General Abilities and Caste Tiers

[dkjordan]

Greetings
I am a bit confsued as to how the progression for a caste tier and/or General Ability works. I am looking at the "Quick Reference Sheet"/GM Screen and see the level progression for PC's. Now, my questions are...

• Is the ability column the correct column needed to be used to progress in tiers or general abilities?
  
  
• At 1st level it looks like I receive 2 ability choices (per the GM reference screen), so does that mean I can choose 2 tiers of my caste and or 2 general abilities instead of tiers?
  
  
• If indeed the Ability column is the one to be used to progress, then that would mean at second level I receive another ability that will allow me to choose yet another tier or General Ability, correct?
  
  
• I see that a PC can dual caste, but say a PC wants to learn from both sides of their tier structure...are they limited on progression there? I know that when a PC Dual Castes they may not progress past tier 3, but I wanted to know that say for instance (Bob the Assassin decided to go down the Apothecary route, but also liked the Silent Killer tier as well...at 1st level Bob has 2 ability choices he can make...does that mean he could choose 1 of each tier? Or perhaps 1 level in Apothecary and 1 General Ability, like say "Shield Proficiency", Bob could do that correct?
  

Anyway, that's all for now...thanks for the help.

Dave Jordan

[Will Carson]

So acording to progression you get 2 abilities @ lvl 1 +1 @ lvl 2 +1 per 2 levels and 1 at lvl 15.
So at level 6 you should have 5 abilities.
This can be any combination of caste tier and general abilities as long as you meet the prereqs. So if you want the 1st tier of one of the caste lines, and the 4th tier of the other line of that same caste and 1 general ability. Then you would just be able to get the first tier in both lines because the only prereq is being that caste, then you would have to get each of the abilities up to the 4th in the 2nd tier (as each ability has the prereq if the tier below it.) and as long as you meet what ever prereqs of your general ability, if there are any, then you are good to go.

For Dual Casting you choose your primary caste at 1st level. This is what all your skills, hp and stuff are based off of. You can progress down either or both of the ability lines. Then once you have decided you want to add a 2nd caste, as long as you are not past your 3rd tier in either of your current lines, you may choose a 2nd caste and start gaining skills in either or both of the lines in that caste as well. And you haven't switched castes so you when you gain new abilities you can choose them from any of the four lines you have available.

Hopefully that answers all the questions you have on that. If not, I can clarify further.

On a side note, I did not like the dual caste system at first, but now that I have made a few dual caste characters I find I love the fun combinations you can make with the system.