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I'm thinking about running a FFG Star Wars campaign with Force and Destiny careers allowed for characters. I've been looking over those career specializations though, and a lot of them (ok, all of them really) seem to have no organic relationship between the other specializations in the career and the career's one light-saber specialization. It reads mostly like they came up with archtypes for the careers, and then separately came up with one lightsaber form for each of the 6 stats, and then just tried to bolt the two together.

There's also not really any lore reason why one any one specific technique needs to go with a specific career. Prior to finding some kind of teacher, characters should be effectively a blank slate as far as fighting technique goes. It seems to make more sense that they'd be taught the one that best suits their skills and outlook, not the one (oddly int-based) form that all the other Guardians get taught.

So what I'm thinking of homebrewing is that anyone who takes a F&D career, when they finally find a holocron or teacher that knows lightsaber techniques (they probably won't start with one), will get to chose one lightsaber form (from any of the 6) to train as their career specialization. All other lightsaber specialization trees will be treated as non-career specializations.

What are the balance issues with this? The only thing I see off the top of my head is that it opens up a lot of choices for picking a lightsaber specialization just for its free specialization skills. But I'm thinking for just about every character there's going to be one stat they want to pump long-term, so that's going to make the choice for them regardless of what skills it happens to come with.

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Fundamentally all you are doing is giving the PCs extra XP with which to buy the out of career specialization.

I would say rather than house rule something, just give them the XP.

Balance wise it would just mean that q player who chose an in-career lightsaber form has a 10xp "advantage" over their peers, which in my experience is pretty minimal in the long run.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Well, the difference is if I did it that way, they'd still be able to buy into that second lightsaber form with the 10xp discount (since its still in their career as well). Also, there'd still be the feeling they are doing it wrong, by going for the more expensive out-of career tree. Probably not a huge difference practically though, you're right. My table isn't generally powergamers anyway. \$\endgroup\$
    – T.E.D.
    Commented Mar 30, 2020 at 16:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ After having run though a campaign with this table for a year, yeah this answer is absolutely right that a 10XP cost wasn't worth sweating this much over. They get that much every session just for showing up. \$\endgroup\$
    – T.E.D.
    Commented May 10, 2021 at 13:30

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