You can identify, build, repair, or disable technological devices; assess the stability of structures and machinery.

If you don’t have an engineering kit when attempting an Engineering check, you take a –5 penalty to the check.

You can use Engineering to assess a structure or a piece of machinery to determine its stability, usability, and structural weak points. This takes 1 minute or more, and the DC is determined by the GM.

Use the following base DCs for Engineering checks to assess stability. These DCs can be adjusted by other circumstances such as the complexity of the structure and damage to the structure, as determined by the GM.

You can diagnose mechanical devices either with the help of built in diagnostics or manually. You need a toolkit for the manual diagnostics.

You can use Engineering to create mechanical devices from parts. See the crafting rules for details.

You can use Electronics to identify the properties and uses of technological items and devices such as vehicles or weapons, as well as alien things. Generally, a check is not required to identify relatively simple technological items that are commonly available. You can take 20 on an Engineering check to identify technology, but only if you have a means of researching, such as access to an information network or downloaded data set.

The DCs for Engineering checks to identify technology are based on the item’s rarity.

You can use Electronics to repair a technical device, as long you have access to it. The amount of time this takes typically depends on the complexity of the object. You can repair an object or piece of equipment you crafted in half the usual time. The DC of the check is determined by the GM and based on the complexity of the object and how broken it is. If you succeed, you restore a number of Hit Points equal to the result of your Engineering check or remove one negative condition from it. If you fail the check by 10 or more, you damage the object further, dealing 1d4 damage to it.

The above hitpoint changes are doubled for huge or larger objects and halved for diminutive or smaller objects.

If the object or piece of equipment is damaged but not broken, you can repair it at a cost of 1% of it's value. If it is broken but not destroyed, you must spend parts equal to half the damage % of the item each time you attempt to repair it. A destroyed object or piece of equipment can’t be repaired with the Engineering skill, though of course you can craft a new.

You can’t take 20 on an Engineering check to repair an item or object.

The DC for an Engineering check to repair an item is based on the complexity of the object. The following chart provides base DCs by complexity and examples of such items. The GM may adjust these DCs and times to reflect other circumstances.

You can use engineering to set and defuse mechanically fused bombs. Note that actual manufacturing of bombs is not included, though it is possible to craft a bomb using engineering rules in crafting from explosives.

A booby trapped or sensor protected bomb must first have it's sensors disabled with electronics or it will go off on the disarm attempt. Note that this definitely applies to most mines.

You can use engineering to bypass mechanical locks. A failure will automatically set of any connected alarms.

Note that in some cases you can also bypass electronic locks with engineering by doing a physical bypass, however such bypass will almost always trigger any alarm

You can use engineering to bypass mechanical traps.

You can use engineering to disabling things, from jamming doors to draining the fuel from things.

* Note that some very simple devices can take longer to disable, like welding a hatch shut might take a minute, but are no harder to do.