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Quick question about Specialties during Character Creation that I could not find an answer to in the books:

Are you able to double up on the same specialty when the opportunity presents itself? Example: take Rifleman twice and get a +2?

Thanks in advance.

Nope, either you know a specialty or you don't. If creating a character with Life Paths and you roll a specialty you already have, you may choose any specialty you want instead.

And to clarify, you cannot choose Rifleman again even though it says you may choose whatever specialty you like, correct?

And to clarify, you cannot choose Rifleman again even though it says you may choose whatever specialty you like, correct?

Exactly. FL doesn't really like negative rules. So they try to avoid "you can't" rules as much as they can (they try to use positive rules instead).

When it comes to specialties (or talents in other games), they represent a unique knowledge, in contrast to skills, which represent a broad knowledge.

In those FL games where you are allowed to take a specialty more than once it will say so in that specific specialty (i.e. a positive rule). In T2K4E specifically I don't think there are any specialties that you can take more than once. In other YZE games that have talents that you can take more than once they are either listed in ranks, like Axe Fighter rank 1, Axe Fighter rank 2, etc in FbL or you have to specify a field when you take them, like Weapon Specialist in Alien RPG that you can take more than once as long as you choose different weapons.

Think of specialties and on/off switches. You either have them or you don't, ON2 doesn't make sense. Then realize you can take any specialty you want if you roll a double. ANY specialty. (This is the only way about 6 of them, as well as others that make sense but didn't make the cut for the top 6 for a career such as Vehicle Gunner or Scout for combat arms. Forward Observer isn't a specialty for any career.)

Fenhorn and Paladin, thanks for the clarifications.

Fenhorn, I think I was getting caught up on the possibility that a skill that adds a +1 could be taken during one term then again during another to gain a +2. But I understand now that in T2K that each specialty is unique and cannot stack (those that would be able to).

Paladin, didn't realize that the "take any specialty instead" meant literally any specialty in the game. Thanks for pointing that out.

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Paladin, didn't realize that the "take any specialty instead" meant literally any specialty in the game. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yes this was something that came up early on during the beta so Tomas clarified that if you roll the same specialty twice, you can take any specialty you want, not only the ones from the d6 list you just rolled.

Also, I just saw that in the new Coriolis, you actually can take (not all, but all a lot) the same specialty up to three times. On the other hands, that game doesn't have any skills, so.