Skills And Paths

A skill is an option that a character learns in one career. A skill can give passive capabilities and a Pheno power. It can also be part of a path or a title.

These pages describe skills:

Learning Rules
Grants And Powers
Paths
Paths And Titles, for the presentation fields of path.json and the titles that a build earns

File Location

Put the Skill files of a Path in the Path directory:

data/<namespace>/profession/<career>/path/<path>/skill/<skill>.json

For example, this file:

data/example/profession/beekeeper/path/hive_keeper/skill/gentle_hands.json

defines the Skill example:beekeeper/hive_keeper/gentle_hands. Townstead gets the Profession and the Path of the Skill from its location.

A Skill for the whole Profession can go in profession/<career>/skill/<skill>.json. Its ID is <namespace>:<career>/<skill>, and it is not on a Path. Do not put Path Skills there and then list them in a Path.

Minimal Skill

{
  "schema": "townstead:skill/v1",
  "display_name": { "text": "Gentle Hands" },
  "description": { "text": "Gather from the hive without wasting the comb." },
  "icon": "minecraft:honeycomb",
  "cost": 1,
  "grants": [
    {
      "capability": "example:beekeeper_xp_flat",
      "op": "add",
      "value": 1
    }
  ]
}

Field Reference

Field	Required	Description
`schema`	Yes	Use `townstead:skill/v1`.
`display_name`	No	Minecraft text component. The default is the skill path.
`description`	No	Minecraft text component. The Career record shows it.
`profession`	From location	The ID of the Career that owns the skill. Do not set it in a Skill file in a directory.
`tier`	From location	The level of the Path sets the tier. Set it only for a Skill for the whole Profession. `level` is an alias.
`cost`	No	Skill-point cost. The default is `1`.
`requires`	No	Skills that a character must learn first. All of them are required.
`exclusive_with`	No	Skills that a character cannot learn with this skill.
`evidence`	No	Recorded deeds that a character must do before they can learn the skill. See Evidence.
`skill_group`	No	A group of skills. Only one learned skill in the group can be active at a time.
`grants`	No	Passive capabilities that the skill adds.
`power`	No	One complete Pheno component.
`animation`	No	The ID of an animation intent. It is not a model transform.
`icon`	No	Resource ID for the Career record.
`mods`	No	Townstead loads this skill only when the mod expression passes.

In requires and exclusive_with, a short name refers to a skill in the same skill/ directory. For a skill on a different Path or at the Profession root, use <path>/<skill>. For a skill of a different Profession, use its full ID with the namespace.

Validation

/pheno validate reports:

an unknown owning profession;
a Path level above the highest rank of the Profession;
a Skill that is on more than one Path;
a missing prerequisite;
a prerequisite from a different career, as a warning;
a skill that both requires and excludes the same skill;
an unknown reference in exclusive_with;
a prerequisite cycle;
an invalid grant or power type.