Can non-Wizard Careers learn Channelling and Spellcasting Skills?

If they can find someone (no sane college wizard would do it) or something (illegal books or deamons...) to teach them (and that won't be easy) I don't see why not. However they'd then essentially become hedge wizards and subject to summarily being sentenced to being burnt at the stake for practicing illegal witchcraft - so I wouldn't recommend it...

42! said:

Just want to know if it is possible within the rules - might be a good hook for starting a character as an exception- some farm kid (Commoner) finds a chaos magic book in some ruins, learns a few low level spells, but a College of Magic finds out about the kid, before the Witch Hunters do, and realizes he has potential to become a regular wizard - or something like that

Going strictly by the rules, the only careers that offer access to Channeling and Spellcraft are Apprentice Wizard and Acolyte, which is the next level of wizard. No other career has access to those skills.

mac40k said:

Do you have the book and page number for that restriction? Thanks!

Unless I've missed something that applies to the magic skills only you can get those skills even as a commoner if you're willing to pay 4 advances each to acquire them as non-career skills. That should only be allowed with a valid RP reason of course. But I think mac40k is refeering to that you cannot those skills as starting skills by the rules.

Then again, if the GM and player(s) are all in on it and think it could add to the story I don't see any strong reasons to disallow picking up those skills from the start. Maybe with the restriction of not being able to buy any spell cards, thus allowing only cantrips.

Yes, I was replying more to Tang86's 2nd post about it being a good starting hook for a character. The only character that can get those skills at chargen is the Apprentice. Acquiring non-career advanced skills after chargen can be done for 4 advancements, but like others have said, I'd require a good RP rationale for how the character is obtaining that training.

the skills are open to anyone who wants to pay to play. the actions cards (the spells) on the other hand are not

page 35 of the main rule book(WFRR?) says under General Career Advances: Action Cards: "...some action cards may have special requirements - for example only wizards can acquire new spells..."

but as always, do what is good for the game. if you want the kid to buy spells, let him buy them, but remember, you are playing warhammer, and unsanctioned spell casting is punishable by summery immolation.

evilben said:

That all depends how you define wizard. A wizard could be defined as someone who has the spell crafting skill, period. Agreed, they would be kind of dangerous hedge wizard unable to properly control their power, but if they had power you could cast a spell with just the spellcraft skill and a spell card.

I commented on another thread about what was strictly needed to cast spells, and more specifically at what point do you obtain a power rating; which is the key decision to make.

I am personally going to play it that you obtain power as soon as you understand how to cast spells (i.e. have the spell craft skill); without the channeling skill or the channel power card, you have very limited control over your power rating BUT you can cast spells.

It's not likely to come into play very often, but as an idea for an NPC heretic to be captured and burnt, it works just fine!

evilben said:

Having said that, in my game I restrict magic, invocations, way of the sword, ritual dance, ancestor, slayer, watcher and judgement because they seem out of place on most characters, even though as far as I know there is no official rule saying you have to.

Hello

I think you can purchase it, but to use it you need the little card that you can stick to your carrer and that you can get only throught a magic or priest carrers

My guessing

Pierre

evilben said:

This example further states that a wizard can only acquire spells from his particular College of Magic. If the example on page 35 is just that, an example of a limitation on what action cards can be taken as an advance, what is the underlying rule that this example illustrates? FFG has gone out of their way to clarify that Traits on action cards in and of themselves have no meaning and do not act as limitations, thus the Slayer trait does not limit actions that have it to being taken only by Slayer careers. The spell cards do not include any limitation in their requirements portion that suggest that you have to be a member of a particular order to be able to use them. I find it curious that this example is the only mention within the rules of this limitation (that I can find), yet the only thing I can find that identifies a spell action as being "from his particular College of Magic" is a Trait.

Yeah, it raises some interesting questions there. Maybe we should get a clarification from FFG?

mac40k said:

Yep, I completely agree with this. I think FFG are being very vague over the whole trait thing (perhaps purposefully) which does allow a great deal of flexibility on the part of the gaming group and GM, BUT "rules" like this are hidden away on the text, and they suggest/imply as if there are a clear set of rules defined somewhere else against which this kind of decisions can be based, but that doesn't actually materialise.

Originially, i was pretty sure this is what the traits were going to be, they just hadn'r been explained very well in the rule book, and then they would all be a referece point and be clearly defined and then FFG came out and said traits are not in themselves restrictions....

It's pretty clear (especially if you have any experience with V2) that you can only really learn spells from within you order, but the V3 rule set doesn't back this up in an obvious solid way, other than the occasional statement hidden in the rules.

I can easily see someone who picks this up for the first time without a great deal of knowledge about warhammer or previous versions, missing this point, or at least having the discussion as we are and not really finding clear guidance in the rules for it. "it's says sigmar on the card, so only sigmarites can use it...ok, but where is this clearly stated in the rules... er...). You've mentioned to sentence that refers to wizards, and I think there is a similar sentence for priests in their book, but again it isn't an obvious rule statement, so could easily cause confusion, if you didn't "just understand".

Personally, until formal rules appear, I will be allowing wizards to use spells from more than one school of magic, but only from a NPC point of view if i required some kind of "black magister" big bad..., that's how i would have done it in V2 and I see no reason not to do the same in V3.

Page 47 ToM, over the course of his wizardly careers, the character can only aquire and cast spells from his chosen school.

pvhammer said:

Yes, that is there, and as I said, i think there is also a similar sentence in the priest book and you can choose to define chosen school as having the correct trait on the card, but that isn't explicitly stated, perhaps FFG just think it is obvious?

It seems that FFG wants to get away from rule heavy games. Sometimes as gamers we make things harder than they have to be. Common sense would tell most people that Bright wizards cast Bright spells. But if the GM allows other wizards to cast bright spells go with it. Don't sweat the small stuff. Have fun it's warhammer.