Occupation skill points for a Call of Cthulhu investigator

Occupation skill points in Call of Cthulhu are the pool an investigator spends on the skills their job would have taught them, and the size of that pool comes from the occupation entry rather than from one fixed multiplier. Every occupation names its own combination of characteristics. Some are flat education, some split the calculation across education and a second characteristic, and the choice of which second characteristic to use is the player's.

That is the part 6th edition players have to unlearn. Chaosium set it out in its own conversion notes: EDU is no longer the only characteristic used to generate Occupational Skill Points, because some characters may have a low level of education but be extremely proficient in some of the less academic skills. The same document says a variety of characteristics feed the calculation depending on the chosen occupation, and that the change also lends more value to APP in the game.

The pool and its multiplier

An Antiquarian gets EDU times four. So does an Author, and so does a Doctor of Medicine. An Artist gets EDU times two plus either POW times two or DEX times two, whichever the player picks. A Dilettante gets EDU times two plus APP times two, which is the clearest case of the design note above: a rich idler with a bad education and a beautiful face still has a real pool to spend.

The practical effect is that rolling characteristics and choosing an occupation collapse into a single decision. An investigator with EDU 80 and APP 40 has 320 points as an Antiquarian and 240 as a Dilettante. An investigator with EDU 50 and APP 85 has 200 as an Antiquarian and 270 as a Dilettante. Nobody should pick the occupation first and then discover the numbers.

Personal interest points sit alongside the occupation pool and are always INT times two. They go on anything, which is where the investigator's hobbies, their bad habits and the one skill the party is missing get paid for. Occupation points are restricted to the list the occupation prints, plus one of the player's own choosing in most entries.

Credit Rating out of the same pool

Credit Rating is not a free number. It is a skill on the sheet, it is bought with occupation points, and every occupation prints the band it is allowed to sit in. Chaosium's quick-start rules band it as 0 for penniless and living on the streets, 1 to 9 for poor with the bare minimum, 10 to 49 for average and a reasonable comfort level, 50 to 89 for wealthy with some degree of luxury, 90 to 98 for rich, and 99 to 100 for super rich where money is no object.

Those bands are the hidden cost of a high-status occupation. A Dilettante has to buy Credit Rating up into the wealthy band before spending anything on skills that keep them alive, and the points that go there are gone. A Drifter has almost nothing to buy, so every point stays available for Stealth, Climb and the sort of thing that gets an investigator out of a cellar.

The other thing to notice is that Credit Rating rolls in play. It opens doors, it gets a clerk to hand over the file, and it decides what the investigator can put on the table when a purchase matters. Spending points there is not spending them on nothing.

Base values and what a point buys

Every skill on the sheet already has a printed starting number, and occupation points are added on top of it. Accounting starts at 5 for everyone, Library Use at 20, and Spot Hidden at 25. The quick-start rules describe the printed value in parentheses beside each skill as the base each character has before anything is spent, with the raised values on a filled sheet superseding it.

The pool is also worth more than its face value because of how rolls resolve. Each skill box carries a Hard value that is the regular value divided by two and an Extreme value that is the regular value divided by five, so a Charm of 50 gives 25 and 10. Pushing a skill from 40 to 60 does not only raise the regular chance, it moves the Hard threshold from 20 to 30, and Hard is what the Keeper calls for when the scene has teeth.

A ceiling on starting skills

The rules as printed do not stop a player pouring an entire pool into one skill. Chaosium's own guidance, written for converting older investigators, suggests that the Keeper may wish to enforce a cap of 75 on starting skills. Most tables adopt it for new investigators too, and it is worth agreeing before anyone spends a point.

The reason is the Extreme column again. A skill at 90 has an Extreme value of 18, which makes the dramatic successes routine for one character and impossible for everyone else. A ceiling of 75 keeps the spread narrow enough that the party solves problems together.

Where the numbers live

The occupation entries themselves, with their multipliers, their skill lists and their Credit Rating bands, are the reason the Investigator Handbook exists: 288 pages published in 2015, carrying over 60 occupations, each with its mechanical benefits and its drawbacks. The Keeper Rulebook prints a shorter list that covers a normal campaign perfectly well.

For a table that has never built an investigator, the cheapest route in is the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, which took the Gold ENnie for Best Rules in 2019, the same year Masks of Nyarlathotep took Gold for Best Adventure. It walks a player through the arithmetic once with a pre-built example before asking them to do it alone.

Build one investigator this way and the process stops being arithmetic. Roll characteristics, read three occupation entries against the numbers you rolled, work out the pool each would give you, then buy Credit Rating first and spend the rest. The investigator who comes out of that is usually more interesting than the one you had in mind before the dice hit the table.