DJH Professions
Contents
List of Professions in The Disappearance of Jason Hexam
Artist
Whether you are a painter, a musician, a sculptor, or even a performer, you follow your Muse where she leads. Sensitive and temperamental, by reputation if not in fact, you already inhabit a demimonde that most never understand.
Professional Abilities:
Art, Art History, Assess Honesty, Craft, Flattery, Languages, and any two Academic or Interpersonal abilities as personal specialties.
Special:
You may refresh one pool point in an ability representing your chosen art form (Art, or Craft, etc) during any significant downtime in an adventure, up to a maximum of four times per session. This represents time spent rehearsing, sketching, or what have you; Keepers should resist allowing this when the artist would not have the time or resources to polish their skill.
Author
You us to capture existence, to conceal yourself, to reveal the truth, or to sell fantasy to Depression-stricken readers. Perhaps all of the above. Your labors are solitary and your rewards sporadic; you may have too much time to think. With discipline and a modicum of skill, though, even a pulp writer can still keep his head above water.
Professional Abilities:
Art, Assess Honesty, History, Languages, Oral History, Research, and three other abilities as personal specialties or left over from previous jobs.
Special:
You may use any downtime in an adventure to refresh one Academic pool point, up to a maximum of four times per session. This represents time spent reading, checking notes and files, and so forth; Keepers should resist allowing this when the Investigator would not have the time or resources to do the necessary reading. That said, Trail of Cthulhu adventures will likely be rife with libraries that invite any author worth her salt to say “You guys check the rest of the house, I’m going to hit the books here for an hour or two.”
Clergy
Itinerant revival preacher, trusted neighborhood priest, scholarly rabbi, or eager missionary, the varieties of clerical life present many of the same challenges to those who listen most intently for God’s call. You may be predisposed to believe in the supernatural, but you are peculiarly vulnerable to the maltheistic revelations of the Mythos.
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Counseling, History, Humanities, Languages, Reassurance, Research, and one other Interpersonal ability.
Special:By using Humanities or Reassurance you can gain access to church records not generally or easily available to the public. Mere clerical status does not guarantee you access to the “Z” Collection in the Vatican Library or similarly secret archives, of course, although a sufficiently grandiose spend and a kindly Keeper might make such a thing possible.
If you identify yourself as a member of the clergy (or are wearing your traditional garb), once per game session you may freely refresh any Interpersonal ability pool by talking to one of your co-religionists (though not a fellow Investigator).
You make Counseling tests for Psychological Triage at a Difficulty of 3, instead of 4.
Corporate
You are part of some company. Perhaps its a large multinational or its just a small office. Either way you are used to the sight of cubicles and suits. The position you hold will probably afford you enough authority and autonomy within the company to work outside the company. You might even act as an agent for your company.
Professional Abilities:
Accounting, Assess Honesty, Bureaucracy, Law, Negotiation, Research
Special:
Once per day you can call on your company’s resources to provide a benefit worth a 1 point spend without spending any points. The benefit must be something your company can reasonably provide.
Criminal
Those who live on the other side of the law are already aware of a secret world of degeneracy, desperation, and evil beneath the normal ways of civilization. Some criminals have built their own codes and laws to shield themselves from the realization that all human order is breakable by acts of will. Others revel in this discovery.
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Filch, Infiltration, Intimidation, Scuffling, Sense Trouble, Streetwise, Surveillance, and one other Interpersonal or Technical ability as a personal specialty.
Special:
Criminals with point pools in Filch, Infiltration or Surveillance may spend points after rolling the die for a test. For every 2 points you spend after rolling the die, you increase the die result by 1. This only applies if you are undistracted and not directly observed. It never applies during a contest. You must describe the thing that almost went wrong, and how you caught it barely in time or succeeded through sheer luck.
Doctor
You see your work as emblematic of the best in society: rational, humane, clean, and selfless. If only society could be cured or cut free of its diseases the way the body can be purged by treatment or surgery! The wealthier and more successful doctors can avoid the blood and filth that their noble aims are built upon.
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Biological Sciences, First Aid, Forensics, Languages, Physician, Reassurance, Research.
Special:
By using or Reassurance, you have access to medical records and hospital wards generally off limits to the public. If you are affiliated with a hospital, sanitarium, or other facility, you can automatically use Reassurance to talk your way into any part of your institution from the drugs locker to the deep freeze.
When you use First Aid or Physician, each point spent heals 3 Health points, rather than 2. (You gain 2 Health points rather than 1 for each First Aid point you spend to heal yourself.) You can stabilize the condition of a seriously wounded victim by spending only 1 First Aid point, rather than 2.
Journalist
Whether for newspapers, magazines, or radio, you piece together the patterns of life and build them into a story, revealing the truth about the world around you. You may try to keep yourself separated from the story, especially if it is one of corruption and selfishness, but how can you avoid your own words?
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Cop Talk, Evidence Collection, Languages (for foreign correspondents), Negotiation, Oral History, Reassurance, Research, Surveillance, and one other Interpersonal ability.
Special:
By using Reassurance, you have access to newspaper morgues. At your own paper, you do the same to get the records clerks to fetch relevant articles. Similarly, fellow journalists may confide “off the record” rumors and stories to you, unless you’re a direct competitor.
Lawyer
You are a person who has been to law school and possibly have passed the bar exam. Your focus might be corporate, criminal, or civil law. Practicing law has a habit of putting you in touch with a lot of different people and the abilities you have reflect that..
Professional Abilities:
Accounting, Assess Honesty, Bureaucracy, Intimidation, Law, Negotiation, Research, and one other ability from either Academic or Interpersonal.
Nurse
A nurse is a trained medical assistant, sometimes male, more often female. Nurses are usually less comprehensively trained, always less well paid, and often less distant and callous than medical doctors.
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Biological Sciences, Bureaucracy, Counseling, First Aid, Flattery, Reassurance and one other interpersonal ability.
Special:
By using Medicine or Reassurance, you have access to medical records and hospital wards generally off limits to the public. If you are affiliated with a hospital, sanitarium, or other facility, you can automatically use Reassurance to talk your way into any part of your institution from the drugs locker to the deep freeze. When you use First Aid, each point spent heals 3 Health points, rather than 2. (You gain 2 Health points rather than 1 for each First Aid point you spend to heal yourself.) You can stabilize the condition of a seriously wounded victim by spending only 1 First Aid point, rather than 2.
Parapsychologist
Academics hold you in dubious regard, while true believers doubt your sincerity. You straddle – perhaps uncomfortably – the line between reason and superstition, between faith and proof. You believe that the supernatural is merely the natural we have not yet studied, or perhaps that the methods of science can uncover or confirm the truths of theology.
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Evidence Collection, Hypnosis, Occult studies, Research, Sense Trouble, Surveillance, and two other abilities from the lists of Academic and Technical.
Private Investigator
There are things that cops can’t do, and things that cops won’t do, and you’ll take money to do either. Sometimes you get dragged into something the cops want you out of, but you gotta stay in it to keep the cops honest. What keeps you honest? Now, that’s the real mystery, ain’t it?
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Evidence Collection, Infiltration, Intimidation, Law, Reassurance, Research, Sense Trouble, Streetwise, and Surveillance.
Special:
Private eyes with point pools in Surveillance may spend points after rolling the die for a test. For every 2 points you spend after rolling the die, you increase the die result by 1. This only applies if you are undistracted and not directly observed. It never applies during a contest. You must describe the thing that almost went wrong, and how you caught it barely in time or succeeded through sheer luck.
Professor
You might be a calm solon, dispensing the wisdom of the ages between puffs on your pipe. You might be a hapless child in an adult’s body, incompetent in anything except Middle High German, and vainglorious and petty about that. You might be the second, and think you’re the first, to the great delight of all who behold you.
Professional Abilities:
Bureaucracy, Languages, Research, any one Interpersonal ability, and any three Academic abilities (including for these purposes Craft and Mechanics).
Special:
Using Bureaucracy lets you enjoy nearly unrestricted access to closed library stacks, research laboratories, and even many private and government archives.
Psychic
Whether you are a true psychic or you are a fake, you make money by telling people you have psychic powers. When it comes to investigating the paranormal or strange events, people think of you.
In this game, psychic powers do exist. I’ll be using the psychic powers as they are presented in Fear Itself game. You can only have one psychic power and you have to pay for them out of the pool of points for abilities.
Professional Abilities:
Art, Counseling, History, Humanities, Occult Studies, Psychology, Reassurance, and one other interpersonal ability. This profession also can take up to two Psychic abilities as professional abilities as well.
Psychologist:
In the original ToC book, this profession was the Alienist. This profession has been updated to reflect modern times. Some of the abilities have been changed to better reflect the training psychologists have.
Professional Abilities:
Assess Honesty, Counseling, Hypnosis, Psychology, Reassurance and any other two Interpersonal abilities.
Special:
By using Counseling or an Interpersonal ability, you have access to mental records and sanitarium wards generally off limits to the public.
You make Counseling tests for Psychological Triage at a Difficulty of 3, instead of 4. It costs you only 1 Counseling point instead of 2 to stabilize an erratic character.
Scientist
You seek to advance science, perhaps to improve the world, or perhaps to tease out some long-denied truth. You may consider yourself handy around the lab; that third fire could have happened to anyone. You just need more equipment, more time, more samples, more understanding colleagues. Perhaps the fools laughed at you at the University. Well, you’ll show them.
Professional Abilities:
Biological Sciences, Craft, Evidence Collection, Mechanics, Forensics, Physical Sciences, and Research.
Special:
If you have academic credentials (a rating of 2 or more in Biological Sciences, Forensics, or Physical Sciences), you can get access to closed stacks at a university library.
