Chapter 4.6: Attribute and Specialization Interactions

Chapter 4.2 covers pairing an Attribute with a Specialization in general terms: the same Attribute does different work depending on what it is paired with, and the pairing you choose says how your character approaches the problem. This chapter is the full reference. Six lists follow, one per Specialization, each suggesting what all six Attributes look like applied to that field. None of it is exhaustive and none of it overrides the table: when a Task could reasonably pair with more than one Attribute, you propose, and the gamemaster decides.

Medicine

Medicine keeps people alive and puts them back together, across species (Chapter 4.3).

• Control, for the steady hand a surgery demands, or to talk a bystander through field first aid over an open channel.
• Daring, to triage the worst case first while the danger that caused it is still active, or to treat a patient with no time to consult your libraries.
• Fitness, to last through the fourth hour of an operation, or to keep working as a colony-wide crisis brings you more cases than you have hands.
• Insight, to read the symptom a patient is minimizing, or to judge how much pain someone is actually in.
• Presence, to talk an unwilling patient into treatment, or to carry a family through news you would rather not deliver.
• Reason, to build a diagnosis out of a scatter of symptoms, or to work out what a pathogen is doing before your cysuit's libraries have a name for it.

Science

Science makes sense of the unknown (Chapter 4.3).

• Control, to run a delicate procedure, or to calibrate an instrument to the edge of its tolerance.
• Daring, to test a hypothesis in the field with no time for a controlled trial, or to take a reading from somewhere a cautious survey would not send you.
• Fitness, to keep working a problem through exhaustion or an environment hostile enough to end the experiment for anyone less stubborn.
• Insight, to draw a working hypothesis out of data that does not yet add up.
• Presence, to carry a room through a finding they did not want to hear, or to argue a theory against a scientist convinced you are wrong.
• Reason, to build the hypothesis, run the numbers, and say what they mean.

Engineering

Engineering builds, breaks, and repairs. The standard cysuit can form common tools; specialized instruments and large fabrication require Traits (Chapters 3.5 and 4.3).

• Control, for exacting work: recalibrating a system to a tolerance that leaves no room for a second attempt.
• Daring, for the improvised fix, keeping a failing system running on whatever the compartment has in it.
• Fitness, to carry a repair through a hostile environment, or a shift that runs long after the rest of the crew has stopped.
• Insight, to make an educated guess about a system you have never seen before, or to read a device's behavior for a fault its diagnostics missed.
• Presence, to explain a fix to someone without your training, or to win an argument with another engineer over which approach to take.
• Reason, to design the fix, from the failure up.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is the work of moving people (Chapter 4.3).

• Control, to hold a delegation's attention through the exact, careful phrasing a treaty demands.
• Daring, to answer an insult or a threat across the table before anyone else in the room has decided what to do.
• Fitness, to stay sharp through a negotiation that runs the length of a siege, matching the patience of a side that is in no hurry.
• Insight, to read what a delegation will not say, or to catch the moment a negotiation has already been lost.
• Presence, to command a room, or to be believed across a table by someone who arrived not trusting you.
• Reason, to find the point of law or precedent that moves a stalled negotiation.

Security

Security meets force (Chapter 4.3).

• Control, for the careful shot, or to hold a line without flinching while someone moves behind you.
• Daring, for close combat, or the half-second decision to act before a threat finishes forming.
• Fitness, to carry an unwilling prisoner clear of danger, or to hold a defensive position for as long as the crew behind you needs.
• Insight, to spot an ambush before it opens, or to read a crowd for the one person about to do something.
• Presence, to make a threat believed without drawing a weapon, or to talk someone down from using one.
• Reason, to reconstruct what happened at a scene from what it left behind, or to plan a defense before anyone opens fire.

Infiltration

Infiltration goes unseen (Chapter 4.3).

• Control, to move without a sound through a space that punishes the smallest mistake.
• Daring, for the way in when the plan is already gone, and the way out when it is worse.
• Fitness, to hold a cramped position for hours, or to make whatever climb or crawl the entry actually demands.
• Insight, to read a security rotation for its one gap, or to feel the exact moment a cover story stops holding.
• Presence, to pass for someone you are not, in a room built to check.
• Reason, to map the routes and the rotations, with a way back out already chosen before you go in.