Career choices are the primary defining characteristics of player characters. They define what skills the character might have access to (unlocked through skill points) and what knowledge or experiences the character might have. Career choices should be made carefully, as these choices should form a central pillar upon which a character backstory and roleplay should be built.

There are five careers in Drift:

• Envoy
• Military
• Science
• Engineering
• Medical

Player characters have two career points at character creation, which can be assigned as they prefer; either two ranks in a single career, or a single rank in two different careers. This enables characters to specialise; gaining access to advanced skills within a career, or to have a broader set of less-specialised skills across two different careers. 

The design of the career selection system is such that players can build characters which reflect realistic societal and professional roles, and promote co-operation between characters, rather than having ‘all round’ characters. Some example character builds are as follows:

• Medical Researcher (Science I + Medical I)
• Diplomat (Envoy II)
• Cybernetics Expert (Medical I + Engineering I)
• Ship Captain (Military I + Envoy I)
• Gang Muscle (Military II)
• Surgeon (Medical II)
• Combat Surgeon (Military I + Medical I)
• Computer Hacker (Engineer II)

It should be noted that career choices do not necessarily reflect the backgrounds of characters (someone with the Military career does not have to be in the Federation Military!); but are simply representations of the experiences and capabilities that characters might have.

Envoys

Skilled in the art of insight and diplomacy, Envoys are able to influence and manipulate social situations to gain advantages. Envoys might be politicians, bar owners, business people, investigators or leaders.

Envoys have access to skills that might allow them to (for example):

• Send encrypted messages to contacts using advanced communication equipment.
• Intuit information about a person or their motives from a conversation.
• Negotiate skillfully with a trader to convince them to sell for a lower price.
• Use their mental discipline to resist mind-altering effects.

Military

Those from a military career are usually well-versed in combat, tactics, and armaments. They might be combat pilots, commanders, gang enforcers, security operatives or arms dealers.

The Military career offers access to skills that might allow them to (for example):

• Utilise specialised weapons; explosives, shields, or dual wielding melee weapons.
• Track a target or military force from impressions left behind.
• Be more resilient to damage through wearing advanced kinetic armour.
• Sneak through areas undetected.

Science

Scientists progress the frontiers of knowledge through theories and experimentation. They might be astrophysicists, academy professors, xenobiologists or asteroid geologists.

Scientists have access to skills that might allow them to (for example):

• Use a compound synthesiser to produce exotic materials.
• Theorise about how some technology might work, and intuit how accurate their theory might be.
• Utilise scientific scanners to gain information about their environment.
• Perform research into a biological specimen.

Medical

Medical personnel will have some kind of experience in medicine, which could be from formal training in a federation academy, or from growing up on a farming colony using herbal remedies. They might be surgeons, village healers, pharmacists, or narcotics dealers.

They have access to skills that might allow them to (for example):

• Use a medical scanner to diagnose a rare alien disease.
• Apply advanced biofoam to temporarily patch up a wound.
• Dissect a specimen to assess cause of death.
• Synthesise and test experimental drugs.
• Perform surgery to install cybernetic enhancements.

Engineer

Engineers typically build and repair equipment, or otherwise tinker or modify gadgetry. Engineers might be station builders, hackers, scrappers, ship engineers or cybernetics experts. They have access to skills that might allow them to (for example):

• Operate a fabricator to produce new equipment, or parts to repair an existing item.
• Identify how an item might have been made, what materials have been used and who by.
• Scrap equipment for constituent components to re-use.
• Hack into computer systems.