Avowed abilities

Abilities in Avowed are special skills and powers that your character can learn and improve upon. Abilities are a core part of combat, and accompany the use of the various weapons available. The game categorizes abilities into a series of separate trees that may be sampled from to build a character that suits your preferred combat approach.

Ability trees

Three trees contain abilities that correspond with the fantasy archetypes: fighter, ranger and wizard. Each tree contains abilities that complement a particular playstyle

• Fighter abilities - Melee combat particularly two-handed weapons, stamina buffs, shield use and blocking, medium and heavy armor. 19 abilities in total, 4 active and 15 passive.
• Ranger abilities - Ability, ranged combat particularly bows and guns, stealth, crowd control, light armor. 18 abilities in total, 3 active and 15 passive.
• Wizard abilities - Area of effect spells, crowd control, essence buffs, use of wands and other magical implements. Many spells can be found in a grimoire, which may be used to cast those spells without learning them in the wizard tree. 33 abilities in total, 22 active and 11 passive.

Two trees contain special abilities:

• Godlike abilities - Unique abilities that the Envoy learns as a godlike. These unlock as you progress through the story.
• Companion abilities - For companion abilities. These trees are much smaller than the player's, and contain abilities that fall into whatever the particular archetype for the companion is. For example, Yatzli's tree has abilities that suit a wizard, while Kai has abilities that suit a fighter.

Activation types

Active

Active abilities are those that the character may choose to use. These abilities may be used or cast in the midst of combat, with some taking a long time and requiring both free hands to cast, and some having a short cast time, able to be cast even with your hands full.

Using an active ability requires Essence, a mana-like resource drawn from a limited pool. The amount of Essence required is relative to the strength of the ability, higher level abilities generally require more to cast. After an active ability is cast, the Essence is spent and the ability is placed on cooldown, rendering it unusable for an amount of time.

Abilities are cast with a single pre-assigned key or button press, each with their own dedicated button. This extends to companions, who have context-sensitive abilities that the player can ask to cast.

Passive

Passive abilities are those whose effects are automatically granted without needing to cast them or equip them to the ability bar. Some passives provide a permanent bonus, or are automatically triggered based on a condition or as a response to an effect on the character.

Some passives like Power Jump and Shield Bash behave like an active ability, in that they cost Essence to use and have a cooldown, but cannot be assigned in the same way as an active.

Progression

As you earn experience and level up, you're granted points that can be spent to unlock new abilities or upgrade existing ones. Every level grants you one point to spend in either of the three main trees (Fighter, Ranger, Wizard). Abilities are grouped into tiers based on their required player level. New ability tiers may be unlocked at level 1, 5, 10 and 15. Some abilities have additional unlock requirements, such as a prerequisite ability.

Points can also be spent on upgrading your existing abilities instead of learning new ones. Most abilities have 3 ranks, the first rank is granted when the character learns the ability, and the second and third ranks can be unlocked at later levels. Certain abilities have 4 ranks, while others have just 1 or 2.

Ability level	Required player level for rank
	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Level 1	1	5	8
Level 5	5	8	10
Level 10	10	13	15
Level 15	15	18	20
Level 20	20	21	22

Some abilities, like Grimoire Mastery and Iron Fists, do not follow the standard rank requirements.

Alongside points to spend on your own abilities, as you level up you're granted Companion Ability Points, which can be spent on learning or upgrading your Companion abilities. Unlike the player abilities which have 1-4 Ranks which provide incremental upgrades and get stronger with each rank, your companion's abilities have upgrades that are mutually exclusive to each other, only one may be picked

Abilities in the Godlike tree are unlocked as the story is progressed, either as a result of your choices, or as the Envoy learns more about themselves.

Trivia

• Fourth level abilities weren't added until later in development.

Behind the scenes

• Many abilities were translated directly from and inspired by the abilities Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, although converted to more of an action-oriented style of gameplay.
• Notable omissions from the ability trees are abilties from Cipher, Chanter, and Druid classes. In an interview with Obsidian, when asked about the these skills, developers said that it was in part due to the differences in mechanics between the older games and Avowed which wouldn't translate properly - particularly for Cipher and Chanter. The omission of Druid abilities was mainly due to the limited scope of the game, doing so would require a significant resource investment in models, animations, and design, specifically regarding the Spiritshift forms.

Gallery

• 
  Fighter ability tree
• 
  Ranger ability tree
• 
  Wizard ability tree

See also

• Category:Avowed fighter abilities
• Category:Avowed ranger abilities
• Category:Avowed wizard abilities
• Category:Avowed godlike abilities
• Category:Avowed companion abilities