Although I think the keywording on everything is underutilized, and we've had discussions about assigning career keywords to what action cards careers can buy, here's an alternate consideration that might help create more detailed and therefore more unique careers.

Currently, any career can buy any action card as long as it has an advance available, and can pay for it (i.e. Rank 1 buying a Rank 2 for 2 advances), etc.

When I consider that a Negotiator can buy "whirling bladestorm of death" as easily as a hardened Mercenary or Pit Fighter, I start thinking how could this be better represented. What I decided was that the action card advances were simply too broad to really encompass the 'theme' of each career. Granted, there aren't all that may types of action cards (combat/support/spell/blessing), but they could be divided into a couple sub-categories (i.e. any combat card requiring a melee weapon is a 'melee action card') and then the action card advances for each career assigned allowed categories.

At creation, players are free to choose whatever action cards they want. But, once they've set on a career path, they can only buy from the action cards available to that career.

Example: Mercenary gets 2 action card advances, they would be limited to (combat, support), where combat is both melee and ranged combat. Messenger gets 1 action card advance (support).

Action cards that have a character's trained skill and/or one or more matching keywords with the current career could always be purchased. This represents the current career's mindset (keywords) influencing training/decisions, while the trained skills can represent prior knowledge/previous careers.

Example: someone shifts to Messenger after Scout and has Ballistic Skill trained, Messenger would not normally allow a ranged attack action card purchase, but since the character has some training/knowledge of ranged weapons he could expand on that knowledge.

Like I said, there may need to be a little more detail to the categories to keep this fresh and not an exercise in combat type = combat cards, non-combat type = support cards, caster type = spells/blessings.

Just a random thought this morning, any comments?

While I agree with the basic premise of the idea, there just isn't enough cards to make this work to my satisfaction. You'll be limiting the players too much. And there'll be a large increase in cookie-cutter characters, since the options for diversifying the career is severely limited by this change. It's also hard for players to make these sort of decisions at the start of the game when they know their characters the least.

It might actually be a better idea to limit the cards available at creation, since it's implied that the career has been working at his trade up until that point and would naturally have abilities that fit his career. While you can pick up all kinds of skills while adventuring. In addition, for newer players, it might be handy to limit the amount of choices they have at character creation, so it's less overwhelming.

That makes definite sense. It'll be quickly ovecome with advances, but a nice way to at least start the characters out on different footing.

"Hah, my scribe has Death Strike of Doom!"

"But how's his writing skills?"

"Writing skills? Whatever, man!"

This sounds like more of a player problem than a rules problem. If your group is making combat-twink scribes, you may reconsider who you are gaming with.

It's one of those things that will depend on the players.

I'm sure most wouldn't approach character generation that way, but then you ask why a scribe would go out 'adventuring' without some sort of self-preservation skill. I do like the careers system quite a bit, but sometimes the metagaming of them (either twinking or trying to literally follow the overlay they create for a player when they suddenly shift from scribe to roadwarden) can stretch the suspension of disbelief.

might be that my players aren't as enmeshed with the RP aspect of the careers as other play groups are.

As others have said; every group to their own, but I personally think there's no need for restrictions.

Players are likely to want to buy appropriate actions. If they don't, then they probably don't want to be in that career. i.e. If a player is happy playing a scribe, he's probably going to want to write more than he's going to want to fight. If he keeps collecting 'killy death' actions, then why is he still playing a scribe, and not a mercenary or troll slayer?

Having said that, I like the flexibility it allows players. PCs are supposed to stand out from the crowd. They are not just 'average'. They are servants who fight Chaos, mercenaries who sometimes do a bit of charity work for the temple of Shalya etc. It's not surprising if they pick up skills that the average servant wouldn't have any need for or opportunity to learn.

If players do want to get the occasional 'weird' action, that doesn't mean it's out of character or that it doesn't make sense that the character picks it up.

I think maybe the original idea of this thread has been lost. It's not trying to make it harder on the players or making the characters 'less special' but more about making the careers mean more than a minor tweak to the advances track and a different career ability.

keltheos said:

I don't know if your idea works well with the current distribution of action cards. If everyone has access to support cards, and few to combat, there's an issue if there are few support cards and many combat cards actually available.

It also values training above action cards, which I don't think should necessarily be the case.

Again, I think if the players aren't taking their career "theme" seriously enough, then it's a player issue (or a "GM wants the players to play his way" issue).I don't think it needs a new rule, especially when it limits players who are legitimately developing their character. For ex: My Agent has used his crossbow a bunch. Should he have to get Ballistic trained (out of career) or should he just be able to pick up an action card?

keltheos said:

I agree with Doc.

It's also an issue of the setting and the nature of the game though. Adventurers aren't just normal people doing their everyday ratcatching, scribing, troll-slaying etc. They're going on adventurers. That in itself is likely to limit the extent to which their careers influence the characters.

I get what you're saying though. Perhaps one thing that would help is to emphasise that to transition from one career to the next, you have to be able to justify this in game as well as simply paying the XP. A scribe trying to become a merchant who's never written or bought or sold anything is going to find this hard, whether or not they have XP to spare.

So players are encouraged by the setting to do at least a few things that scribes do, and to find a merchant who can teach them the new career and then do some of the things required by the new career, so that they can move from one career to the next. This encourages players to put some thought and effort into playing their career.

I have always felt WFRP (in all its editions) did not do enough to capitalize on the careers. I always said the career itself (scribe, hunter, etc) should have some in game effect that could be used, such as being better at interacting with others of the same or similar occupations, or able to get information from others in that profession, etc. Yes this could be done with roleplaying but should also have some roll-playing aspect as well. Maybe a career becomes a Lore like skill that can be used fore general career stuff. For example the Lore (scribe) skill should allow for rapid re-writing and comparing hand writing.

For WFRP3E I would love to see the career get more abilities or maybe unique specializations and also like to see better use of the Traits. It would be great also if the Action cards had some restrictions based on Traits...lend itself to better flavor.

As a final note, I think the wizards and priests should have more Trait, skill and primary attribute variability. A priest of Shallya and Ulric should be different in more than stance, lore card and spells...

I don't think any of this is too cumbersome...