Prior History

[scurry]

We began rolling a character last night (fun all byt itself) with the new T20 rules. My friend made a Marine, and on his 4th term, failed to re-enlist. Since his only class up to that point was Marine, we weren't sure if he could switch to a different career like "rogue" or "traveller."

1) Can he switch around until he is satisfied with the character and still has racial-based terms left?

2) If the answer to is yes, would this character have "mustered out" of the corps and then gone through a whole new career only to "muster out" there too?

3) Do characters tend to come out at approximately the same level after character creation and prior history work throughs?

4) Can a character go back to school at any point in their career? For instance, the PC in question had a bachelors through OTC - he wanted to pursue a masters while in the service. I thought this could be done as a simple 2 year term with service sponsorship, so I gave it a DC and let him go for it. Is this something covered by the rules?

5) Do characters have to have a level in a class to use the prior history tables for that class? For example, the rogue class mentions that some service-based characters will take a level of rogue. Could a level 1 rogue join the Marine corps and use the Marine tables?

Thanks for the help,
Newbie GM (is GM the right label for a traveller DM?)

 

[Tom Schoene]

Originally posted by scurry:
We began rolling a character last night (fun all byt itself) with the new T20 rules. My friend made a Marine, and on his 4th term, failed to re-enlist. Since his only class up to that point was Marine, we weren't sure if he could switch to a different career like "rogue" or "traveller."

1) Can he switch around until he is satisfied with the character and still has racial-based terms left?

2) If the answer to is yes, would this character have "mustered out" of the corps and then gone through a whole new career only to "muster out" there too?

Yes. You can take other terms in other services if you want. THere may be reaosns not to push the max terms limit though. For one thing, you will be getting into middle-age, where stat reductions will occur. And it may conflict with yout character concept.

3) Do characters tend to come out at approximately the same level after character creation and prior history work throughs?

My limited expereince (2-3 charatcers) suggests they will usually be within 2-3 levels of each other. And if they aren't, they are likely to equalize in play fairly quickly anyway.

4) Can a character go back to school at any point in their career? For instance, the PC in question had a bachelors through OTC - he wanted to pursue a masters while in the service. I thought this could be done as a simple 2 year term with service sponsorship, so I gave it a DC and let him go for it. Is this something covered by the rules?

I think the rules are even more lenient and don't require a roll other than the one required to get into grad school in the first place. Certainly it's very common for military personnel in most modern militaries to take advanced degrees, either between military assignments, or even part time during other duties.

5) Do characters have to have a level in a class to use the prior history tables for that class? For example, the rogue class mentions that some service-based characters will take a level of rogue. Could a level 1 rogue join the Marine corps and use the Marine tables?

Not entirely sure. I think you can take a prior history career without taking any levels in that class, but it would be a bit odd.

Thanks for the help,
Newbie GM (is GM the right label for a traveller DM?)

Traveller usually says Referee, but it doesn't really matter.

 

[GypsyComet]

edited to remove blather...

If you want to switch Prior Service paths, three different rules apply:

If the new path is a Service Path (Army, Navy, etc), you normally need to qualify for the related Service Class. Why? because access to that class is why you're doing that Path in the first place (unless you have some interesting character history in mind), and the service classes (like most) have entry requirements.

If you want to start in a Professional Path (basically everything that isn't a Service Path), then you have to have a level in the related class first. This is, by itself, what drives much of the multi-classing.

Thirdly, if the Path is University, the rules for entering and graduating the various stages contain all the necessary requirements (ie. die rolls) for the process. No specific prior class levels required.

 

[endwarde]

1) Can he switch around until he is satisfied with the character and still has racial-based terms left?
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Yes

2) If the answer to is yes, would this character have "mustered out" of the corps and then gone through a whole new career only to "muster out" there too?
--------------------
Yes

3) Do characters tend to come out at approximately the same level after character creation and prior history work throughs?
-------------------
Strangely enough, not at all for my group. I thought they would all come out with characters of similar levels (there were a few who maxed out their terms). The big difference factor for my group came from the survival rolls. One character went through life as an academic for 4 terms then went to the merchants for the other 3 and didn't have much problem with the difficulty and got lots of xp.
Another player, though, went through 3 terms of belter, failed ALL of his survival rolls (meaning he got 0 xp for the 12 years of service, and no benefit rolls to boot.. ouch) then took the last 4 years as a rogue and got what xp he could.

There is like 4 or 5 levels of difference between them. The survival rolls are what keeping things interesting with my group.

4) Can a character go back to school at any point in their career? For instance, the PC in question had a bachelors through OTC - he wanted to pursue a masters while in the service. I thought this could be done as a simple 2 year term with service sponsorship, so I gave it a DC and let him go for it. Is this something covered by the rules?
-----------------------------
It does say in the rules somewhere that you may always go back to school. It doesn't give specifics about it though. As far as your situation goes, I would handle it as follows:
Character gets 4 year degree, does OTC for the navy. Joins navy and does 1 or 2 terms. Wants to go back to get masters. I would let him roll his 2 year degree rolls between terms of naval service, without the need to muster out or anything. I would then make him take another naval term, and then give him the option to go for the doctorate (or to redo his masters if he failed in that). This way, it's easy enough to work in to the character story that the character did light duty or whatnot while getting his degrees, and he take the penalty of time spent on the pursual of the degrees.

5) Do characters have to have a level in a class to use the prior history tables for that class? For example, the rogue class mentions that some service-based characters will take a level of rogue. Could a level 1 rogue join the Marine corps and use the Marine tables?
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Characters don't have to level in the class. I would say they would have to meet the minimum requirements for the class to enter the service though.

 

[R_Kane]

5) Do characters have to have a level in a class to use the prior history tables for that class? For example, the rogue class mentions that some service-based characters will take a level of rogue. Could a level 1 rogue join the Marine corps and use the Marine tables? ------------------
Characters don't have to level in the class. I would say they would have to meet the minimum requirements for the class to enter the service though.

Hmmm...the way I've been reading it was that in odrer to start a Prior History path (especially Service paths), you did need to have at least one level in the related Class..ie all Marines must have at least 1 level of Marine Class

You would have to take this level of the Class as your first Character level at start, or gain at least 1 level of the class during a previous Prior History path...ie Started as an Academic, went to college in the OTC program, gained enough XP to go to 3rd level; take a level of Aca and 1 in Marine, then start your Marine Prior History path...

Of course, I very well be misunderstanding the text; jsut being eligible to enter a Class enabling you to enter a PHP sounds reasonable too

Anyone able to clarify?

In any case, I woudl still (if I were Ref) require any character in a Service PHP to have at least 1 level in the related Class, to simulate that all members of a service share some similar experience (Basic Training)

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

The last poster has good ideas.

The other way school could be used is to Regain Enlistment. The rules specifically state that you cannot enter a career that you mustered out of in -THE- (emphasis mean) term previous.

to me that means that unless you had a survival mishap that discharged you. if you get discharged and go back to school (or spend a term doing something else) you can Re-enlist (assuming you haven't disqualified yourself in some other way.. ie age).. even there though. A 33+ year old officer with fresh degrees and experience is horse of a different colour from a 33+ raw recruit.

As always it comes down to the ref and the judgement s/he exercises.

 

[DrSkull]

There is a difference between service Prior Histories and other prior histories.

SERVICE: because the only time you can take levels in service classes is during a term in that service's prior history, you do NOT need to have a level in that class before getting in. Otherwise, no one could ever join the class.

NON-SERVICE PRIOR HISTORY: you must have a level in the class to join the prior history.

EXAMPLE: Belter Joe is a 14-year old belter. He serves 1 term, becomes a third level belter and fails his re-enlistment roll (a very likely event, 9+ is pretty harsh).

Since he only has levels in Belter, he may not go into the Academic, Barbarian, Professional, Merchant, Mercenary, Rogue or Traveller prior history careers. His choices are limited to University, Army, Navy, Marines or Scouts. But he needs to meet qualifications.

(If during his one term, he had instead of taking 3 levels in belter, had mulitclassed 1 belter, 1 professional and 1 traveller, he would have had a much broader range of choices for prior history.)

Here's the interesting bit. Say Belter Joe decides he wants to stay in space. He enlists in the Navy, goes through basic training, gets his EXP and so forth and gains 2 levels. There's nothing in the rules saying he has to become Belter-3/ Navy-2. He can continue in the the Belter class becoming Belter-5, or pick up levels in Professional or Traveller (for example)if he met the multiclass requirements.

Now of course, since you only can get Navy levels in the Navy Prior history, he might be inclined to take the opportunity. On the other hand, he might want to take levels in Traveller or Professional, so he has wider choices if he needs to go into another profession in Prior History.

Let's say he splits the difference and now is Belter-3/ Traveller-1/ Navy-1. He fails his re-enlistment roll again. His choices of Prior History careers are now Belter (since he's been away for a term), Traveller (since he has a level in it), Scout, Army, Marines or University.

 

[themink]

I read it slightly differently.

For Service classes (Scout, marine, army. navy), as far as I can tell, once you have started your prior history, the only way in is through OTC.

So If you want to leave school and go straight into the Navy, you can (ie you can pick anything you like at first level - which qualifies you to do some time in that service)

What it means is that the "intake" for the services will be 18yr old enlisted, or any age for Officers. This seems fair enough for me, and it stops people being a scout/marine/navy unless they have a great background story (I'll waive almost any rule for a good enough story)

 

[DrSkull]

The problem is that on page 124, the rules about getting into the service are listed twice.

Under Employment, on the left column, it says

"A character can attempt to enlist in one of the services or earn a living as a member of any of the non-service class in which the character has at least one level of experience."

I take the "in which he has at least one level" as only applying to the non-service class part of the sentence, you take it as applying to both halves. But, I think I'm right, and I think that is supported by "Enlisting or Getting a Job" in the right hand column of p124.

There it says

"Any character with at least 1 level in a non-service class may automatically find employment as a member of that class unless..."

And in the next paragraph it says
"A character amy attempt to enlist as a member of a service at any point up to age 33."

These two paragraphs clarify the left column and make it clear that the 1 level requirement only applies to non-service classes.

 

[themink]

Words that cut deep into my heart

"You were right, I was wrong"

Mea Culpa, mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.

Mmm- So through Prior history, you can move arround between services - once you leave yu don't go up in them again (unless scout, or playing a "Mercenary" campeign).

 

[DrSkull]

Originally posted by The Mink:
Words that cut deep into my heart

"Mmm- So through Prior history, you can move arround between services - once you leave yu don't go up in them again (unless scout, or playing a "Mercenary" campeign).

As long as you're young you can still sign up in a different service in prior history.

If you couldn't get into the service careers without a level in prior history, you might really get stuck.

Say you blew your first survival roll and ended up as a first level professional with no other classes and no experience points in your first term. You'd have nowhere to go if you couldn't get into a service class.

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

If you had some university left untaken you could always go 'back to school'