1. I have been through the rules and noted the wide variety and diversity of skills available and the interesting things they allow characters to do such as scrimshaw or even cooking
2. I have noted that it can be hard to find careers that allow advancement in some of these and that is a real shame
3. That as a GM and having worked with them it can be difficult to be "OK" with elite advances as that means the careers become relevant only for how they allow your stats to increase.

Does anyone have a good idea of how to allow customization of careers either trade one skill for another or a good idea for a baseline on what makes for acceptable elite advances.

One of the things that I do in my game is to allow players to take an advance from a higher level at double the listed cost in exp. i.e. because you learn it now it costs you more. They can only do this with skills and talents that they would normally be able to take in the future.

In our group we allow the players to pick whatever skills and/or talents they like. As long as they can motivate why the character should be able to learn the skill/talent.

We have found that this allows characters to actually grown the way they should, there is no good reason why a guardsman should not be able to learn "Forbidden lore: Psykers" if he is exposed to them during his travels.

Characters develop and learn different skills not normally possessed by their career, this is one of the reasons why the inquisition are intrested in the character from the beginning.

If a player want to develop his of her stormtrooper into a warrior scholar (guardsman/adept) our group usually have no problem with this. On the contrary, such imagination is encouraged.

Just my 2 cents

Storhamster said:

I agree with this approach, but don't you think it's therefore essentially doing away with the class/career system?

Do your players have to pay more xp if the skill/talent isn't in their advance scheme?

Luddite said:

I see the careers more like archetypes, a foundation to build on. But for the most part the answer to your question is yes. I find the career system a little to restrictive to allow full character development.

How much xp the players have to pay for the advances depends on how good their argument is

I find that the careers are well suited to low-level characters who haven´t really had time to learn anything more than their standard training, the basis so to speak. When it comes to high-level characters i think the current career system is lacking.

Luddite said:

Yes, it is, and is that a bad thing? I prefer games where the characters develop based on what happens to them and their personalities, rather than being confined by a mechanical choice before play began. Just be careful about allowing powerful combat talents before an advance scheme would grant access to them.

In DocIII's game, I've taken more elite advances than the rest of the party, mostly because my character concept doesn't fit the normal "scum" archetype. If the advance is purely to make the character fit the concept and gives me no unfair advantage, he doesn't charge extra xp. Also, he only charged me 100xp for "ballroom dancing." Oh, and he charged me 200 for deadeye shot once we realized it was supposed to be on the scum progression but had accidentally been left out of both the book and the erratta. Seriously, scum get a talent that has Deadeye Shot as a prerequisite, but they don't get Deadeye Shot.

*edit: removed accidental double post.

I agree with many of the above digressions against the class/career & rank/level system. I would prefer the WFRP career selections, and to those who say that all characters of the same career in WFRP are identical, Ill explain a fix for that later in this post.

As for how to set the fee for "any and all" skill purchases as a elite advance, I find basing the fee off the corresponding Characteristic improvement cost fits nicely. If the skill you want to add applies to a characteristic that starts at 100XP for a simple advance, then to have the skill costs 100XP. 250XP for +10 and 500XP for +20.

Of course, based on the lopsided nature of the prices for characteristic increasements and the honest truth that a skill only gives you access to your full characteristic for that single area of study, a point break may be required.

And additional price costs can be attributed for Basic or Advance skills.

While I do disagree with the overall career approach, I do believe that when you are taught a certain way, certain skills and abilities are more natural then others.

As for WFRP careers, the simplest way to fix the "everyman the same from same career" is to not require all the advances be purchased, but only a certain number, before career swapping. And to use the % chance of having a skill from 1E. Some Rat Catchers have the skill, some dont.