Browsing the rules on career transitions a question occurs to me.

P 38 WHF01

"Finally, it’s important in case a character ever decides to re-visit a career they previously played. When returning to a previous career, it is always considered a compatible transition – so only one advance is required to move back into a career a character already has been in. This applies even if the character’s current career and the previous career would otherwise be considered incompatible."

"Reiklander characters have a special racial ability called Adaptable. This ability reduces the cost of career transitions by one advance. With this special ability, Reiklanders can reduce the transition cost to zero, which may allow a Reiklander to move directly into a compatible new career for no advances."

So in the RAW a Reiklander can transition careers freely (barring GM fiat).

My question is, can a PC transition from career A to career B, then return to career A to transition to career C, taking advantage of a compatibility of A to C and the career A dedication bonus.

For example. A Reiklander PC completes the Student career and takes the dedication bonus. He then transitions to Mercenary (-1 compatibilities, -1 for dedication, -1 for Rieklander = 1 Advance). He does not complete Mercenary before wishing to transition to Dilettante. From Mercenary to Dilettante would be 2 Advances (-1 compatibilities, -1 for Rieklander = 2 Advances). . Transitioning back to Student (0 Advances) and then to Dilettante would be 0 Advances (-3 compatibilities and -1 for Adaptable).

This appears to be legal in the RAW. The only issue appears to be if multiple transition paths out of a career is possible - there is only one line for career transition. So perhaps only one career exit path is allowed. The PC in the example would need to transition from Mercenary to Dilettante. However, this is not explicit in the RAW.

Fresnel said:

I recently came to the same conclusion and started this thread www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Our group has decided to treat it in the following manner. When returning to a previously held career, you must spend one advance in that career before transitioning out of it again. If you have completed a career, to include taking the Dedication bonus, you will not be able to go back to it since that career has nothing left to offer you as you won't be able to take any advances in it before switching again. Bear in mind that this is a house rule, but we felt it was necessary to prevent just the kind of scenario you outline.

Actually I have no problem with characters deciding to play a session 'in' a career they previously completed - in order to access talent sockets more appropiate for the circumstances.

I agree with Mac's assement again, as it is the exact same way (or really darn close anyway) my group used this rule. As a Reiklander with multiple careers, you can leagaly change between them for free, however we decied that for puroses of entering new careers, what stance track to use, talent slots, career abilites etc etc, all Rieklanders are treated as being a member of whatever career they spent their last advancement in, so if you student/mecenary wanted to transition to dilettante he would either have to suck it up and transition from Merc to Dilettante, or spend at least 1 more advancement in Student (thereby making him a current member of the student career) and then transit from Student to Dilettante. As a side effect once a career advancement track is full, you can no longer "transit through" a career, as there are no more advancements to buy, however we are very leient as to what advancements you can use, anything that "checks" off a box on the track counts, whether its a normal career advancement, a non-career advancement, or the dedication bounus.

Last session we also ruled that as a Reiklander you could spend 1 advancement to change to a previous career as well though, even if you didn't want to buy any advancements, as all other races can do this by the RAW and we didn't want to penalize Reiklanders since adaptability and career transitions are their strength.

We go by 2e rules. Which effectively go like this. Valid career exists are any career exist for your current career plus any career exist of any previous career you were in. Which is to say in 3rd edition you don't need to spend an advance in a career you were previous in to use one of it's exists, though the cost in transitioning to a career is tied to the career you are exiting from. So if you went from A to B then wanted to transfer to a career based on A you must use the rules to transfer to that career based on A not on your current career.

The rationalization is that your character is a sum of all his careers past and current. So even if you are now a B you still have all the information from when you were an A. There's no need to occur some added step of transitioning careers based on a past career. You've already paid the time to be in that career, no additional penalties are needed.

Kryyst said:

I kind of like this interpretation. Most RPGs reward specialized characters amply already, this allows for more variation in the specialist vs generalist spectrum and helps establish humans as the quintessential jacks-of-all-trades not only from a lore perspective, but mechanically as well.

We actually made our ruling not because of career transitions, that was just a side effect, we made the rulings because your current career determines things like, your current career ability, and your base stance track, primary characteristics etc etc. We had a Reiklander Vigilante who wanted to lateral to, I think it was student, to buy education and one other skill, then transition back, however he didn't have enough advances to buy all the stuff he wanted from his new career so he could transition back to Vigilante, the question then came up, what stance track did he need to use, effectivley, what career did he belong to for the one adventure he needed to get the one more advancement he needed to go back to Vigilante, so we made the ruling that for Reiklanders who have more than one career, they are effectivley a "member" of whatever career they spent their last advancement in.

Your ruling of using any previous career, as appropriate, for a career exit is a decent one, one we might consider adopting, but that doesn't negate the need for our ruling, as the question of, "What career are you at this very moment" is still a valid one for Reiklanders who can transition at no cost.