If a character starts with a "normal" career and then wants to take on the force do they have to take Force Sensitive Exile/Emergant or can they pick a spec from FaD and get the force rating instead of the career skills?

Nope. All the Force and Destiny careers assumes you have been trained in the use of the force since childhood. Exile and Emergent are for those who discover their own force sensitivity in adulthood.

Luke Skywalker is an Emergent. Rey is an Exile.

Anakin Skywalker is a selftaught prodigy who started with the Racer career from Endless Vigil.

Alisair is right. F&D grants you a force rating point for choosing the career, not the specialisation. So a character could start as an Explorer career with the Fringer specialisation he could pick up say Niman Disciple spec, learn the talents and gain access to the skills, but gain NO BENEFIT from any force talents he learns, and be unable to learn force powers as he has no force rating.

Please also note that the Force Rating talent (for +1 Force rating) is itself a force talent, so is of no benefit until you have a force rating, so no side-stepping it that way.

Of course, if a player has a really good idea, and the GM agrees to go with it, the GM can just give your character a force rating. If I was the GM it would want to be a pretty darn epic story arc to make that happen however, or come at massive cost (Obligation of 50: Palpatine Owns My Soul should do it). ;-)

We are playing a imperial campaign where my character is kind of inspired by the Darth Bane story. He is imperial soldier (merc soldier skill tree) and just like Bane I was thinking of having my force sensitivity found out during the military campaign we are playing since another player is a Inqusitor in training it would be fun to see how it playes out as he starts to notice whats going on. However since he isnt a young man anymore I wanted him to stick what he knows best, shredding people in melee and go a lightsaber tree. But I guess I have to pick one of the others then. They really don't fit the character at all though since they focus on hiding their powers from the empire.

Talk to your GM. I just let PCs buy into F&D careers if they want and earn their FR when they hit the Talent. It's a silly rule for the sake of itself I think. Force careers are already a numbingly slow slog to advance as it is.

54 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Talk to your GM. I just let PCs buy into F&D careers if they want and earn their FR when they hit the Talent. It's a silly rule for the sake of itself I think. Force careers are already a numbingly slow slog to advance as it is.

While I cant talk to balance, since I havent had a player start normal and then buy into the force, I'll admit that I dont like doing it this way - but mostly because there's some tasty stuff to be had in the Exile/Emergent trees.

I wouldn't tell a PC to use either path, just let them do either. In the game there's no real 'no-go' being bypassed regardless because it's all doable with sufficient xp, but that's my point when I say it's a mechanic about spending xp that exists for the sake of it imo. Following the RAW dogmatically just means you're billing the PC 'X' xp for the FR, which is just clunky I think.

I can agree, i personally really like the force exile tree, the but i can understand not wanting to force the player into either the exile or the emergent just for the sake of getting FR1. Each GM and group will have their own opinions, and that is perfectly fine.

For myself? I would give the player three options. Buy into Emergent or Exile, Buy down to the FR bump in a F/D career, or spent some XP on a free-floating talent (a house rule system i use for talents that exist outside of a tree, taking inspiration from the Battlescar rules from Forged in Battle) in exchange for some RP development time and possibly some obligation related to that.

But hey, that is just what works for me. It won't work for everyone, nor should it. Just do what is right for your particular group.

On 4/4/2017 at 7:21 PM, Desslok said:

While I cant talk to balance, since I havent had a player start normal and then buy into the force, I'll admit that I dont like doing it this way - but mostly because there's some tasty stuff to be had in the Exile/Emergent trees.

Yea there are alot of cool and good things in those trees. However they don't seem right with my character or the direction I want him to go. So sure I could go that way and get alot of good stuff so its not a setback in anyway, it does however not really fit with character development.