Skill Fields

{{page |text= Fields are areas of professional competence, each linked to a category of gear and its use in dramatic situations.

Fields 101
The range of fields available is dictated by era of the campaign setting and specific options the GM wishes to make available. While studies can be directed towards nearly any topic, fields only become available when a type of gear allowed in the setting suggests a group of professionals must also exist to provide that gear. Fields allow a character to use the three Precision-based skills Expertise, Mischief, and Profession to perform checks relevant to the equipment the field encompasses.

A Player Character gains 1 field of their choice each time they spend a skill point to gain their first rank in Expertise, Mischief, and Profession. A character with ranks in two of those skills would choose 2 fields. A character with ranks in all three skills would have 3 fields, each useable with all three skills. Additional fields may be offered by Origins, Class Abilities, and Feats. If a character receives a specific field from a character option and already has that field, he may instead choose any other field allowed by the setting. NPCs can be given 1 field at no cost for each Precision-based Signature Skill they possess.

Once a character has a field, his ways of using that knowledge are expressed by the number of ranks purchased. Characters with a field do not suffer the penalties for being unskilled when making related Expertise, Mischief, or Profession checks even if they have 0 ranks in that particular skill. Not all fields are equally desirable when used in conjunction with a particular skill... Some may have great impact on play when used with Expertise, but little consequence when used with Profession or vice-versa.
 * Expertise represents the ability to apply this knowledge and the tools it creates to challenging situations.
 * Mischief is the ability to turn this knowledge to nefarious ends, circumventing/disrupting the proper operation of the devices, quickly and cheaply producing convincing replicas for the purpose of deception, and altering items to be dangerous to other users.
 * Profession represents the ability to build, repair, innovate, and gain money from this knowledge.

Ground Vehicles
Expertise would be used for extreme stunts and chases (Maneuver check). Profession would be use for building or adding features to a car (Assembly check), repairing crash damage (Repair check), designing vehicles for profit (Income check). Mischief would be used for jimmying car doors and hotwiring the starter (Bypass check), for sugaring gas tanks (Disable check), for kitting out a vehicle to mimic the look of a more expensive one (Counterfeit check), and for weakening brake lines to trigger a crash later (Sabotage check). Ground vehicle knowledge might proved the make and models of a vehicle or reveal fasted road routes.

Medicine
Expertise is used to run complex diagnostic instruments and to perform specialized surgery (Operate check). Profession will produce medicines (Assembly check), provide general care (Repair check), and represent work in research or maintaining a private practice (Income check). Mischief covers acquiring patient records or controlled substances without authorisation (Bypass check), discretely wrecking X-ray machines (Disable check), mixing up some interesting snake oil- er, placebos (Counterfeit check), and sticking unwelcome things like cortex bombs in people (Sabotage check).

Site Security
Expertise would aid in manning the controls of an active locks, barriers, and camera system (Operate check). Profession would be used for installing and testing biometric locks (Assembly check), reconstructing or recovering video logs that have been tampered with (Repair check), or heading up a patrol force (Income check). Mischief would be used for spoofing building ID scanners (Bypass check), Cutting phone service to the building (Disable check), putting together a makeshift company uniform (Counterfeit check), and rigging garage dock doors to fall on pursers as you flee the scene (Sabotage check). Knowledge checks could be used to recall point of contact information for the alarm company or assess a building’s internal security devices after a walk around the perimeter.

Behind the Curtain: Fields and Technological Expectations
Fields allow a fixed skill list to dynamically adapt to changing gear lists across multiple settings. Using fields, designers and GMs can introduce new technologies — even extremely campaign-specific technologies such as The Iron Kingdoms’ warjack cortexes or Full-Metal Alchemist’s automail cybernetics — without disrupting the balance or roles of the character classes. Fields also allow the designer/GM to collapse multiple fields as they appear in earlier eras into fewer, broader fields in later eras to represent the evolution of ideas, tools, and education. Creating a completely new field begins with creating or organizing the gear category that it addresses. If the use of this gear is self-explanatory ("drink the potion to gain effect") the field will probably not require any new Expertise skill checks. If the gear only functions in the hands of an expert (i.e. a fully furnished surgical operating theater) scripting a check to bring those benefits to bear will be necessary unless an existing Expertise check can be repurposed to serve. Since fields often combine multiple branches of knowledge into a practical whole it is not unusual or improper that two different fields may share some checks.

}}