Proficiencies
Most of what a player character can do is defined by his race, class, and ability scores. These three characteristics don't cover everything, however. Characters can have a wide range of talents, from the potent (and intricate) arts of magic to the simple and mundane knowledge of how to build a good fire. The character's magical ability (or lack thereof) is defined by his class. Lesser abilities, such as fire building, are defined by proficiencies.
A proficiency is a learned skill that isn't essential to the character's class. A ranger, for example, may find it useful to know something about navigation, especially if he lives near an ocean or sea coast. On the other hand, he isn't likely to suffer if he doesn't know how to navigate; he is a ranger, not a sailor.
Proficiencies are divided into two groups: weapon proficiencies (those related to weapons and combat) and nonweapon proficiencies (those related to everything else).
Once a proficiency slot is filled, it can never be changed or reassigned.
Acquiring Proficiencies
Even newly created, 1st-level characters have proficiencies. The number of proficiency slots that a character starts with is determined by his group, as shown in the Table below. Each proficiency slot is empty until the player "fills" it by selecting a proficiency. The character's Intelligence score can modify the number of slots he has, granting him more proficiencies. In both cases, new proficiencies are learned the same way.
The player must assign weapon or nonweapon proficiencies to all of these slots before the character goes on his first adventure. These represent what the character has learned before beginning his adventuring career.
Proficiency Allocation
| Weapon Proficiencies | Nonweapon Proficiencies | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group / Class | Initial | #Levels | Penalty | Initial | #Levels |
| Cleric | 2 | 4 | -3 | 4 | 3 |
| Druid | 2 | 5 | -4 | 3 | 3 |
| Monk | 1 | 2 | -3 | 3 | 4 |
| Fighter | 4 | 3 | -2 | 3 | 3 |
| Cavalier | 3 | 3 | -2 | 2 | 4 |
| Paladin | 3 | 3 | -2 | 1 | 4 |
| Ranger | 3 | 3 | -2 | 2 | 3 |
| Any Wizard | 1 | 6 | -5 | 4 | 3 |
| Thief/Acrobat | 2 | 4 | -3 | 3 | 4 |
| Bard | 3 | 4 | -2 | 0 | 2 |
Thereafter, as the character advances in experience levels, he gains additional proficiency slots. The rate at which he gains them depends on the group he belongs to. The table above lists how many weapon and nonweapon proficiency slots the character starts with, and how many levels the character must gain before he earns another slot.
Initial Weapon Proficiencies is the number of weapon proficiency slots received by characters of that group at 1st level.
Initial Nonweapon Proficiencies is the number of nonweapon proficiency slots that character has at 1st level.
# Levels (for both weapon and nonweapon proficiencies) tells how quickly a character gains additional proficiency slots. When a character advances the listed number of levels beyond the first, they gain an additional proficiency. Thus, at 1st level a cleric can use two weapons with proficiency, at 5th level the cleric selects another for a total of three, at 9th level the total is four, at 13th five, etc. Rath (a warrior) gets one new weapon proficiency slot at 4th level, another at 7th, another at 10th, and so on. (Note that Rath also gains one nonweapon proficiency at 4th, 7th, 10th, etc.)
If a character has bonus proficiencies due to Intelligence, he can implement any or all of them initially, or he can save them for use the next time goes up a level.
Penalty is the modifier to the character's attack rolls when he fights using a weapon he is not proficient with. Rath, a dwarven fighter, chose to be proficient with the warhammer. Finding himself in a desperate situation, he snatches up a flail, even though he knows little about it (he is not proficient with it). Using with weapon awkwardly, he has a -2 penalty to his chance to hit.
Training
Like all skills and abilities, proficiencies do not leap unbidden and fully realized into a character's mind. Instead, a character must train, study, and practice to learn a new proficiency. However, role-playing the training time needed to learn a new skill is not much fun. Thus, there are no training times or study periods associated with any proficiency. When a character chooses a proficiency, it is assumed that he had been studying it in his spare time.
Consider just how much spare time the character has. The player is not role-playing every second of his character's life. The player may decide to have his character spend a night in town before setting out on the long journey the next day. Perhaps the character must wait around for several days while his companions heal from the last adventure. Or he might spend weeks on an uneventful ocean voyage. What is he doing during that time?
Among other things, he is studying whatever new proficiencies he will eventually learn. Using this "down time" to handle the unexciting aspects of a role-playing campaign lets players concentrate on more important (or more interesting) matters.
Another part of training is finding a teacher. Some skills can be self-taught, but some cannot. Most skills are easier to learn if someone teaches the character.
Weapon Proficiencies
Non-Weapon Proficiencies