Greetings,

Welcome to your (now apparently weekly) Combat Master report! In today's episode, we've got another character sheet based reveal, a welcome board to our new team members, a shoutout to the most prolific Aspect writer so far, and a reminder about my competition from last week! As before, we'll save the character sheet reveal for last, since I know it's what you're all dying to read about. ;)

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New team members

I'd like to welcome Alaris, Wun, and Atyiru to the character sheet team! I'll be putting them to work in the Description Mines soon, writing up countless paragraphs for consumption by eager Brotherhood members. Thank you for your sacrifices, you three, you will be remembered. At least by me. :)

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Aspect competition overview and update

In case you missed it, I've got a mini competition going on that was announced in last week's report. For details, see that report, as well as http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/competition.php?id=6888. So far I have eight entries from a variety of Houses and Clans, so get your entries in quick! Also, in the department of "holy crap he did a lot of work," Chaos submitted some four pages worth of Aspects in order to provide other DB members with plenty of options in the future. Remember that even if only your "best" submission counts for the competition, you CAN submit more than one! All submissions should be emailed to me, include your ID line and PIN, and are due by the end of June 28th.

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Skills in our new system

...okay, not at all like that, but in the Fate system, sometimes the skill system is referred to as a "pyramid." ;)

As many of you have now read or seen, the new system has no list of attributes in the sense we are used to. Indeed, your primary character descriptors come from two areas: Aspects and Skills. Last week, we covered Aspects, and this week, we'll cover Skills. Skills represent the physical and mental abilities, outside of the Force, that make a Dark Brotherhood member beyond the average. However, members without any points in a Skill are still considered able to use that Skill, but with barely even a simple understanding of it (Note: There are exceptions to this, such as lightsaber forms, languages, and the like). The exact circumstances of the Skill usage must be properly explained in the fiction. For instance, any member is capable of shooting a blaster even without Skill points in a Skill related to that weapon. But ask that character to hit a target several meters away, and they better have at least some skill points and the further way the target is, and the smaller it is, the more points that character would need to hit his or her target. While not included in the character sheets itself, this essentially means that every character has every Skill at a level of +0, or …Mediocre. When matching skills either directly (e.g., in lightsaber combat with forms) or through Skills that can oppose another Skill or Ability (e.g., Resolve against the Force Power Mind Trick), the higher value should be considered to be the Skill or Ability that "wins" in that particular case, but only if all else is equal. Good judging should allow for Skills of slightly lower level to have a chance in combat provided there are other advantages present.

So how does skill advancement work? In order to place a Skill at a particular level, that skill must be supported by Skills at all levels directly beneath it. A character cannot have more skills at a given rank than they have Skills at the rank directly below it. If we return for a moment to a screenshot from Raken's report, we can see how this works in practical terms.

While many of these skill names and levels are placeholders, the skill ladder example is illustrated quite well. Should this member wish to give his character an additional "Focused" skill, he or she would also need to first add a Basic, an Average, and a Trained skill. A member with enough unspent Skill points can always add additional Basic skills, though the current sheet has a cap on that total number. This system forces members to diversify characters, at least a little, beyond just combat. Skills cost as many points as the + modifier shown in parentheses for the level the Skill will fill on the character sheet. Members may only place Skills or Force Powers in a tier that has been unlocked by reaching the class tied to that level: Expert (+6) require the Class of Grand Master, Specialized (+5) require the class of Elder, Focused Skills require the class of Equite, Skilled requires Guardian and above, while the first two levels are both accessible even to the newest of members. The total number of Skill points available to spend are based on the rank and Order of the member.

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TL;DR:

-Welcome to Alaris, Atyiru, and Wun to the character sheet team!
-Chaos made a shit ton of Aspects; will you?
-Skills are cool, and give new opportunities for members to customize their characters!

As usual, feel free to post questions or comments here, or email me!

~Mav