Hi we are debating about buying advances from the previous career of a character once he gets past 13000xp.

it's clearly written in the top down approach that you can choose from everywhere,but you have to pay the highest price you find in all the branches of the tree.

how it works with the bottom up approach? since there isn't a clear rule how do i choose? i can take the best xp price for any advance i like? and what about sound constitution? how do you rule this?

Thank you

On page 25 in Ascension it is pretty clear that the "top-down" approach is an alternate rule set to the regular "bottom-up" approach. Please notice the rules on sound constitution and that you don't need to fill up rank 1 before you buy rank 2 etc. So the "top-down" rule about choosing freely between path choices does not apply to "bottom-up", just like the rest of the "top-down" rules.

If all your players start fresh new ascension characters you can use "top-down" to make character creation a bit easier. But if you have players that have walked the long path through rank 1-8 and then one needs to reroll a new ascended character, I would probably go for a "bottom-up" approach to keep the rules even for all players.

as i thought...

but it will be tough to convince my players... ascension it's not so clear as i wish...