All right from what I can determine a character begining in the Apprentice career begins with the Channelling and Spellcraft advanced skills aquired but not trained and the action cards Channel Power, Counterspell and Cantrip.

So will a character entering the Apprentice career then need to:

spend 1 exp to acquire Channelling,

spend 1 exp to acquire Spellcraft,

spend 1 exp to get the action card Channel power.

spend 1 exp to acquire Counterspell

and spend 1 exp to acquire Cantrip?

I'm just curious as my Student character is considering switching to Apprentice.

This is a good question. The FAQ only addresses Priests having to acquire the action cards that a starting character would receive during character creation, when moving into the career at a later point, but says nothing about whether a PC entering the Apprentice Career has the same problem. I think the implication is there that after chargen, you have to acquire everything separately. The starting skills (or actions in the case of Priests and Wizards) represents what you attained before the game started. The fluff presents the training of an Apprentice as something that takes years, so it seems highly unlikely that they would just get all the skills and actions of a starting character for "free" when entering the career.

In the ToM it states that Apprentice Wizards start with Channeling and Spellcraft for free. They would have to spend 1 point to acquire education

I concur with mac40k on this. It's corroborated by the treatment of other basic action cards that a character doesn't qualify for at character creation. Page 31, under "Step 4" states that if you later increase a characteristic to qualify for a basic action card that you did not receive at character creation, you must spend an advance to get the action card.

At what point could the character begin to cast spells, or more specifically when do they have a power rating?

Spellcraft is needed for spell casting clearly.

But at which point does someone start to gain power? do they need channeing skill or channel action card, neither or both?

I would say from reading the rules that if you do not start as an apprentice then you must buy these actions (channel, cantrip etc) with advances.

That's part of learning the career, or at least how I am reading the rules.

pumpkin said:

I would say both. The rules say that channeling power is the first step in the casting process. That to me says they must learn how to channel before they can learn how to cast. They need the action card to do this. The action card requires the skill to use. I know you are probably thinking about the Mage's ability to cast spells like Cantrip, which cost 1 power at equilibrium, without using the channeling action first. The way I seen it, the fact that a spellcaster acts as a battery of sorts and slowly absorbs the Winds of Magic into himself doesn't start happening until they successfully learn to channel. Once they are taught how to channel, they are in essence channeling all the time sort of subconsciously to maintain equilibrium and then only have to use the channel action consciously when they are trying to draw a large amount of power at once.

I've read the card now and I think I will go the other way.

Once the wizard has acquired the channeling skill, then then get a power level and will return to that level via the normal 1 per round rules.

They can in theory cast spells (provided they have spell casting skill) at that point provided they have sufficient power (so are limited to spells that require WP or less power in effect).

Once they also gain the channel power action they then begin to have greater control over their power gaining power > WP, ability to cast more powerful spells etc etc

In reality i think any PC is going to buy all the required actions and skills pretty quickly, but i think i will rule that the channel power action isn't a requirement, its "optional".