Occupational Skills (Second Edition) (2002)

User Summary: The basic rules of character creation in the Lorien Trust Role-Playing system give each player a fixed number of points to spend on Character Skills (CS) that allow their character to perform various actions. But the amount of CS is fixed so that no individual character can do everything (this encourages player co-operation). In order to provide a mechanism for character development, there are an additional set of abilities called Occupational Skills (OS).

For each event that a player attends, they are awarded a number of Occupational Skill Points (OSPs). The large events run by Merlinroute Ltd themselves give more OSPs (up to 10 per event) compared to the smaller weekend events run by other groups (1 OSP per event) to encourage players to spend their money directly with Merlinroute Ltd. OSPs can then be spent in order to buy OS.

Each OS has a minimum rank that a character must have in order to learn the skill, and a cost of 10 or more OSPs. The cost varies depending on whether the skill is learnt through a Guild (cheapest), Faction, or self-taught (most expensive). Additionally the higher level OS can only be learnt through Guilds (or just through Guilds and Factions), and some have further restrictions. Some OS form skill ladders, where you must learn a skills in turn. There are additional restrictions (such as a maximum of 12 OS per character) intended to prevent very old characters from unbalancing the system.

The range of abilities that OS can offer varies widely. Typical examples include (but are not limited to):

• Enhancements to the character's damage calls with certain weapons.
• Making worn armour more effective.
• Granting immunity to particular spells or effects.
• Giving access to additional spell lists.
• Giving the character more power cards enabling them to cast more spells.
• Additional loresheets that provide specialist information exclusive to those characters with that OS.
• Crafting skills that allow characters to create a limited number of items with additional powers.

So these generally provide some degree of advantage for experienced players (that is, repeat customers) without unbalancing the game completely. A starting character can still gain a comparative advantage over an experienced character in particular fields through selecting different CS.