I think mt group may have stumbled upon a difficulty in the Career transition rules...

Since Reiklanders reduce the cost of Career transition by one, this reduces the cost of switching Careers to zero so long as the two Careers have three traits in common (WFRP p38).

Given the huge number of Careers that have three traits in common, this means that the Reiklander could practically switch Careers after each session, shopping around for the Skills, Talents, and Action Cards they want most.

Am I missing something here, or is this potentially unbalancing if you have a player who just wants to grab a few skills he would not otherwise have access to?

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/wfrp-career-by-careers-with-3-trai

schoon said:

I'm not sure how that's really that unbalancing. There's not a lot of sick Talent combinations in this game due to the restrictions of socketing only a finite number of cards. The player also still must have the advances to pay for all those Talents/Skills/Actions.

This, after all, is one of the few advantages to being a Human and should certainly remain. I would give it more time before I declared it unbalancing, but if you still think it is then perhaps in the future just institute a minimum 1 advance or perhaps paying an advancement every other career switch for humans (e.g. first career switch is free, second costs 1, third is free, fourth costs 1). This would only apply to free career switching of course.

You only look at the mechanical aspect of the career transition rules, but what about the story aspect? I won't allow my Players to switch Careers after each session until they won't have a good reason to do so.

Armoks said:

Exactly. The same goes with the purchase on non-career advances. There has to be a reasonable in-game explanation for that sort of thing.

As a dm the players have to be able to justify switching careers

Simply put if you want to be a bounty hunter i will give you a bounty and being known as a bounty hunter has its own price..Its never as simple as changing carreers sometimes you will need to seek out someone to train you..Show you the ropes so to speak...

Its your job to make things as much fun as possible however the old world and warhammer in general is a role players game...

My reading of the rules suggested that there were penalties to quitting a career before its completion or even the inability to do so...

I'd have to check. Actually, I think it's something like a flat rate of 4 Advances when going into a new career if the current one is not complete and possible discounts (up to all 4 as a Reiklander) if it is complete.

innokenti said:

No, actually there's a bonus for not leaving the career early. You get specializations in the career skills and get to keep the career ability card if you complete all the advances. Otherwise, you lose the ability and don't get those specializations.

It does cost 4 advances to career change, but that is reduced by one for each trait the careers have in common, to a minimum of 1 advance. But Reiklanders get a bonus to their career changes, so can pay 0 advances for a career with identical traits (ie basic, rural, combat, specialist) or something to that effect.