Whats your Profession?

One thing I always thought was missing from NWN and especially persistent worlds was the Profession Skill. I thought part of actually being in a world that was around 24/7 was that you had to somehow make a living during those times when you were not out adventuring. In fact some "adventurers" could be considered no more than a professional who gets tangled up in the world around them.

As characters we already have at our disposal a myriad of skills, features and class abilities, which allow us to create marvelous items or perform amazing tasks. All of these "actions" have been carefully designed as part of the system so that you can use them to interact with the world in a fair and structured way which allows for competition and challenge. What isn't generally covered by this however are the actions which are generally considered less notable as those the class uses all the time, and in fact often these actions are simply taken for granted as being common.

With NWN, these actions are generally the result of executing scripts that are triggered either through placeables or via dialog options. Within these actions there may be skill tests or ability checks which are considered to indicate how successful a person is at the task, but they never take into account the experience a person may have at performing that action or how often they have performed it in the past.

Profession Skill = Experienced at Actions
Essentially if we formalize all of the mundane "actions" that can be performed within the world, things which we often take for granted like foraging or mining ore from a rock, skinning an animal or even trying to haggle for a better price, we can easily see that having a specific profession would give you an advantage with a sub-set of those actions simply due to the fact that they perform those actions often while going about their business. Thus a guard is more skilled at keeping an eye out for trouble, a blacksmith can smelt metal, and a sailor can judge the direction they are travelling.

Whats more, but the Craft Skills may also have a certain subset of actions which they often use in the crafting of items. Wouldn't it therefore make sense that if one could craft metal that they would also be in a profession like being a blacksmith? The two are not mutually exclusive and while the difference has always been stated as one produces an item and the other does not, what is performed in both can have a high level of synergy. While one does not need to know how to smelt metal to be a crafter of weapons, it is a handy thing to be able to do and thus they would invest time in learning a trade that gives them such abilities.

By assigning actions to specific professions we now make the profession a useful part of a character's being, and while it may only be something they did before they became an adventurer, those abilities may find good use when they are roaming the world, or it may provide a bit of extra money when you are resting up from a bad injury.

Differentiating Craft from Profession
Of course this may blur the line between craft and profession even more, especially when actions may belong to one or more of them, and certain professions seem to be directly related to a specific craft, but the reality is that a profession is more than just a craft, and while you may end up making something at the end of it, what you make and how good it is falls completely under the banner of "craft", while the way you go about doing it, and the additional steps inbetween that lead up to it are considered to fall under the banner of "profession".

Take Alchemy as a craft vs Apothecary as a profession. Both of them deal with alchemical and magical concoctions and liquids, and yet while they overlap they also diverge. An apothecary does not necessarily have to make their own potions or chemicals, they simply have to know how to recognize them, how to manipulate them and anything else that is required to deal with them, while leaving the actual making of the items up to the crafter. The alchemist on the other hand would naturally have a fair knowledge of chemicals and processes to be able to create such items, but generally could only recognize such components when they are sitting in front of him in a bottle that is clearly marked. Not all alchemists would know where to find certain materials and certainly wouldn't know what a white powder was just by studying it. Thus the Apothecary becomes the identifier and processor of materials, while the Alchemist is the user of those materials for the creation of items. Of course being both is a bonus, not only do you know what to do with them, but you also know where to find them and how to prepare them, thus rounding out the complete life cycle from beginning to end... but how many alchemists actually have time to gather their own materials?

Use of Abilities/Skills/Feats
The other interesting aspect of these "actions" is that they still require structure and the use of skill checks, ability checks and feats, etc. Thus while being of a certain profession may give you an advantage because you have many ranks in that profession, being able to substitute that level of experience with some impressive abilities is also possible. In this way the career professional can keep pace with the adventuring dabbler, one having reached mastery through dedication to the task at hand, while the other has excelled at doing what they do and pulling it all together when the need arises.

Professions place the character in the world
One of the things I like most about the way professions will be handled is that it actually puts the character into the world. It gives them something to do beyond just adventuring which more often than not will lead them into better places. The world is full of people going about their business, eeking out a living and plying their trade. Sometimes I think adventurers forget that they were once simple people too, that they had a day job, they worked to put food on the table and they were actually quite good at what they did before wanderlust took them and they found more enjoyment from brushing cobwebs out of their eyes than from tilling a field or trading furs with a merchant.