As students at Spearpoint Military Academy, the player characters will be expected to choose a field of study upon which to focus during their course work.  Each field connects to one of the narrative Actions listed on the character sheet.  See below for a list.

When you roll with the Action of your field of study, you gain +1D towards the roll.  This extra dice is then lost for future rolls on that Action until you fail a roll with the Action.  This shows the character focusing on their mistakes in their field of study and trying to correct them.

As part of their course work, character will also choose a course project to be completed by the end of each quarter.  This will be represented by a 6-step Ambition clock on your character sheet.  Your course project can be anything that you'd like your character to investigate, aspire towards, or work on during downtime.  You can use this to signal to the GM topics that you're interested in exploring in the game world or ideas you'd like to complicate.  For example, if a player is interested in the Thousand Wars, they might have their character's course project be "Research into Aftermath of the Thousand Wars". Another character might have a course project be "Forge a weapon from scratch", "Discover the location of a lost tome," or "Lead the rowing team to victory".  Anything that you can show to your instructor at the end of the quarter and say "Hey, look what I did!" will probably suffice.

Fields of Study
Sneak -> Infiltration
Traverse -> Ranging
Sense -> Scouting
Study -> Research
Charm -> Spycraft
Command -> Leadership
Tinker -> Engineering
Excel -> Finesse
Smash -> CQC
Endure -> Survival

Classes
Each character is enrolled in four classes per semester. Characters choose what classes they are enrolled in, selected from the ten Fields of Study. Your chosen Field of Study must be one of your classes.

Your performance in your courses is measured by your Grade, which is calculated by adding the corresponding action rating and course study bonuses. A breakdown of the ratings is as follows:



Students must pass ten out of their twelve classes over the course of the school year in order to graduate.

Improving your Grade
Students are able to improve their grade in a course by working hard in their studies, giving themselves a course study bonus.  This is done by spending Effort or sustaining Strain on a one-to-one basis.  For example, a character with a Traverse rating of 0 (failing their Ranging class) could spend 1 Effort to increase their Ranging Study Bonus by 1.  Thus their Ranging Grade (Traverse 0 + Ranging Study Bonus 1) is 1 - passing, if only barely!

Studying with a friend is more effective than studying on your own.  Students in the same course can each spend 1 Effort and both increase their Course Study Bonus by 2 instead of 1.

Benefits of Passing Courses
Students who are passing their courses reap the benefits of their studies with Course Tokens. When a character makes a roll with an action with which they have Course Tokens, they can spend one token before making the roll to either lower the risk or increase the effect of the action by one level.  Student receive a number of Course Tokens equal to their Grade (to a max of 4).  Course Tokens are renewed at the same time Effort is - during Interludes or when the party camps.

Principal's List
A student who passes all of their classes during a semester are on the Principal's List.  Such students total the grades from all of their classes and divide the results by 4 (rounded down).  The result is the number of Mastery Tokens the student receives. Mastery Tokens are renewed and spent in a similar fashion to Course Tokens, except that they can apply to any Action roll, and both decrease the risk and increase the effect of the roll.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:44, Sun 12 Nov 2023.