Yes -- although, we are still just getting started on this.
Skill pointsEvery type of character (basically character sprite) has their own intrinsic bonus skill point allocations.
So, Lin always has an extra skill point of Max Magic Points (this is one point on a scale of 1-10 proficiencies with all these), and she has +2 on physical defense. ALSO, she has 50/100 cold resistance and 25/100 heat resistance thanks to her medieval armor.
Melody, on the other hand, has +3 magic points, and 20/100 cold resistance and 0/100 heat resistance thanks to her not being dressed for anything better.
Jack has +3 magic casting speed, 20/100 cold resistance, and 0/100 heat resistance.
Of course, all of these are BONUS skill points. Each new character also has a randomly-rolled (which you cannot re-roll) set of skill points that get added into all the categories. So what these intrinsic skill points do is say that the character will never have worse than, say, 4/10 magic casting speed in the case of Jack if he gets no randomly-allocated skill points into the magic casting category. Heat/cold resistance never varies by character with the same sprite, it's based entirely on how they are visually dressed.
Professions and Personality TraitsI think these are actually closer to what you were asking about. Various NPCs have professions -- not crafting-related -- that give them special skills in your settlement. We're just getting started with this, but it's something that we've got big plans for during beta. Right now the most tangible one is the Explorer profession type, which lets these NPCs explore further when you're using them on the strategic overlay to find hidden resources, overlords, outposts, etc. Others have more production-oriented professions that help them produce more resources in the citybuilder aspects, etc. None of this stuff matters at all when it's your direct character, this is all just stuff that affects the characters when they are NPCs and you're using them indirectly rather than running your character around in adventure mode.
There are also some personality traits that affect... various things. This one wasn't working out like we wanted before, so it's undergoing some major revision at the moment and will be only somewhat noticeable in early beta. But basically depending on people's personalities they might be more distressed by lots of characters dying, or they might be happier when the overlord gets killed, or they might have other sorts of hopes/needs that essentially make for quests that you can pursue in adventure mode. The hopes/needs model has been around for a long time in this game, but we've been drifting away from it in what we're implementing first, and a lot of that stuff is going to come back later into beta in a slightly different fashion.
Rather than starting out with adventure-style quests, we've instead been going more the strategy game / citybuilder route with how NPCs function and what they need, and how their happiness is calculated, etc. All those other more adventure-centric things we still plan to do (like we always planned the strategic/citybuilder aspects), but the latter was working out more interestingly in the short term and so that's where we shifted more of our earlier focus. It's also the part that makes this not just a generic adventure game in an infinite procedural world, so that seemed more sensible to focus on first since it was such a big differentiator... that we've hardly talked about at all.
I know that must have raised like a million more questions about the strategic overlay and the citybuilder sections, but we'll have some writeups on those before too long, as well as showing them in the beta trailer we're working on, etc. Right now we're just trying to get all those things finished and polished for beta!
