I'm not entirely happy with some of the sets of Career Skills assigned in Age of Rebellion. I'm not saying they did them wrong so much as I'm saying that they don't do what I want them to do, so I figure I might change them for my games.

First up, the Soldier caught my attention. I thought that it was strange for Medicine to be a Career Skill for every Soldier. Sure, first aid training is nice, but there are a lot of other skills that make good sense there too. I've decided that the skill that comes up most frequently in most Soldier concepts my group has tossed around is Resilience.

This gives a revised list of: Athletics, Brawl, Knowledge (Warfare), Melee, Ranged (Heavy), Ranged (Light), Resilience, Survival.

For the Specializations, Commando seems to have a good set of skills. The one possible addition would be Stealth in place of Resilience or Survival (both of which are already provided by Soldier). I'm still not certain on this one.

I would change Medic by swapping Discipline for Resilience to follow the description given for the guy that keeps his head in fearsome situations.

Sharpshooter seems fine to me as written.

I still find the lack of Discipline as a Soldier skill a bit weird personally. It just seems so quintessential to the life of a Soldier.

I still find the lack of Discipline as a Soldier skill a bit weird personally. It just seems so quintessential to the life of a Soldier.

I agree, Discipline was another skill that seemed more fitting than Medicine. Of course, I guess another question is should the typical soldier have Knowledge (Warfare) but lack Discipline?

There are a lot of Career Skill choices in AoR that bug me. I'm glad I'm not alone.

I'd possibly drop Medicine and Survival and add Discipline and Resilience.

Then drop Resilience from Commando for Stealth

The only issue is that this ends with the Sharpshooter not having Survival... I suppose you could drop Ranged (Light) for it, since honestly Sharpshooting just seems more like a long gun thing.

Kind of depends on the setting and events unfolding for a given army. If you are in the middle of a war where you must conserve and preserve as many resource as possible, being able to have everyone able to treat traumatic injuries is probably more important than being the most well drilled force. Practical trumps supplementary with bullets flying if you will.

First aid is actually very important training for all soldiers, but it's mostly for if they get hit themselves. From a gameplay perspective, I like it because it means my players can be awesome Commandos and Sharpshooters all they want, and nobody has to sacrifice their choice in order to be the squad's dedicated doctor. If anybody chooses Medic, then they can start with two free ranks in the skill, freeing up starter XP for more explosive (or diplomatic, even) skills.

Plus, taking the Recruit universal specialization gives you Discipline and a few other useful background skills as well.

The only issue is that this ends with the Sharpshooter not having Survival... I suppose you could drop Ranged (Light) for it, since honestly Sharpshooting just seems more like a long gun thing.

Matthew Quigley would like to remind you that just because he's never had much use for Ranged (Light) doesn't mean he doesn't have a high rank in Ranged (Light).

I agree that a sharpshooter would still be good with a pistol, but its not like you HAVE to have it on both lists to be good at it, that usually just lets you start at a slightly better level than most other starting characters.

I agree that a sharpshooter would still be good with a pistol, but its not like you HAVE to have it on both lists to be good at it, that usually just lets you start at a slightly better level than most other starting characters.

Sorry. I just watched Quigley Down Under last night, so I had to make the joke. I probably should have used one of those annoying smiley faces...

Sorry. I just watched Quigley Down Under last night, so I had to make the joke. I probably should have used one of those annoying smiley faces...

Ha, no problem.

I think there are arguments in a lot of different ways on the skills. I think the EotE ones are a lot tighter, not to say that the AoR ones are terrible, just not as close to what I feel fits the careers.

Matthew Quigley would like to remind you that just because he's never had much use for Ranged (Light) doesn't mean he doesn't have a high rank in Ranged (Light).

Ahah... great punch line at the end of the film

I loved that movie.

It's just sad that the GM knows your skills so you can make such a snappy comeback in a game

First aid is actually very important training for all soldiers, but it's mostly for if they get hit themselves.

I'm not sure First Aid == Medicine. What they could have done instead is have a First Aid Talent, which gives a boost die for certain medical rolls, but not for crits, and make it available in the Recruit tree a couple times. Then make the Recruit tree a mandatory starting spec for the Soldier career, with one of the additional Soldier specs purchasable at chargen through Duty. Do some cleanup of overlaps, change a couple things so that other careers don't feel ripped off.

This would have meant the Soldier didn't conform to the dominant pattern, but there's nothing worse than a game that shoehorns everything into some arbitrary pattern for the sake of conformity.

First aid is actually very important training for all soldiers, but it's mostly for if they get hit themselves.

I'm not sure First Aid == Medicine. What they could have done instead is have a First Aid Talent, which gives a boost die for certain medical rolls, but not for crits, and make it available in the Recruit tree a couple times. Then make the Recruit tree a mandatory starting spec for the Soldier career, with one of the additional Soldier specs purchasable at chargen through Duty. Do some cleanup of overlaps, change a couple things so that other careers don't feel ripped off.

This would have meant the Soldier didn't conform to the dominant pattern, but there's nothing worse than a game that shoehorns everything into some arbitrary pattern for the sake of conformity.

I could see the reasoning for one free rank of Medicine being the equivalent of formal education in First Aid. I like your line of thinking, but I can definitely see simply making Medicine a career skill with the option to receive one free rank of it at chargen to be simpler.

Something I have been doing in my groups when we have no formal medic/doctor is encourage a player to purchase a Military Medpac from Dangerous Covenants. The military MedPac allows a player to upgrade a medicine check if once if they have no ranks in medicine. This is a simpler and more balanced way to represent First Aid training.

I think there reasoning and I agree with it is that generalist (or at least multi-talented) characters are "better". As in more fun to play, easier to integrate, make stories for, have something valid to do every scene. All of which make it easier for GM to create fun sessions.h

Sure a min-maxed, specialist is gonna have more dice to roll. But will be less useful out side of their niche and even when in their niche will either (have GM artificially inflate difficulty to remain challenging or be "always win button"). While some (many) players are powergamers and enjoy the always win. It doesn't have a place in a heroic, narrative RPG like SW.

I get the feeling that the base career skill lists for all the careers were chosen with the idea that the Recruit universal spec is also an option, easily adding a number of bonus career skills.

I do agree that the lack of Discipline for the Soldier career is a bit odd, and that's probably the only skill I'd consider to be "missing" from what's otherwise a pretty solid and exemplary list of career skills for their given role in a group. Obviously as the GM, HappyDaze can do as he wishes for his game, but the notion of dropping Medicine and replacing it with Discipline's not a game-breaker.

As for Vigilance... I'm not convinced that all Soldiers should have it by default. Given that initiative order in this system if flexible, it you don't always need (or maybe even want) all of the PCs to be going before the bad guys, and having a slot or two for the PCs at the end of the initiative order can work out in the group's favor. Also, you've got the Commander (I'd be surprised if there's very many AoR groups without at least one of these guys in the party) which has Vigilance, so there's the person that's going to "react quickly to unexpected danger." We've got a Wookiee Soldier/Commando in one of the games I'm in, and he's not bothered to take any ranks in Vigilance, seeing as how we've also got a Commander/Tactician and a Smuggler/Scoundrel/Emergent that both have pretty solid Vigilance dice pools, so he doesn't really need to compete for a high roll when the fur hits the fan.

The lack of discipline for soldiers makes sense to me, because I envision the rebels as an organization like the American Army pre Baron Von Steuben and/or like the various European WW2 Resistance movements.In other words not everyone has been through basic training or has the discipline to not fire on Imperials.That being said if I ran a Specforces campaign it might start in basic training or the unit might be recruited after several missions.Also to me discipline is how I judge veteran status units in other words Rouge Squadron getting pinned down is a little different from a newly formed rebel cell getting pinned down in a firefight.

The lack of discipline for soldiers makes sense to me, because I envision the rebels as an organization like the American Army pre Baron Von Steuben and/or like the various European WW2 Resistance movements.In other words not everyone has been through basic training or has the discipline to not fire on Imperials.That being said if I ran a Specforces campaign it might start in basic training or the unit might be recruited after several missions.Also to me discipline is how I judge veteran status units in other words Rouge Squadron getting pinned down is a little different from a newly formed rebel cell getting pinned down in a firefight.

I agree with this. While the careers can be used generically, AoR is presented from the perspective of the Alliance. The book talks about the small groups the Rebels operate in. In small tight knit groups we all function well, we've developed the interpersonal skills and emotional attachments, we know what each other are capable of, we will aid each other and follow those we know to be the natural leaders. Discipline comes into play in the big faceless organization where persons that don't know one another are thrown together without that history or those attachments, and all they have is what is drilled into them and the knowledge it's been drilled into the other gal/guy as well.

I get the feeling that the base career skill lists for all the careers were chosen with the idea that the Recruit universal spec is also an option, easily adding a number of bonus career skills.

I get that feeling too, but I don't find that approach very appealing. It's like the Recruit was made as a patch because they couldn't get the careers and specializations to fit into their model neatly so they just let some skills overflow into Recruit. In my eyes, it's an ugly solution.

I get the feeling that the base career skill lists for all the careers were chosen with the idea that the Recruit universal spec is also an option, easily adding a number of bonus career skills.

I get that feeling too, but I don't find that approach very appealing. It's like the Recruit was made as a patch because they couldn't get the careers and specializations to fit into their model neatly so they just let some skills overflow into Recruit. In my eyes, it's an ugly solution.

Or it could be that Lotr_Nerd has a better grasp of the design intent that either of us do, and that the careers in AoR are meant to reflect generally ordinary people that have been thrust into a war. That these aren't the hardened combatants that the Hired Gun or the Bounty Hunter generally are, but rather ordinary people now thrust into an extraordinary situation, using what skills they have to fight the good fight and stay alive in the process. That in spite of the name, the Soldier career wasn't meant to reflect a hardened combat vet with years of experience under their belt, but instead was meant to reflect someone with a basic aptitude for hurting other people and maybe not getting hurt in the process.

As for Medicine, seeing as how Intellect is generally going to be something of a dump stat for most Soldiers (only time it'd be above a 2 is if the species chosen starts with a higher Intellect by default), so providing the character with the option of taking ranks in it even if they don't go into the Medic specialization may have been a design choice so that there's at least one person in the group that can be really good at patching up the heroes after a fight, particularly since there's generally going to be more combats in an AoR campaign than an EotE campaign; with EotE the PCs are generally trying to avoid any Imperial entanglements, while AoR the PCs are actively tweaking the Empire's nose, be it with explosives, starfighters, heavy firepower, or propaganda. With an AoR campaign, it's not a question of if there will be Imperial reprisal for the PCs' actions, but more a matter of when. And since there's bound to be at least one Soldier in all but the most unusual of groups, that career having access to Medicine so that PCs can be patched up and critical injuries healed isn't that far-fetched of a design decision.

Maybe next time that Andy Fischer is scheduled to be a guest on the O66 podcast, you could suggest a question asking why Soldiers have Medicine as one of their career skills instead of just presuming it's "bad design" or an "ugly solution." You don't have to agree with the reason provided, but it might be worthwhile to at least hear said reason.

Or it could be that Lotr_Nerd has a better grasp of the design intent that either of us do, and that the careers in AoR are meant to reflect generally ordinary people that have been thrust into a war. That these aren't the hardened combatants that the Hired Gun or the Bounty Hunter generally are, but rather ordinary people now thrust into an extraordinary situation, using what skills they have to fight the good fight and stay alive in the process. That in spite of the name, the Soldier career wasn't meant to reflect a hardened combat vet with years of experience under their belt, but instead was meant to reflect someone with a basic aptitude for hurting other people and maybe not getting hurt in the process.

That's an interesting take on it. I'm pretty sure that I don't like the idea that Age characters aren't actual professionals in whatever Career that they have but are instead supposed to give us a wanna-be everyman with certain leanings. When I see a character with the Soldier career, I'm more likely to imagine that they are a combat veteran than not. Sure, there may be exceptions (the farmboy Ace), but I think that the Career should be built for the rule rather than the exceptions.

I like the idea of bringing in Stealth for the Commando. Not sure I could give up any of those 4 bonus career skills though! I really like them as is.

EDIT: Medicine, though, is a strange choice for the Soldier career; I'll agree on that!

I'd strongly disagree that the AoR Soldier is supposed to represent an 'everyman'. The Recruit does, sure; that's the definition of a non-combatant suddenly thrust into a war and given combat training.

Commando and Marksman clearly represent an elite combatant like a Green Beret or Navy Seal or Royal Marine. Our AOR characters had a training exercise like a 'Royal Rumble' and the Soldier won handily. So much so, we held another one, the other characters against the Soldier, and she still won handily.

We decided that's okay, because AoR characters are very specialised, and the Soldier can't fly a ship, command others, sneak around, do diplomacy or science stuff like the others can.

In terms of "everyman", the fact that PC in a given career has trained skills is pretty clear that they're no longer an "everyman" type of person, but that they've got a combination of inborn talent or actual training/practice with the skills that they've got one or more ranks in.

To quote from page 114 of the AoR core rulebook..

"Aside from game terms, it may also be useful to consider what skill ranks represent in a more narrative sense. Even a single rank in a skill represents a significant amount of time spent learning and practicing its use. It's generally reasonable to assume that other characters in the game would rely heavily upon their characteristics for actions outside their field of expertise. For example, almost everyone can pilot a speeder in routine traffic, but most people do not have a rank of Piloting (Planetary). Instead, they default to using their Agility characteristic for this type of routine task."

So in regards to the Soldier career, this is someone that may not have had a lot of experience in actual combat, but simply has a knack for combat-related skills, with their specialization adding a further element of focus on what that person is intrinsically good at. They may not even have gone through the equivalent of boot camp, and may instead simply be a local citizen with a gift for violence that got fed up with the Empire and decided to go do something about it.

Heck, the simple fact that the PCs have a career and specialization puts them above the "everyman." It might be where they started (after all, Luke was just a moisture farmer prior to his uncle buying a couple of droids), but when the campaign begins, the PCs have left the "everyman" tag in the past.

I quite like Donovan's (and other's) reflections on this. We have to remember that this is the Rebel Alliance we are talking about. This is basically a grassroots terrorist cell, not a crack military organization. It makes a large degree of sense that many would lack Discipline, simply from the lack of formal military and structured training. And the discussion of soldiers not as crack veterans also fits.

There was a great deal of news coverage on the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI today, with stories about some of the soldiers that serviced for Canada. When we think about war and soldiers, we think about the career military of today, not about the far nore common raised army of 16-20 year olds that is far more likely. While I wouldn't use the word "everyman" to describe any AoR character, we have historical precedent to explain that the Rebel Alliance would be made up of just as many armed kids and weekend warriors as it would be battle hardened veterans.

This thread has been a really good read, since it really exemplifies by hesitation about knee-jerk changes to the rules. As mentioned, Discipline is already a part of the Recruit Spec, which is available to anyone who wants more formal and lengthy military training. Making a sweeping change to career skills starts invalidating that Spec and making it less worthwhile, thus having effects elsewhere on the system that where no anticipated. And Donovan's analysis on Medicine vis a vis Intellect shows that while Medicine might be an odd duck, under the surface it becomes a well thought out consideration. It's your game, but recognize the butterfly effect and the results of what can happen with what you think is a minor change.

I have no problem invalidating the Recruit spec, but I do not see that as the case. Since the Recruit will always be a secondary spec, there is nothing wrong with the Soldier career skills to have the same skills as the recruit. I see no reason for the Soldier to have to spec into Recruit to get the necessary skills that they should already have.