I have a few questions about Initiates and Apprentice Wizards.

Is the required Faith and Order card something that needs to be purchased like a Talent or do you get one for free?

I understand that Apprentice Wizards get Spellcraft and Channeling for free during character creation, but if Apprentice Wizard is not the player's first career, do they need to be bought with advances?

Same question regarding the basic spell and blessing cards. You get these for free if you're starting with that career, correct? But if it's a later career, they need to be purchased with advances like other action cards?

I'm pretty sure I've seen answers to at least some of these questions somewhere (in the book or FAQ or on this board) but one problem with having so many separate documents to a game is trying to keep track of everything! Thanks for the help!

Related question: Am I correct in assuming that, like other action card traits, traits like Bright Order or Shallya on spell and blessing cards are not restrictions? That it's possible, say, for an Initiate of Sigmar to branch out and learn to invoke Shallya's Mercy, or for a Grey Order Wizard to learn to cast Flameblast?

You get the Faith and Order cards as part of the career. You cannot however have more than one type of Faith or Order cards. Wizards are restricted to one College, and no college will accept a member from another college. (ToM p. 12) Dieties are likewise quite jealous and will not allow initiates to dedicate themselves to several gods simultaneously. Likewise, each cult will make an initiate swear fealty to them, breaking this vow will most likely result in the character being rejected completely, labeled an outlaw within the cult, or persecuted. A character may certainly change his mind and follow a different diety, however all of his previous blessings with the other god will cease to function.

Skills and Action cards need to be purchased after character creation. An apprentice wizard is generally started on the path to wizardry from a very early age, and learning even petty cantrips can take some apprentice wizards years of effort. Likewise faith-based miracles are acquired by the gift of the gods or by lots of piety and dedication.

Finally, the traits are not restrictions and this has been expressed several times in the RAW. But a GM can rule them as restrictions if he so wishes and this is also covered in the RAW.

With the exception of petty magic (or lesser if it returns), wizards can only use spells of their Order. If this isn't explicitly stated it should have been. I doubt such a major change from 2nd Ed would have been made without it being made explicit.

WFRP3 is fluff-lite at the moment. However, in 2nd Ed the magic colleges would take any magically gifted person - adult or child - who wasn't too corrupted. So pre-magical careers were possible. However, initial magical training takes 10 years or more, so this isn't going to happen in most campaigns.

RAW currently have no restrictions on what actions can be taken when you are a member of what career. This is where the Lore and the mechanics collide. Those who are not member of one of the colleges who regularly use magic, of any kind will be branded a hedge wizard and hunted down. Those of a college who dabble in learning the magic of another college will be similarly persecuted. The mechanics are valid, as a bright wizard, you can learn grey magic, however prepare to suffer the wrath of the colleges, the empire, and the witch hunters if you choose to follow that path. As a GM it is up to you to enforce these restrictions in a story manner, you can choose to enforce them mechanically if you wish as well.

BCA said:

I would forbit it by GM fiat.

It breaks the established setting too much, for a issue I am 95% sure is simply an omission in the text. Although 2nd Edition canon is old canon, it can act as a sanity check where WFRP3 is vague. In WFRP2 human wizards cannot channel more than one Wind. They can use the corrupt and corrupting Dhar if they choose, but a Bright Wizard cannot channel the Grey Wind and channeling the Grey Wind is required to power a Grey Spell.

BCA said:

There is a restriction in the core rules. Wizards may only purchase/use spells of their own order. That said, anyone can learn petty spells.

Gallows said:

Can you give us a book and page number for that?

I've already provided references for this several times in the past:

Core Rulebook, p. 35, under Advancement Options, Action card sub-title.

Supported by Tome of Mysteries, p. 12, , fourth paragraph on the left column.

The core book reference is sufficient.

The quote is:

"Some action cards may have special requirements – for example, only wizards can acquire new spells, and even then, the wizard can only acquire spells from his particular College of Magic."

Fresnel said:

The core rulebook reference is not sufficient. It uses wizards acquiring new spells only from his particular College as an example of action cards having additional restrictions, but it is not the actual rule itself. That is in the blue box on page 48 of the ToM, The Wizard Specialty Card.

"During character creation, an apprentice wizard must choose which one of the eight Orders within the Colleges of Magic he belongs to.
Over the course of his wizardly careers, the character can only acquire and cast spells from his chosen school."

Warhammer fluff about magic since WFRP first edition clearly indicates that a college wizard in the old world may only buy and learn spells from his color, as his LICENCE authorizes him. It will be illegal to learn anything else... so he would have to disguise himself or to find other source of knowledge than college classes in the 8 unique Altdorf colleges.

In the first edition supplement, they proposed to create High Elf Mage's spell list by picking up in differents colors + Wood elves' magical dryades.1st edition also refered, beside petty magic, to battle magic, alchemy and other magical ways you may learn in local universities.

In 3rd edition for now, if you want to be close to that fluff, your wizard would learn petty magic in a local magic university, and then pretend to the color college in Altdorf. Remember color magic requires to be a really capable caster. A lot of wizards can't use it and are limited to petty and other low magics... Dark wizards are often hedgewizards limited to petty magic who discovers somehow the colored ways and doesn't control them.

mac40k said:

fnord3125 said:

Yes, and I'll give you three guesses, of which the first two don't count, as to where the rules reference is.

Well that makes sense, but it's kind of a bummer. That means if the group wants a good healer someone is kind of stuck in a complete support role... at least assuming we're talking first career/first rank characters.

fnord3125 said:

I'm not sure why you're coming to that conclusion.

Starting characters can have up to 4 actions (in addition to automatically getting all the Basic actions for which they qualify). So there's no reason why you couldn't take 3 actions that make you a good healer, and then... Double Strike for the fourth action. Just sayin'.

fnord3125 said:

Since we're a small group and only have one spell caster I have created a house rule that allows wizards to use spells from all schools. It's not like it's going to make anyone over powered, since it still costs one advancement for each spell.

Gallows said:

With the caveat that it is of course your game and as long as you and your players are having fun, anything goes... While that makes sense mechanically that is a *huge* deviation from the world lore. IIRC every attempt by a College wizard to try to use a Wind other than the one they were trained in has ended in failure or disaster - the fundamental techniques they are trained in to access the Winds are themselves an impediment. Second edition was pretty decent about giving each Lore a good cross section of utility abilities that fit within the context of that Lore and I expect 3E's Winds of Magic will do the same - sort of how the Bright Order cards in the core set still have a healing spell (Cauterize) and multipurpose support/debuff spell (Fiery Passion).

I agree it is a deviation from college teaching, but not that it always ends in diaster. Horstramm mixed magics and ended up leaving the light college to explore his career as a Chaos sorcerer. I believe he is quite satisfied with his path.

Don't forget Hedge Magic. In the example above, I would not consider the wizard part of the colleges, but a houseruled Hedge Apprentice.

Depends on your definition of disaster, I suppose.

You could certainly allow a character who does the work to gain access to a different school's teachings to learn a spell outside his college.

Then give them a corruption token each time they cast it

I like how the specialization of the various colleges balances the power of magic vs. a standard mundane character. While they are not exactly one trick ponies, no wizard has a spell for every situation. When their situation comes up though, the party can point the wizard at it and say "DO!" and the wizard does beautifully.

Haggard said:

I agree with you. That said the wizard has yet to pick spells outside his order. When the new magic expansion is released I may scrap the rule. From a lore point of view I don't like it and agree with the points you make.

I would probably require an additional advance to purchase it (like it requires an additional advance to purchase a higher rank), plus it does not count as a career advance (so much use the non-career advance slots)

Gallows said:

As an alternative, you could always just re-fluff the spells to be College appropriate.