Ability Ranks in The Carrington Event

Whenever anything needs a performance level assigned to it, it is given a Rank. There are several available Ranks inspired by the classic game system Fudge. People familiar with the game system Fate will recognise the idea of the Rank Ladder, but be warned the ranks work somewhat differently here.

Ranks can be given both to your core ability with something, and you performance at this specific moment. (That will be talked more in the post about Resolution). The listing below talks about your core ability, what you are known for and how you are expected to perform in a given ability.

1. Terrible: A level of ability (or inability) that can only be achieved with an impediment of some kind, like an injury that limits your performance. Players do not naturally have this rank in anything.
2. Poor: The ability of a typical person with no training or special aptitude in this area. This is the default rank – if you are attempting something you have no reason to have any ability in, you are Poor.
3. Fair: You are trainee, journeyman, apprentice, hobbyist.
4. Good: A skilled professional. You can do whatever a professional is expected to do.
5. Great: An expert, someone who stands out in a group of skilled professionals as being more skilled than the rest. A university professor, an athlete who competes nationally, etc.
6. Superb: An ability rank that stands out even among experts. Someone good enough to compete at the national level, or be recognised among the best in their nation.
7. Spectacular: Recognised as one of the best in the world. The ability might still be limited to what is humanly possible, but it might not always look that way.
8. Legendary: One of the best in the world now, and in all of history. An Isaac Newton or Archimedes of Education, etc.

Per Rank

Occasionally, the rules will say something like Per Rank or One Per Rank. Whenever Per Rank is used, it means Per Rank above Poor – on other words, each rank you have of advancement above the default.

Abilities sometimes list these. For example, you one one Stress per rank in Courage. If you Courage is Good, that’s 2 Stress, and if it’s Spectacular, that’s a massive 5 Stress.

Rating Anything

The GM can assign ranks to almost anything in the game. This lock might be Great, that wall might be Fair, and so on. This describes how good the thing is at being the thing it is (a Great lock is very well designed and literally Great at stopping people trying to unlock it). When rating things, look at the description of the ranks, and set the rank according to what kind of person would give it a challenge – pick their Rank to get something that neither wins easily, nor is easily defeated.

Advancing Personal Abilities

The full advancement system is described elsewhere, but in short you are expected to start with 1 Ability at Great, 2 at Good, and 3 at Fair, and everything else at Poor. As you gain experience this number will increase, but in brief you have an experience rank from Fair to Spectacular, and convert one Poor rating to the rank of your experience.

You get all previous ranks. So, if you have Superb experience, you convert 1 Poor to Superb, but also another to Great, Good, and Fair, so end up with a lot of Abilities at elevated ranks.

When increasing abilities in this way, a given ability can increase only one rank at a time. So, lets say you get Superb rank. You increase one Great to Superb, one Good to Great, one Fair to Good, and finally one Poor to Fair.

You always advance ranks from highest to lowest. In this way, the things you are good at increase the most.

Other Abilities

It’s possible the GM is using a non-standard list of abilities, or a payer learns an Ability not on the standard list. We can easilly account for that by adding a repeating section. Just below the list of abilities, add this:

 <fieldset class="repeating_skills">
    <div class="ability">
       <input type="text" name="attr_skill" class="transparent" placeholder="NAME" value="">
       <select name="attr_rank">
          {{#each @root.ladder}}{{#unless @first}}
          <option {{#eq this "Poor"}}selected{{/eq}}>{{this}}</option>
          {{/unless}}{{/each}}
       </select>
    </div>
</fieldset>Code language: Handlebars (handlebars)

And that’s it, the CSS already exists to style it. The downside is the Add/Remove buttons at the bottom of the re[eating section look awful. Here’s how we want them to look:

Thi is easily done with some CSS, like so:

.charsheet .btn {
  border: 2px solid #777;
  font-weight: bold;
  border-radius: 10px;
  padding: 2px 7px 2px;
}Code language: CSS (css)

And that’s it for that part of the character sheet. For now. We will be returning here later to add rolls.