Profession
Description
Ability Score Used: Wisdom Usable Untrained? No Armor Check Penalty Applies? No
You are skilled at a specific job. Like the Knowledge and Perform skills, Profession is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Profession skills, each with its own ranks. A Profession skill represents the ability to cultivate, craft or provide goods or services relevant to the profession, as well as the general knowledge of how to earn a living in that profession.
Even though many of these professions require tremendous endurance, or facile hand or tool work, all professions are Wisdom-based, since they all require a great deal of common sense and learning to achieve greatness, regardless of their physical demands. Even though a blacksmith must be strong and endure heat all day, those things don't make him a great blacksmith. His experience with shaping metal with tools (thus, wisdom) are what make him a great blacksmith.
Common Professions
- Alchemist — Crafting of alchemical devices and admixtures. Does not cover alchemical bombs or tinctures (and other class-specific items/tasks).
- Architect — Build houses and buildings. Also includes practical knowledge of building styles. See also Mason.
- Armorsmith — Crafting of armor and shields.
- Artist — Painting, poetry, composition of songs and music, sculpture, etc. When chosen, you must pick a specialty.
- Barrister — Laws, legal defense, researching legal precedents, and swaying of judges and juries.
- Blacksmith — Crafting of tools and parts from metal, as well as the crafting of alloys. Does not include armor or weapons.
- Bowyer — Crafting of bows, crossbows and other projectile weapons.
- Brewer — Crafting of beer, wine and hard liquor.
- Butcher — Prepare slain game animals for food. Also removing the pelts (but not treating/tanning them).
- Carpenter — Crafting of wooden objects, such as cabinets, tables, chairs, etc. Does not include weapons, armor or buildings.
- Cartographer — Surveying and documenting terrain, political borders and recording topographical information. Map-making.
- Cobbler — Crafting of shoes and boots, skis and snowshoes as well as other non-humanoid foot/hoof/pod-wear, as long as it's non-metal.
- Constable — Knowledge of criminal law, penal codes, common criminal practices and thought patterns, investigating leads, basic forensics.
- Cook — Preparing tasty, and/or healthy meals from ingredients. Does not include poisons knowledge, or information on gathering ingredients.
- Crewman — Skilled at crewing a vehicle (but not piloting it). Includes knowledge of general vehicle maintenance, knot-tying, and how to load and unload cargo efficiently.
- Engineer — Troubleshooting and maintaining machinery and vehicles. Does not include crafting or operation of said machinery or vehicles.
- Farmer — Growing crops, tending herd animals, and harvesting. Does not include butchering animals, or selling goods for profit.
- Fisherman — Catching fish, either through rod and reel, nets, or other means.
- Gambler — Practical knowledge of table games, as well as betting strategies, and how to avoid gambling-related disputes. Does not include playing sports or cheating.
- Glass Smith — Crafting of glass items, such as bottles and vials.
- Herbalist — Tending of a garden, growing non-crop herbs. Includes knowledge of which plants are medicinal, poisonous, or tasty, and how to prepare them for use (e.g. grinding, steeping, etc.)
- Innkeeper — Tending of an inn, including the bar, dining, and boarding rooms. Also includes managing a household staff.
- Jewelsmith — Crafting of jewelry, including gem cutting, goldsmithing and silversmithing.
- Leathersmith — Crafting of leather goods. Does not include the stripping, stretching, tanning and preserving of leather and pelts.
- Librarian — Caretaking and indexing of a large collection of books, locating specific books within other people's collections, speed reading, and a knowledge of the great works of literature.
- Locksmith — Crafting of locks. Does not cover picking or disabling of locks.
- Mason — Crafting of structures made from brick or stone, such as fireplaces and buildings. See also Architect.
- Merchant — Knowledge of running a shop, negotiating with wholesalers, understanding of economics and markets. Does not include haggling.
- Miner — Skilled at extracting metals and minerals from the earth. Includes knowledge of mining hazards (e,g. gas pockets, cave-ins, etc.), prospecting, and identifying ore, minerals and metals.
- Scholar — Practical knowledge of how to research, how to test theories, how to discern fact from fiction between contradictory sources, and how to teach others.
- Scrivener — Translator and transcriber of existing texts. Includes a knowledge of bookmaking, paper making, inks, type-setting, as well as handwriting analysis.
- Shipwright — Crafting of vehicles, whether flying, burrowing, land-based or aquatic. Does not include operations of said vehicles.
- Siege Engineer — Operation of siege weapons, including aiming, maintaining, assembly/disassembly, and movement of siege weapons, as well as managing siege crews,
- Soldier — Practical knowledge of being a soldier, including care and maintenance of weapons, armor and kit, as well as military insignias, and military law.
- Tailor — Crafting of cloth-based goods, including clothing, tents, etc.
- Tanner — Practical knowledge of the stripping, stretching, tanning and preserving of leather and pelts.
- Trapper — Practical knowledge of trapping game animals, including finding game trails, watering holes, and setting of snares. Does not include crafting traps.
- Trapsmith — Crafting of traps, snares and triggering mechanisms, typically for game hunting, but sometimes for larger, less legal prey. Does not include actually using the traps.
- Weaponsmith — Crafting of melee weapons, from daggers to polearms. Does not include crafting of armor or projectile weapons.
- Weaver — Crafting of woven goods, such as rugs. Also includes fabrication of wigs.
- Woodcutter — Practical knowledge of lumberjacking, including how to chop down trees without getting killed.
Numerous other professions exist, though some are far too dull to be attractive to a player character (e.g., Bookbinder, Clerk, Miller, Porter), too provocative for some campaigns (e.g. Prostitute, Midwife), or are campaign specific (e.g. Redcap, Lamplighter).
Players are free to put ranks into any profession(s) they desire, granting them insight and knowledge related to that profession, professional contacts, an understanding of common protocols, jargon, laws and business practices pertinent to that profession, etc. Indeed, in addition to making a character's background more colorful, having a profession skill can be highly useful in the right circumstances. In most cases, a relevant profession skill is far more likely to reveal useful information than a more generic skill.
Create a Good
| The profession skill allows you to cultivate, craft or supply a good relevant to your chosen trade (if applicable — some professions provide only services). The DC depends on the complexity of the item to be created. The item's finished price also determines the cost of raw materials.
To craft a good relevant to your profession, you need to do the following things:
| |
| Action Required: |
1 day (8 hours with no more than 1 hour of interruptions, not counting meals or rest breaks). Days spent creating a good cannot be spent for other purposes such as retraining. |
| DC of Check: |
varies, based on good. See Equipment, Goods and Services for details. |
| Modifiers to Check |
|
| Take 10? / Take 20? |
You can take 10. Taking 20 is allowed, but increases the time required to a minimum of 20 days. |
| Allows Assists? |
Yes (up to 5 allies). Assisting allies must have ranks in the same profession you are using to craft the good. GM's may adjudicate that some similar professions are complementary enough to also allow assistance. |
| Results of Success |
You create the good(s) you were attempting to create. |
| Consequences of Failure |
You are unable to complete the item in 1 day of work. For every 2 by which you failed the check (rounding up to the nearest 2), add 1 additional day. |
| Retry Allowed? |
No (there is no need; you will always succeed, given enough time.) |
| Provokes AOO? |
Yes |
Locate a Contact
| You can use your profession skill to locate other members of your professional community. You must be in a location which is likely to have people who practice your particular profession, but a profession check allows you to find colleagues even if they might be difficult to find for outsiders. The DC of this check is 15, though this can increase significantly if you're looking for a particular individual, such as the guild leader of your profession, or a member of your profession who is also a member of the nobility. Settlement size can also influence the DC. It might be very tough to find the herbalist in a very small community where everyone has multiple jobs, and similarly, it will be very tough to locate a the head of the shipwright guild in a megalopolis, though quite easy to find one random shipwright. | |
| Action Required: |
Typically 1 hour per settlement size. See Settlement Sizes for details. |
| DC of Check: | |
| Modifiers to Check | |
| Take 10? / Take 20? | |
| Allows Assists? | |
| Results of Success | |
| Consequences of Failure | |
| Retry Allowed? |
Yes |
| Provokes AOO? |
No |
Demonstrate Expertise
| You can call upon your knowledge of your profession to speak the jargon, comply with the normal protocols or etiquette expected of you, impress your colleagues, and generally be a professional in your field. The DC of this sort of check is generally 10 for casual situations, or 15 if you are speaking with people familiar with your profession. Against other professionals of your field, this is an opposed roll, your profession skill against theirs. If you succeed, you impress your audience with your knowledge, convey the validity of your point of view, etc. A highly successful roll (beat DC by 5 or more) might even change an NPC's attitude towards you, as though you had succeeded on a Diplomacy check. Failing the check by less than 5 means your audience is not swayed by your opinions, but does not change their opinion of your professional competence. Failure by more than 5 means they are dismissive of your ideas, and hold you in lower esteem regarding your competence in this field. Low level characters should consider staying quiet around the masters of their profession, lest they earn a poor reputation that is difficult to shake off later. | |
| Action Required: |
Conversations generally require a few minutes or longer. |
| DC of Check: | |
| Modifiers to Check | |
| Take 10? / Take 20? | |
| Allows Assists? | |
| Results of Success | |
| Consequences of Failure | |
| Retry Allowed? |
You can attempt another check 24 hours later, though a particularly poor result from any check may make future checks more difficult, as you are also forced to overcome the bad impression you've made. |
| Provokes AOO? |
No |
Build Your Enterprise
Ranks in Profession Lifestyle in Headquarters Town Lifestyle in Other Towns 1 - 4 - - 5 - 8 Modest Meager 9 - 12 Modest Modest 13 - 16 Comfortable Modest 17 - 20 Comfortable Comfortable 21 - 24 Wealthy Comfortable 25 - 28 Wealthy Wealthy 29 - 32 Lesser Nobility Wealthy 33+ Lesser Nobility Lesser Nobility