Multiple Professions

It seems that one can only have one basic profession. But one can have multiple professions. And one can only advance from two professions at a time. This seems pretty straightforward.

But since one can only "buy" access to elite professions (since basic professions cannot be acquired beyond what you start with), does that mean that every time I want to change elite professions I have to spend a full advancement to get the new one and can no longer spend picks on the old one?

For example:

I have a starship officer. Her elite profession is Flight Control. She can buy professional abilities from both. So she wants to go into command. She spends an advancement on this and now can advance in Command.

Does she have to pick between Flight Control and Starship Officer as to which one she will also be able to advance? Say she chooses Flight Control. What happens when she wants to advance again as a Starship Officer? Since you can't buy Basic professions past the first one, what does this mean?

We had a similar thread some time ago but I didn't find it. The way I remember it you are allowed to have as many professions and elite professions as you like and can afford. All you have to do is pay those 5 picks before adding the new (elite) profession to your list.

You never lose professional skills. The only thing that changes by adding a new profession is that you will probably have more professional skills than before.
(I hope I got it right this time. :))

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Originally posted by Tar-Palantir
since one can only "buy" access to elite professions (since basic professions cannot be acquired beyond what you start with), does that mean that every time I want to change elite professions I have to spend a full advancement to get the new one and can no longer spend picks on the old one?

For example:

I have a starship officer. Her elite profession is Flight Control. She can buy professional abilities from both. So she wants to go into command. She spends an advancement on this and now can advance in Command.

Does she have to pick between Flight Control and Starship Officer as to which one she will also be able to advance? Say she chooses Flight Control. What happens when she wants to advance again as a Starship Officer? Since you can't buy Basic professions past the first one, what does this mean?

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Yes, she would choose which of the previous professions she wants to advance. If she wants to advance as a Starship Officer again, she simply pays the five picks and picks which Elite Profession she will no longer advance.

Now we come into the realm of my own personal opinion. I much prefer how the LOTR game does things. Here's the variant of that I use in my own game (note this is not official. This is a house rule I use myself. Take or leave it at your discretion).

You can have as many professions as you want (basic or elite), but to switch between them, you must pay five pciks. When you take a new profession, you do not automatically get a Professional Ability, just the Professional Skills and the chance to buy abilities through advancement. Also, Elite Professions have an additional prerequisite of six advancements in one other Profession.

A notable exception to this whole thing is the Starship Officer Profession. Since it is basically half a profession, you still get one Elite Profession for free from Starship Duty. You still get the first Professional Ability from the Elite Profession for free, too (to make up for using Starship Duty to get it in the first place).

I've also been toying with the idea of considering the first elite profession to be part of the base Starship Officer profession for the purposes of which professions you advance as well, but haven't come to the point where that's terribly important, yet.

You may at any one time have:
- 1 Basic Profession OR
- 1 Basic and 1 Elite Profession OR
- 2 Elite Professions

This/these are your active professions from which you determine what are you Profession Skills (and not) and which professions you may purchase abilties from (barring the use of Innovative).

If you already have 2 professions (either combination) and wish to buy into another, then you must decide which profession to give up. Once you buy into the new profession, you may then purchase Profession Skills and Abilities based on this new profession. Once you leave a profession, you cannot purchase its Profession Skills or Abilities (unless there is overlap); the only way to do this would be to buy into that profession again, spending the 5 advancement picks again and having to give up one of your two currently active professions.

Well, you can only have one base profession, but you aren't limited in the number of elite professions you can own.

If you have more than two professions, you may only advance two of them at a time (the two you decide to advance can both be elite professions, if you wish). You are, effectively, "giving up" a profession (although you retain all of the skills and abilities you have earned) while you focus on your other career path. :)

Taking your character as an example:

She uses the Starship Duty professional ability to acquire the Starship Command Officer elite profession (since Starship Duty allows you to forgo the other requirements of a starship officer elite profession), and spends the remaining two picks on Starship Command Officer skills to fulfill her requirement for spending 1 advancement on the profession.

At that point, she must decide which profession she leaves behind (flight control or starship officer) to pursue her command career. If she leaves the Starship Officer profession, then she would have to spend one full advancement to return to it later on in her career.

For another example, I have an NPC character that I based on one I played in a free-form PBEM game. He started out as a Starship Officer and Starship Engineer...about four advancements in, he dropped Engineer to become a Starship Security Officer (using Starship Duty). He was a Security Officer for about a dozen advancements before becoming the XO of a ship and taking the Starship Command Officer profession (again using Starship Duty), and dropping Security Officer.

A disastrous event eventually led to his dismissal from Starfleet, where to he spent the next two advancements to return to his security and engineering professions to become a security systems design specialist for ASDB.

Now, he took a convoluted path, but it serves as an example of how you would manage multiple professions over a career.

Page 155 of the PG does a good job of explaining the process in the two examples on Mr. Sechok.

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
Page 155 of the PG does a good job of explaining the process in the two examples on Mr. Sechok.

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Actually it's that very example which confused me. Because the second example indicated he could only advance in one not two of the elite professions after changing. I'm at work so the exact wording is not to hand at the moment.

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Originally posted by Tar-Palantir
Actually it's that very example which confused me. Because the second example indicated he could only advance in one not two of the elite professions after changing. I'm at work so the exact wording is not to hand at the moment.

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Well, Starship Science Officer is an elite profession. The example states that Sechok must choose between his other professions, either science officer or explorer. He chooses to remain a science officer.

To me that indicates that a character is not required to remain in his basic profession if he so chooses.

Now, the Starship Duty description on p. 66 and the lack of mention of Sechok's Starship Officer basic profession in the Multiple Professions example on p. 155 makes me wonder if basic professions are counted for the two profession limit.

(The former description simply says that a character may not advance more than two elite professions at a time, and the latter excludes Sechok's basic profession from the list of choices he has to keep.)

The way I raed it, you can't do anything much about you basic proffession, so the max would be two (2) elite proffessions.

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Originally posted by P'l
The way I raed it, you can't do anything much about you basic proffession, so the max would be two (2) elite proffessions.

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Well, I am curious if, say, a soldier/ starship security officer/special forces is still allowed to advance as a soldier. Or, is soldier counted in the restriction of two classes only?

Don, Jesse, Doug? Or anyone who saved that thread?

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
Well, I am curious if, say, a soldier/ starship security officer/special forces is still allowed to advance as a soldier. Or, is soldier counted in the restriction of two classes only?

Don, Jesse, Doug? Or anyone who saved that thread?

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Thank you! That is basically a good part of my question right there! :confused:

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Originally posted by P'l
The way I raed it, you can't do anything much about you basic proffession, so the max would be two (2) elite proffessions.

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You can have any number of elite professions you want. You can only advance in any two professiosn, though.

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
Well, I am curious if, say, a soldier/ starship security officer/special forces is still allowed to advance as a soldier. Or, is soldier counted in the restriction of two classes only?

Don, Jesse, Doug? Or anyone who saved that thread?

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The ruels state (empyhasis mine) "Regardless of how many professions (basic or elite)the character joins, he may make proefessional skill and ability picks from only two of them during an advancement." Jesse went on record saying that if you want to advance in a profession you belong to but are not currently advancing, you must pay the 5 picks to "rejoin" the profession.

So in your example, if the Soldier/Starship Security Officer joined the Special Forces elite profession, he would need to decide which two professions he would advance. Since he's joing the Special Forces elite profession, and decides to advance in Security Officer as well, then he can no longer advance in soldier unless he later pays five picks to "rejoin" that profession and drop one of his other two for the purposes of advancement.

He doesn't lose the abilites already gained through the "dropped" profession, but he can't buy any more from that profession unless he rejoins or uses the Innovative edge.

Does that make sense?

Thanks guys. I do understand now. It just never occured to me that I would have to spend an advancement to get back into a basic profession - but if that's they way it works that's fine with me. :)

Thanks for clarifying that again, Doug. :)

Glad to help, guys. I know it's a little murky, so I've asked lots of questions about it myself. :)

The one thing I'm curious to know is this -- is the generic 'starship officer' template a separate Elite profession from the 'starship [X] officer' profession? Because there are two separate 'sets' of professional skills listed for each Starship Officer profession -- the ones they get for the specific profession and the ones for being a Starship Officer in general.

There are some important things to think of with this -- how the multiple profession rule affects it, how the various professional abilities that give a bonus to Courage expenditures on 'professional abilities' affect it, and so on. So it's worth thinking about.

Example: Chief Warrant Officer Degras Dra was an Andorian duelist and Am Tal agent, before he signed on to Starfleet as a deep cover identity for a long-term operation. He was a Rogue, effectively, earning the prerequisite skills of a Starship Security Officer during several tours of experience. Does Mister Dra's list of available professional skills include the ones from the generic 'starship officer' list? Are those professional abilities available to him?

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Originally posted by CmdrBluejeans
The one thing I'm curious to know is this -- is the generic 'starship officer' template a separate Elite profession from the 'starship [X] officer' profession? Because there are two separate 'sets' of professional skills listed for each Starship Officer profession -- the ones they get for the specific profession and the ones for being a Starship Officer in general.

There are some important things to think of with this -- how the multiple profession rule affects it, how the various professional abilities that give a bonus to Courage expenditures on 'professional abilities' affect it, and so on. So it's worth thinking about.

Example: Chief Warrant Officer Degras Dra was an Andorian duelist and Am Tal agent, before he signed on to Starfleet as a deep cover identity for a long-term operation. He was a Rogue, effectively, earning the prerequisite skills of a Starship Security Officer during several tours of experience. Does Mister Dra's list of available professional skills include the ones from the generic 'starship officer' list? Are those professional abilities available to him?

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I'm sure if I'm wrong on this Doug or someone else will correct me, but here's how I believe it works:

Your character Degras Dra is a Rogue - that is his basic profession. He cannot have more than one basic profession, and Starship officer is a basic profession - so no, he can't get those professional abilities (although there are some edges that get around that, I believe).

If he qualifies, he CAN take any of the Starfleet Elite Professions, just like any regular Starship Officer can. Since he would lack Starship Duty, he would have to have all the prerequisites listed for the given elite profession in question. Note that the Player's Guide errata indicates that the text for the elite Starfleet professions should read Starship Duty **OR** blah, blah +2, etc.

The essential thing to get is that Starship Officer is a Basic Profession, all the others are elite. It's mentioned in not so many words in the description for Starship officer.



Hope this helps.

:)

Tar is correct; Starship Officer is a basic profession. Degras would not have that skill list available to him as professional skills if he took a starship officer elite profession.

As ST said, Tar is right.

This is one of the reasons I went with the LOTR-style multiplke professions in my own game. I've never really like the restriction on multiple basic professions.

I too agree in allowing moe than 1 basic professiosn in my game.

I see it like this;

Jack Porter was a smuggler for the Orion syndicate who had control of his planet. So he was a Rogue basic professions.

Eventually (say at the age of 18 or 20) he meets a Starfleet officer, after they bust the Syndicate on Jack's planet. This inspres Jack to join Starfleet. The officer sponsors him, so in my game spend 5 picks and get the new basic profession.

Not for everyone I am sure, but allows for what I want out of a game :)

YMMV

If you want some more input on how to work it, see my first post on the thread for how I work it in my game... :)

Here's what I do for Starship officers. You can only buy Starship Duty once for each Elite Profession, after that if you leave an EP and want back in, you can't buy the Starship Duty again, but must pay the 5 picks. It is the price of being a dilettante. So if you were to join Science Officer, you could buy Starship Duty (Sciences), you dig?

So in summation, there remains the basic Starship Duty Pro Ability for Starship Officer, but since there are no stacking bonuses, each new buy has a specialty.

Again, YMMV

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
Tar is correct; Starship Officer is a basic profession. Degras would not have that skill list available to him as professional skills if he took a starship officer elite profession.

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Thanks. I actually just used 'Degras' as an example of several such PCs in my game. However, this brings to mind an interesting spin-off question.

Right now, I have two or three PCs IMC who have switched from one branch toanother. Our Captain, for instance, started off as a Security Officer. So, technically, then, by the ruling that the Starship Officer profession is a Basic profession separate from any Starship X Officer elite profession, Captain Ibanez technically has three professions right now: Starship Officer, Security Officer, Command Officer. And he must choose in which two of these he actively advances?

If that's the case, boy, my have been advancing improperly for months. I have heretofore considered the Starship Officer profession to be a template that gets *added* to the Elite Professions. But I can see the argument the other way, and since I'm about hitting the point-inflation mark where my PCs are pulling off the near-impossible on a regular basis without breaking a sweat, I may throw this down to slow down the point inflation a bit.

Thanks, fellas.


CMDRBJ

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Originally posted by CmdrBluejeans
Right now, I have two or three PCs IMC who have switched from one branch toanother. Our Captain, for instance, started off as a Security Officer. So, technically, then, by the ruling that the Starship Officer profession is a Basic profession separate from any Starship X Officer elite profession, Captain Ibanez technically has three professions right now: Starship Officer, Security Officer, Command Officer. And he must choose in which two of these he actively advances?

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That's it exactly.