Glantri's Secret Crafts as Prestige Skills
by Sheldon MorrisOK, this is a new concept (far as I know) that I believe works very well for converting the Secret Crafts. Please note that everything is not yet nailed firmly down, and I hope that together we can tweak it to produce a better result. Also, this is only the base concept the we can build the individual crafts on but that shouldn't be very difficult. So, here is the concept for discussion and input:
Concept: Prestige Skills
Secret Craft (INT; trained only)
A Prestige Skill is a special Secret Craft skill discipline that has both greater cost and greater abilities. The costs, beyond just using up skill points, include dedicated experience, time and gold. A Prestige Skill has multiple uses (called abilities), which have prerequisites for each, must be researched individually, and practiced to be mastered. Successful usage of a Prestige Skill's ability requires a successful skill check.
A Prestige Skill's abilities are arranged into Circles which are similar to levels. The chart below indicates that a PrS ability belonging to the 2nd Circle requires an arcane spellcaster level of seven before a character can attempt to learn. All abilities of a Circle must be learned before you can be promoted to the next Circle within that order's Secret Craft.
The Prestige Skill Secret Crafts are Alchemy, Dracology, Elementalism, Illusionism, Necromancy, Cryptomancy, and Witchcraft. You can only belong to a single Secret Craft.
| Circle | Cycle | Cost | XP | Level | DC | # of uses |
| 1st | 14 | 500 | 500 | 5th | 15 | 3 a day |
| 2nd | 28 | 1000 | 700 | 7th | 18 | 2 a day |
| 3rd | 42 | 1500 | 900 | 9th | 22 | 1 a day |
| 4th | 56 | 2000 | 1200 | 12th | 26 | 1 a week |
| 5th | 70 | 2500 | 1500 | 15th | 30 | 1 a month |
Circle: A disciple's rank among his order, or the power rank of a Secret Craft's ability.
Cycle: The time needed (in days) to study one ability of a circle. At the end of a cycle, the PC gains the studied ability. A student may freely interrupt his studies, come back later and pick up where he left. [Possibility - To learn an ability, he must succeed at a certain roll (undetermined as yet)].
Cost: The fee in gold ducats for each day of studies. The gold is paid to the teacher, each day, or in advance for the full cycle.
Experience: The experience points a student must earn before being capable of using a new ability with the best chance of success. He must earn the indicated XPs, using his newly acquired ability, before starting a new study cycle. These XPs are 'used up' in the focus of learning and further understanding of the ability and are therefore not counted towards any character level advancement. These XPs represent an intense focus on mastering an ability at the expense of furthering his class
Level: This is the minimum arcane spellcaster level at which a disciple may start studying abilities of each Circle.
DC: This indicates the DC of each Circle's ability. Each time an ability is attempted, the PC must roll a Secret Craft skill check at the indicated DC or above or the attempt failed. If he has not accumulated the needed Experience yet, his skill check is penalised by -5.
# Uses: This defines the number of times within a specific period that a disciple can attempt to use an ability. A failed skill check counts as one usage. Each ability is tracked individually.