In the RAW it states that you can only train a skill once per rank.

In my games we have run into a problem. I have looked at that rule to mean that the maximum number of skill trainings are tied to your rank. So if you were rank 4 and went into a career that had 3 skill trainings open and your mandatory skill training slot available, you could gain Mastery by spending 4 advances within that career.

Our rules lawyer says otherwise. She says that you can only ever train a skill once per rank. So if you were rank 1 and you didn't train weapon skill in rank 1, and you are now rank 2, you can only train it once.

I brought up the fact that certain careers are very limited in the amount of skills available to them. Such as the Rune-Smith career. There are only 2 careers that would allow me to train Rune-Smithing, So my way of doing it would allow me to gain Mastery within those 2 careers easily. She says I would have to do 2 out of career advances to gain Mastery, and it would take me 4 ranks to do it.

My character is already Rank 4, and I want to go into Rune-Smithing, but if I have to become Rank 7 to achieve Mastery, that is crazy.

Thanks.

Per the RAW rules "A single skill can only be trained once per character rank". I.e. at rank 4 you could only train a specific skill once. We play by that rule and I do believe FFG intended the rule as the "rules lawyer" in your group interprets it.

After all, it isn't very realistic (if that term can be used in reference to a fantasy game) to go from no skill at all to mastery in one (or two) careers. I'd say that becoming a master of runesmithing is a time-consuming endeavour.

We rule it that you can only train a skill once per class, but that is open to Reiklander class swapping abuse if you also don't have some other rule preventing that. Once per rank also has it's own problems though in being able to train the same skill twice, or even 3 times if you really want in the one class. (10 advances = rank 2, 2 off class advances costing 5 each, 10 more advances, rank 3 in the one class) Very one dimensional character unless you max out your starting skills, but it can be done.

I think your "rules lawyer" is right.

Switching into a melee career doesnt make your wizard a master of arms in just 4 advances.

The rule "A single skill can only be trained once per character rank" elimates this possibility.

Yeah, have to agree with the rules lawyer as well. Look at it like this: it takes a lifetime to perfect the art of runesmithing. A dwarf who decides to start it later in life will always lag behind.

Probably best to kill this character off and start a new one. It's not like 2e where you could be a master of everything in 5 careers (in only a few advances) .

You are correct,when it says that you may only train a skill once per rank, meaning that a Rank 1 character can only ever be Rank 1 in a skill. A Rank 2 character can be Rank 2 in a skill. There is no limitation to how much you can train a skill other than the fact that you cannot be trained more than your current Rank.

Rank and Career are 2 different things. If you are limited to only training a skill once while in Rank 2, what happens when you transition out of a career into another one, are you blocked from taking another training of a skill?

If FFG wanted you to be limited to only train a skill once, they would have specifically stated that while in Rank 1, you can only train a skill one time, no more. Since they did not put that rule in writing, everyone else's response is just a house-rule.

Also, if you went with your rule lawyer, you could have 2 Ranks trained at Rank 1. 1 Rank at character creation when you are technically Rank 0, and another during your first career. Since FFG specifically stated that you cannot do that, it leads to reason that they never intended to limit Skill training to once per Rank.

Also Rank is not the same as experience, if I hoard all of my advances, why would I now be limited in what I can train? If I am at 19 Experience but only spent 12 Advances, I am Rank 2, If I waited an I am at 21 Experience and now I am Rank 3, If I wanted to spent my Advances I should not be limited in what I can train. "you should have trained that yesterday, now you can't train it and you lost out, sorry", that isn't right.

Also each Rank of skill is just that, a RANK, which coincides with your character Rank. If you are Rank 4, you are Epic already, you should be able to heavily train a skill. It is not like you magically now have these skills, it is more like you've had them all along, you just haven't been using them until now. So a Rank 4 Priest character can go from nothing to Mastery in weaponskill in one career, as long as they have enough advances to do so.

It mentions it in the rules you cant train a skill to rank two while character rank one even if you trained it in character creation.

But you are correct, rereading the rules in the book on page 45. You could take it to mean 1 per character rank, so can train it 3 times at Rank 3. Just have to use/have the career advances/mandatory slots.

We been doing it the way everyone else has been doing it though, only can train once per rank so I have to be rank 2 to train to rank 2. rank 3 to be rank 3. if a new career at rank 3 and was 0 Ws, I could only train it to rank1 until I was rank 4.

Surprised no one raised a question about this, FAQ hasn't been updated in years.

It does not need to be FAQ'ed because it says it in black and white, you may only train a skill once per rank, trying to read it as "you may train a skill as many times as your rank" required different wording as you can see. The only viable breaking of this rule is with non human races that allow you to train a skill *before* spending CP's, thereby allowing you to gain a skill at effectively rank 0. As soon as you start spending CP's however, you are rank 1.

per rank can mean 2 things.

It can mean for each rank or for every rank.

I can see both ways it could mean, only the game designer would know which was exactly true. But it would explain how to get Dwarven Engineer mastery in only 2 careers. Just make sure your rank 4 in second career.

I can't see that a game designer would want a person at Mastery by rank 3 (1 creation, 2 at rank 2, mastery at rank 3). That would, IMO, be a complete misinterpretation of the rules...but it someone wanted to go that way, more power to them

I'm leaning towards character creation for my next campaign starting at Intermediate career (2nd career) where the PC starts with ONLY character creation points and a career completion ability of the prior career. THis would reduce the power bloat even further, but still allow players to start at 2nd career.

you cant be mastery by rank3. mastery is rank 4. you need to be rank 4 to get it.

rank 1 at creation. rank 2 at rank 2. rank 3 at rank 3. mastery at rank 4.

Yes, my point by the RAW. I'm not sure i have a good handle on mastery yet, as none of our PCs have survived that far ...

I don't know why you would want a handle on "mastery" Emirikol, the rules for it are garbage. Sacrifice 3 gold dice for ONE comet result when odds are you will not just get the comet, but an additional roll due to the "hammer+" result. The specializations covered by Zeiwihander, Destrio etc are far superior IMHO. Mastery should represent a pinnacle of skill, you have waited 4 ranks to get it, sunk at minimum 10% of your CP's on it and to have it be not only mathematically inferior but storytelling wise inferior to just rank 3 is just nuts.

Training a skill at character creation does not allow you to train the skill again during your first 9 advances, since you never can have a training higher than your current rank.

@Carcosa: Mastery is just a flag to give you access to superior actions and talents. Why are the rules garbage for it? You point out one optional facet, that is tailored for the bored high-lvl PC who doesnt care about his 10000000th observation roll.

imo, I have no idea why one would NOT roll his 3 expertise dice - even for an EASY check. The outcome is mainly based on your BOON results and not the successes.

@training as often as you like within one rank

I think we need to agree to disagree - for me the rules are clear, that it is not possible to train a skill more then ONCE per rank (every 10 advances).

@thePREdigger

Of course, but it does allow for non human characters at 10 advances to train again in their first career (assuming you stay on to complete the career) as they did not train it at rank 1. Some may call that a bit "dodgey", but I consider it a fair trade off for the extra cost that non Reiklanders have to pay for career transfer.

As for mastery.

According to Hero's call (Pg 22-23) Mastery grants the following (quoted Verbatim)

* The character is not obligated to roll for Simple (0D) or Easy (1D) checks unless those checks target an enemy character. Should the character opt not to roll, assume the results are a single success with no other results.

* The character may choose to remove all of his expertise dice from the pool before the roll and replace them with a single Sigmar's Comet result - he can simply place one of the dice on the table showing it's comet face. (if the character has already removed one or more expertise dice - for example to use an Enhance - he must still have at least one expertise dice in the dice pool to remove to trigger this ability of Mastery.)

Mastery is in no way a "flag" or "keyword" to allow anything, it merely allows what is stated above. Why I say it is garbage is because, well, as you say, you can see no reason why no one would not want to roll to achieve a superior result than "just one success" and it only applies to non-opposed results, and once it becomes an opposed check, you are sacrificing way too much to get a comet which may be no more than a single success. Consider top end actions which have inbuilt purple dice, fails and banes. They exist to balance the results due to huge dice pools. To remove your best dice, and STILL suffer those penalties is just, well, brain dead and hardly worth another CP when they are such a precious resource as it is. Mastery *should* represent a payoff for spending a minimum of 10% of your resources on one skill, and as it stands, it's more of a booby prize at best. One Mechanic I did like was the Career card for the Champion which gives specific benefits for having mastery in a variety of skills.

Do not confuse career and rank.

You can be still in your 1st career, but already be rank2 (for example taking out of career advances).

This allows you to train WS twice in the same career - regardless if you are human or not.

Mastery is actually better than it looks, because you need it in the context of the proper action cards to manifest it's best effects. I'm not saying Mastery is better than a 4th yellow would have been, but that's not an option anyway. What Mastery does is very different than what another yellow die would have done.

The odds of scoring one or more comets on 3 yellow dice is just under 50%. If you have an action that really needs a comet to achieve it's strongest results, trading in your yellows is probably worth it. If I'm rolling 1 red, 4 blue, 7 white and 3 yellow (which is probably below-average for a skill you've actually Mastered) vs 1 purple and a couple black, I'm usually generating a lot of wasted excess successes that do me no good. Dropping my success count by 2 or 3 to guarantee a comet is actually pretty good trade for most actions with a decent comet line. (The exception would be rolls where the base difficulty is very high.)

Beyond that, the other half of Mastery (skipping low-difficulty rolls entirely) is actually pretty good for wizards. There's plenty of spells that become much more viable once you've got Mastery. A 1st rank buff spell that grants +1 white die to later rolls isn't usually worth risking a miscast for, nor is it worth the out-of-character time and hassle of frequently rolling two sets of dice (one for channeling, another for casting) to keep it up and running. Once you've got Mastery, you can basically assume that they've got those spells up and active all the time. Handling recharge can still be a little tricky or annoying if there's more than 1 or 2 such spells to track, but the largest drawbacks have been eliminated by Mastery. Mastery essentially makes your weakest actions much better.

To a lesser extent, the same can be said for Mastery and non-spell buffs like Big City Bravado. Unlike spells they don't risk a miscast, but they do eat up a lot of time rolling extra dice for minimal reward, so players tend to skip them. Mastery reduces the headaches, making the little buff actions elegant enough to be playable.

Players Guide - Pg. 43

Skill Training or Specialisation This advance allows a character to train in one of the skills listed on his career card. A single skill can only be trained once per character rank. If a character trained a skill during character creation, he may not trait it again until character rank 2 - The maximum ranks of training in any given skill is equal to character rank, to a maximum of three ranks of training, regardless of when or how those skills were acquired. If one of those skills is already trained, the character can choose to instead spend the advance to acquire a specialisation for the appropriate skill.

It says it right there, the maximum ranks of training are equal to character rank. When they say once per character rank, it is not a limit meaning if you didn't train it in rank 1, you cannot double train it in rank 2.

It refers to them as ranks of training, which coincide with character ranks. If they intended it to be limited, they would have specified it in the rules.

I also agree that if I hoard my advances, I should not be punished. It makes no sense to tell me that I should have taken the skill training yesterday, but because today I ranked up, I lost out on that skill.

Just thought I would put a couple of pennies in on Skill Mastery. I have a rank 5 Waywatcher who has Ballistic Skill Mastery. I chose to take Ballistic Skill Mastery over any other skills because there are many Actions and Talents that are improved or require a skill Mastery. And having used a couple of them I can confirm that they are much better than most normal ones.

For instance I have the Epic Talent Weapon Mastery - which does not require you to have Mastery in a skill - it does enable you to trigger the CR of your weapon as often as you like on a successful attack. Having skill Mastery also gives you the added benefit that your CR is improved (decreased) by 1. Include in this that he uses a Bow of Athel Loren - which improves the CR of a bow from 3 to 2 when using a Fortune Point on an attack - this means he attacks with a CR of 1 and may trigger it as often as he likes. Just last night I used it to enable me to give an assassin 3 Crits in the first attack and he never got up again.

Yes if you look at skill Mastery as only allowing you to swap the 3 yellow dice for a comet or to not roll simple and easy challenges, then it can look weak. But when you look at all the cards - actions, talents and career abilities - and think on what not having to roll simple and easy tasks could mean - as r_b_bergstrom states above - then skill Mastery looks a lot better than at first glance.

Players Guide - Pg. 43

Skill Training or Specialisation This advance allows a character to train in one of the skills listed on his career card. A single skill can only be trained once per character rank. If a character trained a skill during character creation, he may not trait it again until character rank 2 - The maximum ranks of training in any given skill is equal to character rank, to a maximum of three ranks of training, regardless of when or how those skills were acquired. If one of those skills is already trained, the character can choose to instead spend the advance to acquire a specialisation for the appropriate skill.

It says it right there, the maximum ranks of training are equal to character rank. When they say once per character rank, it is not a limit meaning if you didn't train it in rank 1, you cannot double train it in rank 2.

It refers to them as ranks of training, which coincide with character ranks. If they intended it to be limited, they would have specified it in the rules.

I also agree that if I hoard my advances, I should not be punished. It makes no sense to tell me that I should have taken the skill training yesterday, but because today I ranked up, I lost out on that skill.

yes it does say "right there" that the maximum ranks of training is equal to your character rank.

But your ignoring the fact they also said that you can only train once per rank.

While you are rank 1 you can train each skill "once", while your rank 2 you can train each skill "Once", While your rank 3 you can train each skill "once"

To quote from p21 of the players guide

Once you hit 10 advances you are no longer rank 1, you are rank 2.

If you did not train a skill during rank 1 you cannot now spend an advance earned during rank 2 in order to train it in rank 1. You're training it IN rank 2 and that is your limit of expenditure on that skill in THAT rank.

Or in other words a character that learned his first expertise dice in a skill during rank 2 would not be able to get to 2 dice in that skill until he hit rank 3 and 3 dice when he achieves rank 4.

@ thePREdiger

RE: Rank Vs Class

You are quite correct good sir. Theoretically you can be rank 3 in your first class and I mistakenly injected our own house rules into that example, so my apologies.

@ R_B Bergstrom

Your opening line says it all. It's not mastery that gives you anything, it is the synergy with other cards and skills/talents etc that make it worthwhile.

As for a comet result, most skills that have a "good comet results" are opposed to some degree, nullifying the "auto success" part of Mastery, and I maintain that there are few situations by the time you get to rank 4 that you should ever really be facing a "defence" of one purp and a few blacks. If you are, then I'd be looking at something else.............

I get what you are saying, I really do, but I still don't think that spending an advance should be no more than a portal to spending even more advances. Career completion at least gives you something for that point, mastery, well, not so much.

@Gazery

Again, it's not really mastery that is giving you anything, is it?

All it is really being is a Advance sink to allow for more advances. I have to ask something to both of you here: If you were given the *choice* at skill rank 3 to spend an advance on a auto comet result using your 3 gold dice, or an additional gold dice to your pool, and both options cost one advance, which would you take?

@Carcosa: You are correct that Mastery isn't as potent as yet another yellow die would be for most characters in most situations. Most of the things you can spend 1 XP on in this game are not as good as a yellow die would be. Stance pieces, talents once all your slots are full, actions that take your entire turn to simply provide a white die buff to someone else, acquiring advanced skills cross class, etc. They all kinda suck compared to yellow dice. The game is set up so that you get some sort of bonus nearly every session, but most of those bonuses are relatively small.

If you know exactly which skill you will roll the most, yellow dice are huge. That you only get to choose this bonus 3 times for any given skill is an important balancing factor.

I don't believe the game would actually benefit from allowing infinite yellow-dice accumulation. PCs of 5th Rank already have stupidly large dice pools that take a little too long to compile and assess, and they almost never miss nor fail at their best skills.