Using A time of War to spice up Total Warfare

[Eldragon]

What I want to do is use AToW character advancement (esp. Traits and quirks) in a traditional Total Warfare campaign.

I just bought a copy of AToW and Era Reports: 3052. My plan is to run an "RPG-like" clan invasion campaign. All Player Characters will be pilots of some kind (Tank, Mech, etc) in a rag-tag merc outfit.  I don't expect there to much "out of mech" action but we will roll up complete characters in case there is.

So I have a couple questions:

I would think this kind of thing is very common, but I've never done it before, and I wanted to know if there are common problems or pitfalls?

What steps should I take to avoid min-maxing? I don't want everyone to start with 2/3 pilots after all.

Has someone created a random career path table?  If not, I'll need to write my own. I'm looking for something like Traveller RPG did career terms. Random, yet viable and interesting careers for PCs. I am worried I'm going to get 4 identical PCs. I want the "A-Team" or "The Dirty Dozen" not "Attack of  the Clones".

Characters will select their mechs as per AToW. However I am a little concerned they will get steamrolled in the ER:3052 campaign. Should I give the players better mechs, bonus warchest points, or are my concerned unjustified?

[DancingTofu]

You can simply limit how much XP they can put into their gunnery and pilot skills, that's what I did with my AToW players. I don't like to limit my players, but I did impose a few limits to help retain some sort of a "not everybody is an elite pilot with the best equipment" feel.

[Talz]

You can simply limit how much XP they can put into their gunnery and pilot skills, that's what I did with my AToW players. I don't like to limit my players, but I did impose a few limits to help retain some sort of a "not everybody is an elite pilot with the best equipment" feel.

It's a bit arbitrary but it's a good, simple solution.

[Eldragon]

Plan A is to simply use the word "No" as GM. I was hoping someone else did the leg-work for an adjusted system. Because as it stands if one can really abuse the AToW character generation system by minimizing anything that isn't mech combat related.

[Talz]

It's best to set certain limits up front, no starting skills over 4 is a good idea that all of the sample characters follow IIRC.  People hate being told no after they've gotten themselves invested into a new character munchtastic or not.  Sometimes saying no is what's needed to keep things in line but it's best as a backup plan IMO.

[monbvol]

Option 1:  State that starting higher than 3 Gunnery and 4 Piloting is prohibited.
Option 2:  Enforce a lower than normal maximum module choice for the campaign.  It does leave some wiggle room without adding a dose of Option 1 but it is very difficult to be an Elite warrior with a decent Mech/Vehicle/ASF/WiGe/VTOL/what have you with only 4 modules.
Option 3:  Lower the starting XP pool.
Option 4:  Some combination of the above.

[Maelwys]

You could state that flex points can't be spent on combat skills (or atleast Piloting and Gunnery), leaving the characters slightly less advanced. Or you could limit how many points they can spend on the skills after the optimization process as well.

[Nodachi]

the limit to pilot and gunnery works, though the one time I ran into that it felt arbitary since it was a Solaris game and I was the newest player/character to join the group. Best way to limit the number of mechjocks with really high pilot and gunnery skills is to remind them that they also need to be effective outside of a mech too. Though the current system makes them ok without too much effort to begin with.

[Cannon_Fodder]

Our group imposed a max Skill of +4 for starting characters. It seamed to work for us.

[JamesPryde]

What I want to do is use AToW character advancement (esp. Traits and quirks) in a traditional Total Warfare campaign.

I just bought a copy of AToW and Era Reports: 3052. My plan is to run an "RPG-like" clan invasion campaign. All Player Characters will be pilots of some kind (Tank, Mech, etc) in a rag-tag merc outfit.  I don't expect there to much "out of mech" action but we will roll up complete characters in case there is.

So I have a couple questions:

I would think this kind of thing is very common, but I've never done it before, and I wanted to know if there are common problems or pitfalls?

What steps should I take to avoid min-maxing? I don't want everyone to start with 2/3 pilots after all.

Has someone created a random career path table?  If not, I'll need to write my own. I'm looking for something like Traveller RPG did career terms. Random, yet viable and interesting careers for PCs. I am worried I'm going to get 4 identical PCs. I want the "A-Team" or "The Dirty Dozen" not "Attack of  the Clones".

Characters will select their mechs as per AToW. However I am a little concerned they will get steamrolled in the ER:3052 campaign. Should I give the players better mechs, bonus warchest points, or are my concerned unjustified?

Oddly enough the guys I play with have been using the table on pg 126 in MW3rd edition and that has you start out as a 4/5 fresh from training lol If you have them choose the life path method it really does a great job of eating XP the most you can do with decent stats is 2/3 which I know is higher then you want so just have them focus on other things. A good one would be some chosen traits most take multiple levels to be gained.