Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I haven't looked closely at the v4 rules but, IIRC, I've heard that they can produce less wimpy civilian characters than previous editions. Hopefully someone who's tried the v4 rules out, or at least looked at them a little more closely, can confirm (or deny).
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I haven't run any civilians through the slightly revised beta version but the alpha version still had this issue to some degree. On one hand, you always get the same number of skills per term as a military character. On the other hand, those skills were not often/always the most useful ones you're going to want in the setting... unfortunately even with only 12 skills there are still about 4 standout, must-have skills that seem just much more useful all the time. In the alpha a bunch of civvy careers did have access to the Recon skill, for whatever reason, which was nice for them but seemed pretty silly. Now that is gone and instead you get a few more general choices that anyone can take at any time (Driving, Stamina, and one other I'm forgetting).
When war breaks out you can either be drafted (in which case you receive access to 2 levels of military skills of some sort or another), or remain in your civilian career (with some justification). Technically I believe the rules as written said you HAD to enlist unless you met a few exceptions but I tossed that out right away for anyone who could come up with a good reason. If you DO stay in your civilian career, the starting gear you have access to is almost universally much, much worse.
Finally, military (and now with the beta, agents) are the only ones that get access to Coolness Under Fire increases. Which can be a pretty substantial advantage that I find kinda hard to justify gating exclusively behind mil careers.
So, it's definitely possible to do, and have a decent character result. But it's still almost certain to be an objectively
worse character in some ways. I don't personally think that matters a whole ton, but if you play with munchkins then expect a different reaction probably.