What's the rationale behind some intermediate careers getting 2 and some 3 talent slots? What makes a career "intermediate" instead of advanced?

Acolyte -2 (intermediate)

Assassin -3 (advanced)

Chamberlain - 3 (intermediate)

Charlatan 3, intermedaite

Disciple 2 intermediate

Flagellant 3 intermediate

Gigante Slayer 2 intermedaite

Investigator 2 intermediate

merchant 3 intermediate

physician 3 intermediate

priest 3 advanced

prophet of dooooooooom 3 "elite"

Scholar 3 intermediate

seer 3 intermediate

withch hunter 2 intermediate

Wicth hunter cap'n 3 advanced

wizard 3 advanced

My first reaction was to say it was a balancing mechanism, those careers with less sockets gain a better career ability. However, that does not seem to be the case. Seer, Charlatan, Giant Slayer and Assassin all have very good career abilities yet they are not all of the same traits and socket number.

So I don't have a clue. Perhaps the traits are going to have a future "clarification" like we have seen in the players guide, with specialized trait.

I agree that the answer is "balance."

However, the Career Ability is not the only element to balancing a Career. There's Skills, available advances, Career Traits (for changing Careers), and a few I'm sure I'm missing.

I'd say there's probably more to the advances than just the overall quantity as well (action vs stance, for example, may be worth different 'values' in the balance process). Likewise, the keywords might factor in despite being the most arcane and in my opinion underutilized aspect of the system.

Emirikol said:

I've wondered myself. There doesn't seem to by any rhyme or reason behind it, looking to be very arbitrary.

It seems those those intermediate careers that are a pre-requiste to the advanced career has 2 slots (giant slayer.. assuming more slayer careers are coming, disciple, Acolyte), those that don't really fit into an clear vertical progression has 3 EXCEPT Investigator, which for me is the only one where it isn't clearly obvious just by looking at the list and no looking at skills etc, why Investigator would only be a 2 slot card.

Does investigator provide access to a lot of skills? Sounds like they should do...

pumpkin said:

Investigator: Education, Folklore, Intuition, Observation, Skulduggery, Stealth

Action:3 , Talent 2, Skill 2, Fortune 1, Conservative 2, Reckless 0, Wounds 0

Focus x1, Reputation x1

Intelligence, Willpower.

When spending fortune points on Observation or Intuition checks add an expertise die instead of a fortune die for each fortune point spent.

So...maybe because the career skill is an all-the time vs a once per session or an exhaust. However, its not that great of a career ability to begin with.

Much like the rest of WFRP3 (and an aspect that I like), I don't think there's a hard and fast system or method behind this. I'd guess that they went with "what seems reasonable" and left it at that. I could well be wrong though.