Hi

I am about to start are RT game my players have a character creation session this Wednesday evening (UK time).

As all my players are experienced gamers I was thinking about letting them choose from any of the boxes from each line of the career path. Would this still create balanced characters?

What do people think?

Nothing is imbalanced.

Its a background question, not all of those make sense. Mutated Astropath? Certainly possible (even with restriction), but depending on the mutation simply illogical.

If your players only go for the boni and ignore the story, then yes it might be slightly imbalanced. If they build coloful stories, then it is perfectly balanced.

Personally i go for both. I disregard options i dont like because of the background and then choose the one with boni which i can use. As long as a story develops during character creation its all good.

I've asked this question before . There are some bits to watch out for, mainly getting a lot of fate points or someone really boosting one characteristic.

Another option if you are worried about letting them take whatever is to allow one free "line". Basically they have to use the strict method, but may break it once anywhere along the path.

Really though, if you have good players who are more concerned with their background than a whole lot of min-maxing then free form would be just fine.

They are a good and experienced group who like to make interesting characters over the min-maxing.

Thank you for the advice on the career path. I think I will go with the freen method with an eye on making sure it makes sense. I may even have them just pick from the career path table (without them seeing the benefits and penalties.