I am planning my first EotE campaign which I will run for very experienced role players, that will, like my self, be new to this system. I wonder how much leeway other game masters give their players if they ask if they can change some of the career/specialization skills their characters have?

Take for example someone interested in playing a Colonist Doctor. Neither the Colonist career nor Doctor specialization give access to Lore: Xenology, despite the skill description mentioning it is vital for doctors. If a player asked me to swap out the Doctor's Lore: Education (already part of the Colonist list) for a Lore: Xenology I would do it without a pause.

Another example would be a player creating a Bounty Hunter Assassin. Say the player prefers a sneaky assassin killing up close and personal. Having Ranged: Heavy for both Career and Specialization but no Ranged: Light would be detrimental to that plan, so I would allow him to take light instead of heavy for the specialization.

What is your take on this? How "customisable" would you make the skill lists for the careers or specializations in your games?

Our GM is not allowing it, and we agree even though we protest. What we actually agree on is once the genie is let out of the bottle...

I understand the eye twitching and head scratching. Take the BH: Survivalist. While the tree seems to be set around the idea of tracking and catching prey with a talent specific to giving boost to Stealth, it does not get the skill Stealth in it's package.

I'm not a big house-rule guy at all, but what you describe here makes sense and is an interesting conundrum. I would first make certain that the players understand that this isn't necessarily the kind of system that one min-maxes in the old school sense. Right off the bat the intention seems to be to chisel a very specific archetype inside the borders of one career spec, and while possible in EotE, I'm finding that those fine-tuned characters are dissapointed when they can't contribute to other activities. What happens six months from now when the bounty hunter wants to hop into the other two career specializations or your combat encounters aren't always setup for a direct melee assault? Are you going to house rule his heavy weapons back in, or make him train up? Should he not be tapping into Marauder as a secondary specialization instead for melee bonuses? The colonist is interesting. Xenology totally makes sense for Doctor, yet Politico and Scholar obviously fit with Education. I can kind of see why they went the way they did overall. The intention seems to be to take general education as a standard and then specialize/train based on tree choice

Personally, devs have suggested too much forward compatability for me to want to tinker with things much and I trust the playtesting and design. Maybe a colonist or bh supplement will explore this more. Perhaps once my players have some game time under their belt, and AoR and FaD are in front of us I'll explore options like this more if something is holding back overall fun.

If the career or spec you choose initially doesn't have the skill you want, grab another spec! That's what they're there for!

The doctor who wants Xenobiology should take Scholar as their second spec, making that skill cheaper. The assassin should pick up Gadgeteer for Ranged (light).

I'm AFB, but I think that in-career specs are 10XP for your second, so that reduces the cost of all skill ranks they want by 10 (again, AFB, but I think it's +5 for non-career skills). So if you're only going for 2 ranks, it breaks even. 3 or more ranks and it's saving XP. Not to mention all the cool talents!

-EF

Not having a particular skill as a career skill doesn't stop you from becoming an expert in that skill, it just makes it take a little more XP to get there. At most it's 25xp if raising the skill all the way to 5. If you're going to go that far then just pick up another Specialization that includes the skill.

Survivalist will get the stealth from assassin, etc.

I agree that it is unnecessary to change the career skills. You are never locked out of any skills and it only costs a little more to increase skill ranks.

I wouldn't change the career skills. You can still learn every single skill, it just costs a little more for non-career skills. Not to mention that you can pick up as many other specializations as you like.

Hmm...interesting point about the Xenology skill. Perhaps that is because it is used for cultures and not medical knowledge? After re-reading that section, no it specifically mentions compounds varying by race. Perhaps they presume that Medical Doctors would specialize in the dominant races in the colony? Sort of like languages, the player would know the differences in the common races?

As to the actual question, I require my players to use the careers as written. Thankfully they included a good system to get out of career skills. Perhaps you should suggest that players interested in being more diverse opt for Scholar as well?

I think the game designers are doing a delicate balancing act, and many of those "absences" are intentional. Making changes without awareness of the ramifications, especially to combat skills or what I think of as a "premium" skills (eg, Stealth... skills that not a lot of careers have access to), might cause some game balance issues later on.

Now, in the examples stated, I would probably not muck with combat skills or Stealth, but WOULD give serious consideration to a change in Knowledge, assuming the Doctor is the only "knowledge-centric" character in the gang. I think the choice was to keep the Doctor spec from having too many goodies, but if there are no Scholars or Politicos, what's one more skill among friends?

Another alternative might be to create a new "first tier" talent for the doc similar to Insight, where for 5 XP, you can make the knowledge skill a career skill.