Chapter 93: Chapter 91: The Trunk of the World-Tree

Passive and active abilities

When a person levels-up, they are either granted a new ability or are able to freely choose from a specific listing of choices available to them.

The most common of these choices are abilities titled active or passive abilities.

Active abilities are skills that a user must activate, as their name implies, in order to use them. Generally, this comes at a cost, typically soul-points, as the ability is fired off. A classic example of an active ability is the wizard class’ fireball spell, which, for the cost of activation, creates a highly volatile ball of fire that the caster may lob towards a target.

Passive abilities, on the other hand, are always active abilities that either grant a boon of some sort or sit waiting for a trigger to activate them.

An example of a passive ability is a Dryad’s ‘regeneration’ ability, which is active from the earliest stages of their life and constantly regenerates hurt and wounded parts of their body, without any further intervention such as bandaging or medicine.

All classes offer a wide variety of both active and passive abilities.