A skill is how characters describe and improve the actions they take. The skills a player chooses to develop show what is important to them and how they wish to play Mezia RPG. There are eight skills available to all player characters:
| Cast | Commune | Converse | Explore |
| Fight | Meditate | React | Tinker |
Using Skills
Skills are used almost every time a player rolls the dice. This is called a Skill roll. A Skill roll happens whenever there is some obstacle a character wishes to overcome that is primarily skill-based (as opposed to luck-based). The GM describes the situation and players decide which skill they would like to use. The GM will set the difficulty and ask the player to roll. Some situations may allow one PC to make a Skill roll for the whole party, others require everyone to make their own Skill roll.
Skill Points
Skills provide a player with skill points that can be used to reduce the difficulty of a single Skill roll. Using a skill point before rolling reduces the difficulty by 3, and using a skill point after rolling reduces the difficulty by 1. Skill points can't be used to reduce the difficulty of a roll by more than 6.
Each skill provides one skill point for each rank of that skill. Skill points are all recovered during a full rest, and 1 point in each skill is recovered during a short rest. A player can also spend 1 XP to recover all their skill points in a single skill.
Perks
Perks are benefits that can make specific actions easier permanently or improve the effectiveness of skill points. A character may acquire a perk when they have a sufficiently highly ranked skill (or skills) and spend the XP for the perk.
Improving Skills
Skills are defined by their rank: Unskilled, Novice, Amateur, Expert, Master, or Grandmaster. All characters are able to perform any skill at the unskilled level and can improve their rank in any skill.
Skills can only be improved during downtime. A character must meet two criteria to improve a skill:
- Spend enough XP to reach the next rank
- Spend enough time with a mentor or appropriate training material
The interaction and XP requirements change depending on which rank a character is trying to reach:
| Transition | XP | Interaction | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unskilled | → | Novice | 1 | 1 week with mentor or 2 weeks with training material |
| Novice | → | Amateur | 5 | 1 month with Amateur mentor or 2 months with training material |
| Amateur | → | Expert | 20 | 6 months with Expert mentor or 1 year with training material |
| Expert | → | Master | 50 | 2 years with Master mentor or 4 years with training material |
| Master | → | Grandmaster | 100 | 8 years with Grandmaster mentor or 16 years with training material |
Since the time requirements are quite high, there are three recommended methods for playing them out:
- Have all characters in the party work on their own skills simultaneously (best for shorter improvements)
- Have the character that is training disappear for a few sessions (best if the player will also be unavailable for some time)
- Have the player use a different temporary character while their main character is training (best if there is urgency for both moving the plot forward and improving a skill)