A flavor advice for skill (special ability) portrayal needed
I've already created my first large game book core rules for shards of reality and am currently working on an addon book for it.
As each addon book has its own style (especially when it comes to special abilities or skills how they are called in this game) I've also looked over how I handled them so far and what could be more stylish.
It maybe a minor thing for most but I'm currently looking mostly at how the skill levels work. Each time you level up your class you can buy a new skill from its list or increase one of its skills levels by +1.
Originally I had just Rank (or level) 1-4 for the skills. And after reading SMT Tokyo Conception and seeing how they did the different levels of fire spells I found that almost more stylish.
To display it I'm going to post here a short example:
Mana Blast Rank 1: Base Spelldamage+2 for 2 MP and Base Spelldamage+0 for 0 MP
Mana Blast Rank 2: Base Spelldamage+4 for 2 MP and Base Spelldamage+1 for 0 MP
Mana Blast Rank 3: Base Spelldamage+6 for 2 MP and Base Spelldamage+1 for 0 MP
Mana Blast Rank 4: Base Spelldamage+8 for 2 MP and Base Spelldamage+2 for 0 MP
If I take the example from SMT it could be:
Minor Mana Blast
Intermediate Mana Blast
Major Mana Blast
Ultimate Mana Blast
Instead (naturally not called that but as a first not much thought about names example).
As said I'm wondering what would be more stylish / something that works better for people just ranks 1-4 or Minor->Inermediate->Major->Ultimate (so 4 different spells that are stronger versions each or just 1 spell that is getting levelled).