Actors

Characters whose primary competency is physical conflict and its disciplines — fighting, soldiering, command, survival under hostile conditions. The fighter, ranger, and barbarian archetypes sit here, along with anyone whose background and capabilities are organized around violence and its management.

Martial characters are not defined by what weapons they carry. They are defined by a depth of competency in the practice and consequence of physical conflict that other domains do not share.

Characters whose primary competency is the relationship between the mortal world and the divine — oath administration, Foundation service, miracles, pastoral care, and the practical theology of the oath economy. The cleric archetype sits here, though in Oath-Bound the divine domain is broader than any single class suggests, encompassing the full range of Foundation roles and vocations.

Divine actors operate within a Foundation structure, serve a visage, and are accountable to the covenant relationships that define that service. Their competency is not magic in the arcane sense. It is a working relationship with something larger than themselves, expressed through the disciplines of that relationship.

Characters whose primary competency is the manipulation of nwyf — the underlying substance of arcane working. The magic-user and illusionist archetypes sit here. Arcane competency is a demanding and consuming domain: its practitioners are capable of effects unavailable to any other domain, at costs and constraints that other domains do not face.

Arcane actors in Oath-Bound are not simply magic-users with a different name. The arcane system differs substantially from vanilla AD&D spell memorization and casting. The broad shape — significant power, significant limitation — is recognizable; the specifics are not.

Characters whose primary competency lies in the subfusc — the spaces between institutions, the economies that operate outside official sanction, the skills of people who move through the world without announcing themselves. The thief archetype sits here, along with a broader range of characters whose background and capabilities are organized around operating in the margins.

Gray actors are not defined by criminality, though some are criminal. They are defined by a particular relationship to the official world — one of studied distance, practical independence, and competencies that institutions do not train and do not advertise.

An Exceptional Actor is a player character. Player characters are not normal people. That is not a narrative claim about destiny or importance — it is a statement about what they are. The ability scores that define an Exceptional Actor are drawn from a distribution that ordinary people do not access. Before training, before experience, before anything has happened in play, a player character is already operating at a level of raw capability that most people in the world never reach.

Most people in Oath-Bound are competent at the things their lives have required of them. Exceptional Actors exceed that baseline across the board. The world contains individuals who are exceptional in specific ways — a master swordsman, a senior Foundation priest, a celebrated arcane practitioner. What distinguishes player characters is that their capability is broad rather than narrow, and present from the outset.