Editing Skills Summary (section)

=Mental Skills=

==Academics==
'''Academics reflects understanding, higher education, and ability to research fields within the humanities and the liberal arts. Historical study, for instance, is hardly â€œjust academicâ€ if your immortal enemies lived â€“ and left traces â€“ in that period. When you take this Skill, you get a free specialty. For foreign languages, use the Linguistics Merit (p. 179).

==Awareness==
'''Awareness handles your perceptions. You may spot a Child of Haqim before a strike occurs, spy a key dropped in the trash, or sense a lingering perfume.

==Finance==
'''Finance allows you to identify trends in the market, invest well, manipulate stock, and know when a fall is coming. It also allows you to assess â€“ and trace â€“ the wealth of others and broker financial deals. You can generally appraise art, property, or any other noncriminal good. Ventrue value this Skill more than some Disciplines.

==Investigation==
'''Investigation allows you to unravel cases of mundane and mysterious means, spot clues, interpret them, and trace missing persons. Vampires find this Skill especially useful when a vessel escapes.

==Medicine==
'''Medicine allows you to fix people who are broken and diagnose causes of death or sickness in a victim. It also allows you to use medical equipment, prescribe drugs, and stanch (or encourage) rapid blood flow.Characters use Medicine to heal Aggravated Health damage in mortals (see p. 127).

==Occult==
'''Occult represents knowledge of the mystical world, extending from the rites and practices of Freemasons and Rosicrucians, all the way to Noddist scholars and real mages. You can recognize occult sigils and folk-magic practices, effective or not.

==Politics==
'''Politics covers diplomacy and bureaucracy: both human and Kindred. You can work with, and possibly put pressure on, city government and perhaps higher levels. Among Kindred, you know the inside scoop on which sects are dominant where, who is at war with whom, and where the bodies are buried. Literally.

==Science==
'''Science is a broad church, covering everything from basic principles of life to the understanding of universal entropy. The laws of science govern the mortal world, and vampires who wish to rule that world study them. 

==Technology==
'''As a Skill, Technology acts as something of a moving target; it governs the operation and understanding of â€œtechnical developments most vampires find mystifying.â€ In 1870, it might have governed steam engines and electricity; these nights, it governs computers and computer systems. Of course, now computers govern almost everything â€“ including steam turbines in power plants and electrical systems in office buildings.