It seems reasonably clear that:

Skills may be Trained once per Rank.

Do trained skills purchased during character creation count toward this restriction?

(The rules imply not, but the end result is that a character can have two Training marks and a specialization on a skill at the end of the first session. )

I would say yes. Even thought we know they do not count towards your advancement to a new career, it is still a maximum of once per Rank. So you would have to wait until your Rank 2 before you can take a second "training" in it.

Rank 1 is 0-9, thus character creation is part of rank 1 (0 xp). So, if you train a skill during creation, it has been trained during rank 1.

So how does the Rank system work. Is it completely linear?

Ie

Rank 1 (0-9 XP)

Rank 2 (10-19 XP)

Rank 3 (20-29 XP)

etc

Phantomdoodler said:

Yes, although keep in mind that the system is also career based. So, if you follow a straight an linear path, ie spend your 10 advances to complete a career with no extra purchases, when you advance to a second career or advanced career you'll be second rank. However, you can change careers before or after that point, so rank does not necessarily equate to number of careers. In essence, rank is a system to restrict frequency of repetition in training advances, and has nothing to do with the careers themselves.

Phantomdoodler said:

You become Rank 2 when you complete (or otherwise move on from) your first career and on to the next. Since there are other things to spend advances on (like stat bumps), it is possible that you will have a lot more than 10xp when you achieve Rank 2.

Actually, it seems as if Rank is not related to number of completed careers, but is simply the number of Advancements you have cashed in.

Otherwise, you'd start into a quagmire of questions about whether a jump from a partially completed career counts as a rank, and end up in a long discussion about cutoffs for how much of a career has to be completed before it counts as a Rank.

moofrank1 said:

Matches my understanding of the text.

Maybe I read that wrong. Thanks.

Yep, rank is really just a gauge of XP gained (or spent?) rather than careers. It's a way to keep track of overall power/experience of the PC, rather than relying on the careers which can be changed relatively freely.

Cheers. I will definitely use the Rank system- seems like a good way of stopping players max out skills, especially as i will be using a more free form career system (you can move into any career without restriction, as long as the story makes sense, and careers just give you an xp rduction when purchasing Primary Chars and Skills)