Core: Abilities

Characters in Monomyth have Abilities; passive or active skills that inform how they interact with the world both in and out of combat.

Passive Abilities

Passive abilities are abilities that are always affecting the character. These abilities usually can't be turned on and off, however they can be disabled.

Some Passive abilities may give the player access to Active actions. For example, a Mage choosing a school of magic to study as an ability is passive, but the actions that they are granted can be used in combat as active Actions.

Active Abilities

Active abilities are used in Combat and Role Playing in order to directly affect the world around the character. All active abilities have an effect that impacts either the character using the ability, other characters, or the world around them.

All active abilities have a few characteristics in common:

• Range: The maximum distance that the ability can be used from.

• Targets: How many characters the ability can target. For area of effect abilities, the targets can list a size and shape for the area of effect.

• Duration: How long the effects of the ability can last. Some abilities happen instantly while others can continue for several turns in combat or for a significant length of time outside of combat.

• Description: The description of what the ability does. This includes both flavor text describing the effects of the ability as well as any mechanical details and rolling requirement(s) for the ability.

Ability Progression

Some abilities explicitly get better as characters gain level, doing additional damage or unlocking additional effects. These abilities will always list the level requirements for unlocking new features as well as what those new features do.

Other abilities are so powerful that low-level characters are unable to use them. Abilities may state that they cannot be learned until a character reaches a certain level. Characters cannot learn or use these abilities until they are the indicated level, unless they are granted these abilities by some other means.

Changing Abilities

When characters in Monomyth level up, they can change their chosen abilities. Characters leveling up in Monomyth can choose to switch one existing ability with a new ability of their choice as long as they meet the requirements to learn it. When this happens, they lose all bonuses given by the old ability and can no longer use its effects.

This can be done in addition to learning a new ability at levels where new ability slots are granted.

Bonus Abilities

Some character customization options, level progression milestones, or other events can grant Bonus Abilities. These abilities are added to the character automatically and do not count toward the maximum number of abilities owned.

Bonus abilities cannot be switched out during regular level progression or unlearned unless the effect that added them to a character states otherwise.