So I remember seeing that if you have an unranked talent in one tree, then you don't have to repurchase it in another tree, and just go through it. My question is similar.

In the Universal Imperial Academy Cadet tree there is Tactical Combat Training for 10xp (Melee and Ranged (Heavy) become career skills). What if your character has those as career skills at creation? Can this talent be skipped, or do you still have to purchase it? As a GM my gut is to say skip it.

Rules As Written, you would not skip it because you do not have the Tactical Combat Training talent already. However, allowing it to be skipped if it offers literally no benefit is, in my view, a very reasonable allowance.

9 hours ago, bsmith23 said:

So I remember seeing that if you have an unranked talent in one tree, then you don't have to repurchase it in another tree, and just go through it. My question is similar.

In the Universal Imperial Academy Cadet tree there is Tactical Combat Training for 10xp (Melee and Ranged (Heavy) become career skills). What if your character has those as career skills at creation? Can this talent be skipped, or do you still have to purchase it? As a GM my gut is to say skip it.

RAW, you still need to purchase that talent, even if you already have one or both of those skills.

This was confirmed back when the AoR core rulebook came out, with the Recruit spec having talents that did something similar, and folks wondered that if they already had one or both of the skills offered by various Recruit talents if they could just skip over said talents. Answer was no skipping over them, you still need to purchase them to proceed up that spec's given talent tree.

Also, it's only 10XP, which unless the GM is extremely stingy with the XP awards is barely a bump in terms of XP earned. Plus, not like you have to take that one talent to proceed further into the tree.

What I do as a house-rule got all those talents that give career skills is that I also let those talents remove a setback from those skills. So that even if you already have the skills in question, you still get a benefit.

50 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

RAW, you still need to purchase that talent, even if you already have one or both of those skills.

This was confirmed back when the AoR core rulebook came out, with the Recruit spec having talents that did something similar, and folks wondered that if they already had one or both of the skills offered by various Recruit talents if they could just skip over said talents. Answer was no skipping over them, you still need to purchase them to proceed up that spec's given talent tree.

Also, it's only 10XP, which unless the GM is extremely stingy with the XP awards is barely a bump in terms of XP earned. Plus, not like you have to take that one talent to proceed further into the tree.

Ah, yes, it's the path that I didn't read correctly. So if you want to go the quick way you have to spend the xp, if not, then just go around

50 minutes ago, Absol197 said:

What I do as a house-rule got all those talents that give career skills is that I also let those talents remove a setback from those skills. So that even if you already have the skills in question, you still get a benefit.

That's not a bad house-rule as far as those sorts of talents go. Then again, I could see some issues as being able to remove a setback die from combat checks is a really nice perk, pretty much negating the effects of most cover for ranged attacks and allowing melee attackers to use the guarded stance maneuver without penalty, or even Piloting skills (as gained by the Courier's Pilot Training talent) as that improves the handling of most larger vehicles automatically (in effect becoming a rank of Skilled Jockey).

But I guess it's a matter of how often it comes up that a character has one or even both skills that one of those talents offers, as well as how liberally you're adding setback dice to the difficulty pool.

22 hours ago, bsmith23 said:

So I remember seeing that if you have an unranked talent in one tree, then you don't have to repurchase it in another tree, and just go through it. My question is similar.

In the Universal Imperial Academy Cadet tree there is Tactical Combat Training for 10xp (Melee and Ranged (Heavy) become career skills). What if your character has those as career skills at creation? Can this talent be skipped, or do you still have to purchase it? As a GM my gut is to say skip it.

I allow my players to Skip pointless talents, or gain an alternative benefit. For instance Knockdown is useless, a Triumph can already knock an opponent prone, and if it cannot it still isn't work knocking someone Prone compared to a Crit, or changing the narrative.

12 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

That's not a bad house-rule as far as those sorts of talents go. Then again, I could see some issues as being able to remove a setback die from combat checks is a really nice perk, pretty much negating the effects of most cover for ranged attacks and allowing melee attackers to use the guarded stance maneuver without penalty, or even Piloting skills (as gained by the Courier's Pilot Training talent) as that improves the handling of most larger vehicles automatically (in effect becoming a rank of Skilled Jockey).

But I guess it's a matter of how often it comes up that a character has one or even both skills that one of those talents offers, as well as how liberally you're adding setback dice to the difficulty pool.

Well since the talent is supposed to reflect some level of training/proficiency with those skills, due to the PC actually taking time to learn them, paying for it twice, and having that double payment reflect an even better understanding of the fundamentals of the skill (and thus provide a setback negation) would make a lot of sense. This is someone who has put in twice the training in those skills, compared to someone who just bought the skill once. So I think it would make sense. Though, if the idea of negating a setback on all checks with those (admittedly frequently used) skills, seems excessive for 10xp, you could switch it to providing a boost instead. Though I think there are a lot of other talents that cost 10xp, that let you remove a setback from all checks for 1-2 skills, so there is plenty of precedent in the system for such a talent.

4 hours ago, Spartancfos said:

I allow my players to Skip pointless talents, or gain an alternative benefit. For instance Knockdown is useless, a Triumph can already knock an opponent prone, and if it cannot it still isn't work knocking someone Prone compared to a Crit, or changing the narrative.

I sort of agree with you, but it applies to any (lowercase) melee attack. In grappling you have the Knockdown quality, but once you grab a weapon (that doesn't have that quality) you loose that ability.
There are situations where it would be useful. If you are fighting along the edge of a cliff, Knockdown might be said to result in knocking the opponent off the cliff. If you run up to a ranged character (i.e. a stormtrooper sergeant) and you trigger Knockdown, the character cannot use a free maneuver to get out of engaged range, greatly increasing the difficulty of their next combat check and allowing you to not have to use a maneuver to close the gap (allowing hit-and-run attacks because you can make your attack and then run away).

Crits often don't do a lot in the short-term (though sometimes they can truly be game changers), so in some cases (like those outlined above) it would be better.

At the very least (and I know this isn't saying a lot), it's better than Blooded.

19 hours ago, Absol197 said:

What I do as a house-rule got all those talents that give career skills is that I also let those talents remove a setback from those skills. So that even if you already have the skills in question, you still get a benefit.

I haven't had the issue come up, but I'd just house rule that they could pick other skills that make sense. Military training would cover a wide variety of things, and if they already are skilled in those areas, I'd have them focus on something else.

The other possibility I'd probably allow is to give them an XP price break on the next time they train those skills. You have to spend 10xp now to get that talent, but I'll discount your next purchase of each of those skills by 5xp. There isn't a net loss of xp this way, but they do have to spend more to get the use out of it.