Hi this is just idle speculation the idea for a house rule just occurred to me and I wanted your thought on it. The idea is allowing players to have 2 careers, one each from 2 different game line and what that means to me is essentially letting them merge 2 careers:

• they only get one set of starting careers (possibly their choice, and the starting spec bonus career skills could possibly be from the other career)
• they pay the in career cost for new specializations for those two careers and
• can take signature abilities from both careers, however you still can only have 2 signature abilities but you have 4 to choose 2 from.

Along with this rule I'm also thinking about letting them take a universal spec as their starting spec with either of their careers, and universal specs now count as in career specs for everyone so signature abilities can be attached to them.

Reasons I'm considering it

• new specializations signature abilities as new books are announced/bought could have changed what the player would have chosen if they had access to it at the time of character creation
• some careers are natural analogs/extensions of each other, for example: Hired-Gun:Soldier, Technician:Engineer, Colonist:Diplomat (politico:Ambassador/Agitator, Entrepreneur:Quarter-Master, Scholar:Analyst)
• a choice of starting skills that better fits the character concept
• being able to start Solider:Recruit or Spy:Recruit or almost anything:Recruit is very thematically appropriate (you started training for a career but joined the military before finishing "college")
• EotE/AoR career with a starting spec of Force Sensitive Emergent or Force Sensitve Exile puts them on par with FaD careers, especially and then letting them choose a FaD career so they can get a lightsaber specialization at in career cost and FaD signature abilities
• As an "alternative" (as in don't even ask) to making custom specs (which are often over powered even if well intentioned) that "better fit the character concept (the reason I wanted to do it was primarily to get a better set of career skills, but then choosing talents was problematic)

So... what do you guys think?

I mean...sure, if you want to. But I don't know why you'd bother. Gaining an additional Career, as opposed to an additional Spec, doesn't provide any additional talents. All it brings with it are some additional career skills (which you can get by taking new specs anyway) and the possibility, once a full talent tree has been filled out, of gaining additional Signature Abilities...although this will only be relevant to characters who are, at a minimum, at 600 XP. And the fact that some careers are analogous to each other seems like a reason not to take both - why complicate things? And there's no need to create a rule to merge game-lines - if you want a Hired Gun in AoR, or a Soldier in EotE, then do: my last EotE campaign had an Engineer, a Smuggler, a Soldier and an Explorer. No new rule needed.

If you want to provide alternative combos and/or alternative Signature Abilities, a much simpler house rule would be to allow players to make their starting Spec an out-of-career one (perhaps at a 10XP cost), and to allow character to take appropriate Signature Abilities from outside his career, if they really want to. Otherwise I just think you're making a lot of work for yourself without really gaining a lot.

With regards to the Universal specs...again, I'm not sure why you'd do this. For one thing, neither FSX or FSE provide any Spec skills - although admittedly Recruit does - and none of the universal specs really allow the character to stand out as anything. In fact they're designed to be augmentative, not to work on their own. Your players might struggle to really get the most out of their characters if they just have the talents from those trees, and don't have anything for them to build on. And anyway, the rules already allow characters to get these Specs really easily - they count as in-career from an XP spending perspective, I believe, so one good session is enough to buy the new spec.

Why? I mean sure if you want to ..... but .....why?

If you want more flexible characters to start, maybe start with extra xp that has to be spent on certain things, like an additional specialisation, skills and top row only talents. That way you get most of what you want without having to come up with a new system.

I wouldn't. Everything is possible for xp in any combination, the starting freebies are just that, any skill is available at creation for xp. It always boils down to patience. If the game needs to be expedited, just starting at Knight Level and suspending the xp cost for additional specs speeds things up sufficiently.

I've heard Knight level mentioned a few times on these boards, where would those optional rules lie ?

F&D.

Cheers, found it (pgs 104 and 322)

IMO, PCs should have one and only one Career. They can have many specializations, from whichever lines the GM is willing to allow them to reference, but they still have one and only one career.

Figure out the thing that is most consistent about their personality and their character — that thing that defines them as who they are at their most core. That determines their Career. And they’ll have at least one Specialization from that Career, even if they don’t invest much in that Spec.

But they could then spend all their money, time, XP, etc… in various other Specializations.

Han Solo is, and will always be, a Smuggler. He might also be a Pilot, a Scoundrel, a Charmer, a Gambler, a Mechanic, a Commander, and many other things. But at his very core, he is a Smuggler.

If you don’t want to give someone a particular Career because it fits the concept best but the playerwon’t be spending any XP in any of those Specializations, then maybe at their core they are actually a different Career instead.

Do people choose their careers based on the signature abilities? Seems like a small thing to me. Seems it would be easier to just rebuild their character in the career that they feel they absolutely need because they missed out on a certain signature ability.

Or you could just get rid of careers. They dont do anything but make an artificial limit for no reason. You get one signature ability from one of the trees you have

Do people choose their careers based on the signature abilities? Seems like a small thing to me. Seems it would be easier to just rebuild their character in the career that they feel they absolutely need because they missed out on a certain signature ability.

Once the spy book comes out maybe the signature abilities will be the tie breaker between starting spy:xxxxxx and smuggler:thief+scoundrel. Right now hired-gun:demolitionist is my preferred career:starting spec for a James Bond or Jason Bourne type character (because of skill list and talents and last one standing although perhaps a third of the demolitionist talents, the big boom ones powerful blast and selective detonation and perhaps the improvised explosive don't really fit a "spy")

Last one standing is an awfully compelling reason to take hired gun over soldier (which some people at Gen con knows the sign abilities for) so for hired gun vs. Soldier it could be the tie breaker... signature abilities could also be the tie breaker between technician and engineer (personally I prefer engineer but then again I have a PhD in mechanical engineering... so I may be a little biased in favor of engineer:mechanic+scientist for that reason)

IMO, that’s meta-gaming. I’m not going to do anything to help meta-gaming be more effective in my games. At least, not intentionally.

If people want to meta-game, then they can work their character concept around whatever game mechanic they want, and be done with it.

If a good, honest, role-player discovers that they chose the wrong career at the beginning and they want to re-spec, I’m all for helping to make that happen in a way that makes sense but doesn’t destroy or excessively alter previous established facts and events.

But that’s not meta-gaming.

I only allow one career, but what I AM willing to do is create a "unique career" for each player.

For example, one of my players is a slicer character with a ton of knowledge about a lot of topics. He has started as a Technician/Slicer... but we've realized that none of the other talent trees from the Technician career are particularly appropriate, while some of the things from Age of Rebellion are (notably, Analyst, to reflect his intense intellect, knowledge, and ability to apply it).

I told the player that if he wanted to take Analyst as a second tree, I wound consider it a career spec for him (and him only!). I would also likely allow any of my other PCs to take a talent tree from AoR as a career spec... as long as it doesn't already exist in Edge of the Empire.

In fairness, though, our group has a very odd "weighting", with 2 Smugglers, 2 Technicians and (as the NPC help) 2 Hired Guns, so anything to help these folks stand out...

I'd suggest if you want to go this route you give them 1 career and let the second "career" just allow them to buy the specs at the in career cost and allow them to buy signature abilities from the second career.

The only part of your suggestion I'm favorable to is allowing Recruit to be taken as the initial Specialization in an AoR campaign regardless of starting Career with the stipulation that the next Spec you purchase must be an in-career Spec.

Consensus: either "bad idea" or "not worth the trouble" thanks for the feedback that is why I was asking.

But a few comments...

The combination of amrothe and happy daze's suggestions is about 80% of what I was suggesting.

I'd suggest if you want to go this route you give them 1 career and let the second "career" just allow them to buy the specs at the in career cost and allow them to buy signature abilities from the second career.

The only part of your suggestion I'm favorable to is allowing Recruit to be taken as the initial Specialization in an AoR campaign regardless of starting Career with the stipulation that the next Spec you purchase must be an in-career Spec.

Also other than being able to take universal specs as starting specs and possibly career skills from one official career and signature ablities from another ... i'm thinking that what gwek suggested is effectively a more permissive version of my suggestion, which might be reigned in by GM oversight

I only allow one career, but what I AM willing to do is create a "unique career" for each player.

For example, one of my players is a slicer character with a ton of knowledge about a lot of topics. He has started as a Technician/Slicer... but we've realized that none of the other talent trees from the Technician career are particularly appropriate, while some of the things from Age of Rebellion are (notably, Analyst, to reflect his intense intellect, knowledge, and ability to apply it).

I told the player that if he wanted to take Analyst as a second tree, I wound consider it a career spec for him (and him only!). I would also likely allow any of my other PCs to take a talent tree from AoR as a career spec... as long as it doesn't already exist in Edge of the Empire.

In fairness, though, our group has a very odd "weighting", with 2 Smugglers, 2 Technicians and (as the NPC help) 2 Hired Guns, so anything to help these folks stand out...

Isn't that just a saving of 10 xp? Not sure why it'd need to be reigned in. (cost of taking non-career specialisation over career one).

Isn't that just a saving of 10 xp? Not sure why it'd need to be reigned in. (cost of taking non-career specialisation over career one).

Not sure who this is addressed to but if me... then other differences besides the 10xp per spec would be allowing a character taking "career skills" from one career and a starting specialization from the other and you'd get to choose 2 out of 4 signature abilities, so a little more flexibility at character creation and a little more flexibility at high xp stage and a 10 xp difference for 1 or 2 of your 3 or so spec's in a long term game. I didn't think it was a big deal but consensus says otherwise, or at least it's not worth the trouble.

To be honest Elias, I think you'd just be better off giving out more XP to begin with.

We've had this conversation before I think, and the general consensus is that it's simply not possible to build Jason Bourne or James Bond as a starting character. Bond and Bourne are veterans in their mid to late forties, with a half-a-dozen specs each.

When I set up the AOR game the entire concept was that they were the best the Alliance had to offer. Some were highly-decorated heroes, others had been fighting the Galactic Civil War for 20 years. They were never going to be represented by starting characters, so I gave out more XP on the understanding their missions would be much harder than starting characters, in terms of stats and campaign scope.

Rather than fiddle around with multiple careers, I'd just allocate enough XP to the characters, if you want them to be Bourne or Bond or Batman right out of the gate. As long as they get appropriate challenges, there's no problem doing that.

If you want to play with really vetran characters give 350-750 xp and 35k to 75k in gear.

If you want to play with really vetran characters give 350-750 xp and 35k to 75k in gear.

I've run three games where characters started with 300 XP and 18,000 credits of gear. I only allowed skills to start up to 3 ranks, and I only allowed talents of 15 XP or less to be purchased at the start (so, the top three rows of any talent trees). The characters were fairly broad without being super-badass.

To be honest Elias, I think you'd just be better off giving out more XP to begin with.

We've had this conversation before I think, and the general consensus is that it's simply not possible to build Jason Bourne or James Bond as a starting character. Bond and Bourne are veterans in their mid to late forties, with a half-a-dozen specs each.

When I set up the AOR game the entire concept was that they were the best the Alliance had to offer. Some were highly-decorated heroes, others had been fighting the Galactic Civil War for 20 years. They were never going to be represented by starting characters, so I gave out more XP on the understanding their missions would be much harder than starting characters, in terms of stats and campaign scope.

Rather than fiddle around with multiple careers, I'd just allocate enough XP to the characters, if you want them to be Bourne or Bond or Batman right out of the gate. As long as they get appropriate challenges, there's no problem doing that.

I liked that level of power but it might have been nice if they had a little more starting flexibility... being able to take the career skills from one career starting spec from another. Not a big boost in power just a hopefully "balanced" way to give a few more customization options. But consensus is bad idea and that's what I was asking

To be honest I preferred the idea that was put forward in the O66 podcast that it was easy to create a Bourne as a starting character. After all most of his opponents are minions. A starting PC is already a hero style character.

I'm going to be running an AoR campaign soon. The characters will initially be generated by EotE careers and specilizations, but then they will spend a couple in game sessions going through rebel boot camp. The reward at the end will be a specialization in one of the AoR careers. The players will be competing for assignments, so while they can indicate which direction they'd like to go competitions will determine who actually gets what.