Hello there fellow GMs!
I started a new SWRPG campaign last Thursday and my idea revolves around of the idea that characters will start being normal edge of empire characters on the first two arcs, on the third arc I wish them to join either the Rebellion or the Imperial forces, thus opening them the possibility to use the careers of the Age of Rebellion book, and after some arcs (don't know how many yet), they will be joining the Jedi or the Sith side, allowing to pick careers from the Force and Destiny book.

I see some things happening after that, first of all is the number of career's specializations the PCs will end up getting on the end of the Age of Rebellion arcs, making them overpowered. Second is that the NPCs will have to follow the same schema, to keep things balanced right?

I also thougth about allowing them to trade some of the earned XP from the older careers to the next book career specialization, obviously with some penalty, only between arcs and only from a single career at a time. Maybe even disallowing them to improve or buy careers of the previous book when a new book is introduced, or making them spend more XP for talents of the previous books. The main problem with that is how to deal with the XP trading of talents like Dedication, which affects characteristics. I mean, how to justify, in game, the lowering of a characteristic ?

On the same subject, I think that the XP penalty on trading would have to be something between 10% and 25% of the total XP that will be allocate to be traded. Having that clear, would allow the PCs to plan their entire career progress. Also, XP will be handled only between chapters.

For now that's all I have in mind. I'm looking forward for new ideas and suggestions.

====== Campaign Information ======

All the PCs started as a refugees beign shetered by an Forsaken Jedi. All of them have acces to the Force powers, BUT, not all of them choosed to develop it. That makes the opening spot for the one who wish to dip into Force and Destiny careers. In the EoE arcs, they are already beign guided by an Rebellion agent, and will have to accomplish several missions related to the retriveal of a powerful AI until they are invited/forced to join the rebellion, since they all have a reward on their heads by the Imperial Forces as an obligation on EoE.

[EDIT] Added campaign information

I followed a similar story structure in my second campaign. The players began the campaign as the usual band of EotE dirt bags and joined the Rebellion as special forces operators for the second half of the campaign.

My suggestions are thus and I've been successfully using them in my current campaign:

1. You're waaay overthinking it and you're overly concerned with "power levels." FFG Star Wars operates on a very shallow advancement curve and the three game lines don't operate with different levels of PC ability, unlike FFG's Warhammer 40K RPG line. A starting Edge character is the same as a starting Age of Rebellion character. Force & Destiny characters start with a single Force point and their career talent trees have a different focus, but otherwise, they're on equal footing.
2. If you have players that want to play Jedi-type characters, just let them start with the Force & Destiny book.
3. Lightsabers put out a lot of damage but they require putting points in the Lightsaber skill to be used effectively. If you want to mitigate this starting off, make finding a kyber crystal and building a lightsaber an adventure in and of itself.
4. Joining the Imperials isn't an option with characters from Force & Destiny (evil acts or ignoring evil results in Conflict which risks a fall to the dark side) and AoR was designed around playing scrappy Rebel heroes. If you stick with Edge , it could work.
5. If you want to save yourself some headaches, limit your PCs to the specific core rule book they start with when it comes to careers and specialization. With all the career books that are out it's not like they're going to lack options for specialization options. Age of Rebellion specifically states that a character that takes Slicer from EotE can't take Slicer from AoR so you can't double dip anyway. If you have a player that wants to play a Smuggler or Ace with Force talents, that's what the Force Sensitive and Sensitive Emergent universal trees are for.
6. Players planning their characters out from beginning to end is necessary for min-maxing in D&D 3.5. It's not a requirement in FFG SW and overly pre-planning the campaign puts a straight jacket on it. Don't risk cutting out good ideas you come up with later.

Concise Locket is correct, but he left out one major factor. If you are planning for them to head into Force and Destiny, but do not allow them to use the careers there to start, they will be crippled. In order to get their 1st Force rating, they will have to pick up Force Sensitive Exile or Emergent, or else buy to the bottom of a F&D tree. In F&D, they receive their 1st force rating from the Career, not the Specialization.

I don't see a problem with a rebuild, necessarily, but I think it's just as easy to incorporate new characters. I'm a big proponent of episodic play, where every session feels like an "episode" of a TV series, such as The Clone Wars/Rebels. Every episode has its own story, and every one contributes (however tangentially) to the overall story arc, but the cast of characters can vary widely from one episode to the next. It's also a great format if you have players that can't always make it, or who want to drop in and out. It's also a great way to give everyone a chance to run a session as GM, which almost always improves players' appreciation for your hard work.

As an aside, I'd probably scale your campaign back a bit. It does sound entertaining and ambitious, but you might well get bogged down in the number of supplements and rulebooks; this site is a great way to reference books and page numbers. A lot of GMs limit players to a certain number or selection of books, just to keep it from becoming Page Reference Wars.

Best of luck!

When I started my campaign, the primary theme was Edge of the Empire but I allowed my players to choose from either the Edge of the Empire or Age of Rebellion books with the possibility of taking Specializations from Force and Destiny so as they took the Force Sensitive Exile or Force Sensitive Emergent specializations beforehand. A PC can only have one Career but many Specializations and from experience with my players, having multiple Specializations helps flesh out the character the player wants. They will seem overpowered but only because the Adversaries aren't scaled with the PCs and you'll have to get creative with them to present the PCs with a legitimate challenge. Also, you can nix the XP penalty for trading and taking from other books and having the players plan out their characters, it isn't necessary as 5-10 XP per hour of gameplay is enough to progress the PCs and allow them fiddle with their Talents and Skills. For the campaign itself, run the Edge style part as you would but when it's getting down to the wire, let the PCs as a group decide who to join. Or not join and just provide "goods and services" as needed. But make it clear that if they caught playing both sides against the middle, there will be consequences.

Hi Tiagorrato,

There is no need to penalize the characters from buying other specializations. The rules are already balanced in that way so I'd recommend that you allow players to advance their characters according to the Rules As Written (RAW).

And there is no real reason to limit players starting careers to one book (unless that's the only rule book you have and are using). The careers are all pretty nicely balanced (IMHO).

And transitioning the characters from an EotE campaign to an AoR campaign simply changes the types of NPC's they interact with and what type of work they do. Otherwise the rules do not change one whit.