Sympathetic Jobs

Sympathetic Jobs turns everyday Minecraft activities into a proper profession system. Choose a job, earn profession XP by doing the work that belongs to it, and unlock stronger bonuses as that job levels up. Mining, crafting, brewing, fighting, farming, cooking, exploring and supporting other players all have their own progression paths.

The mod includes twelve professions. Some are completely passive, while others have an ability or a toggle that you control. Every profession has its own level, XP bar and rules, and all important gameplay decisions are checked by the server. Placed blocks, automated actions, previewed crafts and fake combat damage cannot quietly generate rewards.

The default balance described below is the balance included with the mod. Server owners can change the level curve, profession limits and many profession values through config files and datapacks.

Requirements

• Minecraft: 1.21.1
• Mod loader: NeoForge
• Supported NeoForge versions: 21.1.235 or newer within the 21.1.x line
• Java: 21
• Mod version: 1.0.9
• Required dependency: Sympathetic Attributes 1.1.3

Install both Sympathetic Jobs and Sympathetic Attributes on the client and the server. Do not keep an older copy of either mod in the same mods folder.

Getting started

The first time a player joins, a profession selection screen opens. Choose an icon to read the full description, level bonuses, XP method and active ability before confirming the profession. The screen cannot be dismissed until the first profession is chosen, but after the choice is saved it will not interrupt future logins. Other mods that show their own first-join selection screens can continue afterwards.

The default controls are:

• O — open the Professions menu.
• L — use the active profession's ability or toggle.
• Middle Mouse Button — select a Guardian or Shaman friend while looking at them.
• Cook crafting toggle — available as a button on supported crafting screens. A separate keybind is also provided for modded screens and is unbound by default.

Every key can be changed from Minecraft's Controls menu.

Each profession starts at level 1 and normally reaches level 25. Profession XP is separate from ordinary Minecraft experience. Dying does not remove professions, levels, XP or active cooldowns. The default server limit is one profession per player, although operators can increase the global limit or give individual players additional slots. Additional professions after the first choice are granted by an operator.

With the default XP curve, reaching level 25 takes a total of 42,512 profession XP. The curve becomes steadily more demanding at higher levels, and both the curve and maximum level can be changed by the server owner.

If a player owns more than one profession, the standing passive benefits from all owned professions remain active. The profession marked as Active only decides what the ability key and friend selection key control.

The twelve professions

Miner

Miner is a passive underground profession focused on natural stone and ores.

Benefits: Mining speed starts at +25% and reaches +140%. Eligible primary resource drops are multiplied by x3 at level 1, x4 from level 5 and x5 from level 20. The multiplier is applied to the finished loot result, so normal Fortune and other loot processing can still do their work first.

How to earn XP: Break eligible natural blocks yourself. Common stone gives 1 XP; coal and copper give 3; iron, gold, redstone, lapis and quartz give 6; diamond gives 15; ancient debris gives 25. Extra items created by the drop multiplier do not create extra XP.

Important rule: Blocks placed by players, machines or commands do not count. Blocks inside structures, blacklisted blocks and outputs that are not real mining resources are also excluded. This keeps a placed-ore loop from becoming an infinite source of drops and XP.

When the mod is added to an older world, it cannot reconstruct placements made before installation. Miner remains usable by default, while every new player, machine and command placement is tracked and excluded normally. Servers that prefer strict migration handling can enable miner.requireLegacyWorldAcknowledgement; the persistent acknowledgement command is /sympatheticjobs config acknowledge-legacy-world.

Ability: None. Miner is always passive.

Artisan

Artisan is a passive equipment-crafting profession. Weapons, tools and armor crafted by a real player can receive permanent Sympathetic Attributes that are shown in the item tooltip.

Benefits: An Artisan craft has a 25% chance to remain Normal and a 75% chance to use the positive attribute pools. Equipment crafted by a non-Artisan has a 20% chance to remain Normal and an 80% chance to use the flawed pools. Higher Artisan levels improve the chance of every positive attribute row that is checked.

Melee, tool, armor and projectile pools are independent. An item uses every category it matches, so an axe can receive both melee and tool rolls. More than one row can succeed in the same pool, which means a particularly good craft can carry several bonuses. Repairs, enchanting and normal upgrades keep the original roll instead of rerolling the item. If no row in a chosen pool succeeds, one valid row is selected as a fallback so the completed roll is never empty.

Possible bonuses include attack damage, attack speed, health, armor, toughness, movement, reach, mining speed, experience gain, critical stats, elemental damage, life steal, penetration and other attributes appropriate for the item. Flawed equipment uses matching negative pools.

How to earn XP: Craft eligible equipment yourself. Each produced item gives XP based on material: wood 0.1, stone 0.2, copper 0.5, iron 1, gold 2, silver 30, diamond 50 and netherite 100. Automation and recipes that do not produce eligible equipment give no Artisan XP.

Ability: None. Artisan is always passive.

Brewer

Brewer improves real brewing-stand batches owned by the player.

A batch belongs to the real player who supplied the last valid brewing ingredient. That player's Brewer level is recorded for the batch when the ingredient is supplied.

Benefits: Brewing speed increases from x2 to x7. Supported potion effect level increases from x2 to x4, and duration increases from x2 to x5. Each finished bottle is marked so the same result cannot be multiplied repeatedly.

Normal follow-up recipes still work. Glowstone, redstone, fermented spider eye, gunpowder and dragon breath create the correct new potion or bottle type, then the Brewer bonus is recalculated from that new vanilla base. Old bonuses are not multiplied on top of themselves.

A stand last used by a non-Brewer works at one-tenth brewing speed and produces effects with one-third duration. Fully automated brewing without a valid player owner is left neutral.

How to earn XP: Finish an effect-bearing potion in a brewing stand attributed to you. Every final bottle gives 8 XP. Water bottles, Awkward Potions and other intermediate bottles do not give XP.

Ability: None. Brewer is always passive.

Fighter

Fighter is a passive frontline profession built around genuine melee combat.

Benefits: Depending on level, Fighter provides +5% to +15% melee damage, +5% to +10% attack speed, +5% to +10% movement speed, +12 to +20 maximum health, +10 to +20 armor and +4 to +10 armor toughness. The trade-off is reduced swimming speed, beginning at -5% and reaching -50% at level 25. At level 25, valid melee hits also gain 10% execution and 15% armor-toughness penetration.

The melee-only effects are applied only during the correct hit. Arrows, indirect damage and unrelated attacks cannot borrow them.

How to earn XP: Deal a valid melee hit yourself. You receive 1 XP for each point of health the target actually loses after damage reduction, doubled against players. Absorption-only damage, overkill, repeated attribution and tagged combat dummies cannot inflate the reward.

Ability: None. Fighter is always passive.

Hunter

Hunter is a passive ranged profession for bows, projectiles and animal hunting.

Benefits: Arrow damage rises from +5% to +25%, draw speed from +5% to +25%, arrow velocity from +5% to +10%, movement speed from +5% to +15%, and step height from +1 to +5 blocks. Animals personally killed by a Hunter produce x5 loot. Food from those animals stays at Normal quality instead of receiving the default Very Poor world-loot quality. Level 25 also adds projectile-only execution and armor-toughness penetration, with default values of 10% and 15% respectively.

How to earn XP: Damage a target with a projectile attributed to you. You receive 1 XP for each point of health actually lost, doubled against supported animals and tripled against players. Fake projectiles, overkill and repeated hit attribution are ignored.

Ability: None. Hunter is always passive.

Enchanter

Enchanter is a passive profession for enchantment tables, books, anvils and ordinary Minecraft XP.

Benefits: Enchantment-table results receive +1 to +4 enchantment levels and may go above the normal maximum. Supported book and book-to-item anvil costs are divided by 2.0 to 4.5. Ordinary Minecraft XP gain increases from +50% to +200%. This bonus affects vanilla experience only; it does not multiply profession XP.

Supported book work can combine normally incompatible enchantments and can raise enchantments above their ordinary maximum, up to the safety limit of level 255. Server owners can place unsafe or unwanted enchantments in the denylist so those entries keep their normal restrictions.

How to earn XP: Complete a real table enchantment or supported anvil operation yourself. The operation cost gives between 2 and 20 profession XP, with x1.2 for books, x1.5 for diamond equipment and x5 for netherite equipment. Looking at a preview or cancelling the operation gives nothing.

Ability: None. Enchanter is always passive.

Cook

Cook gives manually crafted food a visible quality and can add temporary attribute effects. Every unit in a recipe is processed separately, including multi-output and shift-click crafting.

Food quality:

• Very Poor: -50% nutrition and saturation, and causes Bad Taste. This is the default quality for untouched world food and food manually crafted by a non-Cook.
• Poor: -15% nutrition and saturation.
• Normal: the original food values.
• Fine: +10% nutrition and saturation.
• Masterwork: +30% nutrition and saturation.
• Mythic: +50% nutrition and saturation.

The default Cook quality chances are:

Cook level	Poor	Normal	Fine	Masterwork	Mythic
1–4	20%	35%	25%	10%	10%
5–9	10%	35%	35%	10%	10%
10–14	0%	35%	35%	20%	10%
15–19	0%	25%	35%	25%	15%
20–24	0%	15%	35%	35%	15%
25	0%	5%	35%	35%	25%

These are real food values, not decorative tooltip text. Vanilla eating and food-information mods that read Minecraft's normal food properties see the same adjusted nutrition and saturation. Mechanically identical food stacks normally; food with different quality or effects stays separate because it genuinely has different properties.

At level 1, an eligible Cook meal has a 10% chance to receive a bonus effect. This reaches 40% at level 25. Effects last 60 seconds and depend on the food type:

• Meat: maximum health, attack damage, arrow velocity or movement speed.
• Vegetables and tofu: movement speed, hunger efficiency or healing received.
• Fish: swim speed, luck, arrow damage or magic projectile damage.
• Desserts: vanilla XP gain, attack speed, mana regeneration or Jobs cooldown reduction.

New food generated in world or structure chests and food dropped by animals starts as Very Poor by default. Actual crop harvests stay neutral. Animal food credited to a Farmer or Hunter also stays Normal. Server owners can disable the world-loot rule, and the change only affects food generated after the setting is changed. Bad Taste removes one full hunger icon on each pulse; repeated Bad Taste stacks make those pulses happen more often, up to the server's configured safety limit.

How to earn XP: Craft eligible food while Cook crafting is enabled. XP is based on the food's hunger value and quality, from 0.1 up to 75 XP per produced unit. Every unit rolls and awards XP independently. Automation and Cook-toggle-off output remain neutral.

Active ability — Feast: Press the Job Ability key to begin a 20-second Feast in a fixed 20-block area. Nearby entities, including enemies, become candidates. A candidate must remain present, alive and unharmed, then eat the first effect-bearing Cook meal. When the window completes, the recorded food effects become twice as strong and last five times longer. The cooldown is 10 minutes.

Farmer

Farmer tracks who planted each supported crop and rewards real planting and harvesting.

Benefits: Crops planted by the Farmer grow from x1 to x3 speed, mature harvest drops increase from x2 to x5, and right-click harvesting expands from a single crop to a radius of 3 blocks. Supported crops planted by non-Farmers grow at one-tenth normal speed. Food dropped by animals personally killed by a Farmer stays Normal rather than receiving the default Very Poor world-loot quality. Area harvesting reserves a real planting item from the drops when one is needed for replanting. Pam's HarvestCraft crops whose edible crop item also plants the same block are supported by this rule.

How to earn XP: Plant a supported crop yourself for 5 XP, then harvest it at full maturity for 10 XP. Immature right-clicks, cancelled interactions, automation and duplicate area claims give no XP.

Active ability — Growth Aura: Advances a snapshot of nearby crops. The radius grows from 10 to 20 blocks, the duration from 10 to 20 seconds, and each crop's per-second growth chance from 10% to 30%. At higher levels the aura can advance several stages at once. Cooldown falls from 300 to 60 seconds. An empty cast is refused without consuming the cooldown.

By default, rapid-growth effects and bone meal are disabled so they cannot completely bypass the profession's growth system. Server owners can change this rule in the server config.

Lumberjack

Lumberjack is a forestry profession with a toggleable tree-felling mode.

Benefits: While holding a supported axe, mining speed rises from +15% to +115%, axe melee damage from +15% to +55%, and axe attack speed from +5% to +15%. Valid log drops and supported sapling growth increase from x2 to x7.

The tree detector follows one bounded natural tree, respects protection and loot hooks, and charges tool durability for every log actually broken. Player-placed logs do not enter the chain or receive the multiplier, and unrelated nearby trees are not deliberately swallowed into the same action. Oversized or unsafe tree shapes fall back to an ordinary single-log break. Saplings planted by a non-Lumberjack grow at one-tenth normal speed. The mod does not automatically plant a replacement sapling after a tree is felled.

How to earn XP: Complete a valid tree-felling transaction while the toggle is enabled. Each log actually broken gives one-third XP. Leaves, placed logs, refused breaks and unrelated trees give none.

Toggle ability — Tree Felling: Press the Job Ability key to enable or disable tree felling. While enabled, break the root log of a verified tree with an axe. There is no cooldown.

Explorer

Explorer is a travel profession for movement on land, in water and through difficult terrain.

Benefits: Movement, swimming and jump height rise from +25% to +75%. Step height increases from +1 to +6 blocks, safe-fall distance from +10 to +35 blocks, and luck from +2 to +5.

The complete movement package can be used in either of two ways: keep both the chest and leg slots empty, or wear allowed light armor in both slots. Leather, chain, gold, iron and datapack-approved equivalents count as light armor. Helmet and boots are unrestricted. A half set, a light/heavy mix or a heavy chest/leg piece switches the package off.

How to earn XP: Move under your own control while the package is enabled. Every real block gives 0.3 XP. Teleports, vehicles, knockback and other forced movement are excluded.

Toggle ability — Explorer Package: Press the Job Ability key to enable or disable the movement package. There is no cooldown, but the armor rule is checked continuously.

Guardian

Guardian is a defensive profession for surviving attacks and protecting selected friends. The player friend limit rises from one to two, and owned tamed animals have a separate one-to-two-slot list.

Benefits: Maximum health and armor both rise from +6 to +12. Guardian also has permanent Resistance I, upgraded to Resistance II from level 20. While genuinely using a shield, ordinary blockable melee and projectile attacks can be blocked from every direction, and axes cannot disable the shield. Magic, curses, explosions, unblockable or armor-bypassing attacks, and damage explicitly tagged to pierce the defense can still bypass it.

How to earn XP: Take a real hit. Guardian receives 1 XP per point of raw incoming damage up to the per-hit safety cap, plus 2 XP for each point of health actually lost after mitigation. Redirected damage cannot pay twice.

Active ability — Redirect: Select reachable friends, then press the Job Ability key. For 10 to 25 seconds, 15% to 50% of their incoming damage is redirected to you. If more than one Guardian could protect the same target, the strongest eligible redirect wins instead of stacking. Cooldown falls from 300 to 120 seconds.

Shaman

Shaman is a support profession connected to chosen friends. Its player limit rises from one to three, and owned tamed animals have a separate one-to-three-slot list. Both lists are separate from Guardian's lists.

Benefits: Golden-apple effects are shared with reachable friends. Healing potions create an area from 4 to 9 blocks, with x2 to x3 effect duration and x2 to x3 potency. Players can be selected through team permission or a one-time consent request. A tamed animal can be selected only by its owner.

Shaman's mana bonuses affect only the independent mana pool provided by Sympathetic Attributes. They do not alter Tensura, ManaScore or another mod's unrelated mana system.

How to earn XP: Restore real missing health with an attributed Shaman heal for 1 XP per health point. A Cleanse that removes at least one harmful effect gives 20 XP once. Overhealing and unchanged targets give nothing.

Active ability — Cleanse: Removes harmful effects from you and reachable selected friends, then temporarily blocks only the effects that were actually removed. It also grants Regeneration II, Resistance II and +50% to +100% Sympathetic mana regeneration. The protection lasts 10 to 25 seconds; the additional positive buffs last 10 to 15 seconds. Cooldown falls from 300 to 120 seconds.

Selecting Guardian and Shaman friends

Make Guardian or Shaman the active profession, look directly at a player or one of your own tamed animals, and press the Select Friend key. Press it again to remove that target. If a list is full, hold Shift while selecting to replace the oldest entry.

A player on the same scoreboard team can be selected directly. Other players receive a one-use clickable consent request. Only animals personally tamed by the selecting player are accepted. Guardian and Shaman keep separate player and animal lists, so changing one profession's group does not silently change the other.

Nearby selected friends can receive a colored outline, while more distant friends can be shown with a direction and distance marker. Both displays can be disabled in the client config.

Food, equipment and stacking

Cook food and Artisan equipment use real synced data rather than hidden name or lore tricks. Their tooltips explain the result, and two items stack whenever their actual gameplay data is the same. Items with different quality, effects or attribute rolls remain separate because combining them would lose information.

Crafting is handled as one server transaction whether the player takes the result normally, shift-clicks it, moves it to the hotbar or drops it from the result slot. The same craft cannot award XP or roll its result several times through different inventory actions.

Server configuration and datapacks

Server owners can configure the profession slot limit, level curve, maximum level, performance and anti-farm limits, legacy-world safety, Cook world-loot behavior, tree-felling limits, growth rules and area ability behavior.

Datapacks can override the level brackets for all twelve professions. Artisan material values and its eight positive/negative item pools are data-driven, as are the four Cook food-effect pools. Standard item, block, entity and damage-type tags make it possible to include modded ores, crops, foods, animals, trees, equipment and damage sources without editing the mod's code.

Invalid datapack data is rejected as one complete update. The last valid settings stay active instead of leaving the server with a half-loaded profession table. After changing data, use /reload followed by /sympatheticjobs config validate.

Operator tools

The main command is /sympatheticjobs, with /sjobs as a shorter alias. Operator commands can inspect a player, add or remove professions, choose the active profession, change XP or levels, manage global and per-player slots, clear cooldowns, reopen the first selection, reload and validate profession data, and print a compatibility report. Changes made by commands are applied and synchronized immediately.

Compatibility

Sympathetic Attributes 1.1.3 is the only required mod dependency. Optional integrations are detected only when the related mod is installed, so missing optional mods do not produce unnecessary NeoForge "only supports" warnings.

Better Combat is used when available to recognize additional data-driven weapon types. Sympathetic Attributes provides optional Curios item-attribute support. Standard NeoForge hooks and tags are used where possible so modded tools, weapons, foods, crops, trees, animals and loot can participate without being hard dependencies.

The mod works in single-player and on dedicated servers. The server remains responsible for XP, levels, item rolls, drops, abilities, targets and cooldowns.

Questions, bug reports and suggestions

Please use the comments on the Modrinth project page for questions, bug reports and suggestions. Comments are read and answered there. When reporting a problem, include the Sympathetic Jobs version, Sympathetic Attributes version, NeoForge version, a short list of other relevant mods, and clear steps that reproduce the problem. Crash reports or the relevant part of latest.log are especially helpful.

License

Sympathetic Jobs is distributed under All Rights Reserved. See the included LICENSE file for the full notice.