Dual Career Characters

[Leitz]

Assume for a moment that whatever "Game Balance" is, it doesn't matter. Think about people who have two careers at the same time. For example, an Navy Reservist who is a Bureaucrat in a Civil Service Bureaucracy. Or a Marine entrepreneur who is a Merchant on the side.

While there are only so many hours in any given time span, let's use two simple measures.

A) The character is in one Career mainly, the other only in name. For example, a Navy Officer with a Soc B+ who just attends parties now and again.

B) The character works both careers equally. This is the Marine who runs his business late into the evenings, on weekends, and attends classes to get his MBA.

In the case of A, chargen is simply for the primary career and the secondary is noted.

In the case of B the character can get a few more options. In CT LBB 1-3 they get 2 skills per term, plus any for commission, promotion, etc. Some careers have default skills. So, the character could get something like this:

Default skills as noted.
Commission and Promotion skills from that Career's tables.
General skill advances from either set of tables.
Muster out uses any available tables. Maximum number of Cash rolls applies period, rank or term adjustments reflect on that career for that career's tables.


If you are using LBB 4-8 then perhaps a better way would be to run each term in one career. Muster out as above.

What did I miss?

 

[GypsyComet]

Aside from a note in the character's background, what do these second jobs do to the final character sheet? If you are looking for ways to add more skills to the character then you are subverting the CT process to some extent. While this isn't *necessarily* a bad thing, it is not something that just one person should be taking advantage of. What do the people who concentrated on their career get instead?

The easiest answer for skills is to convince the Ref to hand out a couple zero lvl skills to everyone based on character development. Mr Hobby might get a zero in something unrelated to his rolled Career, while the focused career guy might get a zero in one of the career table's skills that he really should have but managed to never roll.

 

[McPerth]

I've used a similar idea in MgT for some special situation (e.g. an Agent infiltrated to Navy; a Marine that was Psionicist).

That is how I handled it:

• They had a Main Career (the public one, Navy and Marine respectively) and a secondary one (the hidden one, Agent and Psion respectively).
• Main careers were folowed as usual (with a -2 to survival due to increased risks)
• They received the basic training in their secondary careers as stated for career changes (only one skil lat level 0).
• They had a -2 to success (except for being expelled from them) in their secondary careers due to not being full time.
• They only received promotion and event related skills in their secondary careers.
• They only received Rank derived muster out rolls for their secondary careers.

Some of this may be readily translated to CT, some will be more difficult (or not possible, as the case of events). See that in any case, no Psion or Agent careers are in CT (unless you're playing Solomani and use SolSec in this way).

 

[flykiller]

Think about people who have two careers at the same time.

I dunno man, sounds like MOAR SKILLZ! to me. there are only a tiny handful of people who have the energy and drive and luck to pursue two careers simultaneously without penalty to either.

a Marine entrepreneur

heh. don't you mean merc?

 

[Leitz]

Aside from a note in the character's background, what do these second jobs do to the final character sheet?

On the character sheet it would give a wider spread of skills than might be usual. Of course, not all skills are mixable; Army and Navy, for example. But things like Noble, Agent, and Psion seem to go well with a lot of others. Maybe Citizen and Army for a Reservist.

I like McPerth's idea of more difficult rolls for some things. Especially Promotion and Commission. That would slow down the skill gap. However, if you look at it, the gap exists anyway. Not only do some careers have default skills in addition to the 2 per term, but Commission and Promotion can significantly increase skill count over someone who never made those rolls. For example, a first term Other gets 2 skills and no chance at commission or promotion. A first term Army character who makes those two rolls gets 6 skills. To top it off the Other loses out 16% of the time on mustering out because there's no "6" benefit.

 

[Condottiere]

Skill allocation could depend on how much time and effort is spent on secondary interests or pursuits.

If you're using zero as familiarity, there might be no limit as long as the skills are closely associated with that interest or pursuit.

 

[McPerth]

I like McPerth's idea of more difficult rolls for some things. Especially Promotion and Commission. That would slow down the skill gap. However, if you look at it, the gap exists anyway. Not only do some careers have default skills in addition to the 2 per term, but Commission and Promotion can significantly increase skill count over someone who never made those rolls. For example, a first term Other gets 2 skills and no chance at commission or promotion. A first term Army character who makes those two rolls gets 6 skills. To top it off the Other loses out 16% of the time on mustering out because there's no "6" benefit.

See that as I did it, they didn't receive the automatic term skill in their secondary creers, only those for promotions and events, just to avoid this skill gap.

And, as for CT, this skill gap would probably be lesser than using advanced vs basic CharGen...