Hi all, we’ve been debating within our group and can’t seem to find a clear answer in the Core Book when it comes to Iconic careers. We get that you can only have one Iconic career but can you repeat that career in multiple phases?
For example, career phase one is Bushi (military) and career phase 2 is iconic career Corporate Samurai. If the player has the life points and ability available to them can they repeat the Corporate Samurai in career phase 3 and potentially 4?
If so, do they need to roll the difficulty to continue? Or is there there a cost beyond just paying a life point for career Phase 3.
If not, where are the clear rules that define this?
only one IC choose able, so no change from Corporate Samurai to Shadowwalker.
in my understanding no repeatable IC
extension of IC seem possible, but no of my players ever use it.
3rd or 4th career cost 1 LP regardless of the choosen career
So if you choose IC as 2nd career choice, more LP to spend for reducing the Entry difficulty. But if you choose to enter IC as 3rd or 4th, your test might be easier as your skills and talents might be better.
Depending on the difficulty level of your campaign/scenario, as a GM you are allowed to modify rules to fit your specific needs. You could for instance allow players to ONLY use iconic careers, and then have them run into problems that are extremely difficult to solve/survive. Or 2 or 3 depending on what level you plan the players to experience in your campaign. Don’t be afraid to modify a set rule for some that suits your needs. All you need to do is be consistent with your alteration.
It used to be that way, in 1st and 2nd ed. Modiphious changed it in 3rd ed. But like I said before, depends on how powerful you as a GM want the players to be.
Cybertronic Doomtroopers
My reading of the rules is that, as long as they meet the prerequisites, then yes, they would be able to become Doomtroopers (or Luna PD Detectives). I suspect that, while the Freedom Brigade has no prerequisites, Capitol might look askance at Cybertronic criminal citizens trying to become Capitolians … although it might happen as an undercover operation, which would make for an interesting backstory.
Repeating Iconic Career
I think this would have to be based on the interpretation of the sentence “You may only have one Iconic Career …” in Decision Seven (p37 of Player’s Guide, p57 of Corebook). It’s clear that characters can only have passed through one Iconic Career, but on one reading, this shouldn’t necessarily prevent taking more than one cycle through that one Career.
House rules are obviously up to the GM, but it might be useful to have some ‘official’ confirmation as to developer intent, especially if porting pre-gens from one game to another - @Modiphius-Nathan, would you know?
No, you can’t repeat an Iconic Career (you can extend that career for extra career events and age, but you can’t repeat it for extra skills and talents). This is because Iconic Careers grant more skills and talents than regular careers, so allowing them to be repeated would be a no-brainer (try to get into a decent iconic for your second career, then repeat that iconic twice for terms 3 and 4… doing anything else would be much less efficient). Also, the Life Point cost to take/repeat a career into a 3rd or 4th term is only listed for Basic Careers.
When you do go through character creation, remember that you do get to justify or explain how those different parts fit together. Maybe the 3rd career represents specialisation or additional training within the Iconic Career, for example.
If you want to houserule this to allow an Iconic Career to be repeated, the cost in Life Points to repeat an Iconic Career should be 1 plus the Iconic Career’s difficulty, to account for the greater benefits they provide.
Cheers! I thought they granted the same number of skills, but I’d forgotten that you got two ranks in each, rather than one. And the bucket of Talents, too. I’ll be the one over here in the corner, looking sheepish.
Thanks for the clarification. The embarrassment is all down to me!
I like the idea of allowing repeatable iconic careers with higher Life point costs.
One think I´ve never managed to understand though is what kind of Primary career a mystic character (first Directorate) is supposed to take before choosing any Mystic Iconic career, to allow them to choose freely between different aspects of the Art. Choosing any of the primary careers from the Brotherhood source book will permanently lock them to a specific aspect, since there are no primary careers from the first Directorate, and Primary careers from any other Directorate will lock them to a single aspect (the Primary careers listed under the first directorate is pilgrims from other directorates).