Hey folks, I'm a long-time gamer new to WFRP3, having played both 1st and 2nd edition previously. I have a question regarding advancements purchased on previous careers.

If I remember correctly, advancements in previous editions did not stack from new careers - meaning, if you had one career with a possible +2 in an area and then your next career allowed up to +3, you only were allowed a total of +3, taking the better option available.

How does that work in WFRP3? Do advancements stack upon moving to a new career? Or do I lose previous advancements and have to start over and re-purchase all the skill and other advancements?

Thanks in advance!

Advancements stack in 3rd Ed, and once you've purchased something it's yours for good. What you can get out of a given career is independent of (and totally disconnected from) any careers that may have come before it, though they do stack if you've previously bought some of the same thing.

Example: I start as a Commoner, and during my time in that career, I buy both of the 2 available Conservative Stance pieces, as well as all 3 available Fortune dice. Later, I change careers to Burgher. I may now buy both of the 2 Conservative stance pieces available to Burghers, and the 1 available Fortune die, if I'd like. My total when I'm done with the second career could be as high as 4 Conservative pieces and 4 Fortune dice, a total higher than the number appearing on either Career card individually.

Thanks for the most informative answer. That answers all my concerns about that.

Another question, then, based on that: is there an easy provided way of keeping track of a character's total advancements in those areas? The game text recommends having a new sheet for each career a character acquires and develops. What methods are recommended for keeping track of the combined totals? A separate sheet of note paper, or perhaps a third all-encompassing "lifetime" sheet?

all you really need to do is keep track of where you are spending experience points so that if you go back to an incomplete career you don't "accidentally" purchase something twice. i think you could just keep a sheet of paper like you suggested and just write:

commoner advances, 5 total points

2 conservative stance pieces

3 fortune dice

or you could keep it on a sticky note, but then you will probably just lose it.

When the rules say to get a new character sheet for each new career you take, what they are really saying is, get a new career advancement track, that part of the character sheet is all you really need. FFG would really like you to use up more pre-printer character sheets, then buy more from them. I do not fault them for this desire. However I found it much easier to just make up new career advancement tracks and combine them all in a work document so, now I can print out a page that has 5 of these on each side, so 10 on a two sided copy, this way you can just keep checking advancements off advanment tracks through lots of careers, but only need one character sheet to put the results of all you advancments on.

I remember a time, when I used a pencil and an eraser for my character sheets. Dumb computer ;-D