The Interface acquired through a Silvergate allows for acquiring discrete stats, pools, and skills (see Lexicon).

Skills are the core of the Interface. Each skill is either passive and permanent, triggered by various conditions, or active under the mental control of the Gater. Skills either affect mundane actions (sprinting, climbing), enhance aspects of the person (night sight), or enable actions that would normally be impossible to a non-Gater (magic). Active and most triggered skills are only available while the Interface is active, which happens only when using a Silvergate. Passive and some triggered skills seem to be still applicable even on Earth.

Examples:

* Marathon, allows a person to run without suffering fatigue. It is used to cheat in the real world.

* Call the Stone, allows the creation of a temporary stone magical construct to fight for its user.

* Drain Life, allows a person to drain the health pool of an enemy to replenish their own.

Skills are acquired in three different manners:

* During Setup, nine skills are provided based on unknown criteria, one for each stat. Some skills are pre-determined, while some allow a pick between three different skills.

* After setup, people can spend levels to acquire a new skill. The cost of a new skill starts with 1 level and then increases by 1 level for each skill previously acquired. The skills acquired are seemingly random (see Locational Interference).

* Relatively rare items called skill stones provide new skills for “free”, without requiring spending levels. The skill is specific to the skill stone, allowing one to check the skill beforehand, and acquiring one through a stone still increases the cost of the next new skill.

Skills have a level, which determines the person’s performance when using them. Increasing levels increase the magnitude and/or duration of effects, decrease the costs of its use, and/or the chance of failure.

Skills are associated with a stat and a tier. The skill level is determined by the sum of multiple factors:

1. The practice level of the skill (the first level is free unless you gained the skill from a skill stone).

2. The associated stat, divided by the tier.

3. The number of points manually invested in the skill by the Gater. Each point for that skill costs 1 level more than the previous.

4. Any bonuses provided by pieces of equipment.

5. And any temporary increase or decrease provided by ongoing effects.

Example: Quandocor’s Cold Grasp is at skill 38. This comes from having gained 14 pts from practice, having 34 pts in Strength (including a +1 from gear) divided by 2 as the skill is a tier 2 skill (so, +17pt), having 5 pts invested in the skill, and a +2 skill from his leather doublet.

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Skills improve by use. Using a skill, actively or passively, yields experience in the skill. Typically the amount of experience provided is equal to the current magnitude of the skill, the difficulty of the action, or other factors. Once that amount of experience goes over 100, the skill improves its practice level, and the remaining experience rolls over. The amount required to gain a practice level grows by 15% for every level gained that way (so 115 points for the second skill level, 132 for the third, 152 for the fourth, 175 for the next, and so on).

Examples:

* Evaluating an entity (item, person, monster, skill) through a skill yields its level.

* Using a channeled skill yields 1XP per second of channeling.

* Fighting a creature usually gives its rank in XP.

The interface displays the experience gained in the percentage of the requirement for the next skill.

During Setup, a first-time user of a Gate (a Gater) gets an evaluation of 9 stats:

* Dexterity

* Fortitude

* Intuition

* Perception

* Presence

* Reasoning

* Reflexes

* Resilience

* Strength

Each stat yields a bell curve in terms of values, although each stat has a different average. Dexterity averages 25, for instance, while Perception only 15. People also receive a variable amount of opportunities to improve by 1 point from their initial value.

Stats improve in four different ways beyond their initial values after Setup:

1. The Gater may manually invest additional points. Each point for that stat costs 1 level more than the previous.

2. The levels obtained by the practice of associated skills, divided by 1+ the skill’s tier.

3. Any bonuses provided by pieces of equipment.

4. And any temporary increase or decrease provided by ongoing effects.

Stats improvements have the most effect when the Interface is not available. People with increased Strength have an enormous amount of effective strength, beyond usual Olympic contestant levels. There are numerous conspiracy theories running about some politicians and their recent charisma.

Example: Vantegaard’s Reasoning is 42 (out of 29 during Setup) due to having +7 pts from four different skills having improved (notably Mind over Matter), +5 pts manually allocated, and +1 from his gloves.

Note that partial improvements by skills add together, so it is possible to gain +1 stat even if none of the skills have enough xp to provide +1 based on their tier.