Hi,

Well, after reading the rules 2 or 3 times, I have a hard time to figure how will it be after a long term campaign.

One of the big problem in WFRP2, IMHO, was that after 2 or 3 career shifts, you kinda blocked in evolution or you have to switch to a completly different career to have something to improve.

In WFRP3, you lose your talent slots (But you can still keep your career card if you get your dedication bonus), which is not really logical nor good news for players (Which end up with useless junk talent cards). This is a problem I have to think about and solve with an house rule. And I don't want them to get 2 new talents slots / career, which would be a huge advantage. (Maybe allow them to keep one of the slot / career if they get the dedication bonus, but still thinking about it)

Is anyone already played enough to reach 40-50 xp? Does the characters aren't kinda blocked in evolution? Aren't they too powerful, as they already start with rather good attributes (5 in an attribute is easy to get as a starting character), added to the expertise dice which may look like +2-3 expertise on many skills + fortune dice associated with attributes? Is there any challenge (Other than pure RP challenge, I mean) at this level?

In WFRP2, after 20-25 sessions, you'll have completed 2-3 careers, maxed out nearly everything you use on a daily basis and look to the future with a big question mark above your head...what will I do next?

In xp terms, it seems that it would be roughly the same here, with 1 xp per session, sometime 2, and a few after a campaign arc, 20-25 sessions will be enough to reach 40-50 exp.

Maybe some thinking about long term character evolution may seems appropriate here, and I'm eager to hear about fellow players/GM who has reach this step in evolution. I really want to avoid that my players feel like their characters has nothing more to offer.

Any thoughts or idea on this subject?

Thanks,

Ghor²

Easy to get a starting ability of 5? It'll cost a human 12 of her 25 creation points for a single ability of five, which will leave you a bit short on other fronts, I'd say. Are you sure you're doing character creation right?

No, it would cost them 9 points out of 25 for an human and 5 for a non human, if they increase racial/career attributes, which is fairly easy to do.

Dwarf and elves get +1 in two attributes, and the selected career offer +1 in the two primary attributes.

Which means that you can easily start with a 5 (Or maybe 2, dwarf who "fighting career that emphasize on ST and TO would begin with 2 attributes at 4 for... 0 creation point and it'll cost them 10 out of 20 points to max them to 5).

Sure that this kind of character would be unbalanced, but investing 1 in wealth, 2 in skills, 2 in talents and 3 in actions, which is fairly nice, would left human with 17 points and non-human with 12 points. Potentially 1 x 5, 1 x 4, 2 x 3 and 2 x 2 (non human) or 2 x 4, 3 x 3, 1 x 2 (human) which is nice enough.

So yes, pretty easy to start with a 5 (maybe 2 will be costly). I'm rather good at spotting how my players can invest their creation points in a way to optimize their characters (Which is not a bad thing, overlooking this could make weak character, if the system allows it, why not using it at its "best").

Am I right?

Ghor²

No, you're wrong

You have to pay for every level of the ability. For a human, that would be three points to increase to 3, then four more to increase it to 4, and then five to make the top. Twelve points all in all. Page 28 of the rulebook.

Rulebook p28: "The initial value for each characteristic is based on the character’s race and starting career. First, take the values indicated on Table 3-1: Default Ratings by Race. Next, increase each of the starting career’s Primary Characteristics by one. The result is the default characteristic profle for that character."

So 5 points for an optimal non-human or 9 points for an optimal human.

Every character in my group has a 5 stat, while one of them has two. It's clearly not that restrictive, as they all have a fair selection of equipment, skills, talents and actions. A lot of 2s in the stat lines though.

As I see it, the "price" of 5's as Characteristics out the starting gate is lots of 2's. 2's are sucky. For for crits or insantities 2's in the wrong stat puts you down fast. A good adventure/GM distributes challenges across stats and makes some challenges not "choose your champion to face this" but "everyone faces it". Say Strength is something a couple of PC's have 2's in - well that encounter where there is a flash flood and everyone is making a Strength based roll to hang on and not be washed away, they'll pay for it, and on across other stats (this is pretty much true of any game system which allows min-maxing etc.). Fellowship? Well, that encounter where everyone who didn't make the check was questioned all night by the city guard before being released and has 2 misfortune dice the next day for how tired and beaten up they are.

I was surprised to realize that as you change careers, you lose ability to use some Talents. You don't keep the old career card and have choice of socketing 4 things etc., just the the new one and its socket.

The only silver lining I can see mechanistically is that a Talent that doesn't "socket" anymore may still "socket" to the group card and be useful there. Otherwise, yes it does not make sense to acquire Talents at the same rate you do pretty much anything else I can think of. It's the area where you "max out" fastest.

In play, if you are going to acquire one (say you had no Reputation Socket and change career to one with one, planning to then go to one without that socket again), then acquire it early to get maximum payoff on the investment.

The idea that "years later a change in career and suddenly those old talents come back to you" is narratively valid however (at least to me).

Rob

@Vulpus : The paragraph mentioned by jaj22 is just after "Generate Characteristics" sub-header. You're a very sadistic GM as you take away their so much loved attributes points... But removing this "+1 to primary attributes" step during character creation will be a good idea.

So it's easy to have a 5 and not so much 2's, more than that, few people are well-rounded, in the average. In real life or in RPG, well-rounded characters are rare, it's not really shocking to have one or two 2's. Not everyone is good at everything...

Regarding talents, we can find an explanation, as for anything (Even respec in D&D4 every level... ) but getting some useless junk is rather frustrating for players.

We can imagine that old talents can be socketed anywhere in new career, the new career only allows more option, new kind of socket, and older talents will be dual-typed talent, gaining the new career socket trait.

Or maybe when changing career, we can imagine that player will be allowed to switch useless talents with new talents, without additionnal cost. But talents will and can be maxed out rather quickly.

Changing career take time, learning, and so on... you can't choose to become ratchatcher for student in the blink of an eye. talents switching could be justified like this, lose previous knowledge due to lack of practice and acquiring new one as you exert youself in the new career.

Thanks for your opinions on this matters,

Ghor²

I think that FFG will have to start to provide more advanced careers over the coming expansions and I expect those careers to be of the variety that have more than 2 talent slots.

For now I am not house ruling anything on how to deal with "useless" talents or anything until I see a bit more of where the game is going.

To help facilitate this I'm also going to guide my players so that they take there time going through a few of the basic careers with matching talent slots as much as possible, so that they can progress the character without finding that they need these new imaginary advacned careers, I've invented!

If the advanced careers don't materialise in the way i think they should, then it's time for a house rule!

I think FFG have designed the core set in a way that it allows you to happily progress a PC through its first couple of careers and are trying to time expansions so that the "advacned careers" come on time at around the time they are genuinely needed by the majority of playing groups.

By restricting advanced talent and action cards to specific Ranks , they could buck this trend.

They've already hinted that they are considering something like this, but we've yet to see any of it.

Another mitigating factor for the "useless" talents are that you may be able to still use them on the Party Card.

pumpkin said:

The Flagellant already points at this being a likely case. However, I don't see the problem. The potential for 'useless' talents is one of the considerations players have to bear in mind when changing career. Yes, they'll gain a new career ability an access to new skills, but is that worth losing access to talents they've paid for. Couple with potential uses of talents slotted to the party card it makes advancing your character not just a case of getting better at everything. I think this is an interesting dynamic to advancement.

Bertolac said:

Yep agreed. I think the extra talent slots are going to have to appear more to give the PCs to head into the advanced careers. Currently unless you are a wizard or priest or zealot, the current advanced career options (which only leaves witchhunter) don't really offer anything mechanically over another basic career... perhaps the option to get a few more specialisations via the dedication bonus, but nothing much really..

But then I think that people used to V1/2 are getting confused as to the purpose/function of advanced careers in V3. Advanced careers in V3 aren't the 'goal' they were in earlier incarnations as there is no longer anything stopping basic careers progressing as they'd like (max stat bonuses used to serve this function). Really in V3 Advanced careers serve a narrative function as extensions of some basic careers and mean that the characters don't have to suddenly about face.

It is feasible, for example, for a Swordmaster to become a Soldier and not fundamentally change the nature or role of the character. Whereas Wizards, Priests, Slayers and Zealots really need to continue being Wizards, Priests, Slayers and Zealots to maintain their character and role. Advanced careers offer no real mechanical bonus other than enabling these characters to continue into Rank 2.

Of more concern is the fact that the releases so far only support PC's into Rank 2. If you give EP's away like sweeties, as suggested in 'Eye for an Eye', any regular group is going to hit this crisis point fairly quickly.