Which advanced/intermediate careers do you feel we still need?

I'm estimating that the Khorne product will have sargeants, captains, pistoliers and knights. Realistically, those are on some of my top lists. Considering the actual careers in play: spreadsheets.google.com/ccc, hopefully they will be tailored towards that (anything with 9 or more could highly beneift from intermediate and advanced careers). Agent, bounty hunter, dilettante, envoy, gambler, hunter, ironbreaker, mercenary, pit fighter, rat catcher,scholar smuggler, thief, thug, waywathcer and zealot come up the highest for use as of a couple months ago (wizard, priest, trollslayer, and zealot already have some).

Which ones would your group benefit from the most?

jh

Keep in mind that WFRP have never been very oriented towards "advancing" linearly. Even in v2. Typically it was Basic or Advanced, with an occasional career offering a "more advanced" version. Most advancement really was laterally to similar other advanced careers, or restarting in a new basic career.

Just saying. While there are certainly many advanced careers that haven't been translated over to 3rd yet, people need to keep in the forefront of their brains that WFRP in general doesn't go linearly for most careers more than one career (Basic to Advanced).

Without knowing what is coming in the Khorne book, it's hard to say, although I agree most (but not all) will tend to be martial oriented. I'll try to scrub through my v2 book and see what advanced careers might be nice to have.

I have to agree with Dvang. There's a big difference between "need" and "want". Another career step for Priests and Wizards would be good if your players have advanced that, but otherwise I think we have a pretty decent mix at the moment.

I think the game actually -needs- more vertical advancement. Most players, in my experience, want to go from classes such as Commoner or Thug into something more impressive. Few want to take a step from Soldier into Rat-Catcher, even though they are still increasing in strength.

I don't think we need to go too crazy, but my group would very much enjoy having Intermediate, Advanced and higher careers to look forward to on some of the career lines.

Horse riding careers. Squire to knight, to knight panther/whatever other order and so on. Pistollier and Outriders are there too, for the nobility types. I fully expect to see these in the war expansion, so I will not consider those something we need.

The poor Barber-Surgeon needs some kind of intermediate career between physician. You need Education and First Aid to become a physician, and if you're playing the Barber-Surgeon straight, you have no recourse. Of course you can become a scribe or a student, but you are missing out on a second rank in First Aid as a career advance.

Slayer is another I assume will see further advancement. Troll-Giant-Daemon-Dragon or some such.

The more socially oriented careers really need some advancements, too. Even though you can be perfectly fine bouncing around from agitator to dilennate to entertainer and so on, I'd like to see some vertical advancement. "Johann is a Battle Wizard, Grungor is a Dragon Slayer, and I'm an Entertainer?!?" In effect it would make that a sexier route for players. Although we won't see that until the summer I guess.

Crafting careers are something that is wholly left out of the mix, like horse careers, which makes me think they will be in an expansion. I have faith that FFG will cover all of the needed ground if given enough time, on account of their disciplined release schedule.

"Horse-Careers" will surely be in the Omens of War Box, I think.

I said in the first part of my previous post that I expected horse riding careers in the war expansion.

They darn well better be in there. I'm willing to overlook the omission of horses in the main rules (even though we have the riding skill already) if it means it is handled well in a rules expansion.

I'd at least like to see some riding and mounted combat rules. My group doesn't yet have horses of their own, but I'm fairly certain our Road Warden is going to try to buy one shortly. I'd have liked to make them more available, but I haven't taken the time to house rule their use.

The combat careers for sure need better advancement options as there currently is a lack.

Currently we have:

Open Advanced Careers:

Assassin

Chamberlain

Charlatan

Investigator

Merchant

Physician

Scholar

Advanced Career Paths:

Mystic* -> Seer

Troll Slayer -> Giant Slayer

Apprentice Wizard -> Acolyte -> Wizard

Initiate -> Disciple -> Priest

Zealot -> Flagellant -> Prophet of Doom

Zealot* -> Witch Hunter -> Witch Hunter Captain

So, currently, the only combat oriented advanced career most characters can get into is Assassin, which mechanically works fine (it's a very solid kill stuff career), but does carry some thematic baggage that some GMs or players might balk over. Personally, at least until there is another published option, I'm ok with a player taking the career and just relabeling it something else and perhaps swapping out the sneaky skills for some other more martial skills on a one for one basis. But I digress.

I never picked up the Career Compendium for 2e as I didn't feel it was necessary and had stopped playing / keeping up w/ 2e by the time it came out. However, in the 2e core book we have a much richer selection of Advanced Careers, including many more combat and socially oriented options:

Annointed Priest

Artisan

Assassin

Captain

Cat Burglar

Champion

Courtier

Crime Lord

Daemon Slayer

Demagogue

Duellist

Engineer

Explorer

Fence

Flagellant

Friar

Ghost Strider

Giant Slayer

Guild Master

Herald

High Priest

Highwayman

Innkeeper

Interrogator

Journeyman Wizard

Judicial Champion

Knight

Knight of the Inner Circle

Master Thief

Master Wizard

Mate

Merchant

Minstrel

Navigator

Noble Lord

Outlaw Chief

Physician

Pistolier

Politician

Priest

Racketeer

Scholar

Scout

Sea Captain

Sergeant

Spy

Steward

Targeteer

Vampire Hunter

Veteran

Witch Hunter

Wizard Lord

Now...some of those careers are needlessly specific IMO, and 3e's "surface area" is smaller (fewer stats and a more unified mechanical base) and also career progression is overall more open as most careers don't have entry requirements and the career entrance / exit idea was abandoned. On the other hand, 3e careers all need a mechanically distinct career ability. So I fully expect to see fewer overall careers and am ok with that. But not having at least a couple advanced careers for basic archetypes in the core rules is a bit of an oversight in my opinion.

dvang said:

Dvang, I always respect your opinion, however I have a different take:

I don't disagree with the fact that WFRP has been "intended" as a non-linear game, however it is my opinion that this is what holds the game back and will ultimately kill it (again). The biggest gripe about this game (other than the disorganized rules in the core set) has been the lack of advanced careers. The second biggest gripe you will hear from people is that they can't get their friends to play this game. Sorry, but who wants to play a character that never really becomes anything, has no future, and runs around crippled by insanity, poverty, and disease? Is it any wonder they don't even play this at conventions anymore and people are "collectors" instead of players of this game?

I personally want the option to have linear progression. Most importanly, my players want the ability to become something and have forwards progression and the feeling that the campaign will last longer than a game of Descent. The Career-System is the major strength of this game. It's what sets apart from Dung&Drag or skills-min-max games. Also linear character progression games are the most popular in the world and the good ones also have the ability to be multi-career characters.

IMHO, this game will remain in the backwaters because it doesn't offer what the largest player base int the world gravitates towards: the option to do linear progression.

I disagree that V2 wasn't a linear progression game. There were up to 5 ranks of character advancement in some cases (knights, wizards and priests being the best examples). Other examples: Soldier, veteran, sargeant, captain. Thief, Cat Burglar, Crime Lord. Outlaw, highwayman to Outlaw Chief. Troll slayer, giant slayer, demonslayer.

Currently, I'm just house-ruling retaking a basic career get's you the next "rank up" thematically, however this should be built into the game for most popular effect

jh

jh

Warhammer has been killed before? I have had a break of 5 years from RP games and Warhammer 3rd. edition got me back into it bigtime. The biggest strenght of WFRP 3 isn't just the careers. It's the cards, the new style of play, the dice and the world.

Being an old gamer I really dislike the "going from nothing to hero" approach to characters. I like this much better... starting out as heroes and refining themselves. It's about the story anyway and the stories they have released so far are great. And there is the secret.

It's the great stories that will make this game popular. If they were to release a campaign like TEW and lots of smaller campaigns and scenarions... stuff that was ready to go for people too busy to spend time on creating it themselves. That's their main strenght... that they have so many cool stories to tell that make D&D look like a kids game. And they should promote that...

TGS was a decent beginning. Great in terms of quality, but too short. They need to create a super campaign.

Gallows said:

WRFP has died a couple times if I remeber right...

Flame stopped publication in the early '90's ('92 I think), then the game started up again under Hogshead a few years later (though there were non English editions in between). In about '02 Hogshead gave up the license and Black Industries and Green Ronin created the 2ed a few years after. They were in turn replaced by FFG and 2ed gave way to 3rd.

WFRP just wont stay dead, a fact that I am very grateful for.

I agree that rules for mounted combat are necessary, it would make running a Bretonnian campaign so much easier. I could also use formal rules for Halflings (we are getting by fine but some of the players really want official Halfling resources) beyond that linear progression is not high on my list but I have nothing against more advanced careers. It will be easier to make a proper list once the last two chaos god themed supplements are out.

regards,

ET

My point is... warhammer isn't dead until we stop playing it... and I doubt we will

I know the companies have had issues and that is exactly the reason I am happy with FFGs direction. I love what they have done with the game and I think it's a financially sound model as well. That is all WFRP needs.

Emirikol said:

...what do you mean by "next rank up"?

Rank is a function of experience points accrued. A character with 10 xp is Rank 2 and so forth.

I'm inferring that you mean you let a character take the same career twice and get a new advance tree for the second instance of the career. If that's what you mean, it seems very reasonable to me.

Yes. I reference"rank" to be how many careers you've got rather than the amount of x.p. (which is seeming irrelevant to anyone other than a spellcaster), but excellent point.

I just finished writing up my House RUlebook with the thematic effects of ranking up a character in the same career (or taking a basic career in the 2nd or 3rd rank). Watch for this in the House rules forum. I integrated 90%of the career themes from the career compendium as "Thematic" effects for a rank2 or rank 3 basic (e.g. taking soldier at rank 2 gives you the thematic options of veteran, sargeant or artillerist (yes, I've added blackpowder bombs to my game). Players can just wing it or they can draw inspiration from that old V2 book by Jay Little.

In keeping with my heresy that _my_ v3 must be a progressive-career game, I figure this is the best way to give the players more advanced careers whilst adding nearly zero in terms of mechanical alterations. All I had to do was say you can take it again and that at 3rd career you get an extra talent slot.

It was fun looking at all those old careers again like Raconteur, Jailer, Lay Priest, Astrologer, and Demagogue (fear the 'gogue!)

JH

That's a pretty good idea Emirikol... and simple. When having completed two careers (rank 2+) you always have at least 3 talents on careers. If I understand your house rule right that is.