Hi. My thief recently died in our WFRP guide. He, like the rest of the characters in the group were created when we sat down with the game the first time, so he was a bit haphazardly thrown together by simply selecting skills, talents and actions that seemed to fit his concept.Now that I got to make a new character with several advancement, I sat down with the rulebook and really started planning how to build my new character.

I went through a few versions of him, before I hit upon a build that seemed to include everything I wanted for his concept. Then I decided for fun to plan ahead by looking at what career I should transition into when the time came and how to advance him in a way that still made sense when he started his new career (primarily avoiding unusable Talent cards).

After messing around with that a little while I went, "Oh wait, wasn't there some skill bonuses and such for completing your current career?" and I started studying that bit of the rules and realized that a character spending 0 creating points in skills might come out of it better than someone spending 2 or 3 creation points if they both go for the career completion bonus. My character as an example below:

I'm creating a Smuggler. He has access to 5 skills: Intimidate, Guile, Skulduggery, Stealth and Ride.Now, in my group there is a Thug who does all the intimidating, and I'm building my smuggler with St 2, so taking Intimidate is a waste of points. Which means there are 4 skills from this career I'm interested in taking.
I'm betting quite a few careers have a list of available skills where you're not really interested in all of them. So, let's look at the difference between 0 and 4 creation points in skills:

0 creation points in Skills= 1 Skill
Let's say I start with Guile.
Now, during play I invest 3 advancement points in Skulduggery, Stealth and Ride.
Then I get to the end of my career I use 1 advancement point to get the dedication bonus.
For my dedication bonus I then recieve: Career Card, 3 Skill Specialisations.

End result: I go out of the career with 4 skills trained and 3 skill specialisations.

3 creation points in skills= 4 skills + 2 specialisations
I start with Guile, Skulduggery, Stealth and Ride. All 4 skills I want from the career.
I get to the end of my career and use 1 advancement point to get the dedication bonus.
For my dedication bonus I recieve: Career Card

End result: I go out of the career with 4 skills trained and 2 skill specialisations.

I realize this isn't a huge deal, but I felt it worth noting. I built my smuggler with 4 creation points in skills and felt a bit gypped when I realized this. So in the end I'll probably decide to leave the career before finishing it, simply because I've taken everything I can get out of it and the career card by itself isn't good enough to warrant an advancement point.

Any comments? Is there somthing I'm not seeing?

Well the first thing that jumps out at me is that taking 4 Skills + 2 Specializations only costs 3 character points, not 4. That helps a bit.

Another is that it's much harder to survive, be useful, and have fun with a character with no skills at start. If you get to CREATE the character at higher level, then yeah, this makes some sense, but playing a starting character with NO skill would likely be pretty dull.

Uncle_Joe said:

Well, investing 0 creation points, you get 1 skill. And you'll have creation points to start with either higher stats or more actions/talents. Then all you need is to advance once or twice and you'll have several trained skills. In addition, you often don't have use of all your trained skills that often, so if you're a bit lucky/strategic with what skill you choose to begin with, you won't notice being a skill or two short. So the drawback is only there for a few sessions, and not at all when rolling a new character with a few advances available like I am.

Edit: Oh yeah, and you're right. It only costs 3 points, which equals out the cost if you consider creation and advancement points as of equal value. Fixed that in the OP.

I can see where it makes sense in some cases, since you're essentially trading 3' XP' during character creation (worth 4 skills trained and 2 spec's) for 3 XP spent during the campaign, which in the end, nets you 4 skills trained + 3 spec's when you're ready to transition out. However, training 3 skills during play might not be an option for some careers and you're also giving up 3 other potential career advances.

Also, don't forget that buying your dedication bonus also reduces the cost of your career transition by one XP.

If you go for max/min your char, then I find this the best...:

Spending 3 points in skills, since you get 4 skills and 2 specs, thus the 2 specs pretty much come for free.

Spend the rest on stats, because raising stats later is hard hard work, you need to be in the right career, and it's anoying to save up 5 advancements to begin with. One wants to spend the points!

The leftovers are spend on wealth, talents and skills in that order. Skills are simply great, but you allready begin with some, so you can still do stuff. Talents slots are kinda wasted without talents, so at least get 1.

This brings up an errata issue because it isn't clear in the rules:

* Dedication bonus should apply to all skills gained during that career (including creation).

That's how we're ruling it. We're encouraging skills.

jh

Emirikol said:

That gives you a bit many specialisations by the time you finish a career, but I still agree with it over the current design, because a player who puts the max amount of points in Skills at creation is creating a skill-focused character. That he will actually wind up behind someone who doesn't focus on skills at all during creation seems wrong.

It also depends on your play group. If there's a heavy emphasis on skill use vs. Action card use early on characters with fewer starting skills should be at a disadvantage...just a thought.

You will need to get a min 3 skills at the start. You can only train 2 skills during the career without having to use your non-career spots. The more the career lets you advance skills during the career the less you have to buy at the start.

I think it's all balanced out with the 1 or 2 free specializations at creation. You either get them sooner or later. At most you end up with 2 skills without specs (and you can always get around 1 of them by making your last advance that career the second rank in one of them).

Doc, the Weasel said:

I'm pretty sure you can't do that. According to the FAQ: "However, skills trained during character creation do count towards the limit of one rank of skill training per character rank."

So you have to hva spent 10 advances before you can train a new rank in any of the skills you took during creation.

Emirikol said:

Two months ago I asked Jay about Dedication bonus and character creation:

Greetings-

No, the Dedication Bonus does not provide additional specializations for skills trained during character creation – only skills the PC invested advances in during the career.

Cheers,

Jay

Armoks said:

Hmm, that answer is not exactly crystal clear, what was your question? Why is he writing "additional specializations", seems to me he's referring to skills you have already gotten a specialization for during character generation. To me it makes no sense that you wouldn't get specializations for skills you have trained during char gen, they are career skills just as the ones you buy later on. When you buy skills at char gen you are already in the career.

The only time I'd say you don't get a specialization is when:

a) you already have a free specialization taken for that skill during the career (i.e., you got it from the 3+1 or 4+2 options for build points)
b) the skill is not on your career list, but trained for free during char gen (i.e. racial extra skills).

@gruntl

Rule Question:

Hello,

If a character purchases the Dedication Bonus, does he learn a specialisation for each skills he trained during the character creation?

Greetings

I was also thinking that if a player got the dedication bonus, his character would get an especialization for every skill trained in the career, including character creation. That changes things a little... I'm not sure how much at this point.

There are more complexities about character evolution than just picking 10 career advancements and moving to a next career. Actually, I think this system has so much complexities about character evolution that we didn't start getting all of them clear at this moment. Like, if your character is human, he'll need one less advancement to change career, and that could mean 0 advancements. So, if you pick another career with at least 3 similar traits, you'll be able to change careers for free, and you could actually develop a two-career character, moving from one to the other at every couple of games, and changing the available career ability till you get one of them as permanent with a dedication bonus. You could even do that with a career that you don't have much similarity, you'll only have to pay one or more advancements the first time you change, since then to change back would mean going to a perfect similar career.

Another thing is that Rank evolution is based on experience, not on career. So, if you take one out-of-career advancement (like training an out-of-career skill), you'll be Rank 2 before finishing your current career. That would mean you would beable to get extra training in skills you have already training, and thus you wuold get specializations for them when buying the dedication bonus. Including the out-of-career skill, if I'm not mistaken.

On a last note, remember that there is no limit of specializations for any given skill, you would only have to choose other field of specialization. As a House Rule, you could actually allow some PC to take another fortune die to the same field of specialization (but I wouldn't encourage that).

Going out of topic, I'm a little in doubt about the dificulty of tests as characters develop...

Ralzar said:

Not quite. You need 10 experience before you can train a new rank. Spending the advance comes afterward. You technically can have 10 experience without spending a single advance.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Or you could have spend some advances in out-of-career advances.

Armoks said:

Thanks for posting the question. I didn't mean to come off as if I doubted you, I just don't agree with Jay (=the actual game rules) on this one, so wanted to find some possible explanation.

Well well, it's not hard to house rule this one at least.

The thing is, you don't get much of an advantage by holding out on skills. At most, you end up with one or two skills without specializations at the end of the career, and that's assuming you don't hit that second rank at the end of the career.

Also depends on your career. As a priest I'm spending most of my creation points just buying advanced skills, while I'll be 'training' them using open and skill advances. That leaves me HAVING skills to advance during my regular class. Hence for many classes with advanced skills, this works out just fine.

Pedro Lunaris said:

Since reading this post I've been looking at it quite a bit from my characters perspective and it's an interesting (and perhaps unintentional?) way to "multi-class" in WFRP. In the end you probably don't net that much benefit from it, but it gives you much more room to get upgrades you want earlier. For example, I'm playing a Smuggler who's going to enter the Gambler career. I have a list of about 12 Actions I want but I can't get all of them yet. I start with 4 action cards (if I remember correctly). I also spent max points in Skills to get all 4 skills in smuggler I wanted.

If I want more Actions, I can use three advances for three Action Cards in smuggler, then switch to Gambler for 0 cost, take 4 Actions there, and while I'm there train Intuition and Observation, then switch back to Smuggler.

I now have a Smuggler with 11 Actions and 6 trained skills much earlier than if I'd just finished one career.

But I feel this is a bit "off" from the intention of the rules. It just seems weird to be able to jump back-and-forth willy-nilly. After all, there's no rule (as far as I know) that dictates WHEN you can switch career, because it's intended to be something you can only do when you have advances to use. So I will basically have two career abilities, since I can just decide to switch careers whenever needed.

If I was going to house-rule this I'd decide that you could only transition to a new career for 0 advances if you combined the Reiklander trait with the Dedication bonus. This would also give an incentive for players like me who won't get anything out of the dedication bonus other than the career-ability.