I've always found the chemistry and demolitions skills to be very fun in concept, but I don't know nearly enough about either to use them effectively in-game. What are some of the more useful applications for demolitions, chemistry, or both in tandem? Bonus points for creativity!

Chemistry: make acid. Shoot people with acid. Acid is fun.

Demolitions: How are you going to leave? Though a door? Put bombs there, so after you run through the door, it's not a door. Through a wall? Put bombs there, so once you need a door, it's a door.

Chemistry: DRUGS... oh the wonderful drugs.

Demolitions: Hm... built a mine... loaded with DRUGS... oh the wonderful drugs.

How creative *drily ironic*

Well, the creative application is in the detail. All skills have just one or two uses. With pistols you can just shoot thing. The creative use is to determine WHAT you want to shoot. The same it is here.

Good use of drugs (recreational and enhancing ones), acids, maybe medications (with medicine skill in tandem), or maybe some materials (plastics and such) can be very varried. But its dependent on the situation.

Demolitions is a bit more simple: You either make charges, blow something up or stop something from blowing up. Creative use can of course be made in micro-charges, intelligent use of detonators and delivery. (For example the good old stuff 20 grenades in a box with a small "spread charge (a light explosive) and dronify that thing. (Nice to see a whole area carpet bombed)

So in conclusion: I LOVE having this skills, and use it for "normal things". But the creative part comes when the team have an specific objective and you can't help but say: "Well... i think we could try to built....". Like the A-Team used their Automotive Mechanical skills *g*.

You'll get the really creative responses when you give a detailed and nigh-insurmountable challenge, and some parameters to go about achieving the goals. Like, here's an example; Mr. Kim is a very important researcher who works for Mitsuhama. He's paid a very generous salary and has been given expensive betaware implants to help him in his job, which is to design cutting-edge nanites, because he's one of the best at what he does. However, Mitsuhama is worried that he might be extracted and the valuable trade secrets he knows will be stolen, so they keep all his work-related files in an implanted datalock, and have put microbombs in both his cranium and his torso, so that if he is at risk of divulging sensitive information, the information (and/or his life) can be terminated. Mr. Johnson just wants Mr. Kim's data, but Mr. Kim is dying to be extracted (not only do the bombs bother him, but he's afraid his work is being used to develop weaponized nanotech), so taking him alive will result in a substantial bonus.

How do you extract him without the bombs going off? Could you manage a bait-and-switch, so that you run off with Mr. Kim while replacing him (or just his implanted commlink node) with a fake while the bombs are disarmed? Could you break into his office and disarm the bombs on-site? What about destroying the node that have the admin accounts to order the bombs to detonate? Or do you just rip out his datalock, let his head explode, and try to extract the data later?