At character creation, players will be granted a number of points which can be used to define their initial character:

• Two Career Ranks
• Skill Points (SP)
• Gear Points (GP)

Following character creation, characters are able to accrue and spend Expertise Points (EP) to further their character skills.

Career Ranks

Careers are the defining characteristic of character creation. They determine what skills a character has access to, and enable interaction with certain game mechanics. For more details, see Careers.

Skill Points (SP)

Skills are the specific abilities and capabilities that a character has. Skills might enable a character to wield specific types of weapons, conduct research in specialised fields, diagnose rare diseases or build cybernetic implants.

A Skill Map is available to aid character creation – Skill Map

Skills in Drift are divided into three categories:

• General Skills (accessible to all characters)
• Career Skills (accessible only to characters with the corresponding Career Rank):
  • Engineer Skills
  • Envoy Skills
  • Medical Skills
  • Military Skills
  • Science Skills
• Specialist Skills (accessible only through Expertise Points or other mechanics)

General and Career skills have an assigned cost in skill points. For example, the ‘Contacts’ skill is a Rank 1 Envoy skill, costing 2 skill points.

Gear Points (GP)

At character creation, and in downtime between events, characters are assigned a number of gear points which may be used to select equipment and resources that they have in their possession.

See Character Generation.

Expertise Points (EP)

Expertise points are the primary means of mechanical character progression in Drift. Expertise points are provided to characters during an event, as a reward for good roleplay, engaging with game mechanics, applying their skills, and various other means. 

Expertise points are tied to specific careers. For example, a character may simultaneously have 2 Medical expertise points, and 3 Military expertise points. A character cannot accrue expertise points for careers they do not have a rank in.

Expertise points may be spent during or between events to:

• Unlock specialist skills.
• Perform scientific research.
• Unlock new, or alternative crafting recipes.