart from that classification: Voodoo Crafts and, last but not least, Better-Off Ridiculed Than Hanged.
That clustering doesn't mean, for instance, that the Skills from « At the Tavern » will only be used in taverns, that would be too limitative! There are also pubs and also guest houses, etc. But one can argue that they will mostly be used, with profits and losses, in that king of place. For instance: one can well Spread Rumours or make a whole Mess-About outside of any tavern but isn't it so much faster and efficient when one is just « At the Tavern »?! Another precision is necessary at that point, before going on creating our brand-new young Pirate: the names chosen for the different Skills are not always that easy to understand when reading them the first time or they can actually cover a quite wide field of application. Our friend Reader will like then to refer to the section where those are described more completely for reference.
Lastly, it is advisable to read the paragraph regarding Specialities to understand the complet picture before rushing for the setting of the Skill Levels of one's Character.
Skill Levels at Character's Creation
First of all, initial Level for any Skill is at zero. Upon that, each Player becomes an initial total of points to allocate between the Skills she wants for her Character, the maximum Level being ten, as we already discussed.
That initial total is at (160 + 1d20), then modified as follows:
- – 2 for each Attribute at a Level smaller than or equal to five;
- + 2 for each Attribute at a Level greater than or equal to six.
The total, thus being modified, is to be allocated between the desired Skills according to the rules and the following chart (Points to be allocated to Specialities are to be taken from that total too – refer to the next paragraph for more information):
| Skill Level |
Cost for the Level: |
Thus, total cost to reach it (from zero): |
|||
| 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| 2 | 1 | 3 | |||
| 3 | 1 | 4 | |||
| 4 | 2 | 6 | |||
| 5 | 2 | 8 | |||
| 6 | 2 | 10 | |||
| 7 | 2 | 12 | |||
| 8 | 3 | 15 | |||
| 9 | 4 | 19 | |||
| 10 | 5 | 24 | |||
Principle for the choice of Skills for a Character: it is free but one should try to be consistent with the chosen Activity; one never saw yet a Gunner who would be completely unable to fire a Cannon!
One will see that, with the initial total, it is difficult for a new Character to reach Skill Levels beyond seven, which is quite normal if we take into consideration the young age of our future heroes! Unless they have a clearly identified hobby and they neglected other parts of their education for it…