Here's the text for Jobs in the upcoming Rules Manual!
Jobs
If you want to survive in the Utter Islands, you must have a Job. Not even just to gain joss: that is, currency to survive. But to gain the means to fight back. Post-Calamity Utter Islands is a land where violence has replaced the Law for little communities, while Violence has become the Law in large communities. Cities and states ruled by large fraternities, corporations, and puppet-republics will hunt you down. Worse: monasteries, dojos, and mystery cults will hunt those that practice their arts without proper initiation.
After the Second World Revolution, the Tearing of The Lotus Throne, and the Instatement of the Sasacakkavati, entire magick traditions and martial arts were wiped out and expunged for being crucial to revolutionary efforts. Those that weren't wiped out registered into the World Imperial System, and were installed into the International Job Standard. These esoteric Jobs--Knights, Sorcerers, Healers--stood alongside more mundane jobs such as Machinists, Accountants, and Diplomats. Eventually, even the mundane jobs were influenced by the esotericism and initiatory rites of the esoteric jobs, leading to the Job Market today being a bundle of fraternities, guilds, and factionalisms.
Each Job arises from a Faction. Sometimes the faction is a nation, sometimes a city, sometimes religion, sometimes an ideal, sometimes an oath, sometimes a commune in the middle of the sea.
In this Rules Manual we introduce 20 Jobs, the most common in amongst the Utter Islands.
Job Benefits
When you choose which Job you're going to follow, you get the Benefits of that Job: passive benefits that change you due to the training you are given from the initiation. A Job's Benefits will have the following:
A Trait. The Trait you gain by just being of that Job, which goes away if you ever Change Jobs.
The Job's Speed modifier. The Speed modifier you add to the 2d6 roll after every Rest to determine your Speed until your next Rest.
The Job's Root modifier, affecting a particular Root.
Gear Class Licenses
Each Job will also have Job Specific Gear Class Licenses that they have while they're actively working a Job. The Gear Licenses that a Job grants them represents proficiency in that weapon or armor.
When switching Jobs, your Gear Class Licenses change too. This represents the mental toll it takes to switch Jobs at any given time.
This can be overcome, of course, with the various Weapon and Armor Lores.
Using a Weapon Class you are not Licensed to inflicts Folly on using it.
Wearing an Armor Class you are not Licensed to means you do not benefit from the +HP, +SP, Mod, nor the Material benefits of it.
Initiation
To be inducted into a job requires an application form and someone willing to induct you into the job. For Mass Labor this is easier to do: they have recruiters for it. But all Labor is worthy Labor, especially in the face of alienation.
Each Job will have a different Initiatory Rite that you must do if you wish to be inducted into their ranks.
During Character Discovery, you start with 1 Job already initiated into.
Once initiated, you can start gaining License Points (or LP) for that specific Job. License Points is what you use to gain access to Licenses.
Licenses
Licenses are proof that you can reliably perform and repeat that Jobs' special technicks and/or magicks. Gaining a License requires the expenditure of License Points, which are a combination of Experience, spiritual Cultivation, and actual accounting of things done. Each Job has a different way of gaining License Points, itself forms of Accumulation and Cultivation.
Licenses allow for specific use of abilities, technicks, and magicks. There are no Licenses restricting weapon usage or armor usage--regulating that was a nightmare--but some weapons and armor work best with abilities of specific Jobs. It is imperative for you to explore.
Each Job has 10 Skills each. These are not exhaustive: Jobs can have other Abilities learned from other masters, other sects, branches, subjobs, and the like. The 10 Abilities in this Manual display the most popular and/or the officially endorsed Abilities taught to every would be worker for that Job. Each Job Ability exemplifies and is used for performing the duty of that Job, which is dictated by the Job description.
Gaining License Points
Other than the License Point Trigger for a Job, you also generally get +1 License Point for your current Job after you Rest.
License Points you earn for 1 Job do not carry over to another Job.
Finally, you may gain extra License Points for doing quests, missions, and tasks for your master, guild, or faction.
Acquiring Licenses
License Purchase requires going to a major city or important hub to be able to verify the License Points used, or in the case of more esoteric or more ascetic jobs you can report back to your master or teacher.
To gain License for a new Skill, go to a city or master that can teach you the License and spend the required LP.
Mastery
Mastery of a Job means you've learned all of the 10 Skills laid out in the general list in the Rules Manual. You can call yourself a "Master Exorcist" if you wish. More importantly, you get the Mastery Reward, which is usually a piece of Gear or a Trait.
If the Mastery Reward is Gear, you must return to a trainor or a Job Official to validate your Mastery and then they will give it to you (or arrange for its shipping. Shipping in the Utter Islands goes for 2-14 days).
The Skillset
Every worker has a Skillset. This is a formalization of the capabilities of a character. Skillsets are abstractions and represents the mental toll of a Job's capabilities. A Skillset is the tools, tricks, and capabilities that a character has access to in a particular moment: it doesn't mean they don't have access to their other skills. It just means they're focusing on a particular set of Skills at that moment. The practice of focusing on Skillsets has been a grand boon to getting rid of mental blocks or decision paralysis in the heat of intense expeditions. Modern psychology calls this compartmentalization, as the mind can only really handle so much at a time.
Changing Skillsets during battle or any other intense scene is usually possible if given the opportunity. In intense battles, it might only come during a breather given by the changing of Revolutions.
Every character can have up to [INT] Skillsets at a time. After a character rests, they must choose which Skillset they have active from them.
When a character gains the License for a Skill, they are considered as having earned that Skill. They can slot that Skill into a Skillset. Skillsets can only be changed during Rests.
A Skillset has 6 Slots at CL1-4, 8 Slots at CL5-8, and 10 Slots at CL9-12. This means you can only slot in up to 6 Skills into the slots at CL 1-4.
Crossjobbing
You can equip into your Skillset any Skill from any Job that you've already earned the License for. Having Skills from more than 1 Job in a Skillset is called Crossjobbing. However, you must have at least 2 Skills from your current Job in the Skillset you have active.
The main drawback is that you will never have access to the entirety of your Job's Skillset. Crossjobbing has you mixing other jobs into your Skillset.
Unemployment (Or Freelancing)
If you do not choose to get a Job, you are considered Unemployed (Freelancer if you want to be nice). You have access to all your Skills and Licenses, but you do not gain License Points to unlock new Licenses. You additionally do not have access to any Job Benefits.
The upside is that you will not be beholden to the faction that you would have worked for. This means you can accept missions or do the dirty work of anyone. And, of course, you can equip any Skills that you have access to.
Unlocked License-Specific Gear
Jobs will often License specific Gear that is iconic to their Job but also bears the power and strength that their Job is known for. To wield a Licensed Gear you must have the Gear License in your Active Skillset.
If your Active Skillset does not have the Gear License then the piece of gear understands this through its withdrawn qualities imbued by the machinists and blacksmiths.
Unlicensed Weapons are made with a -12 penalty.
Unlicensed Armor no longer confer any of their benefits, and you suffer -2 on all Checks.
Unlicensed Items fail to be used and become inert.
These are on top of the penalties of using weapon or armor that you don't have the Gear Class License to.