School Proficiency

School Proficiency (formerly known as Shaping Skills) represents a mage's fluency with the canal structures required to cast magic from a specific Core School.

The act of casting is called Shaping—where a mage must feel and control the mana in the atmosphere, shaping it into invisible canals that guide and transform raw power. Every branch of magic (like Evocation or Dimensionalism Class) has its own unique shaping exercises and canal architectures to master.

Your dot rating in a School Proficiency represents how complex an architecture you can comprehend and execute within that specific school.

Unstructured vs. Structured Magic

The difference between types of magic lies in the precision of the canals:

• Unstructured Magic (Tier 0): The mage is essentially "shaping in the air," clumsily forcing mana to flow without a map while hoping for a specific result. This requires no proficiency rating.
• Structured Magic (Spells): The mage has studied and memorized the precise canal structure of the spell. Casting is the act of rapidly shaping that complex architecture out of ambient mana.

Mechanically, when a character casts a spell, they roll their Magical Attribute plus the appropriate School Proficiency (like Projection Class or Abjuration). The total successes rolled must meet or exceed the spell's Tier to successfully form the canals and trigger the effect.