Rules Clarification - Elite Profession Skills

I'm working on a character at the moment who started out as a Rogue and then entered the Starship Security Officer Elite Profession. The Security Officer has a variety of skills that are considered Professional Skills for that profession. What I am curious about, and what my poor tired brain isn't seeing, is whether or not those skills become Professional Skills (for purposes of advancement) the character in question. If they do, which set of skills become Professional Skills? I'd love an official answer to this one.

The choices I see in this dilemma are as follows:

A. Neither the Professional Skills of the Starship Officer Profession or the Security Officer Elite Profession become Professional Skills for advancement purposes. This seems unreasonable to me, though I couldn't tell you exactly why at the moment.

B. Only those skills listed as Professional Skills for the Seecurity Officer Elite Profession become Professional Skills for advancement purposes for this character; the skills for the base Starship Officer remain as Nonprofessional Skills. This is the direction I'm leaning, but some official guidance would be welcome.

C. Both the skill lists for the Starship Officer base profession and the Security Officer Elite Profession become Professional Skills for the character in question. This strikes me as a little excessive.

Thanks in advance for you help.

IIRC, you can have one base and one elite profession at a time. If thatis right, I think your Rogue "leaves behind" his Rogue Professional Skills when he becomes a Starship Officer. In that case, your Professional Skills would be from Starship Officer and the Security Elite Profession.

No, that would be changing your base Profession (from Rogue to Starship Officer), which under the rules you can't do. You don't "leave behind" your base Profession, ever; once a Rogue, always a Rogue. Sort of like the Mafia, only without the dark glasses. No one ever seems to wear sunglasses in Star Trek.

In any event, the Starship Officer Elite Professions are treated as other Elite Professions, so you don't have to be part of the base Starship Officer profession to become, say, a Ship's Science Officer. Thanks for chipping in, though.

I'd have to agree with PGoodman13 - you keep the Rogue proffesion.

So, that means you have proffesional skills for Security officer and Rogue, but not starship officer. - option B.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Not an official answer but my understanding of the rules is that your Professional Skills at any time consist of...
- All the Professional Skills of your Base Profession
- All the Professional Skills of up to two Elite Professions you are part of

I haven't found it to be excessive in play, especially when you consider that it takes five advancement picks to join an elite profession, for which you get nothing save entry into that elite profession.

I don't have my PG at hand, but I was under the impression that it was up to 2 professions, period. These can be 1 base profession and 1 elite, or 2 elite, but not 1 base and 2 elites.

Mind you, we are still waiting for an official ruling on the "how do I get back to the base profession then?" question (and affiliated) ... Helllooooo, Don?

There, I've done it again, haven't I?
/me ducks for cover.

Ah, I see p. 155 PG.

You can indeed only have two Professions at any given time, Basic or Elite.

I don't quite see how one could drop a Base Profession however. Rather curious.

Personally, I'm gonna House Rule and make it that you can have up to three Professions, including your Base Profession. Otherwise my group has a lot of illegal characters that I don't want to remake! :D

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I don't quite see how one could drop a Base Profession however. Rather curious.

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I don't see it as dropping the Base Profession as more of concentrating on two Elite Professions, putting more time into learning and using these skills while not falling back on the skills and abilities of the Base Profession as much.

Its a whole lot more simple than Dual Classing used to be in 1st and 2nd editions of Dungeons and Dragons.

That's what I get out of it, YMMV,

da Guru

OK, so this may be a bit off-topic, and I'm no expert on the rules, but as I gathered it, the only major issue with having a profession, is that you get to increase the skills related to your profession at a cheaper rate. Which, given that they are the ones you'll be using on a day to day basis, makes sense to me.

Since it doesn't stop you developing or learning skills outside your profession (you just pay more for them) I don't think it's a major problem.

To answer the intial question, I was under the impression (as Pathstrider has pointed out already) that you would retain the professional skills of your base profession (you can't change your base profession) and adopt the Security Officer professional skills package, with the professional skills from you previous elite profession progressing as non-professional skills from that point on.

Okay, as I understood it, Dan was right as far as the intent was you could advance in one basic profession and a maximum of two elite professions. I believe the word "elite" was erroneously dropped from the line on pg. 155 of the PG.

And as toi professional skills, you get those of your basic profession as well as those of the two elite professions you are advancing. So, for xample, Cpatain Than Pentis, who started out as an Ops officer and moved into starship command would have the professional skills for Starship Officer, Operations Officer, and Command Officer. :)

Doug, is there any chance you can get a confirmation on that from TPTB?

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Originally posted by Doug Burke
And as toi professional skills, you get those of your basic profession as well as those of the two elite professions you are advancing. So, for xample, Cpatain Than Pentis, who started out as an Ops officer and moved into starship command would have the professional skills for Starship Officer, Operations Officer, and Command Officer. :)

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So the Rogue in question would have Rogue and Security Officer professional skills, but not those of the base Starship Officer profession. Cool. Thanks for chiming in. (Would still love an official errata update from TPTB, but this will work for me for now. :))

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Originally posted by PGoodman13

So the Rogue in question would have Rogue and Security Officer professional skills, but not those of the base Starship Officer profession. Cool. Thanks for chiming in.

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... which still bugs me a bit cause a security officer without the starship officer skills is really not much of a security officer. Well, YMMV, wie immer.

She still has access to the skills, Calcoran, just not as professional skills; she has to work for it a little harder, that's all, and I'm quite cool with that. It makes sense to me. There's a very good in-game-story reason for her to be doing this. Once I get her done to my satisfaction, I'll post her stats and her story.

I knew someone would say something like this! ;)
It is true, isn't it? ... but it still bugs me.

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Originally posted by Calcoran
I knew someone would say something like this! ;)
It is true, isn't it? ... but it still bugs me.

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I think it might be that you're French and I'm Texan, but I'm not quite following what you're trying to say here. (Or it could just be that I haven't slept well in a week and my brain isn't at full capacity; I leave which it is as an exercise for the reader.)

I think it's beacuse you are trying to make much more sense of my post than I put there in the first place ;).

I was just trying to say that I knew that someone would say "but Calcoran, you still have access to the skill, only not at the professional skill rate" ... and that I'm not sure really like it this way ... well, I'll just have to call house-rule-man to the rescue I guess.
/me sneaks to the nearest public phone ... then swears when he notices there are no more public phones because of all those darned mobile phones.

Personally, I would allow a basic profession and up to two elite professions, for advancement purposes. As the basic represents the core of any character's education, those skills and abilities should always be available to him or her as professional skills.

Useful house rule to consider, at least...

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Originally posted by Doug Burke
Okay, as I understood it, Dan was right as far as the intent was you could advance in one basic profession and a maximum of two elite professions. I believe the word "elite" was erroneously dropped from the line on pg. 155 of the PG.

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I can understand this, but I'm hung up on the "only one base profession ever" rule. Is there some reason behind that?

It seems to me that it would be more realistic if you allowed the characters to spend some number of picks to switch professions. To use the Rogue example, perhaps I want to simulate a criminal type who, after spending X years being a scoundrel, wants to reform his life and become say, a merchant? How the heck would I handle that?

CorpBoy does have a point: there is a certain lack of flexibility in the current character creation rules which do not allow one to design characters who are a trifle outside the mold. Also, starship officer is singularly the best basic profession to choose, as its core professional ability, Starship Duty (which cannot be obtained via the Innovative edge by other professions), provides the character access to a free elite profession. This restricts its other professional abilities, save for Rounded, from being acquired via Innovative as well, since Intrepid require Starship Duty and Capable requires Intrepid.

One solution is to make Starship Duty an automatic first professional ability for characters entering an elite Starship Officer profession, rather than one of its existing professional abilities. Another is to just scrap the erratum restricting Starship Duty from being purchased via Innovative. Why make exceptions?

Just my .02 bars of gold-pressed latinum...

FWIW my campaign (starts tomorrow) has dropped Professions and dropped Experience Points.

Instead I am issuing pick-points as rewards. There will be restrictions ("No, sorry, no teacher for that skill around" and the like) placed on picks at given points, but generally there will be free reign.

Yes, this gets rid of professional v. non-professional skills, but I'm not convinced that is a big issue. Now instead people have the chance to develop the character they want.

The professions and 1000-xp=5-picks still feels too much like "classes and levels" for my tastes. Then again, these are house rules, not meant to be imposed on others. If you like the notions, feel free to borrow them; if not, feel free to ignore them :)

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Originally posted by Ramage
My campaign has dropped Professions and dropped Experience Points. Instead I am issuing pick-points as rewards. There will be restrictions placed on picks at given points, but generally there will be free reign. Now instead people have the chance to develop the character they want.

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Apologies for the snippage, Ramage... just wanted to keep the salient points.

Many people may end up going this route, just for the ease and flexibility. What, though, to do with professional abilities? Mixing and matching them ad nausem removes part of the game's distinctiveness, which I think is a mistake. The professions provide structure which takes some burden off the narrator.

Thus far, my fellow players are pretty stunned by my Chief Engineer's "Miracle Worker" and "System Overhaul" abilities. They skimped on professional abilities during character creation (everyone got several advances to start), and now want to know where they can get *their* "crunchy bits".

I do think you have a sound idea, I'm just curious how you plan to fit professional abilities into the mix...

This was a tricky bit, I must agree, but we finally agreed on a tack for it.

To take a Professional ability still takes 5 picks. A player may not take a Level 2 ability without already having taken the requisites for it, which means taking a Level 1 ability from the same track. We have not decided about the Elite Profession abilities (outside of Starship Officer) yet, but as all of our characters will be Starfleet Officers, this has not caused any problems yet.

I have found that my players more or less know what sort of "track" they want their characters to follow anyway, so there is not too much problem here. I suppose in a totally "wide open" campaign (you are allowed to be any race, any background, any profession) there might be more problems, but as the parameters of our campaign limited matters to Starfleet personnel, we have yet to run into any hinks.

More details as the campaign progresses...

The martial arts chains from Feng Shui (or the charm progressions from Exalted have similar organizations, but it might be interesting to tweak the Star Trek professional ability roster to allow pathways which are customizable to a greater degree.

Just a thought, and probably too much work... would require a massive rethink of professional abilities and the progression from one tier to the next. Far, far easier to just keep things simple.

By the way, Ramage, professional abilities require three picks, not five. Changing professions costs five, although I can see the utility in your system for increasing the cost.