Non-Weapon Proficiencies

Non Weapon Proficiencies.

Non Weapon Proficiencies are a significant portion of the Players Game Life.  A good game experience is due in part to a vast resource of skills available to the Player that do not just include fighting or spell casting, and they are essential in a game that attempts to be something other than dungeon crawl, or Hack and Slash.  

When understanding the NWP overhaul to The Northern Province, it is important to separate NWPs from WPs completely.  To look at the Non-Combat life and game as more of a conversational aspect.  For instance, Imagine if you never had to roll for combat, you talked it out and then the DM determined if you hit, and how much damage you did?  That would seem wrong on a simple and fundamental level.

With NWP’s, there is another whole life for the character available, that is governed by roleplay, some die rolling, Critical Checks, and Story woven into a library of skills and abilities.

With that in mind, each character will have dozens of slots available for NWP’s, and each NWP will require multiple slots and sometimes other special requirements.

Counters will be used in some instances, and sometimes, the ability to have a specific NWP may be taken away entirely, as in the case of a person attempting a dangerous ford of a river, and trying to swim and failing with a 20 on their check.  They drown, or almost drown and are rescued.  That person is now unable to swim and afraid of rivers.  They receive a tally of 5 counters that can be removed as the character moves through their life, confronting the fear on much smaller scales, to remove the counters and be in a position again to actually face their fear of crossing rough waters.  When they try again, they roll a 20 again, and drown, but are revived by their party, and after that the Player must adopt a permanent fear and a strong aversion to water.

        Similarly, a player is attempting to tie up a bandit that was defeated and on their first roll of rope use, they get a 1.  This makes them able to bind people quickly and efficiently and gives the bound entity penalties when trying to get out of the knots.  It also gives the player a permanent bonus to binding hands of +2 on their role.

        It is also important to have a person that could fight and kill a giant with their bare hands, not have to choose between riding a horse, and swimming.

        There will be many NWP’s that arise during a campaign, and opportunities to pick up the skills without having to make significant, character-arch sacrificing decisions about whether to pick up the Whistling language of the Halfling hunters of the bog, or learning how to treat arrow wounds, should not be a constant consideration.

        For this reason a character will start with several free NWP’s in their back ground.  They will also have from 15-20 NWP points that they can allocate, at character generation, with an additional 15-20 points that are awaiting allocation.

        As much relies on situation and opportunity, there may be no opportunity for a player to learn rope use after the game begins, and until they meet someone who is willing and able to teach them a few things, and they have the time, they will not be able to add points to the NWP.

        Characters also gain XP for successfully using an NWP.

To use NWP’s correctly in the Northern Province, the guide in the players handbook must be discarded.

        To start, a player adds up all their attributes and divides them by 6 discarding percentages.  This gives them the number of points they can use towards NWPs at Character Generation.  NWP points at this stage, cannot be saved. 

         The next stage of NWP collection is when the Player receives their Background from the DM.  NWP’s and languages provided by the DM with the Character Background, will either be deducted from this total or will not be, as determined by the DM.  Once a positive or negative number is determined, the Player adds their IN and WI and adds one additional point if they are starting at first level.  This can be a number range between 10 and 37.  These points are kept for use during game play moving forward.

Once the game starts, no more than a single point can be allocated to a NWP at a Level raise.  So, you will not be able to add two points to Direction Sense during one Level raise.

Also, once the game starts, all proficiencies must be acquired in game play with the DM’s involvement.

       

        NWP’s can be allocated at any time through the DM in game play.

        NWP’s are often times highly personalized.  For instance Riding land based, does not really exist, its Horse Riding.  The requisite is DX that checks are made against, and for one point, a character gains some proficiency, but it must be noted, anyone can ride a horse in theory, even without proficiency.

        Lets say that during character generation, the player chose Horse Riding, and then when the Character received their background, the DM gave them another slot in horse riding.  And during the first game, the DM made it available to the players that while they stayed in town, they could pick up an additional point in horse riding., and then later, when the character raised in level, they were able to spend another point in horse riding. As it stands, the DE of the Character is 16.  When they picked it as a proficiency, that changed nothing but it gave them proficiency in riding horses, and allows them to attempt feats by rolling their DE or lower.  They received a +1 from the DM, they Chose to augment it upon receiving their back ground, and when they raised a level they added another point.  This gives them Horse Riding, with a De of 16, and a +3 to every check roll.  They can keep adding points until they get to 20.  They can add a point to receive a re-roll if they ever roll a 20.  They can add a point to give them more movement speed.  They can add a point for rudimentary commands with their horse, like, come, or go hide, or throw your rider.  

        Most NWP’s are similar to Horse riding in that they offer development over time, and attribution of additional skills and properties that pertain to the NWP.  This allows a skill like Horse riding to be developed without sacrificing every other opportunity for knowledge the player will ever have.

        Now let us say horse riding was a huge part of a characters persona, and they developed a style of fighting on horseback, NWP’s that allowed them to fire bows from horseback without penalty, and ones that allowed their horse to play a role in combat, and bought special saddles, and magic barding..  This is how NWP’s should be able to be developed throughout the game.

Similarly, as these skills interact with NPC’s and the larger Game World, it is important to be able to have these skills interface with the game world in a way that illustrates the limits of learning and the benefits of mastery. 

For instance, a PC with 1 point in Rope use may think they tied an unbreakable knot, but unless they rolled a 1 on their check, just about anyone with 2 points in Rope use can untie it.  Further, someone with 3 points in rope use can say to the DM, I want rope armor.  And the DM will give the Player its stats, so long as the player has rope and time to make it.  No roll is necessary unless doing something crazy like lasso an attacking griffin inflight, which can be done, but will need to be rolled at penalty.  It is assumed they are very good at rope use.

Also, there are no penalties for taking NWP’s outside of your class, as there are no class restrictions to NWP’s.

A character’s NWP’s should be listed with no more than 3 per page in the NWP section of their Character Binder.

This allows them to record the details of the proficiency, their Attribute checks, the bonuses they receive and why, and record any counters that may have been activated on the NWP.  It is also important to record the number of times the NWP use required a roll and the number of times it was successful, as that relates directly to the game in other mechanics.