A friend of mine is coming into our game, making a human marauder. He picked Melee, resilience, vigilance, and discipline as his career and spec skills. We're concerned on the wording for his two non career skills. He wanted to take athletics and discipline, which honestly I'm fine with, but another player said it couldn't be from either list he had access too from his career and spec. Who is right in this matter?

The other player.

I know The Other Player is reading the rules as intended, but wouldn't the other way be RAW? The creation process goes:

1 - Pick Species (Human)

1A - pick two non career skills

2 - Pick career

2A - Hurray! you now have career skills!

3 - Pick career freebies

Since you don't yet have a career in step 1A yet, all of the skills are non-career skills.

Mind you, I'm away from book, so I cant check the exact wording. I might be way off base here.

"Humans start the game with one rank in two different non-career skills of their choice."

Game play begins at the end of CHARGEN, so you pick the skills as the last step. You don't immediately select them when you choose human. You could pick them after career/spec selection, but probably waiting until the end when you know what everyone else has, your gear, etc, will let you pick the most beneficial.

Since you don't yet have a career in step 1A yet, all of the skills are non-career skills.

Then why would they bother specifying "career" skills? Why wouldn't they say "any" skills?

Eh, you make a strong point. I yield my dumbassery.

Thanks for the clarification. My player would like to know what two non career skills would help round him out.

Thanks for the clarification. My player would like to know what two non career skills would help round him out.

That's hard to say. What's the whole party? What's their gear? What's the starting circumstances, if known? That's for optimum. As a general rule it's good to not ignore the initiative skills.

It's an RPG, whatever is relevant from their backstory.

Use Rope.

A character doesnt just start with a base career they have that as part of their first specialisation. Your background includes both a career and a free spec from that career. So prior to choosing anything further you choose both of these which fixes your staring career skills. As to useful skills pretty much anything works that fits with your game

Brawl backs up the melee and works a lot with the talents of the Marauder.Cool helps with your initiative , if you want something to do on while in space gunnery can help as there is nothing for a marauder to do except run around and put out fires or maybe spoof missiles with vigilance (which is better left to the computer geek) Im not sure about social skills but with a reasonable willpower, coercion may be a good call. Medicine also, is always good for a combatant.

One of the biggest questions to ask with a human is what you intend thr 2nd spec to be as these can also help with the choice. Also what as stats are boosted as well. Again though, whatever works for the game in mind.