So a character can purchase a specialization outside his/her career at a great cost... but can one purchase another career entirely?

No, specs only, your career is your career forever.

Was one of the sticky points about Force and Destiny specs. The careers give FR 1, not the specs. So to buy into them from outside and have the force talets work also requires emegent or exile too.

When you purchase into the specialization outside your career you have purchased into a new career, you have to follow the tree of that new specialization, you can't just buy what you want out of that tree.

Where Career choice truly matters is access to Signature Abilities. So a Colonist, for example, who buys heavily into a Hired Gun specialization cannot take Unmatched Protection or Last One Standing, but rather would only have access to their own Signature Abilities.

Buying another Specialization really isn't a "great" cost... it's the cost of what an additional specialization would be +10xp. That's really not very much at all. Once you buy into the specialization, the talents are the same Xp price as someone who started off with that career spec.

Makes sense,

Thanks for the quick response

To add to what Agatheron said, you only get the 4 bonus career skills of the specialization as new career skills but not the 8 regular career skills. It's best to find specializations that don't have much overlap in bonus skills to make the "great cost" most worth it.

So the Signature abilities are available ONLY if your original Career matches?, Regardless if you have Multi Specialized outside your given Career?

So the Signature abilities are available ONLY if your original Career matches?, Regardless if you have Multi Specialized outside your given Career?

Correct.

Enter the Unknown (p. 33): "A character can only acquire a signature ability from his career and can only attach that ability to in-career talent trees." This sentence is repeated in all career splat books so far.

So the Signature abilities are available ONLY if your original Career matches?, Regardless if you have Multi Specialized outside your given Career?

Pretty much.

The idea behind the Signature Abilities is that they're something of a reward for the PC starting off with a particular career instead of someplace else and then picking up another career's spec along the way. I'm sure there's been a number of players that found it'd be worth it to start in one career and then purchase a non-career specialization as soon as possible because the talents there are a better fit than what those attached to your starting career could offer.

For instance, starting as a Hired Gun for the wide breadth of combat skills as career skills, taking Enforcer as your starting spec but not bothering to buy any added skill ranks or even talents before diving over to Scoundrel. Because this PC didn't start as a Smuggler, they're not eligible for whatever the Smuggler's Signature Abilities would be once Fly Casual comes out next year. But because they started as a Hired Gun, they could pick up the Hired Gun's Signature Abilities where the PC that started as a Smuggler/Scoundrel and then picked up Enforcer couldn't.

No, specs only, your career is your career forever.

Was one of the sticky points about Force and Destiny specs. The careers give FR 1, not the specs. So to buy into them from outside and have the force talets work also requires emegent or exile too.

Yeah that annoyed me a little because it increased the minimum number of specs create an EOE counterpart of my favorite Saga edition PC by one.

Where Career choice truly matters is access to Signature Abilities. So a Colonist, for example, who buys heavily into a Hired Gun specialization cannot take Unmatched Protection or Last One Standing, but rather would only have access to their own Signature Abilities.

Yeah though if you are planning a character with specs from multiple careers that makes picking the career whose sig abilities best match your vision a guessing game until all of the career books involved are out.

fortunately the EOE and AOR GMs for my group have houseruled that until all of the career books are out characters who have specs in multiple careers but haven't activated any sig abilities can switch between them if the career book shows that doing so will best fit their idea for the concept they are playing.

I think what I'm going to work with is that until the point where you get your Signature Abilities, than your career is all the careers in which you have specializations. Once you "attach" your Signature Abilities tree, than that's it: This is now your chosen career for life.

This way, early characters don't feel limited to only one career, and are much more flexible, without loosing the idea that Signature Abilities require you to be focused

I think the signature abilities are versatile enough that I won't be dissappointed when the technician book comes out. I think attaching the signature ability to whatever tree you like diminishes their design purpose. This idea is similar to house rules freely mixing careers and specializations without penalty during character creation (which I also do not support.)

But, different strokes for different folks, and I prefer a more RAW style of play, since I tend to experience too many power gamers that use house rules as a slippery slope to completely unbalancing the game in their favor.