Runic Skills

Level skills naturally. Runic Skills adds a quiet, vanilla-respecting RPG progression layer to Minecraft 1.20.1 — swing a sword to raise Strength, cast a spell to raise Magic, plant a farm to raise Wisdom. Each skill funds perks and passives you pick yourself, and titles you earn for the rare milestones a normal world never sees.

Minecraft 1.20.1 · Forge 47.3.0+ · Java 17
Forked from JustLevelingFork and substantially reworked. Free, open source, Apache-2.0 licensed.

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Overview

Most "RPG skills" mods make you grind against a separate track. Runic Skills piggy-backs on the things you already do in a survival world:

• Ten skills. Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Building, Wisdom, Magic, Fortune, Tinkering. Melee players, archers, mages, farmers, miners, and engineers each have a natural primary track.
• Active perks. You unlock them at skill breakpoints, you can toggle them on and off from the Skills screen, and many have multiple ranks (e.g. Haggler I / II / III deepens villager discounts; Wormhole Storage opens your ender chest from the inventory screen). Choose the ones that fit your playstyle.
• Passive stats. Spend skill points into passive tiers: +Attack Damage, +Max Health, +Mana Regen, +Armor Toughness, +Movement Speed, +Projectile Damage — all via the vanilla/Apothic attribute system, so they stack correctly with gear and other mods.
• Earned titles. ~50 titles for milestones like slayer of the Ender Dragon, conqueror of the Warden, master enchanter. Pick one to display above your name once you've earned it. Other players see it too.
• Item lock-gating — optionally lock powerful armour, weapons, and tools behind skill thresholds. Throw someone a Netherite sword before their Strength is high enough and they literally can't swing it. Configurable per-item via the in-game config GUI.

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Screenshots

Placeholder — drop screenshots or gifs here before publishing:

• Skills overview page showing the ten aptitudes and total level.
• Detail page showing passives on the left, perks on the right, with a multi-rank perk expanded.
• Title selection screen with scroll list.
• Overlay warning for a skill-locked item.
• Legendary Tabs strip with the Skills tab installed.

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Compatibility

Runic Skills is built to feel like part of your modpack rather than an island. Optional integrations light up automatically when their mods are installed:

• Ars Nouveau — Magic scales spell damage, mana-regen passives, glyph mastery perk.
• Irons Spellbooks — Spell echo, arcane shield, attunement perks (all nine schools), school bonuses, spell gating by Magic level.
• Apotheosis — Affix, gem, and socket awareness. Broader attribute pool for passives. Apotheosis Wisdom raises your effective enchantment cap, and gem rarity gating ties socketing a gem to a Fortune level scaled by the gem's rarity (config-toggleable).
• KubeJS — Script your own skills, perks, passives, titles, and conditions. A SKILL_LEVELUP event is exposed.
• L2Tabs / Legendary Tabs — Skills shows up as a native tab in those mods' strips instead of being drawn twice.
• FTB Quests (since 1.3.0) — Six native task types (runicskills:skill_level, global_level, perk_rank, passive_level, title_unlocked, title_selected) so quest authors can gate FTB Quests on Runic Skills progression. Sticky completion by default; opt-in "sticky": false for live-threshold semantics. Backfills on login.
• Custom skill visuals (since 1.3.0) — Override per-skill overview/detail/background art with a single datapack JSON per skill at data/<ns>/runicskills/skill_visuals/<id>.json. Accepts arbitrary namespace:path texture ids so pack authors can point at any mod's item or texture sprite without shipping copies under the runicskills namespace.
• More integrations — Auto-generated level-gate lock lists for Farmers Delight, Ice and Fire, Cataclysm, Mowzie's Mobs, Stalwart Dungeons, Bosses of Mass Destruction, Siege Machines, Saints Dragons, Samurai Dynasty, Nichirin Dynasty, Natures Aura, More Vanilla, Fantasy Armor, Jewelcraft, and Locks.
• Gun integrations — Gun-fire events from Crayfish Gun Mod (unofficial), Scorched Guns 2, TacZ, and PointBlank (Vic's) honour Runic Skills perks and locks.

Optional integrations. Runic Skills detects missing mods at runtime — no silent class-not-found crashes, no hard dependencies beyond Forge and YACL.

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Requirements

• Minecraft Forge 47.3.0+ on Minecraft 1.20.1.
• YACL v3 3.4.2+ — client-side only, used for the in-game config GUI. Grab it from the YACL CurseForge page or Modrinth.

That's it. Everything else is optional.

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Installation

1. Install Minecraft Forge for 1.20.1.
2. Download the Runic Skills jar.
3. Drop it in your .minecraft/mods/ folder. Add YACL to the same folder if you don't have it yet.
4. Launch. Press Y in-game to open the Skills screen (or click the Skills tab next to your inventory tab).

Works on single-player, LAN, and dedicated servers. Same jar on client and server.

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Controls

• Y (default, rebindable in Controls) — open Skills screen.
• Skills tab — appears next to the inventory tab. With L2Tabs or Legendary Tabs installed, uses those mods' tab systems natively so the UI stays consistent with your modpack.
• Perk tooltips — see description, level requirement, rank, and when your next rank unlocks.
• Overlay warnings — a skill requirement overlay appears briefly when you try to use a gated item you can't yet wield.

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Pack Makers

• Configurable values. Skill max level, XP curves, lock-item lists, title requirements, per-integration toggles. You can tune the whole pack from config/RunicSkills/runicskills.common.json5 (editable via the in-game config GUI as well).
• Disabling item locking has four distinct levers: the enableItemLocks master toggle (whole feature, in the common config / Config → General), removing entries from config/RunicSkills/runicskills.lockItems.json5, the per-integration *EnableLockItems / enable*Integration toggles, and — importantly — not deleting runicskills.lockItems.json5, which regenerates the default locks rather than disabling them. Apply edits with /skillsreload.
• Titles are data-driven. Datapack JSON under data/runicskills/titles/ — ship your own title pack by dropping files in your pack. Reload live with /skillsreload.
• KubeJS scripting. Register custom skills, perks, passives, titles, and condition types from server scripts. See the KubeJS scripting hook section of the README for examples.
• Sided-imports lint runs at build time — no net.minecraft.client.* code leaks into common-side logic, so the mod is safe on dedicated servers. Repeatedly audited for packet-deserialization security (see the 0.9.2 CHANGELOG entry).

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Commands

• /skills <player> <skill> <level> — set a player's skill.
• /skills <player> <skill> add <amount> — nudge up or down.
• /listskills <player> — print all ten skill levels.
• /respec <player> — refund passives and perks without touching skill levels.
• /registeritem <item-id> — runtime-lock an item.
• /skillsreload — re-read the titles and lock-items datapack.
• /globallimit <cap> — cap the total-skill sum.
• /titles <player> <title> set true|false — grant or revoke a title.

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Support

• GitHub issues is the best place.
• If reporting a crash, attach logs/latest.log, your mod list, and if config-related your config/RunicSkills/runicskills.common.json5.
• Pull requests welcome — the project is Apache-2.0.

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Credits

• Otectus — current maintainer, rebrand, GUI rework, audit, Legendary Tabs integration.
• JustLevelingFork — the original fork base.
• Each third-party mod we integrate with is owned by and credited to its respective author. Runic Skills does not bundle their code; integrations are thin optional compat layers.

Thanks for installing — drop feedback on the issues tracker. Happy levelling.