Realized I put this in the Rules Q area rather than the House Rules area. Reprinting it here to talk it up.

Digging through the action cards and careers (in the boxed set only, haven't picked up the Adv's toolkit yet) I'm finding a distinct lack of career specialty. Other than the stance varieties (which isn't a wide range as they start with 4 boxes, which is either 2/2 or 3/1) and the different advance steps the only careers that seem to 'get something' are the Zealot and casters (insanity and casting abilities respectively). Skimming the action cards, only a few require a specific career (outside of the spells/blessings), most - when they have a restriction - base it on equipment carried. The only thing that the career choice seems to have any real bearing on is talent choice...

Seems like except for shuffling around how the advances stack up and the talent slots the careers are a background description and four keywords (that don't do all that much - so far).

Is anyone else finding this is the case? I loved the old 1e/2e career method that seemed to give the character more 'connection' to the career choice.

What are you doing to make the career choice have more impact on the character?

I've started looking at the action keywords and seeing where they could be affected by the career choice (for example, buying an action that doesn't share at least one keyword with your current career requires +1 advance to represent the focus of training/experience being different; or simply being unable to take an action that doesn't share a keyword). I'm sure in some cases this won't work (for example, the number of actions with the social keyword is far greater than the ones with melee or ranged or whatnot).

Emirkol said: +1 advance cost for not having the same keyword...good start. Still, no, there's not much to the careers except for pictures and background. They truly are the required fluff though. I had a player gripe about being stuck with a "boatman" at the convention... He asked, "what makes him special?" It got me thinking about this very subject.

Yeah, the fluff's definitely required and I love it, but it feels like there needs to be more 'point' to the career itself.

haha, boatman. Good question.

Here's another option:

Actions a character takes that he doesn't share a keyword for or is trained in the skill required generate an additional recharge token (which means a 0 recharge now costs 1). That helps cover the lack of keywords on some actions. Just another thought.

Part of this comes from me sitting down and generating a couple of characters last night so I have firsthand practice with it before walking the players through (used pregens last game) and realizing after generating stats and picking talents I had the exact same pool of options in what they were capable of doing for both a Wood Elf Soldier and a Reiklander Student.

It's a very free form system. An envoy can be as tough as a troll slayer... but that's alright. It is going to cost him more experience, so it would be better to pick the troll slayer career instead. I just see the careers as a role playing catalyst. I like this new system, but FFG could have made the starting skills of each career set, so the players had no choice and the same for the characteristics.

A simple house rule could be that at character creation you can only increase skills and characteristics, buy actions and talents, that fit your careers description (by using skill list, characteristics and traits).

That's another one I was toying with. It seems to allow for the widest number of options post-creation but still 'sets' the character in the career at game start.

Perhaps combining that with the +1 action cost rule they use for higher rank actions so a player who reeeeally wanted a Student who had earned high marks as an archer at college could still grab Accurate Shot even though it's outside his career start IF he was willing to invest in it.

Careers have:

-Different Talent sockets

-Specific characteristics that can be improved as career advances

-Specific skills that can be improved as career advances

-A specific career ability

That's actually a pretty good amount of diversity between careers. It's good that the career system is open enough to allow action cards outside of the norm, to allow some customization of characters, but each career still does have their own uniqueness and benefits. Also, after the recent clarification on increasing Stats, what class you are also determines the maximum value you can increase a stat to.

dvang said:

Yes that's true. You can only raise a non career characteristic to 4 now I believe.

I've played many rpgs in my lifetime and if I had to pick a system that this game has alot in common with, I'd pick Call of Cthulhu. When you look at the careers in that game, they aren't much differrent mechancially either. I think people who are used to the high fantasy games will really see that about this game. I know I have.

I think it's really meant to be a roleplayable difference and not a mechanical one. I think the game has a real rules light approach. I think customization is very possible as the game expands, but you won't see a drastic difference between characters until rank 3 and beyond. That's when mechanically the action cards chosen, and the talents chosen, will make the character different. And I think that the options available to starting characters you could have a boatman at rank 3 that's exactly like a coachman, especially if you allow them to pick the same cards. Again, very similar to call of cthulhu where after your carreer skills anyone could take any skill they want, creating similar characters.

When it comes right down to it, you are just going to need to make a fluff difference. That's why I don't think new carreers are nearly as important as new actions cards and talents.

This won't be the kind of game 4E DnD is, where a class (ie career) give you acess to 500 unique powers and abilites to that class. The upside about that is, this game isn't going to concern itself completely with tactical rules combat either.

Depends whether you want to make careers more unique (and therefore probably more restrictive) or just more flexible

Much of the current blandness comes from a lack of depth - we've got 40 careers (with the toolkit) compared to the 100+ in the 2e corebook. And the common GM opinion of "if you aren't actively doing the career you can't be one" makes many (esp. low class menial things like rat catcher, boatman etc) careers unusable in many games unless you start with it.

And the "10 advances and you're done" idea is even worse in practice than the "stop being a ## as soon as you are fully qualified" idea from the previous editions.

Even using the fixed advance line a Mercenary (for example) can only buy 2 of its 5 career skills....

Plus I feel the advances system could have (easily) been more flexible - giving each career a total of 15 (or so) advances to pick 10 from instead of a fixed total of ten (with the minimal flex of the 4 fixed advances) would have worked much better.

I'd be tempted to add one to all the categories in advances on the career cards just to allow folks to focus on skills or actions or whatever -as a quick fix.

Slightly off the blandness topic - but possibly a factor affecting peoples vision of how viable/interesting/bland the system is as a whole is my other big issue with careers : Talent slots - or "Why can I no longer use abilities I have paid xp for once I change career?"

I can understand a limit on the number of slots - but to restrict them absolutely just means most folks will either have to :

a/ only play careers that cater to their talents - thus removing a large chunk of career choice in an already very restricted list. and encouraging over specialised characters (and munchkinism)

b/ not bother buying talents after character gen - making the entire system fairly pointless

c/ buy talents with the knowledge that many of them may be unusable thru a large section of their career.

None of which seem good options

Quick fix : let players use the empty space in between the 2 slots on most careers cards as a generic slots after a certain point (probably rank2)

Slightly off the blandness topic - but possibly a factor affecting peoples vision of how viable/interesting/bland the system is as a whole is my other big issue with careers : Talent slots - or "Why can I no longer use abilities I have paid xp for once I change career?"

Because you should consider carefully what talents you select. Talents are very powerful. Keep in mind, that you can also slot talents onto the party sheet so that *everyone* can use it. This is especially powerful for cards that don't exhaust. So, when deciding what talents to buy, or what career you want your PC to go into, you should consider what the talent sockets are both on your career and the party sheet. If you have a talent that neither your party sheet nor your new career have a socket for, then you need to make a choice to live without using the talent or go into a different career.

Optionally, in the true spirit of WFRP3e, i.e. it's really about what the GM will allow. Ask your GM if you can change one of career's existing sockets for the one with your talent. As a GM, I might allow it with the restriction that that particular talent cannot be unsocketed.

keltheos said:

"What makes him special" is not something that a player should ask the GM, it's what the GM should ask the player. The player decides what makes his character special, and career is only a tiny part of that. This isn't D&D where characters are just their class with (optionally) a face painted on.

As for abilities, different careers have access to different skills, right? Different characteristics are slightly cheaper to increase. And most importantly: their place in the world is different.

I'm not saying there are no problems, though. If you can increase only 2 skills, having 5 career skills doesn't help you much. And with so many points that can be spent inside a career (4 standard, 10 career-specific, 6-10 for characteristics), but only 10 points that you're allowed to spend in that career, it makes it possible for people in different careers to make exactly the same choices. I'd like people to be able to stay in careers longer. The whole "10 advances and you're out" rule is stupid.

Making some action cards cheaper or more expensive depending on whether they have anything in common with your career sounds like a great idea.

I do like that WFRP careers are so much more flexible than D&D classes, but if they're too flexible, the careers start to lose their meaning. Mechanically, at least. Fluff-wise, they're still cool, but there the "10 advances and you're out" rule is even more stupid.

I think some of the "blandness" comes from the oversimplification of skills. The skill list has gone down in number since V1 a lot. The skills are now all encompassing, which can be nice when you want the whole shebang quickly. But that makes careers harder to differentiate.

Ex.: Nature Lore now includes Follow trail, Hunting, Trapping, Outdoor survival skills, Identify plant and Identify Animal.

Result ? Careers like the Hunter, the Scout and the Waywatcher will have a lot in common.

Is that a problem ? Not really. Just a matter of taste.

For people who like differentiation, I would use the present specialisation rules differently, to break down skills.

IE.: When you train a skill, you must choose a specialisation. Your yellow skill dice will apply only to that specialisation. (No more fortune dice for specs)

GMs are encouraged to define mandatory specialisations for each career (Ex: Thug would get Weaponskill: Hand Weapon; Ballistic skill: Thrown weapons). You could have a selection of options as options instead of just one. It just needs to fit the career.

Players can use a skill advance to buy extra specialisations for the same skill. These start at the present skill level (of 1 to 3). No separate bookkeeping. Buying specialisations outside of the career options is identical as buying skills outside of the career and use the RAW for advance costs.

I am thinking about changing the skill / expertise system slightly.

Training in a skill denotes a 'knack' in that general area of skill and gains a fortune dice.

Specialising represents a more thorough grounding and practised ability and warrents an expertise dice.

As has been discussed before this changes the percentage chances of success / failure and effects of cards, and I still wondering how much this will effect the system.

This would lead to a greater variation of character, probably even if two characters are following the same career.

Jericho said:

I really like this. This will also give more variation between different careers and lower the % rate of success without changing that much in the core rules.
Alp's proposition is also interesting inverting yellow and white dices.

I like Alp's idea too.

I would even go a step further:

- instead adding a specialisation die to the pool, replace one of the corresponding dice (white for skill specialisations, blue for attribute specialisations) in the same way as you do with stances.

- you can buy only 1 specialisation per attribute

- you can replace only 2 dice for 1 roll (1 blue in corresponding attribute, and 1 fortune white in corresponding skill)

- rule that states "you must have skill trained before you may buy a specialisation" still applies

In this way player with maxed stats: attribute 6 (last official FAQ), specialisation in attribute, skill trained 3 times, and doing stuff that he has specialisation in, with lets say 3 steps in conservative (because it grants highest success rate) rolls as maximum base pool:

2 blue characteristic 3 green stance (stance replacement) 2 white fortune (skill training) and 2 yellow expertise (1 for replacing blue characteristic, and 1 for replacing 1 white fortune)

This gives success chances:

1 <P> - 0.9840

2 <P> - 0.9346

3 <P> - 0.8511

4 <P> - 0.7573

To compare in normal rules it would look like:

3 blue characteristic 3 green stance (stance replacement) 3 yellow expertise (skill training) and 2 white fortune (1 for characteristic specialisation, and 1 for skill specialisation)

This gives success chances:

1 <P> - 0.9948

2 <P> - 0.9730

3 <P> - 0.9277

4 <P> - 0.8738

On someone less skilled: attribute 4, no specialisation in attribute, skill trained 1 time, and doing stuff that he has specialisation, with lets say 2 steps in conservative rolls as maximum base pool:

2 blue characteristic 2 green stance (stance replacement) 0 white fortune (only one level of training and will be replaced by specialisation die) and 1 yellow expertise (1 for replacing blue characteristic, and 1 for replacing 1 white fortune)

This gives success chances:

1 <P> - 0.8862

2 <P> - 0.7282

3 <P> - 0.5618

4 <P> - 0.4152

To compare in normal rules it would look like:

2 blue characteristic 2 green stance (stance replacement) 1 yellow expertise (skill training) and 2 white fortune (1 for characteristic specialisation, and 1 for skill specialisation)

This gives success chances:

1 <P> - 0.9373

2 <P> - 0.8233

3 <P> - 0.6820

4 <P> - 0.5437

Looks promising.

Just add a high enough cost in advancements (like for example: 1 for specialisations connected to skill that is in current profession list, 2 for specialisations connected to skill, that is not, 3 for attribute that is in current profession list, and 4 for attribute that is not).

Jericho said:

A technical question at the character creation, how would this work?
say I invest 2 creation points in skills. Normally I would have 3 skills + 1 specialisation.
That means with your system I would have 3 skills + 4 specialisations?
Would that not be too much?
Or did I not understand something?

Also I thought about something looking at Alp suggestion. I had since the beginning issues with too high % of success.

So say when you train a skill you get a Fortune dice
When you specialise a skill you get a yellow/expertise dice

Exemple:
INT 3 - Intuition with specialisation Detect lies
normally here with this system you would have this pool of dice: 3 blue + 1 white for the trained skill + 1 expertise yellow for specialisation in Intuition.
But when you think about it could we not take out the white trained skilled dice and keep only the specialised/expertise dice? If you are specialised in something that means in a way that you are more than trained so it could be logical to keep only the expertise dice. Also the% of success is quite different between both dices. Yellow dice 46% and white 33%. By doing this it will lower the success rate.

Of course if you are trained in a skill and not specialised you would of course use the white dice.

Hope this is more or less clear (poor english of mine )