As the Elves are prohibited from using magic in the core set, I've set out to fix this as one of my players will not play without this option. Let's face it, humans are boring and making this set so human centric and killing the options for the other races frankly makes me mad. I guess Dwarfs are sort of covered but High Elves taught (stinky) humans magic so why did they get shafted?

So here's a possible fix. Please comment and help balance as we haven't had a chance to play yet so this career is untested.

CareerApprenticeMage.zip (2.3mb PDF zipped)

i would replace the wound advance by an action one. Most academic carrers dont have wound advances exept thegeneral career advance. One more action could mean one more spelle to learn. You should also specify which spells are vailable to such a career (it may be too powerful to give it acces to all arcane spells)

First off, kudos on the quality of your work.

Based on the idea that High Elfs study magic at a rate of centuries to a humans decade, and the fact that they do not learn little bits of magic like some pre-school level "College of Magic" , I would give the player one of these choices:

Either your Mage has gone rogue, in which case take the WND increase and put it in Reckless. All the obvious roleplaying elements that come to mind would be in full effect. However, the location of the Mage is not immediately know. Indeed, to delay the full ramifications from impacting the campaign, you could say the Mage was able to make it look like they had traveled to Lustria. They are limited to one color of magic. Since they don't have access to someone who can train them, I would apply a 1XP (tempted to say more than that) penalty for advancing to a new magic career.

Or, your Mage is being exposed to the Old World as some sort of experiment, which is only being allowed because their Master is a high ranking member of the Mages Council; even then there are a lot of powerful High Elfs who want them to fail. The Master is in Marienburg and so training is available. The Mage is able to learn any magic spell. However, the enemies of the Mage's Master know the Mage is in the Empire, and will surreptitiously work to undermine, or even destroy the Mage. Better, if the Mage can somehow be forced into embarrassing the Master, the Master's political enemies will have a great victory, and the Mage can be destroyed at will.

Of course you could just let the Mage be a High Elf Apprentice Wizard with the regular rules, and be done with it, but seriously, where's the fun in that?

Nice work!

The only real omission I can see is that the apprentice mage and the initiate basic careers ( the caster careers! ) both have a talent socket taken up but their caster abilities. For the Apprentice its his Order Talent and for the Initiate his Faith Talent . I think it is done to balance casters with other non-casters.

Perhaps the High Elf Apprentice Mage should get an Arcane socket with an ability relevant to the Elven style of High Magic?

I have had one of my group mention they would like to play a High Elf Mage. The way I was going to do it was to let them play the standard Apprentice Mage basic Career since they have not as yet had the great centuries of learning to understand as many of the Winds as Teclis and the other Elf Wizards. When the Elf Magic careers come along then she can advance into those careers as if she has enough experience with the world to begin to understand more than just a single wind.

New version up based on feedback.

The one thing left out is actually their small ability card. Still thinking about that.

lenaianel said:

Actually, I changed that to a Reckless option. I figure, once you're out there, you might want to lean a bit that way too.

As to the issue of not choosing a college, well, High Elves don't have to specialize as humans do...

Bonuses from no specialization:

• Can use any order of spell

Drawbacks:

• Cannot use Attuned items or if they do, it's only good for that wind
• Have to buy multiple skill specializations to cover the different winds
• Don't get the Order ability bonus

I think those balance out the freedom of spell use quite well.

This is all based on the fact that in 2nd they could be Apprentice Wizards. They shouldn't worry about being "rogue" as they are High Elves and not humans.

Trodomir said:

Sounds like you have a good concept figured out. Just for the record, I didn't mean "rogue" as in thief, or scallywag. I meant it in the classical sense, such as 'operating outside the bounds of official or sanctioned thought, guidance, or regulation.' Like a rogue cop.

Oh, I do understand. "rogue" wizards & mages are hunted by our good friends and neighbors the Witchhunters as we all know. Your tax pieces at work.

Ebonwarlock said:

Although I now have the box-set I've been forbidden from opening it until Christmas, however, I'm interested in how Elven Magic can be implemented into the new edition (and I love that career by the OP). In which case just how do the Order and Faith Talents work prey tell?

Would you mind posting the template you made for the character sheet? I'd like to start work on chaos cultist, marauder, chaos magister, chaos warrior, wargor, bray shaman, necromancer, wight and a couple others.

I just used the Dockhand PDF that FFG posted as a news item a while back. Load that into something like Illustrator and go to town.

Trodomir said:

I like others wonder, did you save the blank? If so, would you mind posting it? It would be a big help to customizing our own components.

I guess I'm not being clear. There is no blank. You take the Dockhand PDF and edit it. That's it.

I have a guy that wanted to play a high elf mage.

I just charged him 5 Character Points, he took the apperentice but he could cast from all college (which right now means 3 I think). Bascially for 4 cps he has access to any college which I think simulates the elves better understanding of the winds of magic. After all in the fluff it makes a big deal out of the elves being able to use every "color".

Granted the 5 CPs was a bit arbitary but I had to figure out a way to balance it with someone wanting to play a human one wind wizard. Since he got access to all colleges, he didn't seem to think that was unfair.

Sinister said:

If i've understood it correctly... Newbie High elf wizards aren't just able to cast spells from all the different winds of magic from the start. It takes 100s upon 100s of years of dedicated training to reach that point. A newbie high elf wizard start casting spells from a single color of magic just like a human would...

Reaching the ability of high magic, channeling all 8 colors together... that just something the "elite" of the high elf wizards does, and they've been training for a loooooong time, and probably would never ever travel outside their island except under very special circumstances. They would also probably be a very very high rank and not a starter rank 1 character.

Freiduin said:

In defense of the OP the notion of an "elite" career, in the way you describe High Elf Mages, is out of the window with the introduction of Swordmasters, Waywatchers, and Wardancers, as basic careers. All of which in the fluff are careers that are mastered over a period of time that are beyond that of a Human, over 100s of years.

It should also be said that while Elves must master each Lore of magic before going onto learning High Magic, there is nothing within the background that says an Elf cannot use other Lores. High Magic is after all the blending and mixing of the Winds of Magic, not the use of more than one Lore, as the blending of the Winds produces spells of greater power and effect. So for example, while the background says that the Lore of Fire is 'mastered' first, it does not suggest that an Elf does not know spells from other Lores.

WFB of course represents Elven Mages as either using High Magic or a specific Lore, but then it could be that an Elf must attune themselves to either a single Wind of Magic or the techinque for using all in combination (High Magic), thus explaing why an Elf uses a single Lore.

So basically there is no reason for why an Elf Mage could not switch between the various Lores, purchasing new spells from different Lores. The question is how many spells must they know in a single Lore before it is considered to be mastered?

Gilead te tuin lothain said:

yeah. Hopefully it will all get addressed soon. For now, my solution is working, although I can see why it's not for everyone.

The Download-Link is broken. Can You upload the file again? Thanks in advance!

The simplified way we did it was to use the current Apprentice / Adept classes. However we added a "High Magic" Order that basically states the High Elf Mage can choose any Lore spell.

sandobar said:

+1