Hi all - just a quick question with regards to duty during character creation. To be honest the whole dealing with Duty in the core rulebook has ticked me off something rotten and I've had to use the forums quite a lot already to figure out whats going on. Why oh why did they remove instructions for awarding duty that was in the Beta rulebook? Crazy!!

Anyway my question is based on lowering Duty to gain benefits. I'm playing with 6 people so everyone has only 5 duty each which can be lowered for either 5 XP or 1000 credits. Can these things be used during character creation. I think my guys will more interested in the bonus credits - does this mean that when buying starting gear they now have 1500 to spend rather than just 500? Or does this starting money only apply to the amount of cash they have once gameplay begins?

Cheers

Yes, it goes towards character creation, and since determining Duty applies before the Invest Experience Points, the bonus experience can be used towards increasing Characteristics.

Not only can it be used during character creation, it must be used during character creation. If you come out the other side, play a bit, and one of your players asks to lower her duty so she can get XP or credits, by RAW the answer is, "No, that time has passed."

Just to clarify players can go to zero duty if they want? With only 5 starting duty per player I'm worried everyone will opt for the extra stuff and end up with a starting group duty of 0!!

Yup, they can go to 0 Duty. Incidentally, this is also why there's the extra Obligation rule that says you can only benefit from an increase in Obligation no larger than your starting value. It's to mirror the effect of lowering Duty. Since you can only lower Duty to 0 (ie, your starting amount), you can only benefit from extra Obligation up to your starting amount.

Believe it or not, the Duty/Obligation section on my character generator is the one area that causes the most confusion with people. The mechanic in the app works correctly, it's just the mechanic in the book can be weird and difficult to understand. I did a write-up in the apps' FAQ that explains how it works:

Yup, they can go to 0 Duty. Incidentally, this is also why there's the extra Obligation rule that says you can only benefit from an increase in Obligation no larger than your starting value. It's to mirror the effect of lowering Duty. Since you can only lower Duty to 0 (ie, your starting amount), you can only benefit from extra Obligation up to your starting amount.

Believe it or not, the Duty/Obligation section on my character generator is the one area that causes the most confusion with people. The mechanic in the app works correctly, it's just the mechanic in the book can be weird and difficult to understand. I did a write-up in the apps' FAQ that explains how it works:

Question: I can’t figure out how obligation and duty options are supposed to work (the ones that give me more XP and credits). Options enable and disable every time I change obligation and duty in some arcane manner that confounds me. Of course, I’m probably not understanding the rules for it from the CRB, either. Can you explain this?

Answer: Sure. These options allow you to select extra XP and credits depending on whether or not you take more obligation, or less duty, than the predetermined starting value for your character. Start by talking to your GM and getting a base starting size for obligation and duty. Enter this value from the “Starting Size” dropdown. Changing this value will cause all previously selected options to become unselected.

Let’s say your starting obligation size is 10 and you currently have no obligation. None of the options will be enabled. Then, you add 10 points worth of obligation, either from a single obligation or multiple obligations (options work based on total obligation, so it doesn’t matter how the obligation is divvied out). They still won’t be enabled. Then you add 5 more obligation, for a total of 15. Once you do that, “+5 XP” and “+1000 credits” will be selectable. If you select one of these, the other will then become disabled. Deselect it again and they’ll both be enabled. This is because you have a starting size of 10 and you’ve selected 15 obligation, which is 5 over the starting size. Therefore, options that require +5 obligation will become available. If you select one of them, it takes up the extra 5, so the other one is not selectable anymore.

Then, you add another 5 obligation, which means you now have 20 obligation, or 10 over the starting size. If you have “+5 XP” selected, “+1000 credits” will be enabled, but the other two won’t. That’s because you’ve used 5 of the extra obligation to choose “+5 XP”, which leaves you the other 5 to choose “+1000 credits”, but not enough to choose “+10 XP”, which requires 10 extra. If you unselect “+5 XP”, and have nothing else selected, all four options will become available, since you have 10 extra that isn’t being used.

If you add more obligation after this, you won’t get any extra benefit from it. That is, it’ll work as if you have only purchased 10 extra, even if you take 25 obligation (15 extra). Why? Because the starting size limits how much extra obligation will benefit your character. If your starting size is 10, you can only benefit from an extra 10 obligation (20 obligation total). If your starting size is 20, you can only benefit from an extra 20 obligation (40 obligation total).

Duty works similarly, except instead of benefiting from extra obligation past the starting size, you benefit from purchasing LESS duty UNDER the starting size. If your starting duty is 10, you can take only 5 duty and benefit from the extra 5 that you didn’t take. Or, you can take no duty at all and benefit from the 10 duty that you didn’t take and is UNDER the starting size.

The options can only be selected once. That is, you can’t select “+5 XP” multiple times. You can, however, select “+5 XP” and “+10 XP”, assuming you have at least 15 extra obligation (or 15 less duty) than the starting size, AND the starting size is at least 15.

Once an option is selected, it’ll remain so, even if you modify your obligation and duty to the point where they normally would be unavailable. That’s because obligation and duty can change during game play, and these options are supposed to be used at character creation. Once you’ve quality for an option and select it, it’ll stay selected and become part of your character design. However… if, for whatever reason, you decide to uncheck an option when you no longer qualify for it, you won’t be able to select it again until you, once again, qualify for it. So, don’t mess with obligation or duty options after you initially create your character or you could lose the benefit.

Incidentally, there’s an option in the character generator (click the “Option” button) called “Ignore Obligation Starting Size Limitation”. If this is checked, you are not limited in what options you can take by the obligation starting size. In other words, if, say, your starting size is 10, you would normally only be able to take another 10 points of obligation over this limit to use for obligation options. With this option checked, you can benefit from any amount of obligation over the starting size. You are still limited by the four options, however, so in reality, 30 excess obligation is all you can benefit from.

Does it mean that the players can exchange XP for Duty?

Really quick answer: Eat more fiber.

So my friends and I are starting this game as well. We are confused by duty. We also have 6 PC's, so our starting duty is 5. Now it says we are able to, at creation, use these 5 points if we choose to buy either +5 xp or +1000 credits. The discrepancy is it says as a limitation we can't go any lower than our starting duty. So the conflict is that even though we have 5 duty at start we still can't use it during character creation. Can someone explain this. Also OggDude your generator is awesome thanks.

You can't go lower than 0 duty. Duty is a good thing in AoR, as opposed to obligation being a "bad" thing in EotE. Whereas you increase your initial obligation to get startup options during character creation, you lower your initial duty to get the same thing.

If your starting duty is set to 5, just create a duty entry and give it a 0 size. You'll then have access to the +5xp/+100cr options. Having a duty of 0 is perfectly normal. Remember, your duty generally increases more regularly than your obligation does, and when your group hits 100 total duty, everyone's duty is reset to 0 and your group gets a contribution rank. So as long as you're going up in ranks in the Rebellion, your duty will, at some point (and, hopefully, multiple times), drop to 0. Again, perfectly normal (and RAW).

Yup, they can go to 0 Duty. Incidentally, this is also why there's the extra Obligation rule that says you can only benefit from an increase in Obligation no larger than your starting value. It's to mirror the effect of lowering Duty. Since you can only lower Duty to 0 (ie, your starting amount), you can only benefit from extra Obligation up to your starting amount.

Believe it or not, the Duty/Obligation section on my character generator is the one area that causes the most confusion with people. The mechanic in the app works correctly, it's just the mechanic in the book can be weird and difficult to understand. I did a write-up in the apps' FAQ that explains how it works:

Question: I can’t figure out how obligation and duty options are supposed to work (the ones that give me more XP and credits). Options enable and disable every time I change obligation and duty in some arcane manner that confounds me. Of course, I’m probably not understanding the rules for it from the CRB, either. Can you explain this?

Answer: Sure. These options allow you to select extra XP and credits depending on whether or not you take more obligation, or less duty, than the predetermined starting value for your character. Start by talking to your GM and getting a base starting size for obligation and duty. Enter this value from the “Starting Size” dropdown. Changing this value will cause all previously selected options to become unselected.

Let’s say your starting obligation size is 10 and you currently have no obligation. None of the options will be enabled. Then, you add 10 points worth of obligation, either from a single obligation or multiple obligations (options work based on total obligation, so it doesn’t matter how the obligation is divvied out). They still won’t be enabled. Then you add 5 more obligation, for a total of 15. Once you do that, “+5 XP” and “+1000 credits” will be selectable. If you select one of these, the other will then become disabled. Deselect it again and they’ll both be enabled. This is because you have a starting size of 10 and you’ve selected 15 obligation, which is 5 over the starting size. Therefore, options that require +5 obligation will become available. If you select one of them, it takes up the extra 5, so the other one is not selectable anymore.

Then, you add another 5 obligation, which means you now have 20 obligation, or 10 over the starting size. If you have “+5 XP” selected, “+1000 credits” will be enabled, but the other two won’t. That’s because you’ve used 5 of the extra obligation to choose “+5 XP”, which leaves you the other 5 to choose “+1000 credits”, but not enough to choose “+10 XP”, which requires 10 extra. If you unselect “+5 XP”, and have nothing else selected, all four options will become available, since you have 10 extra that isn’t being used.

If you add more obligation after this, you won’t get any extra benefit from it. That is, it’ll work as if you have only purchased 10 extra, even if you take 25 obligation (15 extra). Why? Because the starting size limits how much extra obligation will benefit your character. If your starting size is 10, you can only benefit from an extra 10 obligation (20 obligation total). If your starting size is 20, you can only benefit from an extra 20 obligation (40 obligation total).

Duty works similarly, except instead of benefiting from extra obligation past the starting size, you benefit from purchasing LESS duty UNDER the starting size. If your starting duty is 10, you can take only 5 duty and benefit from the extra 5 that you didn’t take. Or, you can take no duty at all and benefit from the 10 duty that you didn’t take and is UNDER the starting size.

The options can only be selected once. That is, you can’t select “+5 XP” multiple times. You can, however, select “+5 XP” and “+10 XP”, assuming you have at least 15 extra obligation (or 15 less duty) than the starting size, AND the starting size is at least 15.

Once an option is selected, it’ll remain so, even if you modify your obligation and duty to the point where they normally would be unavailable. That’s because obligation and duty can change during game play, and these options are supposed to be used at character creation. Once you’ve quality for an option and select it, it’ll stay selected and become part of your character design. However… if, for whatever reason, you decide to uncheck an option when you no longer qualify for it, you won’t be able to select it again until you, once again, qualify for it. So, don’t mess with obligation or duty options after you initially create your character or you could lose the benefit.

Incidentally, there’s an option in the character generator (click the “Option” button) called “Ignore Obligation Starting Size Limitation”. If this is checked, you are not limited in what options you can take by the obligation starting size. In other words, if, say, your starting size is 10, you would normally only be able to take another 10 points of obligation over this limit to use for obligation options. With this option checked, you can benefit from any amount of obligation over the starting size. You are still limited by the four options, however, so in reality, 30 excess obligation is all you can benefit from.

Does it mean that the players can exchange XP for Duty?

No. Duty is gained during play for completing your characters Duty. For example one of the players may have the "Recruitment" duty. And they should be rewarded duty every time they made progress in recruiting for the rebellion. XP can only be spent on skills/talents/specializations.

On a slightly tangential note: what about having more than one type of Duty? I noticed that the character sheet has room for two different types of duty, but won't that be a little unbalanced? If everyone has two Duties they'll increase twice as fast (theoretically, anyway).

Yup, they can go to 0 Duty. Incidentally, this is also why there's the extra Obligation rule that says you can only benefit from an increase in Obligation no larger than your starting value. It's to mirror the effect of lowering Duty. Since you can only lower Duty to 0 (ie, your starting amount), you can only benefit from extra Obligation up to your starting amount.

Believe it or not, the Duty/Obligation section on my character generator is the one area that causes the most confusion with people. The mechanic in the app works correctly, it's just the mechanic in the book can be weird and difficult to understand. I did a write-up in the apps' FAQ that explains how it works:

Question: I can’t figure out how obligation and duty options are supposed to work (the ones that give me more XP and credits). Options enable and disable every time I change obligation and duty in some arcane manner that confounds me. Of course, I’m probably not understanding the rules for it from the CRB, either. Can you explain this?

Answer: Sure. These options allow you to select extra XP and credits depending on whether or not you take more obligation, or less duty, than the predetermined starting value for your character. Start by talking to your GM and getting a base starting size for obligation and duty. Enter this value from the “Starting Size” dropdown. Changing this value will cause all previously selected options to become unselected.

Let’s say your starting obligation size is 10 and you currently have no obligation. None of the options will be enabled. Then, you add 10 points worth of obligation, either from a single obligation or multiple obligations (options work based on total obligation, so it doesn’t matter how the obligation is divvied out). They still won’t be enabled. Then you add 5 more obligation, for a total of 15. Once you do that, “+5 XP” and “+1000 credits” will be selectable. If you select one of these, the other will then become disabled. Deselect it again and they’ll both be enabled. This is because you have a starting size of 10 and you’ve selected 15 obligation, which is 5 over the starting size. Therefore, options that require +5 obligation will become available. If you select one of them, it takes up the extra 5, so the other one is not selectable anymore.

Then, you add another 5 obligation, which means you now have 20 obligation, or 10 over the starting size. If you have “+5 XP” selected, “+1000 credits” will be enabled, but the other two won’t. That’s because you’ve used 5 of the extra obligation to choose “+5 XP”, which leaves you the other 5 to choose “+1000 credits”, but not enough to choose “+10 XP”, which requires 10 extra. If you unselect “+5 XP”, and have nothing else selected, all four options will become available, since you have 10 extra that isn’t being used.

If you add more obligation after this, you won’t get any extra benefit from it. That is, it’ll work as if you have only purchased 10 extra, even if you take 25 obligation (15 extra). Why? Because the starting size limits how much extra obligation will benefit your character. If your starting size is 10, you can only benefit from an extra 10 obligation (20 obligation total). If your starting size is 20, you can only benefit from an extra 20 obligation (40 obligation total).

Duty works similarly, except instead of benefiting from extra obligation past the starting size, you benefit from purchasing LESS duty UNDER the starting size. If your starting duty is 10, you can take only 5 duty and benefit from the extra 5 that you didn’t take. Or, you can take no duty at all and benefit from the 10 duty that you didn’t take and is UNDER the starting size.

The options can only be selected once. That is, you can’t select “+5 XP” multiple times. You can, however, select “+5 XP” and “+10 XP”, assuming you have at least 15 extra obligation (or 15 less duty) than the starting size, AND the starting size is at least 15.

Once an option is selected, it’ll remain so, even if you modify your obligation and duty to the point where they normally would be unavailable. That’s because obligation and duty can change during game play, and these options are supposed to be used at character creation. Once you’ve quality for an option and select it, it’ll stay selected and become part of your character design. However… if, for whatever reason, you decide to uncheck an option when you no longer qualify for it, you won’t be able to select it again until you, once again, qualify for it. So, don’t mess with obligation or duty options after you initially create your character or you could lose the benefit.

Incidentally, there’s an option in the character generator (click the “Option” button) called “Ignore Obligation Starting Size Limitation”. If this is checked, you are not limited in what options you can take by the obligation starting size. In other words, if, say, your starting size is 10, you would normally only be able to take another 10 points of obligation over this limit to use for obligation options. With this option checked, you can benefit from any amount of obligation over the starting size. You are still limited by the four options, however, so in reality, 30 excess obligation is all you can benefit from.

Does it mean that the players can exchange XP for Duty?

No. Duty is gained during play for completing your characters Duty. For example one of the players may have the "Recruitment" duty. And they should be rewarded duty every time they made progress in recruiting for the rebellion. XP can only be spent on skills/talents/specializations.

Slightly tangentially, how does this work if they can't trigger duty to start a session?

My recommendation is to use the Force and Destiny method for all three games. With this, you select one starting option for each character:

1) +10 Starting XP

2) +5 Starting XP and +1,000 Credits

3) +2,500 Credits

4) Adjust Morality +/-20 (Not Applicable if not using Morality)

After this step, assign the character starting Obligation or Duty (as appropriate) based upon number of players. This value is not altered by the choice made above.

My recommendation is to use the Force and Destiny method for all three games. With this, you select one starting option for each character:

1) +10 Starting XP

2) +5 Starting XP and +1,000 Credits

3) +2,500 Credits

4) Adjust Morality +/-20 (Not Applicable if not using Morality)

After this step, assign the character starting Obligation or Duty (as appropriate) based upon number of players. This value is not altered by the choice made above.

I like it! Simple, an elegant rule for a more civilized game

-EF

On a slightly tangential note: what about having more than one type of Duty? I noticed that the character sheet has room for two different types of duty, but won't that be a little unbalanced? If everyone has two Duties they'll increase twice as fast (theoretically, anyway).

I'm curious about this as well. I've found nothing in the rulebook about it. Have any of the developers addressed it anywhere?

On a slightly tangential note: what about having more than one type of Duty? I noticed that the character sheet has room for two different types of duty, but won't that be a little unbalanced? If everyone has two Duties they'll increase twice as fast (theoretically, anyway).

I'm curious about this as well. I've found nothing in the rulebook about it. Have any of the developers addressed it anywhere?

Well, in most cases, doing something that would fulfill one Duty likely wouldn't fulfill the other, so their overall Duty score is probably still advancing at the same rate; they just have other options open to them.

On a slightly tangential note: what about having more than one type of Duty? I noticed that the character sheet has room for two different types of duty, but won't that be a little unbalanced? If everyone has two Duties they'll increase twice as fast (theoretically, anyway).

I'm curious about this as well. I've found nothing in the rulebook about it. Have any of the developers addressed it anywhere?

For general things, it works less like "Alright, you guys finished the mission, each Duty goes up by 10". And more off "each player, increase your total Duty by 10". So players with 2 Duty would just split the 10 into 5 for each of their Duty.

And then when it gets to specific things, you can do it however you'd like. If nobody has overlapping Duty, then you just give them a normal amount of Duty for completing whatever extra thing, and that only applies to that Duty. It works just the same as if they had one Duty, since it'd still be the same amounts, it's just that with 2 Duty, they've got a bit more variety as to what Duty will pop up.

When Duty overlaps, just make the Duty-specific task a set amount of Duty (probably based on the difficulty of accomplishing it) and split it up amongst whoever with that Duty worked on it.

So basically, there's no mechanical benefit to having multiple Duty, it's just having a bigger narrative mix. Much in the same way as starting with multiple Obligations and trying to decrease it.

On a slightly tangential note: what about having more than one type of Duty? I noticed that the character sheet has room for two different types of duty, but won't that be a little unbalanced? If everyone has two Duties they'll increase twice as fast (theoretically, anyway).

I'm curious about this as well. I've found nothing in the rulebook about it. Have any of the developers addressed it anywhere?

From the Duty table:

Roll twice on this chart. The PC's Duty is equally split between two different areas of focus, and success in either is good

for increasing the Duty score.

Just like you can have obligations to multiple people or organizations, you can have multiple responsibilities: A face character may have a supplies and a recruiting duty. Acting as either a recruiter or a quartermaster would qualify as meeting his goals. When you roll duty at the start of the session, the person will be on the duty chart twice, giving them 2 opportunities to gain more.

On a slightly tangential note: what about having more than one type of Duty? I noticed that the character sheet has room for two different types of duty, but won't that be a little unbalanced? If everyone has two Duties they'll increase twice as fast (theoretically, anyway).

I'm curious about this as well. I've found nothing in the rulebook about it. Have any of the developers addressed it anywhere?

From the Duty table:

Roll twice on this chart. The PC's Duty is equally split between two different areas of focus, and success in either is good

for increasing the Duty score.

Just like you can have obligations to multiple people or organizations, you can have multiple responsibilities: A face character may have a supplies and a recruiting duty. Acting as either a recruiter or a quartermaster would qualify as meeting his goals. When you roll duty at the start of the session, the person will be on the duty chart twice, giving them 2 opportunities to gain more.

Then what precisely is keeping each player in the group from taking 5-6 different Duties? Rolling on the starting Duty table only means you split your starting Duty between the two different Duties. It says nothing about whether you should divide all future Duty gained by the number of total Duties.

Then what precisely is keeping each player in the group from taking 5-6 different Duties? Rolling on the starting Duty table only means you split your starting Duty between the two different Duties. It says nothing about whether you should divide all future Duty gained by the number of total Duties.

The rules say players chose a duty that best fits the character concept, not several duties. Rolling the table allows for two duties.