Hey Community I'm curious as to know how you handle the application of Cult Skills. As I've mentioned in other posts I'm somewhat of a Skill junkie and so inconsistencies or discrepancies with skills always make me puzzled. Now its not that I think that the Cult Skill rules are in anyway broken, its just that I find them to be slightly ill defined. I wanted to get a measure of how other GM's and Players handle them.

I feel, for fairness sake, that they should replace skills on the Initiate career as per the Players preference. So for example the devotees of Myrmidia have access to both Leadership and Weapon Skill as Cult related skills, I love this as it suits the flavor, however I feel that in order to have one of those skills considered a career skill the player must sacrifice one of the standard Initiate skills. So First Aid would be replaced in this instance. This I feel helps even up the skill distribution. A priest class gains access to 6 skill to begin with anyway so adding 2 more that only cost one advancement puts them way out ahead of even the Rouge / Skill oriented careers.

Let me know what you guys feel. If you think that I'm completely off my rocker please let me know, however if you are going to do this you should come with examples and reason.

Thanks!

The Strolling Bones said:

Please point me to this rule, i cannot find it in the players guide or anywhere else. Could you pinpoint the location of this rule and state its intention?

I agree that it is kind of strange that priests start off with so many skills. I also thought that maybe you should sacrifice one initiate skill per cult skill you want to have as a career skill. As it is now an initiate may take maximum skills during character creation thus getting 2 "free" specializations. Then proceed to buy more skills during the career, for more "free" specializations when dedicating the career. Only Apprentice Wizard can do this 'optimization' so the initiates have the potential to become the most skilled careers, with more skill checks and free specializations than any other class (except AW). Apprentice Wizards have 7 skills right? So they can basically do the same thing.

Fluff wise it fits kind of well, since initiates gets formal training in a variety of skills I imagine, but there are other careers that do to.
From a game mechanics perspective I think it's odd as they allready have access to cool blessings and it puzzles me as to why they should have an extra advantage in the skill section?

@zwobot: In Signs of Faith page 38 - 46 (in the boxes about the different faiths).

Hi,

I'm not too worried about the extra skills at this stage. It does give a slight advantage on skill development at rank 1, however from disciple onwards they are restricted to the alloted max on skill training anyway. Its worth noting for wizard and preist chars they will have to sacrifice some of their seven or so skills every career due to the max skill slots available, also their action slots available will need to be split between blessings/spells and other combat/social tricks. Having alot of choice is very nice dont get me wrong, but the advancement system still requires you to select a limited amount from this choice.

Its also worth considering that because all basic skills are available for 2 exp out of career, many inbalances on skills between careers can be addressed by a player should he/she wish to. Our grey acolyte bought resillience at the very start of his journey, and after hitting rank 2 is seriously considering another helping. I blame the diseases... but anyway, the system does seem to offer an inbuilt self balancing thingy.

No.12 said:

I'm trying to inprint this on my players as well. I think our soldier would benefit greatly from buying coordination and then improved parry, all in all 3 advances, for an amazing upgrade. I allowed him to get resilience at start (for 2 creation points).

I think one of the problems though, is that many players (correctly) notice non-career advances is poor "economics", first of all because it costs 1 extra advance, which is sort of wasted. But also because it then means you'll be in your current career longer, meaning you'll be 2 extra xp from compleeting the career and get the free specs, and also be able to move to a new career thus having 1 extra career skill.

Of course in my view, it's a cost well spend, because it means your party well be better, and thus will live longer, meaning more xp...

This is actually one reason why I didn't see a need for "Cult" skills, because you could just get the skills with non-career advances.

I think there's a balance issue, and I think the best thing is to allow them to replace skills of their choice for those cult skills if they want. In some cases it's very important and would be unbalanced to have a priest buy them as out of career skills. The myrmidia priest for example, his special ability is he gets a favor every time he generates a comet on a weapon skill check...if he can't take weapon skill as a career skill this just seems silly. It also seems silly that the priest (and wizards) should have so many more choices than other careers. Having them swap the skills they want seems pretty reasonable to me.

Hi Spivo,

Do your players see out of career advances as a compromise on the time it takes to complete their career? I completely agree with your point, perhaps you should suggest to them exp expenditure is by no means a "race" to complete their career, more of an illustration(?) of the progress of the character. It may cost you an extra advance but if it fits with the story arc and where the player see's his character going then it is by no means wasted exp, as you stated there are always more skills at more careers providing you stay alive to get there.

Our Assassin even spent 4 advances on education, purely so she could write proper blackmail letters...

I agree with No. 12 - I don't really see the issue of extra skills as a problem - as you're still limited in the number you can take during any one career, and doing so means you're not taking something else.

It is good to have such a wide choice, but most careers contain the kind of skills you're wanting to pick up if you're playing that career. i.e., It doesn't matter if someone else has access to 15 skills that you don't care about, just so long as you have access to the 2 or 3 that you do care about.

I say right-on. I put a section in my house rulebook justifying this sort of stuff for my future games as well. I figure if a player can justify it, go for it.

jh

You are slightly limited in what you can take as total skill training due to advancement strictures, however I do believe that an Initiate can train 7 out of 8 skills available (assuming Cult Skills are just given at no penalty). This puts them way out ahead when considering skills. Skills don't get enough credit I think, as I see it they are the most "bang for your buck" as far as advancements are concerned. You'll use you're Skills way more than any Action or Talent throughout your adventuring life. Now when compared to a Dilettante or other "rouge-ish" character who's focus has traditionally been skills --this is where they get their advantage and appeal from-- an Initiate (and I'm assuming Apprentice Wizard I'm not sure though because I do not posses Winds of Magic) can train 7 skills at the cost of 7 advancements and the Dilettante can only train 7 skills at the cost of 11 advancements. This doesn't take into account any Advanced skills such as Education.

This seems to me that the RAW heavily favor Priest of Wizard careers and in my opinion, apart from good story roleplay, I don't see why players wouldn't just play Priest and Wizard characters. I feel that the Rouge careers are underpowered in this sense and that is a problem because this is where they should shine.

Angelic Despot said:

I disagree, in my experience my players like to be "skilled" from the beginning, thus almost all of them spent 3 creation points on skills. For most careers this means maxing out the avaliable skills with the required fixed skill advance, and since most of my players feel that specializations are good to have but hardly worh 1 whole advancement point.

But not for the Initiate or Apprentice Wizard, they still have got 3-4 skills to choose from, plus they get free specializations for each trained skill when dedicating the career.

Thus after dedicating the first career most players in my group had 5 skill checks and 3 specializations, while the Apprentice Wizard had 6 traind skills (3 of them in advanced skills by the way) and 4 specializations. Almost the same thing goes for the Initiates, allthough they do not aquire Piety and Invocation for free. But they can still have way more skill checks, an Initiate spends 3 points on skills that aquires Piety and Invocation at creation (which most will do to be able to use blessings) then train two skills. Furthermore he/she can invest 3 advances into skills for a sum will be 5 trained skills, 2 aquired advanced skills and 5 "free" specializations.

Of course this varies a bit depending on if the "normal" careers have advanced skills or not in their skill list as they must aquire them, and then train them. But as an example the High Elf envoy in my group started off with a free check in Intuition (beeing a High Elf) and spent 3 points on skills, thus netting 5 checks, 1 aquired advanced skill (Education beeing a High Elf) and 3 specializations.

I think that during the starting careers it matters a lot if you have 8 skills avaliable or only 5.

On the second career forward I agree that it does not matter to super-much how many skills you have accesss to as you can only spend like 2-4 advances on skills anyways.

Furthermore it is kind of strange that these two careers (Apprentice Wizard and Initiate) have aa lot of skills avaliable since they allready are special since they are able to cast spells/blessings.
The careers that "should" have more skills options avaliable to them (in my oppinion that is) should be careers like student, since they spend a lot of time practicing (mental/social) skills.

Hmm... Good point K7e9...

I hadn't really thought about maxing out skills at character creation. Perhaps you could just let players take any skills at creation (if they can justify them), regardless of whether they are 'in career' or not. (Perhaps you could say that they can only do this if they max out their career skills first?)

That would take some of the pressure off.

I do also agree that it does seem a bit of an advantage to have the 'special' careers (wizards and priests) also get loads of skills. I guess I never saw it as a problem, as I assumed players would only take a few of them in any one career (which I guess they do - but at character creation they could also take a lot.)

Hi,

Agreed, fair point K7e9.

While it does seem a little unfair on the non priestly/wizardly careers, it is also worth noting that some of these skills (spellcraft, channeling, invocation and to some extent piety) are advanced so do not yet gain the valuable yellow dice, and for most purposes will be used just to enable said character to cast spells/blessings. There has only been a few occasions in the last year where I have called for a skill check on these skills outside of performing a spell or blessing action. So you may perhaps view it as initiates have to "waste" 2 creation points just to be able to do what that career requires them to be able to do? Of course wiz appr dont need to invest in spellcraft and channeling at creation, but dont get the faith skills, so maybe still fair...?

As for Strolling Bones bang for buck, yeah difficult not to love an extra yellow for skill checks but in the games I've run action cards have incredible impact too. I would again suggest that wizard and priest career start to balance out from rank 2 as most of their actions are kinda forced into spells/blessings leaving minimal option for defensive cards or support and combat tricks, coupled with the tough choices on which skills to train. Disciples and priests only get a total of 3 skill advances, most will want invocation leaving only two split between the ones on career and faith. Lastly both these career types do sacrifice an order/faith talent slot...

To me it doesnt seem like there is much difference, just some swings and roundabouts

See, the thing about 'balance' is that you can't trust some innate human feeling of fairness and you have to essentially just look at hard math. So lets look at some hard math.

Fact is that Mathematically this is fine, much like mathematically the Trollslayer have 4 skills is fine. Here's the simple truth.

Every character has 6 open advances which are limited by the career limits.

Priests don't get that many more Skill Purchases, but like mages to be 'effective' they have to actually get ADDITIONAL skills. Meaning that while they may purchase 5 skills total, being honest some of your advances are locked into place. You HAVE to buy Channeling, and Spellcraft, or in our case the Priest is pretty much stuck spending 2 advances on Invocation and Piety.

So the priest doesn't have 6 or 8 skills so much as they have 2 purchases spoken for, and a few left.

So why do priests get access to more skills? Well lets take a look at my Sigmarite. Several of my spells are cast using Weapon Skill (Str). Awesome. It's not a class skill. How am I supposed to get it? Well if I was not a priest, I could just switch to a class that has the skill I'd like. As a priest I'm stuck following a career path, or leaving my order. Sigmarites are also battle priests, not just 'capable' of combat but trained in the martial skills championed by their very god. So for them to NOT have weapon skill, is about as ridiculous as Shallayans not having medicine.

Does this mean they should not learn to read their holy texts? Battlefield First Aid? No, it just means that some skills are required by a functional priest to even make their career cards go.

Math wise, the CHOICE to pick up 2 more skills is irrelevant. If you are a priest, the majority of the time you CANNOT (and I mean CANNOT) buy even all the skills you want. Oh you want to be a sigmarite? You have to buy weapon skill, invocation, piety, and if you want to actually face undaed, demons and all the enemies of your god which you are required to do, you should have discipline. Oh, that's already skills over your limit for your career.

So mathematically speaking the 'option' is illusory. The skills attached to a priesthood are often sensible for them to have, but the idea that you have to eliminate others only makes sense in the cases of some. I can see a priest of Taal without first aid, but not with the aspect of Rheya. Maybe manaan could get by without it. The fact is that purchase wise, the 'additional' skills are more than just suggestions, they EAT UP your skill slots and are in cases required to have a realistic and functional priest of your god.

So no. It is balanced. You aren't magically more powerful than others. The choice is illusory. With no more slots, you are almost more LIMITED in your skill choices than other classes, because to function with your blessings you're very very limited in what you are taking every career.

@shinma:

On one level I agree, yes a Sigmarite should have Weapon skill and yes they "have to" at least aquire piety and invocation. Still as a whole I disagree, the 4 skills you name can be bought on character creation, leaving the priest to purchase an additional 3 skills (if I remember correctly) throughout the first career. So math wise according to me is when this discussion becomes relevant.

By your logic a soldier "must" have weapon skill to be able to fight, discipline because you are trained to be disciplined in the army and so on. This can be said for many classes. What cannot be said for many classes though is the ability to pick up 4 at creation and 3 more during the first career. Leaving them with more skills trained and more free specializations that aid them when doing they "have to" than other classes get. Again math wise is what makes this discussion relevant.

Personally I don't care much about this, because I frankly do not care if all careers are equal or not. I mainly want them to fit the world, and I think priests (and wizards) do and that their extra skills adds flavour to the cults. But I still do think it is strange that they do not have to swap out skills. Why did FFG make this design choice? It puzzles me since all careers are created on a standard of 5 skills (with only the slayer as the only exception beside from Priests/Wizards).

Back to Priests and First Aid as an example: Does Ulric Priests really need it? To my mind they are too much in a battle frenzy to think about something like that. Does a Mannan priest really need it? Does it fit super well? Ranald + First Aid? Nah.

Furthermore the Slayer could opt to buy 4 skills at character creation, leaving him "full" and unable to buy any more trainings for regular advances (thus 'forcing' him to buy specializations).

Many of the other careers could have extra skills assigned to them that fit their proffession, but they do not. If you want to be a literate Envoy you'll have to make sure to buy that education skill out of career. But I think that it would fit Envoys to read?
Why single out Priests? Sure Invocation is (almost) a "must have" skill for them, but there are careers that have Piety without the blessings and they do not get any extra skills for it.

But after character creation and the first career is done I agree, you do not get more skill checks.

Again, go with the math.

It's possible, not really plausible. The priests who would use things like First Aid, also require the stats to back it up (namely int) or it's beyond useless (because if you're using it you have 2 purples more often than not). Building a sigmarite, you'll need your str, toughness, agi for dodge, the fel and will for casting, leaving you with far fewer points for skills than you'd like.

And you're still taking Invocation, Piety and you have 1 open slot for say WS per class tier.

Most of the priesthoods that need the extra skills also use a very different stat template, meaning 20+ points are going into those. So just because you CAN buy skills, unlike a wizard your stat allocation doesn't usually leave you the room for the previous example.

It's doable mechanically, but so is building a character with 5's in the wrong stats technically.

Now let's address some specific points K7 brought up because I think they're actually really good points.

1. A soldier is a class that you build to either kick ass and take names, direct people around with tactics, or be kind of tanky. The builds here differ muchly, but in general, the soldier career is very much geared towards combat. In order to be able to fight, you need Action cards, Talents and Weapons/Armor. You CAN try to get some int for observation, but that's really more of a scout, or investigative role. If a soldier doesn't take any form of weapon skill, and he doesn't bother learning to fight, he will simply be terrible at his job. So yes, I agree that a soldier (like many classes) needs certain abilities to function. A sigmarite like most priests is defined by his spells. And his spells REQUIRE invocation, piety, and weapon skill - all of which also split stats, so you can't focus to be 'better' in a specific arena. Math wise, this is VERY relevant.

Oh, and to be clear on my own perspective: Discipline isn't about being trained to be 'disciplined' so much as it's the stat that lets you not break when you see something awful. Empire soldiery are constantly exposed to fear (violence) checks, as well as the common hulabaloo (vampire counts, chaos, greenskins exploding, more insane chaos, oh and if I forgot to mention the madness inducing chaos) constantly. The Discipline (like the sigmarite) is much more the capacity to remain sane in the face of doing your daily job.

2. Manaan/Renald priests may not NEED first aid, but again, just because it's on their sheet, it's super unlikely they will spend their precious few skill advances on it. Chances are high they'll buy their order skill (which by the way has been a rule since previous editions) and the access that is being argued is unlikely ever to be touched. That Renaldite will be spending his points on Agi, Strength and Skullduggery. In addition to that we're looking at again (int) which isn't used for anything suited to these priesthoods likely being low, meaning education, first aid etc even with the yellow die will probably simply not work.

3. The Slayer could (and possibly should because of career path limitations) buy those skills, have his paltry 2 advances ready, advance something else out of career (for example his free dwarven Discipline), and then tag those skills at the end of his build when he's already rank 2. In effect stacking his 3 skill advances into the 2 slayer careers. So yes, this is actually not a terrible build idea.

4. This one is unfortunately a softer argument (IE not math) but your point about envoy's is a good one. I do think some classes can and should swap things around. A combat medic who is a soldier that trades a skill for first aid (shout out to the Reckless Dice Podcast) is kind of cool. The amber wizard in our own game was allowed to switch education for nature lore (after a long discussion in the group) which I think also makes sense. However, if we're discussing RAW then the question is when did the envoy get educated?

If it's a human, and it's pre-game, perhaps you're playing the career too soon. If you were a commoner, then hired by a noble who paid for a year or plus of university, you may want to start the game as a student, and switch to envoy a session or 3 in when you prove yourself as an envoy. SHOULD specific classes have different skills? SHOULD people be allowed skill swaps? I don't necessarily feel qualified enough to say for everyone. I know what the opinnions are in my home games, but universaly... not sure. We have the game we have, and I think overall it's pretty darn good. I loved an earlier discussion where someone pointed out that it isn't so much about career balance as it is about every career having things to do, and fun ways to build. But math wise, I don't think priests are somehow 'more powerful' or 'unbalanced' because of the 2 cult skills. Having more things to buy in my experience means the players are crying since they have to buy appropriate things that are even on their class list as non-career advances, because the skill slots simply don't allow for it.