I've been confused about this for awhile. Are the Advanced Archetypes additions to the standard Archetypes or do they entirely replace them? I've looked at all the Tomes and none have given me a clear answer one way or the other.

To give an example, I wanted to make an Alpha Legion Sorceror for a game, but just before it started up Tome of Fate was released. I thought Sindri Myr was a pretty awesome character in Dawn of War so I had wound up combining the Starting Archetype, the Chaos Sorcerer with the Advanced Archetype, the Alpha Legion Chaos Space Marine. The game is over, so it's a moot point, but was it against the rules to do this? My character certainly had some extra tricks but he never felt terribly overpowered compared to the others were doing.

Was my question that stupid?

It was "against the rules" to do it, yeah. You usually only pick one archtype, advanced or not. But if everyone was doing it, I don't really see a problem?

you select archetypes to you race it can be either an advanced (from the Tomes) or a standard one from the core rule book.

If the party contains mixed archetypes like advanced versus basic or mixed races human disciples of chaos versus chaos space marines it is wise to balance them out with some extra experience, infamy and corruption. .

Thank you. It confused me because every game before that had things like this as Elite Advances. It had simply never occurred to me that I needed to reevaluate that.

With legion characters, you can use the following:

1)Upon creation you take the skills, talents and gear from core archetype, because Tome ones are simply OP.

2)You pick your starting alignment during character creation according to Tome Archetype your character represents

3)You pick either core archetype's special ability, or one of the Tome abilities at the start, and buy the rest during the game for XP, 1000 xp per ability. The only exception is TS sorcerer - he starts with PR2 like any other.

So, basically, you create an Alpha Legion sorcerer, and buy him the alpha legion abilities for 1000 xp each during the game. It's a perfect way to introduce tome archetypes into your game without ruining the balance.

Interesting.

What about non-legion characters?

I actually never thought to use them like that. Dude, I think you're onto something there.

Non-legion characters are more tricky and need a bit of adjustment if you wish to use them the same way.

yeah i'm trying to figure out how to write up a warpsmith as a starting character.

Create a Forsaken or Champion, pick Heretek's starting ability instead of Forsaken/Champion ability, allow buying Warpsmith special abilities as advances, 1000xp per ability.

Was think along these lines my self, now just to trim off a few of those starting talents, oh and the characteristic boosts as well.