Which are the starting actions,skills etc. that I gain for free when I create an Apprentice Wizard or Initiate?

Where in the books it is mentioned?

Thanks!

Your starting career ability is listed on the career ability card (or on the relevant page in the players guide). Nothing else is handed to you for free. Career skills are listed on the career sheet. You purchase them at creation.

jh

Emirikol said:

I don't think that is correct Apprentices definately gets some extra skills but I need to double check Iniates ... I'll find the pages and post.

From the Player's Guide which just clarifies what is already in the Core Set ... page 39.

Apprentices get (only during creation, not if career is taken later):

Skills: Channeling and Spellcraft for free

Action cards: Channel Power, Magic Dart, Cantrip and Counterspell ... all should have the petty magic trait

Initiates get (only at creation not if taken as later career):

Skills: none

Action Cards:

only if Initiate pays for Piety skill, gets Curry Favor

only if Initiate pays for Invocation skill, gets Minor Blessing, Minor Ward, Blessing of Health

They reason the Priests are different is that there are some Priest that don't perform "Blessing" and just preach.

Since we're talking about starting skills, and to avoid starting a whole new thread, I have another question:

Do the skills that you "train" during character creation count to your limit indicated on your career card?

eg.: during character creation, I pay points to start off with three skills. My career card indicates that I can train a maximum of three skills. Does that mean that I cannot train any others?

I assume that the answer is NO since you don't get specializations in those skills if you pay for the dedication bonus...

Necrozius said:

AFAIK, your assumption is correct. Nothing you buy at character creation counts against the limits listed on your career card. Unless your GM has a house rule to the contrary.

But it does count towards the limit of only training a skill once during your first rank. So if you train something at creation, you cannot train that same skill until your second rank (10+ experience).

I believe this is answered in the errata. However, the answer is:

No, they do not fulfill any of the slots on the career advancement. *However*, any skill training that you take during creation does count towards the 1-training-per-rank limitation.

On a side note, I copied this from Mal Reynolds in another thread, but its worth keeping in mind here (but not super important depending on how efficiently you want your character to level) ...

Mal Reynolds said ...

1) Don't invest too much skills during Character Creation.

The thing is once you purchase the dedication bonus for completing a career you get a free specialization for each skill you trained in during play. You DON'T get a free specialization for skills you trained in during Creation process.

That's a very good point.

However most of my players regret investing in Action Cards as well because they quickly end up with SO MANY of them.

So the correct route to take in Character Creation is to invest as much as possible into Attributes / Characteristics, I guess...

GullyFoyle said:

The thing is, you can get free specializations during character creation. If you spend 2 or 3 points on skills you get 1 or 2 free specializations. This offsets the specializations you would have received for the dedication bonus. In fact, these are better since you get to actually use them through your first career.

Basically, you are going to end up with one or two skills that you won't get free specializations for, no matter what you do. One of those can be offset by using your 10th advance to buy the second training in one of those (since rank goes 0-9, and your first career is 1-10) if it really matters to you.

Otherwise, shorting yourself on skills early for a later payoff assumes that you will be spending a lot of your open advances on skills (and that your career even supports that). Sounds like a lot of self denial and maneuvering to get just one fortune die.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Good point ... had forgotten the specialization can only be used on trained skills.

I always hated those rules. We house ruled them away a long time ago: • Skills trained/specialized at creation count towards career advancement and you still gain specializations in those skills upon career completion.

Any of these "complications" that make the game "un-fun," I've tried to ditch. Also, this is a good example of where the game would be moved away from creative roleplaying (skills) and towards D&D's "you've-only-got-these-abilities-telling-you-what-you-can-do-combat-only" mentality. Hates' it. Hates' it. Hates' it.

Solved.

jh

I just look at it this way:

Everything that happens at character creation describes the character's life before taking on their new (starting) career. So of course none of it counts for completing the career.

Emirikol said:

Did you also take away the free 1-2 specializations when you buy 3-4 skills at character creation to balance it out?

Emirikol said:

Interesting. My question is, advancing is dependent partially on the PC taking 6 career advances and 4 non-career ... which equals 10 to advance to the next rank/career. Since you are giving a 0 xp character 3-4 career advances how are you handling the fact that their are only 10 slots on a career to advance, but you'll finish before 10xp? So PCs can complete their first career after only 6 or 7 xp?

GullyFoyle said:

I don't agree with this at all. The starting skills and specializations you can get during character creation help to immediately differentiate starting characters from each other, and allow characters to immediately be useful.

The yellow expertise die for being trained is a big deal, adding a big probability boost to a check and also the chance for a comet. Also, some Actions require key skills to be trained or offer further benefit if a key skill is trained. If you go all in on Skills at creation you also get specializations which you get to use during your entire first career.

It is also, IMO, harder to explain away training a skill in-game if you don't start off with it in the first place which might matter if you or your GM is a stickler for such things.

Personally, I favor characteristics, followed by skills, followed by wealth, 2 talents, and however many actions i can afford on what's left.

KillerShrike said:

I agree, and if I was a player I'd be fairly anoyed at other players who chose to be useless to begin with out of gamey reasons.

I suggest to my players to invest 16 points in stats (all 3, 1 4), 1-3 in wealth, 2-3 in skills, 1-2 in talents, and 2-3 in actions.

fair enough to comment something I said on another thread, and was brought up here by another poster.

I offered this advice to someone who asked for help about creating a character, and didn't mind som min-maxing. And it is a general advice I give to all I play with. that said and done, your own ideas of how you want your character to be, must always weight more than some general advice.

But...the more skills you can train trough your career, the less important it become to spend Creation points on skills, for you end up loosing more than you gain, because of the dedication bonus. it a balance thing, and the math is supporting this advice.

for instance if your career have 6 skills, but only 3 skill advances, than you can say it would be fairly wise to invest some of your creation points on skills. But on the other hands if you have 5 skills advances than you should invest next to nothing on skills during character creation. Of course if you don't mind losing the free specializations you get by the dedication bonus or use some house rules, than my advice should not have any impact on your character creation.

but I suspect some players will feel cheated if not informed about the implications of the Dedication bonus. and in my group this became a big thing as those players who had spent alot on skills in creation, felt cheated. Again I blame it on bad rule clarifications.

Good gaming

Sorry about removing your comment from the original context Mal ... Mea Culpa

I was hoping it would just be an interesting point, and it became somewhat controversial.

Next time I'll just link to the original post.

As to your recent comments, I agree that it should be mentioned to players, letting them make a choice as to its importance, rather than finding out after the fact. Depending on the individual it could be a big deal.

Mal Reynolds said:

I still don't understand how people can talk about missing out on the free specializations from the dedication bonus, when the remedy is to miss out on the free specializations offered in character creation.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Correct me if I'm missing something Doc, but if you spend 1 creation point and get to train 2 skills, you get no specializations at creation and you also don't get the dedication bonus for those skills. This "lost" dedication bonus is true even when you send more points.

GullyFoyle said:

That's true, but you can't really escape those one or two skills. As far as free specializations go spending 1 point is the same as spending 2 or 3. You end up with two skills that don't get anything (as opposed to the one you would have if you spent no points in skills).

What I'm getting at is that there is a mechanism in char gen that offsets the loss of the dedication bonus, but people keep ignoring it.

And also a bird in the hand is worth something. Some characters will never complete the career, for any of a variety of reasons. The game might not last that long, the character may die, the player may decide they don't like the career they are in and jump out.

Even if a character does complete the career and get the dedication bonus, at 1 advance per session that's a long ways off. For instance, my group plays maybe twice a month, more like 3 times every 2 months. Accruing enough xp to complete a career and get the dedication bonus is a long road to hoe. Putting off the benefits of having skills available from the word go until career completion because it is theoretically more optimal as you'll gain a couple more specializations as payoff is simply not practical.

This seems like a case of penny wise, pound foolish to me.

GullyFoyle said:

No worry sir. You didn't do anything wrong.

At anything you made me very interested in seeing how this turn out. as what I said have pretty much been established as fact in my gaming circles. I might be wrong in my assumptions, and I am no mathwiz. but at this point I think the math is supporting my theory.

that said on the orignial thread, I summarised up everything discussed, and I conlcuded that xp wise you saved by not spending too much CP on skills, but wheter it was smart depended on the lethality of the game and the whims of the GM. So it might not be the smartest thing to do if high lethality is expected, but xp wise it's def. the best thing to do.

good gaming