I apologise if this has already been discussed and I've missed it.

I seem to recall that, in the beta, PCs were limited to a choice of three specialisations - they could also remove a specialisation (losing all but permanent Talents) in order to gain more; however, in the published core rulebook, I think I read that players are not restricted to the number of specialisations they can take on.

What's the actual ruling?

In any disagreement between the core and the beta the core wins.

So players can choose as many specialisations as they wish? Awesome. Removes the one problem I had with the beta - the removing of Talents and the like whenever a player dropped a specialisation.

That was removed during the Beta in one of the updates. So, you're months behind, heheh.

Yeah, I'm getting that. lol

They probably dropped the limit because of the practical implications of how much XP you'd need to keep starting specialization trees.

Yeah, with 19 Specializations in-book right now, the last ones you buy could cost up to 200 EXP if it was out of career, or 190 if it was in it.

I have a cat in my lap, which trumps all research or I'd look it up myself - but I wonder what the cost would be for buying all the specializations. Prohibitively expensive, of course - but I still cant help wonder. . . .

Doing a quick count, I come up with 2050 xp for all career specializations, including FSE. ****, that's alot.

And that's not including the 300 EXP's worth of talents in EACH ONE. It seems like that would cost 5700 more EXP for all the talents, but some of them are not ranked and shared across trees, so chances are it would be a bit lower than that... but probably not below 5000!

So, I think it is, at this point, safe to say that in reference to Experience costs, in order to get a character with every specialization, force power, and skill power, it would cost...

OVER 9000!

IT'S OVER 9000!!!!!

That's impossible!

So I did the math on acquiring all the talents, and the specialization path you need to take to cover all the non-ranked talents that appear in multiple trees buying them at the cheapest exp value you can.

The specialization order is:

Survivalist (Forager 5 exp, Soft Spot 10 exp) must be before Scoundrel and Scout.

Scoundrel (Quick Draw 5 exp, Natural Charmer 25 exp) must be before Assassin and FSE

Then it opens up a bit and you can pick any except where noted here.

Assassin (Anatomy Lessons 15 exp, Jump Up 10 exp, Master of Shadows 25 exp) must be before Doctor, Fringer, Thief,

or

FSE (Intense Focus 10 exp) must be before Scholar, and Scout

or

Trader (Steely Nerves 20 exp, Spare Clip 10 exp) must be before Politico and Gadgeteer.

or

Outlaw Tech (Utility Belt 15 exp) must be before Scout

or

Pilot (Let's Ride 5 exp) must be before Scout

or

Marauder (Knockdown 10 exp) must be before Fringer

After this it really doesn't matter where you go. If you want to round out the rest of the non-ranked multiple tree talents I suggest Politico or Slicer (Mental Fortress 25 exp).

Using this order will save you a total of 305 exp by buying the non-ranked multiple tree abilities at their cheapest possible cost. As noted above by Issari it's 2050 exp to buy all 19 specializations, and 300 exp per specialization in talents, less the 305 you save for going with the order above I get 7445 exp to max out every specialization.

There is also an omission from this list because on page 144 in Talents the entry for "Targeted blow" shows it belonging to the Assassin, and Mercenary Soldier trees. However on page 79 in the Mercenary Soldier talent tree it isn't there.

They probably dropped the limit because of the practical implications of how much XP you'd need to keep starting specialization trees.

That and having several specializations greatly increases the amount of xp needed to get that many talents.