Improving Proficiencies (POSP)

Improving Proficiencies Once an adventurer possesses a proficiency, spending character points can improve the adventurer's performance when that proficiency is used. The section on using proficiencies describes how to determine an initial rating—which varies for the different proficiencies and can be modified by character ability scores.
This initial rating can be improved by spending additional character points during the course of an adventurer's career. For the most part, new characters will have a beginning level of proficiency, though the DM and player may agree on a rationale to explain a novice character's high degree of proficiency. A young woman who embarks on a life of adventure, for example, after being raised beside her father's potter's wheel, might have a significant level of accomplishment at the pottery skill.
Spending character points can improve an adventurer's proficiency performance. This is a one for one exchange—1 character point increases the character's chance of success by one. A nonweapon proficiency only can be increased through character points once each level.
As a general rule, adventurers can add 1 character point to a given proficiency each time they advance a level of experience. They don't have to use the point at the time they reach the new level.
For example, Bellerana the wizard advances from 2nd to 3rd level. She spends 1 character point to improve her rope use proficiency. And she spends another to improve spellcraft.
It is possible to create exceptions to this limitation. A character who ceases adventuring for a while, and devotes much of that time to farming or laboring in a blacksmith shop, might continually improve his agriculture or blacksmith proficiency even while he does not advance in levels in his character class.
==Maximum Ratings and Automatic Failure==
Characters cannot improve their unmodified ratings in nonweapon proficiencies above 16. This can be modified upward by the characters' relevant ability scores, or by a trait that improves their score in that specific proficiency.
Regardless of how high a character's modified proficiency rating becomes, a roll of 20 on a proficiency check is always a failure.
==Acquiring Character Traits==
Not everything an individual does is a matter of training, practice, and education. Certain things, such as artistic talent or naturally keen senses, are inherent. These inherited characteristics might be combined with skills to provide a high level of mastery, but the talents themselves cannot be learned—characters have them or they don't. The greatest masters in any field of endeavor, of course, combine a high level of natural talent with extensive training. A combination of a trait with a high level of nonweapon proficiency can allow a character to simulate this level of accomplishment. The greatest minstrels of the realm, for example, possess the trait of musical ability, probably both vocal and instrumental. Additionally, they have gained through practice and learning, a high proficiency in playing musical instruments.
Table of Traits
In the Skills and Powers rules, talents and other inherent abilities are represented as traits. These traits can confer significant game advantages on a character, and can often amplify the effects of related nonweapon proficiencies. Since they are significant enhancements, they are also relatively difficult to acquire.
Character points must be spent at the time of character creation if players want to select traits. Once a trait is assigned to a character, it is regarded as permanent. Unlike proficiencies, traits cannot be improved as a character develops. For the most part additional traits cannot be gained by a character who already has been involved in adventuring (though if the judge deems it appropriate, a rationale can be devised to explain why a character suddenly discovering a hitherto unknown trait).