Professional Skill

Defaults: Special
Professional Skill (DX or IQ/Average) is a realistic job skill that is more useful for making a living than for adventuring.
Examples: air traffic controller, barber, brewer, cooper, distiller, dyer, florist, game designer, journalist, prostitute, tanner, vintner, and zookeeper.
==General Information==
Depending on the skill they may default to other skills. “Journalist”, for instance, would logically default to Writing-3.
Professional skills associated with highly paid or respected professions often have prerequisites. For example, Electronics Operation (Sensors) being required for air traffic controller makes perfect sense.
Some some Professional Skills may be specialized with different defaults. For instance a computer game designer might have Artist, Computer Programming, and/or Computer Operation as defaults.
On a practical level this is just a place holder for Average skills that don't seem to have an adventuring application out of very special circumstances and mainly serve as a way to flesh out a character.
===Better definition===
As suggested on the Steve Jackson Forums: "Professional Skill is best summed up in Crewman, Soldier, and Survival. There are a lot of little 'skills' that are of value by themselves, but are learned together in a package because you really only know very specific applications of them. These skills often also cover learned behaviors, like a soldier always keeping his kit prepped and ready, a spacer stowing all loose items before leaving a room, a survivalist properly dousing the campfire before breaking camp."
==Classic Skills that are Professional Skills in 4e==
There are several Classic skills that became Professional Skills in 4e; those in italics that are primarily artistic in nature either combine with or are replaced with an Artist skill. Since these skills had defaults they give a rough idea regarding the creation of new Professional Skills. 
For some strange reason GURPS Update considers Classic Blacksmith/TL to equate to Professional Skill (Blacksmith) rather then Smith (Blacksmith)/TL
Classic Skill 	Classic defaults 	4e Skill
Bartender 	Carousing-3 	Professional Skill (Bartender)
Cooperage 	IQ-4, DX-4 	Professional Skill (Cooper)
Courtesan 	Savoir-Faire-5 	Professional Skill (Prostitute)
Distilling 	IQ-4 	Professional Skill (Distiller)
Dyeing 	IQ-4 	Professional Skill (Dyer)
Flower Arranging 	IQ-4 	Professional Skill (Florist)
Glass Blowing (P/H)	DX-6 	Professional Skill (Glassblower)
Sonar Imaging 	Prerequisite: Sonar Vision(Scanning Sense (Sonar) in 4e)None	Professional Skill (Sonar Imaging)
Tanning (P/E) 	IQ-4 	Professional Skill (Tanner)
Weaver 	IQ-4 or DX-4 	Professional Skill (Weaver)
==See Also==
*Hobby Skill
*Expert Skill
==References==
*Basic Set pg 215
Category:Skills