I was reading about the lightsaber forms in Knights of Fate the other day and it reminded me of something that I thought was strange when I first got Force and Destiny.

Is there a reason that each lightsaber form specialization is tied to a different career (aside from Juyo)?

Knights of Fate talks about how organically Jedi build on their forms and often learn multiple ones, both before and after the fall of the Order. The book seems to outright encourage you to take multiple form specializations as a way to imitate this in the rules, but while it's certainly legal, it carries a tax that seems arbitrary based on the actual lore.

I was thinking it would be fairly easy to house rule that the form specializations are Universal specializations, at least for Force and Destiny careers, but I was curious if there was any particular reason why this might be a bad idea. Are they specifically balanced to be connected to their respective careers? Is there something else I am missing?

There are a couple reasons why I think this was done:

First I think is balance. The truth of the matter is that if you buy multiple lightsaber specs you will eventually not fear damage in the slightest. with only 2 lightsaber specs you can have upwards of 10 ranks in Parry which means for only 3 Strain you will negate 12 Wounds worth of damage from melee attacks. At that point you'll be like, "What lightsaber blow?" And that's before you factor in the non-lightsaber specs that also give you parry/reflect. By making you buy out of Career specs to get more lightsaber abilities then you'll be more likely to buy non-lightsaber specs.

Which brings me into my next point, it pushes you into diversifying you characters skills leading to organic character growth. Very few individuals will dedicate themselves entirely to martial pursuits in real life, they'll round out their skills to also have social, tactical or educational skills as well. By spreading the lightsaber styles among the different careers they make you more likely to buy other specs instead, while also letting characters who didn't start with a lightsaber style still get the most advantageous form for their selected career without having to pay extra.

Finally I have my personal feelings on this. While the optimizer in me would love to have the lightsaber styles not cost me extra (I'm currently playing a charcter who wanted to become a Battlemaster and learn all six primary styles) the Roleplayer in me sees this in a different light. I did modern tournament style fencing for years when I was younger, if I was to attempt to learn another martial art it would actually be harder than if I hadn't spent those years fencing. This is because even after over a decade of not fencing, my body still drops into that same practiced stance when I square up. Our bodies' muscle memory is a powerful force and it's one that it doesn't like to change. At the end of the day that's what the different lightsaber forms are, different martial arts, so I can justify in my head why it would take extra time (which is all extra XP is) to learn a new one.

I hope this helps. Sorry if this was a bit to long, I've put a lot of thought into this.

I suspect it's to give each of the careers a form specialisation that fits in some way with that career, and fit with the 'six specialisations per career' pattern established in EoE and AoR. Consulars are the least combat-focused career, so they get Niman. Guardians are about defence, so they get Soresu. Warriors are both the most primal and the most aggressive, so they get Shii-Cho and Juyo/Vapaad. Etc, etc, etc.

I also don't agree with your characterisation of the out-of-career additional XP cost as an 'arbitrary tax'. It's an attitude I've heard from my own players more than once and it's very frustrating to me. The additional cost is hardly crippling, all it does is to give your character an area of focus. When I was playing I certainly never had any issue with getting out-of-career skills and specialisations.

7 hours ago, Jokubas said:

Is there a reason that each lightsaber form specialization is tied to a different career (aside from Juyo)?

I was thinking it would be fairly easy to house rule that the form specializations are Universal specializations, at least for Force and Destiny careers, but I was curious if there was any particular reason why this might be a bad idea. Are they specifically balanced to be connected to their respective careers? Is there something else I am missing?

On the first one, it's primarily so that no one career becomes "the lightsaber specialist career" and that each career can offer a character build that is a lightsaber expert. Though with Juyo Berserker being attached to Warrior, that does become the one career with two specs built around a 'saber Form, but it at least it's not the only career to offer multiple specs with Lightsaber as a bonus career skill (Guardian has Armourer, Sentinel has Sentry, and Consular has Arbiter).

And yes, there is a balance issue with allowing them as universal specs, namely that it becomes easier to start stockpiling ranks of Parry and Reflect, which can in turn make said PCs much more difficult to hurt, and ultimately undercuts one of the principle design tenets of the entire system, namely that combat should be always have a degree of danger to the PCs. A PC that manages to rack up 5 or 6 ranks of Parry and Reflect can become difficult to hurt in most combat encounters, and that's a combination that's already fairly easy to get with Niman Disciple and most any other Form spec. Doing away with the out-of-career XP cost for the Form specs can make it even more alluring for a PC to just stockpile ranks of Parry and Reflect until it reaches a point that anything less than vehicle-scale weapons simply can't hurt them.

Also, don't take the Knights of Fate section on the blending of Forms too literally. While various Jedi might very well blend in elements of various Forms, such as Obi-Wan incorporating elements of Shii-Cho and Ataru into his fighting style, he remained first and foremost a Soresu expert. Anakin was mostly Form V, with elements of Ataru and some Shii-Cho mixed in, later adapting his style after his transformation into Darth Vader to drop the Ataru and most of the Shii-Cho elements to instead incorporate Makashi and Soresu defensive elements to better protect his center. Narratively, a Jedi PC that's studied multiple Forms can describe their attacks as using elements of Form whichever, but for many of them, they're really only going to focus on a single Form; Jedi who master multiple Forms are quite rare, and not even Mace Windu (one of the Order's greatest swordmasters) had mastered all the Forms. Closest was the Order's battlemaster Cin Drallig, who'd mastered Forms I through VI over the course of his life, but he was an exception to the general rule.

As for why forms are tied to different careers, I suspect that it is because no matter what a Jedi does within the order, when they pick up a saber they are a badass. At least from what we see in the PT and TCW.

I would also agree that it's not at all an "arbitrary tax".

What it does is "encourage" and reward characters for sticking with a theme. Not to mention the arguable power-bloat/balance implications. It's a legitimate cost for a legitimate return.

If you/your table don't see where that - thematic PCs/controlling bloat - holds value for your campaign, it's very easy to either just say, "I'm not gonna charge the +10 XP-per for cross-Career Specs.", OR to hold onto the"tax" because it's there, and just reward more XP in play to account for it. In which case you're still rewarding Players who might find value in more thematic characters, even if you and/or other Players don't, but effectively minimizing the impact of the "tax" on... what is it again? ... your perceived-right to have exactly what you want exactly as you want it?

13 hours ago, Gray10055 said:

I hope this helps. Sorry if this was a bit to long, I've put a lot of thought into this

This is pretty much exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

As for the arbitrary thing, I actually fretted over how to word that. Still, part of the reason I said it is because of the flavor behind the forms. There's technically no flavor reason that, say, a Consular couldn't start with Shii-Cho and never touch Niman at all. Now that I think about it, though, maybe the excuse is that Force and Destiny is nevertheless a Galactic Civil War book. In other words, you're not necessarily officially a Consular, you're a Force Sensitive who has tended toward Consular-like skills. Niman is in-career for you not because a Consular of the Jedi Order couldn't start with Shii-Cho, but because Niman is the lightsaber form that matches Consular-like ideals.

Part of the reason I wanted to ask this, though, is to get some insight on what I should do with one of my characters. I really struggled before to settle on where to even start with them. The overlap in a lot of places made it really hard to me to decide on what fit their backstory best. In the end, I went with Makashi Duelist, which was my original choice. After reading Knights of Fate, it made me think back to that initial indecision in a new light.

I thought it could be interesting to have the character start with Makashi Duelist as their spec, befitting the non-lightsaber sword dueling that they were raised on, but as they become more in tune with the Force and gain familiarity with more supernatural capabilities, they pick up Ataru Striker for the more acrobatic moves and lightsaber throw.

The issue I have is that it seems like it would be a lot of extra investment for little benefit. I'm not looking to overpower a character with Parry ranks, I'm just looking to get across my character's theme. At the same time, I'm not sure it would be worth going that far in a non-career tree just to pick up something like lightsaber throw, when I could grab another Mystic spec and show their growth in the Force instead.

17 hours ago, Jokubas said:

The issue I have is that it seems like it would be a lot of extra investment for little benefit. I'm not looking to overpower a character with Parry ranks, I'm just looking to get across my character's theme. At the same time, I'm not sure it would be worth going that far in a non-career tree just to pick up something like lightsaber throw, when I could grab another Mystic spec and show their growth in the Force instead.

I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. The point isn't to make it super-expensive for any person trying to buy ALL DE STYLEZ!! It's so that no matter what type of Jedi you make, you can have at least some level of lightsaber proficiency and defense. Because it's considered that all Jedi, whether they are warriors or scholars, are skilled enough to fend off at least some level of blaster fire/melee attacks, this allows any PC, of any concept/build/career, the ability to cheaply buy into a Saber style, so they can accurately reflect the capabilities of Jedi in the films. Where you see an old, scrawny looking librarian, pull a saber hilt out of their cane, and whoop a gang of street thugs by themselves. It's also why they included a talent in each of those trees, to allow you to use a different characteristic for your dice pool, instead of only Brawn. So that you can have PC's like say, a 13 year old kid, capable of taking on a clone squad with reasonable proficiency (like that kid in Attack of the Clones). And while I haven't read the books in a while, I do believe that every saber tree, has at least 1 rank of Parry/Deflect in it, to reflect the classic saber training we expect from anyone calling themselves a Jedi. Sure, some are way better at it than others, and those would be the combat focused PC's, who did buy into other trees to get more saber strength, but even just a little saber training, makes a PC a terror in combat.

And I can personally attest to the validity of this strategy. I made a Consular Healer, who was very pacifistic, and not at all combat oriented. But, he was a Padawan who had grown up in the Jedi Order for most of his life, and was reasonably close to taking the trials. So I didn't think it would make sense that someone that far along in training, wouldn't have SOME capability with a saber, even if he preferred never to use it, and would instead use the Force. So, I gave him one rank in the skill, to reflect his "basic training" in the weapon, and bought into the saber style tied to Consular, down to the point where I got the "use your Intelligence instead of Brawn" talent, to further reflect his training, and the more analytical style of approach to combat that style represents. He wasn't a Master of the saber, far from it, but it did mean he had a 3 green, 1 yellow dice pool to work with, when he got into a saber fight with minions for the first time in his life. And he was able to drop 2 minions, and seriously wound a 3rd, in one strike, because lightsaber, and because he had a decent dice pool to work with. And I was able to build him like this, with the starting XP at character generation, because the saber style was "in-career", and thus didn't have an extra cost tied to it.

Oh, I guess I was a bit unclear.

My question about my character is a bit different. I guess every campaign is going to be different, but on average, how long does it normally take to get through a non-career specialization? What tree that is isn't that important. I just want to know if I'm going to be falling behind the other characters in the group (if not in power, than in options) just for the sake of a couple of talents.

18 minutes ago, Jokubas said:

Oh, I guess I was a bit unclear.

My question about my character is a bit different. I guess every campaign is going to be different, but on average, how long does it normally take to get through a non-career specialization? What tree that is isn't that important. I just want to know if I'm going to be falling behind the other characters in the group (if not in power, than in options) just for the sake of a couple of talents.

How long it takes to get through a non-career spec isjust as long as it would with a career spec. The only difference between the two is the starting investment in XP to buy the spec to begin with. After that, the costs are the same. So, how long it takes you to advance is completely up to how much XP you choose to put into talents from that tree.

26 minutes ago, Jokubas said:

Oh, I guess I was a bit unclear.

My question about my character is a bit different. I guess every campaign is going to be different, but on average, how long does it normally take to get through a non-career specialization? What tree that is isn't that important. I just want to know if I'm going to be falling behind the other characters in the group (if not in power, than in options) just for the sake of a couple of talents.

You're not going to fall behind.

It takes exactly the same amount of XP to get through any specialisation, no matter what career it belongs to, if any.

You also don't have to buy every single last talent in a specialisation before moving on to the next.

This game doesn't have D&D style levels. A Consular with three full Consular specialisations isn't more powerful or even more suited to his his chosen role than a Consular with Sage, Soresu Defender, and Jedi Padawan. You can't fall behind.

Sorry about that. I guess I got so wrapped up in my indecision, I ended up forgetting some of the basic rules.

Oh well, you all helped nevertheless, so thanks for that.