Combo Skills

A Combo Skill connects two or more careers. It needs a minimum rank in each of them. When a character reaches every rank, they get its effects automatically.

Use a Combo Skill for a benefit that comes from experience in different kinds of work. Do not make a child profession only to show a combination.

File Location

data/<namespace>/combo_skill/<name>.json

The file path is the Combo Skill ID. For example:

data/example/combo_skill/apiary_chandler.json

defines example:apiary_chandler.

Minimal Example

{
  "display_name": { "text": "Apiary Chandler" },
  "description": {
    "text": "Years of hives and years of candles. Nothing about wax surprises you any more."
  },
  "icon": "minecraft:candle",
  "professions": {
    "example:beekeeper": 2,
    "example:chandler": 3
  },
  "grants": [
    {
      "capability": "example:wax_yield",
      "op": "add",
      "value": 1
    }
  ]
}

Field Reference

Field	Required	Description
display_name	No	Minecraft text component. The default is the resource path.
description	No	Minecraft text component. The Career record shows it.
icon	No	Resource ID for the Career record.
professions	Yes	Career IDs mapped to minimum ranks. It must have at least two careers.
grants	No	Passive capabilities, in the same format as for usual skills.
mods	No	Townstead loads this Combo Skill only when the mod expression passes.

Each rank must be at least 1. A definition with one career is malformed, because a usual skill already does that.

Unlock Behaviour

Townstead decides from career XP whether a character has a Combo Skill. It does not save a separate flag.

When a career rank changes, Townstead checks the ranks again. When a character gets a new Combo Skill:

• the Combo Skill shows in the section of each career that it needs;
• Townstead records a learned-craft Chronicle event;
• a player sees an unlock message;
• the character gets its grants.

The character does not spend Insight, and does not get an Archives stamp. A change of primary vocation has no effect, because the career profile keeps the earlier career ranks.

Grants

Combo Skill grants use the usual skill grant format:

{
  "grants": [
    {
      "capability": "townstead:cook_xp_flat",
      "op": "add",
      "value": 1
    },
    {
      "capability": "townstead:butcher_xp_flat",
      "op": "add",
      "value": 1
    }
  ]
}

The example gives more XP in both careers, but keeps their XP separate. For all grant fields and operations, see Grants And Powers.

Choosing The Right Mechanism

Goal	Use
Offer several techniques in one profession	A skill path
Require earlier experience before a character can acquire a profession	A gated career with Pheno requirements
Reward ranks in two or more separate careers	A Combo Skill
Change the displayed name for one complete skill build	A title

With these mechanisms kept separate, each career has one XP history, and you do not need a profession for each combination.

Diagnostics

Townstead skips and logs a malformed Combo Skill. The professions object must have two or more valid career IDs, and each value must be a rank of 1 or more.

Townstead checks mods before it reads the rest of the file. When the gate is not met, Townstead removes the Combo Skill for that session.