If a career (like soldier) decides to advance to a wizard career with GMs permission, what do they get for free and what must the pay advances for? When you start as a wizard I know you get:

Spellcraft (skill)

Channeling (Skill)

Channel Power (action)

Cantrip (action/spell)

Magic Dart (action/spell)

Attuned Item (Item)

But what if you advance to Wizard career? Do you still get these for free without spending Advance Points aside from those you spent to change careers? I would like to hear how you all are playing this.

For an initiate, the FAQ states he does not even start with Invocation and Piety if a mundane career changes to initiate! He must spend an AP to aquire those, even though they are listed on his career card! In addition, they must spend AP to aquire the cards curry favor, minor ward, blessing of health and minor blessing. This was very confusing to me.

My conclusion for advancing careers to a Wizard and Priest, based on the FAQ and the Rulebook is:

When a mundane career advances to a Wizard he receives all of the starting skills listed on his career card including spellcraft and channeling. In addition, he recieves the channel power, cantrip, magic dart action cards, and an attuned item.

When a mundane career advances to an Initiate they do not get any action cards, and must spend more AP to acquire Invocation and Piety.

It just doesn't sound right. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Within the setting Wizard Apprentices spend at least 10 years in training.

It is not a career anyone can enter, magic talent is very rare. Many people with magical talent are burnt when they first manifest their power. Essentially a child needs to be lucky enough to hide his 'gift' and/or be found by a college wizard before he/she is burnt. Even when he gets to a college the masters might decide he is too corrupted to train - he then disappears.

So basically transitioning to a Wizard Apprentice is not really a situation that is accomodated. Unless your campaign can take a 10 year break...

You might want to come up with a Hedge Wizard homebrew.

The OP explicitly said "with GM's permission", so it isn't about wether you could do it or not (after all, one's may play as he likes). However, I'd have phrased it "with my group's permission" for it isn't the GM's game, but really all of the players (including the GM). As a GM, I wouldn't allow it if it caused problem with the other players. But if it's fine for everyone, why not.

Now, back to your question : I've sent a question to FFG some months ago asking if someone who starts with 2 Agility raises his stat to 3 with advances, does he get the Dodge action card for free. Answer were no, you must buy it with advances. So you can extrapolate from that that nothing is gained for free with career transition, which makes sense. You only get "freebies" at character creation. So short answer is, no, you don't get free skill training in Spellcraft and Channeling, nor you get any channel power, cantrip, magic dart and attuned item and same applies for priets. Like Fresnel stated, you don't become a wizard that easily and you'll have to pay a bunch of extra advances to just be able to do what apprentices learned over those ten-ish years.

Thanks for the response Silver. That seems to make sense to me. What didn't make sense is the apparent disparity between the two (priestly careers and wizard careers).

Basically, there is no hard and fast rule for this in the rulebooks. Which means whatever we come up with will most likely be a house rule.

It's unfortunate really. With the "random" career selection and only one starting wizard class, it seems odd they would have written an entire rulebook to address wizard abilities and background, and then not have details on how to get there. It would be the equivalent of having an entire rulebook for a Dockhand in that there is only one career that would use Dockhand rules. I understand that wizards are more rare than other careers, but then why put together a separate book which is primarily fluff? It's just weird.

So to me, it begs for either abandoning the random career selection or allowing regular careers to transition to casters. In either case, it's an overlooked area.

I think more will be clarified on the subject once the Winds of Magic expansion comes out. But having to pay advances for beginning skills and abilities makes sense as it follows the lines of other career advancement. I figure the Tome of Mysteries was so light on subject matter was due to the WoM expansion coming out.