As a thought experiment over on the GM forum I calculated what I think is the cheapest way to have all skills as career skills. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that many on the player side don’t venture into the GM forum, so I’ve posted my findings here.
There are a total of 33 skills in the CRB and 34 if you include AoR and Knowledge: Warfare/Galactic Civil War/whatever they end up calling it in AoR. (This doesn’t include Lightsabers.) If you assume perfect distribution you need a career for 8 skills and 6.5 specializations to cover the rest of the skills, which in reality is a total of 7 specializations. If all are within the same career or universal it would take a minimum of 270 xp. By the way, there is no perfect overlap and I think the minimum number of specializations required would be around 10 and the non-career specializations make it quite costly.
The trick to maximizing your career skill cost is using talents, either Well Rounded or the skill talents in the Recruit tree. Archaeologist has Well Rounded for 5 xp and for 30 xp minimum each you can get it in Medic, Politico, and Scholar. The four skill talents in Recruit cost a minimum of 40 xp and provide a specific list of 8 skills.
Recruit provides the biggest bang for the buck for acquiring career skills. It’s a Universal spec tree with career skills and skill talents. With this tree I’m able to cut the cost down to 290 xp for all skills known and do it in only 5 specialization trees, under the 6.5 specializations and just over the 270 xp perfect assumption I provided above.
0 - Colonist - Career
0 - Politico - 1st specialization - career
20 - Recruit - 2nd specialization - universal
30 - Scholar - 3rd specialization - career
50 - Medic - 4th specialization - non-career
60 - Thief, Mechanic, Saboteur, or Demolitionist - 5th specialization - non-career
90 - Well Rounded x 3
40 - Basic Combat Training, Vehicle Combat Training, Well Travelled, Tactical Combat Training
290 xp total
With how I figured out my skill lists, Archaeologist specialization and its cheap Well Rounded aren’t used. Its career skills are picked up with the Colonist tree Recruit specialization. There might be a way to squeeze it in, change the career and drop a specialization to lower the cost a touch, but I didn’t see it at first glance.
With the Colonist book coming out soon, I wouldn't be too surprised if this number could drop. With it written up as it is, Saboteur or Demolitionist as the last tree will leave an extra Well Rounded skill slot for Lightsabers if/when it comes out in F&D.
Edited for clarity.
Edited by Jamwes
I think the system contributes to this ease of understanding but who knows, after a decade maybe we'll see more character build threads. In any case, good job Jamwes!