As far as the rules go, you can't actually start in a universal specialization ("That specializa­tion must be one in his chosen career." "universal specializations are not career specializations"), which was odd since many of them have origins attached to them (Being a Padawan Survivor is something you acquire, not start as?). Also if not for this there are now enough universal specializations to build a character who never actually enters a non-universal one. I decided to make a quick homebrew to get around that while adding a new option that's (hopefully) balanced and interesting.
Freelancer
Career skills: At character creation, a Freelancer picks any four skills, which become that Freelancer's class skills. If a Freelancer's initial specialization doesn't have specialization skills (e.g., it gains force rank 1 instead), they gain another rank in any two career skills instead ranks in specialization skills.

Starting Specialization: A Freelancer may select any universal specialization as his or her starting specialization.

Non-universal Specializations cost 5 additional experience for a Freelancer to purchase (instead of the normal 10 for cross-career specializations).

Any thoughts?

I'm all for a system without specializations (like Genesys), but if you're going to keep them to play to SW archetypes, then I'd stick with the system as written.

28 minutes ago, NanashiAnon said:

As far as the rules go, you can't actually start in a universal specialization ("That specializa­tion must be one in his chosen career." "universal specializations are not career specializations"), which was odd since many of them have origins attached to them (Being a Padawan Survivor is something you acquire, not start as?)

As far as this goes, I would just grant enough extra XP to everybody so that the person who wants "Padawan Survivor" can include it at chargen. Then adjust the backstory to suit whatever narrative is required, so their "career" becomes what they ended up doing after they survived Order 66.

31 minutes ago, NanashiAnon said:

Any thoughts?

Only that this is what happens when you feel like you have to follow the rules too closely. As far as character builds and backstory goes, there's little you can't fix by adjusting XP and loosening a few restrictions.

13 minutes ago, whafrog said:

As far as this goes, I would just grant enough extra XP to everybody so that the person who wants "Padawan Survivor" can include it at chargen.

This is one of a number of reasons why I let my players start with an extra spec for free (though they still have to pay the 10XP surcharge if it's out-of-career).

While I can appreciate the intent, the execution of the idea can lead to problems, especially with the whole "pick any four skills" portion, which a min-maxing player will use to select the four most opportune skills that suit their build. In the case of the Padawan Survivor, most players are going to gravitate towards grabbing Discipline, Lightsaber, and Vigilance as their career skills, which is a very optimized combination that isn't readily available. Or for something like Retired Clone Trooper, most players are going to double-down on combat skills so as to easy start play with two ranks in as many of them as they can manage, making that PC an ace in combat encounters. And I'm sure once Collapse of the Republic comes out at the Death Watch Commando spec is available, you'll have players use Freelancer to yet again double-up on a number of key skills for that spec.

Whafrog's pretty much go the best suggestion, in that if a PC really must have a universal spec as part of their starting character build, simply give it to them while giving the other PCs a similar amount of XP to keep everyone on a roughly equal footing.

I think the problem stems from a character becoming a survivor suddenly doesn't fit well into narrative. "By the way guys, I was a Jedi... I'm going to start moving rocks with my mind."

As a GM it would have to be the players second spec cause I wouldn't allow a lot of play and suddenly have this history appear.

8 minutes ago, MrTInce said:

I think the problem stems from a character becoming a survivor suddenly doesn't fit well into narrative. "By the way guys, I was a Jedi... I'm going to start moving rocks with my mind."

As a GM it would have to be the players second spec cause I wouldn't allow a lot of play and suddenly have this history appear.

Dont be so literal.

1 hour ago, MrTInce said:

I think the problem stems from a character becoming a survivor suddenly doesn't fit well into narrative. "By the way guys, I was a Jedi... I'm going to start moving rocks with my mind."

As a GM it would have to be the players second spec cause I wouldn't allow a lot of play and suddenly have this history appear.

I don’t see this as a problem, really. Look at Kanan Jarrus. His whole Schtick was that he had hidden the fact that he was once a Jedi Padawan for the past fifteen years or so prior to the start of Rebels .

6 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I don’t see this as a problem, really. Look at Kanan Jarrus. His whole Schtick was that he had hidden the fact that he was once a Jedi Padawan for the past fifteen years or so prior to the start of Rebels .

As shown in the novel A New Dawn.

Just to add, but having watched Rebels after reading the novel, it was kind of jarring to see Kanan bust out his lightsaber so fast because of how much he focused on keeping his identity as a Jedi hidden throughout the book.

On 5/26/2019 at 5:23 PM, AnomalousAuthor said:

As shown in the novel A New Dawn.

Just to add, but having watched Rebels after reading the novel, it was kind of jarring to see Kanan bust out his lightsaber so fast because of how much he focused on keeping his identity as a Jedi hidden throughout the book.

I think with that case, it was "desperate times call for desperate measures" aka the Godzilla Threshold. It was either out himself as a Jedi, or a whole bunch of innocent Wookiees as well as his team/family were going to either die or languish in the spice mines until they died. Since he's a hero and abiding more by the general tenets of the Jedi than he was at the start of A New Dawn, it's not hard to see him making that particular choice (which he did so reluctantly after it became clear that Hera wasn't going to be able to just sweep in for a pick-up) and accept the consequences when they came due.

Plus, he wasn't the same self-centered person at that point that he was during most of A New Dawn, which I think takes place about five years prior to the start of Rebels. The Kanan we meet in Rebels isn't solely concerned with avoiding the Empire and simply living his life as a galactic nobody, as working/living with Hera for all those years rubbed off on him.

36 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I think with that case, it was "desperate times call for desperate measures" aka the Godzilla Threshold. It was either out himself as a Jedi, or a whole bunch of innocent Wookiees as well as his team/family were going to either die or languish in the spice mines until they died. Since he's a hero and abiding more by the general tenets of the Jedi than he was at the start of A New Dawn, it's not hard to see him making that particular choice (which he did so reluctantly after it became clear that Hera wasn't going to be able to just sweep in for a pick-up) and accept the consequences when they came due.

Plus, he wasn't the same self-centered person at that point that he was during most of A New Dawn, which I think takes place about five years prior to the start of Rebels. The Kanan we meet in Rebels isn't solely concerned with avoiding the Empire and simply living his life as a galactic nobody, as working/living with Hera for all those years rubbed off on him.

I completely agree.

Also had no idea how about the 5 year time gap. That’s an important detail that I somehow overlooked when I first watched Rebels.

Well back to the topic at hand. This idea isn't for me, but it's an interesting one.

Rather than a blanket "pick any x skills to become career skills" appraoch, how about an addendum:

No more than 2 can be combat skills, no more than 2 can be knowledge skills, and no more than 2 can be social skills. Finally, no more than 2 can key off the same ability scores. This will prevent player from lop-siding their skills list, and will encourage some diversity.

On 5/28/2019 at 8:19 AM, kaosoe said:

Well back to the topic at hand. This idea isn't for me, but it's an interesting one.

Rather than a blanket "pick any x skills to become career skills" approach, how about an addendum:

No more than 2 can be combat skills, no more than 2 can be knowledge skills, and no more than 2 can be social skills. Finally, no more than 2 can key off the same ability scores. This will prevent player from lop-siding their skills list, and will encourage some diversity.

Perhaps to build on that, four of the eight career skills are "locked in," and the player only gets to choose four skills to round out the list, with the caveats that of those four, only one of them can be a combat skill and only one of them can be a social skill. With only getting to pick four of the eight total career skills, having a limit on too many Knowledge skills probably isn't something to worry overly much about, as those are of a generally more limited viability in games.

As for what those four locked-in career skills are, that's one I'm not so sure about. I'm inclined to look at Explorer's career skill list, as they're pretty much the closes thing to a "generalist" that any of the three core product lines have.

An interesting idea, but I have to ask, why not just let a player chose a career and have the additional house rule option of taking a universal specialization in place of one of the career ones?

Want to be a Smuggler/Pirate? Go for it! Want to do Explorer/Force adherent? Have at it. After character creation all the XP/buying new specialization apply like normal.

Only limitation I'd give to this are universal specializations that give a force rating. That might be a bit broke, but otherwise seems like a much simpler and cleaner solution. Though I guess it does take away the fun of homebrewing a new career

I feel like creating a whole new career is overkill. My house-rule solution has been this:

At character creation, all characters get an additional 20 xp that can only be spent on a second specialization. It does not have to be spent at creation, it can be saved to use towards a specialization later.

That's it! If someone wants to start with a universal spec as background like Retired Clone Trooper or Padawan Survivor, they can do so without having to dig into their regular character creation xp (that they probably should be spending on characteristics). If they want to start with two career specs so they have sort of a split focus (like Smuggler: Pilot and Charmer), they can do that too. If they want an out-of-career combination (like Bounty Hunter: Gadgeteer plus Outlaw Tech), they only have to spend 10 of their "real" xp to get it. And if their concept really only needs one specialization to start out with, they can just go with one normal career spec and save the additional 20 xp to use on a second spec once they've filled out their starting tree a bit and their character has a little more direction.

I totally get the idea of some of these background-type specs being revealed over time but I've seen situations arise where that was really unsatisfactory to players. Especially for some players fairly new to this system, there can be a real desire to "multi-class" at creation. Since starting xp is precious enough in this system, I really hate penalizing the players who feel like it is important to their character concept to have this stuff at creation. It helps that I've only ever seen a player take a second specialization at creation for role-playing or true character-development reasons; nobody trying to min/max would spend starting xp this way. This route doesn't require any major changes or complicated book-keeping and it lets some people start with a more satisfactory and/or better developed character in a way that doesn't seem to mess with game balance. It's a much cleaner solution to the problem and one that I always plan to use in games I run.

On ‎5‎/‎31‎/‎2019 at 1:47 PM, unicornpuncher said:

Only limitation I'd give to this are universal specializations that give a force rating. That might be a bit broke, but otherwise seems like a much simpler and cleaner solution. Though I guess it does take away the fun of homebrewing a new career

Overall, in comparison to starting with a F&D career and spec, using this house rule with an EotE or AoR career isn't that worrisome, as the F&D character winds up with potentially 10 career skills with a total of 5 ranks split amongst them (3 from career, 2 from spec) and a Force Rating of 1, meanwhile the EotE/AoR character using this house rule with a Force sensitive spec only has 8 career skills and 4 ranks with no chance to double-up on skill ranks since they wouldn't get any bonus skills from their spec.