The Apprentice Wizard and Acolyte career cards list only one race - Human.

I'll leave the ramifications, opinions, criticisms and justifications for others. Just want to be sure this is NOT an issue of two career cards having the same misprint on them.

I suspect my player who wants to run a High Elf Mage will be disappointed.

Thanks!

Well, the Colleges of Magic in the Empire are for humans. High Elves use a different form than that taught at one of the human Colleges. I don't see the High Elves having a satellite campus for High Elf Mages somewhere in the Empire, so any Apprentice would have to return to Ulthuan to further his training. That would kind of put a damper on the adventuring. Still, it's possible that High Elf Mage could show up in a later supplement, but I can see why they aren't in the Core Set since that doesn't even have all 8 of the human variety of spell decks available.

Honestly, I found that the elf mage taking the same career as a human mage in previous editions to not fit very well with the rest of the WH background that I've read. Also, in the v2 Grandmaster career, it said an elf mage at this stage was ready to go to Ulthuan and learn proper magic, but afaik there was no option for that in any books.

So hopefully, the High Elves and Wood Elves will get their own lores this time around.

Well, I would look at it this way:

High Elf and Wood Elf apprentices don't go traipsing around human lands. They study for decades with their tutors in their own land. Once they are full mages, and it's possible they might venture to the Empire, they are significantly more powerful than most human mages. So, it then becomes a balance issue.

It doesn't fit to have an apprentice Elf mage career, yet an advanced elf mage career would need a basic career to come from. Quite the conundrum. I expect at some point FFG might make a supplement with elven magic and elf mage careers, but it certainly isn't fitting for the Core Set.

As to your acolyte question, it has a very similar answer.

Elves and Dwarfs have their own religions that (if released in another supplement) would at the very least require their own special Faith cards. More likely they will have their own special career cards as well.

Dwarfs don't cast magic, as priests either, to the best of my knowledge.

And I don't believe Elf Priests sling blessings either; they have a much different focus on religion as I understand it. I don't believe there have been any supplements for v1 or v2 on non-human spell casters; though there were runesmiths for the dwarfs in v2 who could inscribe items with power.

HedgeWizard said:

In v1 you are right there was no supplement for non-human spell casters... otoh there was no supplement for human spell casters either and human/dwarf/halfling/woodelf could all be arcane or divine casters from the base book. Oh and dwarves did cast as both wizards and priests, albeit not as well as humans and elves.

Kaptain O said:

True, true. In v1 there was a lot more racial flexibility, particularly as regards magic and priests. Though I can't recall if the original Realms of Sorcery (10 years later) was human focused. I believe it was but the details have escaped me.

The conumdrum and reason for them being not included is that Elves are far more capable than Humans. They can effectively use all 8 colours of magic, whereas Humans can only realy cope with one. So an Elven mage would have access to far more spells than a Human wizard.

Additionally they are seen as far more powerful basically the Teclis effect of having the Elven mages that are worth an army on their own. far too powerful for a player character.
But then Elven Great Swords should be capable of slaughtering whole regiments of goblins comapred to a mere human soldier. But they are in game.

Either the greatswords and Wardancers etc. should become Advanced careers or the players must be considered as Junior apprentice level Greatswords in training rather than fully fledged Greatswords.

So for Elven mages can we then assume that acolytes are out and about the same as these green faced Greatswords ? If so then we can equate these young in training mages with Human mages. They may soend centuries in training at the tower of Hoeth, but may have popped out for a year or two to have a look at the Empire. Sightseeing with daddy the Envoy etc. before travelling back for the next semesters training.

I would allow Elven mages, as they are no more or less strange than Greatswords. But a PC greatsword is just a Greatsword, not a hero like Tyrion, and a Mage is a Mage, not Teclis. So ramp it down to Human levels for these young mages. One day they will outstrip the feeble Human Mages, but unless you plan to run a 500 years or more campaign that will be a long time in the future for most PC's.

Willmanx's houserule for High Elf mages : I read the High Elf supplement from Warhammer Battle : A high elf mage begins to learn every magic color in the White Tower of Saphery (Ulthuan Island)... When he is confirmed, he may mix them and use the High Magic.

• A high elf mage is a beginner gone to the old world to practice what he learned in the White Tower magic "school".
• For convenience, he may use the color college career cards restricted to humans,
• but he is not limited to 1 color as High elves mages know every colors and more...
• True Elf High Magic is limited to his powerful NPC teachers.

Willmanx's houserule for Wood Elf mages : Wood elf magic is somewhat a mix of Shallya blessing and Jade Color (not available yet)... Confirmed Wood elf wizards then are able to invoke dryades (spirits of the forest).

• A wood elf mage is a beginner gone outside the forest to discover what the world is made of. He's a student.
• For convenience, he may use the color College career cards restricted to human.
• He is limited to Jade Color (not yet available in V3), and he may also use Shallya's blessings, even if he's not in a priest's career progression.
• True Dryade invocation is limited to his powerful NPC teachers.

While there isn't a good analog for the Lore Of Athel Loren (wood elf) magic in the game yet, the WHFB 7E High Elf book specifically mentions that instruction of their mages begins with the Wind of Aqshy; thus, strictly speaking all novice Asur mages should have capabilities similar to human Bright Order wizards.

On the other hand, this bit of fluff was largely inserted to restrict Dragon Mages of Caledor to hero-level instead of lord-level characters. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that if a student had an aptitude for one of the other Winds that instruction wouldn't begin in another area instead. Not to mention it always seemed a bit questionable to me to start a long apprenticeship by teaching your students how to incinerate people.

Joking aside, another main difference between human and elven mages is that the latter do not distinguish between priests and mages; to elves, anyone blessed with the ability to manipulate the Winds possesses a gift from their gods and is obligated to act appropriately. For this reason, a hybridized skill list between Initiate and Apprentice Wizard might be appropriate; or alternately such a character could use the Apprentice Wizard career but be obligated to purchase any outstanding Initiate skills with their out of career purchases. This would also reflect a slow and measured approach to learning the art of wielding magic - after all, what's the rush to get to Acolyte when the character literally has centuries to master their craft?

Yeah, it's nice to respect the setting, for sure, but I never should be AGAINST the rule, on the contrary, the setting whould be working FOR the rules (and the rules should be working FOR the setting also). If you say : High Elf mages are more powerfull than human mages in the setting, you already have a problem. No player want another player of the same rank having his character stronger than his. Also, if you cannot play an elf mage before, say rank 4, you still have an issue. The player shoudn't be told : you cannot play a High Elf mage before rank 4 because they are too powerfull. And like Dvang said, those character didn't go from nothing to uberpowerfull. They have improved over time, like any other careers. So it's only logic that they were, at some point, apprentices. Still, we don't have them, yet. So, there whould be house rule to "patch" this issue until we see a proper elven mage apprentice. Willmanx ideas are good, but still lack "mechanical rules". Do high elf mage player just take one of human's mage career (bright and grey wizzard)? Do you let it take any spell from any mage career? If you do so, you have to make some drawback so as human mage don't get disdvantaged.

Is human listed in the four advancement notes (or whatever they're called) at the top where things like scholar, noble, etc. are listed). If it is, then it just means it takes one more advance. I honestly don't remember any Career being 100% race restricted in this game. So just use it.

We are bound to see Elven Magic someday. When that is, who knows, but the day is coming. Furthermore, what little I remember of the fluff, yes, battle wizards are not restricted by colleges, but don't you think they would learn by the colors, after all they taught the colors to man and had their magic divided. One house rule I was considering is an elf gains access to a number of colors equal to their rank. So a rank 1 would get access to 1 color, a rank 2 would get a second color, etc.

Just my two cents.

commoner said:

If you read the rules on acquiring a career, races are restrictions not traits. So, technically, no non-human wizards or priests.

As mentioned, elf/dwarf magic (or runes) and religious worship is quite a bit different than humans. The 'beginning' game is currently focused on humans and the Empire, as such, elf/dwarf magic/religious careers are really too 'advanced' in concept to be included at this time. You can house rule using human College magic, I suppose, and it wouldn't break the game. I would expect, however, that even though 'apprentice' elf mages begin learning the 8 winds of magic separately ... should one in such a novice state (as only starting to learn their first wind) be allowed to freely roam the Empire (highly unlikely), that their known spells would probably be different and have different effects than what is known/available to human college wizards. Just saying ...

dvang said:

...that their known spells would probably be different and have different effects than what is known/available to human college wizards. Just saying ...

On the contrary, the spells originated with the high elves and were passed down to the Colleges of Magic - in all likelihood they are exactly the same spells Asur apprentices are taught.

The implication in the high elf lore is that a student masters one lore before proceeding to another. My personal solution would be to allow high elves to be apprentice wizards, with the caveat that they purchase the non-duplicated initiate skills as out-of-career advances before becoming eligible for the profession bonus. After that they can either progress to Acolyte in the same lore they were an apprentice in, or may repeat the apprentice wizard career for another lore. Likewise, the profession abilities they purchase as they complete careers, I would only apply to the lore they were studying for that career. I would also be fairly strict in allowing only Rank 1 spells to apprentices, and Rank 2 spells to acolytes, again reflecting the measured, cautious approach to instruction the students are given.

Asrai, unfortunately, would be out of luck until I had something close enough to Jade and Amber magic to model the Lore of Athel Loren on.