I'm waiting for the Core set to arrive... but am now wondering about the guides, vaults and expansions.

My understanding of the core set:

• gives you everything to get started and keep you happy for several gaming sessions

My understanding of guides and expansions:

• If you have the core set, you don't really need the guides
• If you want more careers or special rules you get the expansions

Adventurers toolkit - extra careers and rules, general

Omens of War - extra careers and rules - if you want more things with military flavour

The Winds of Magic - if you're interested in more magical careers and rules

The Creature Guide and Vault - if you want to add more adversaries to your adventures

Advancing further?

Q: If you only have the Core set, will there come a time when a character can't advance further and you will need to get one of the guides or expansions?

I've tried looking around the forum and site, but couldn't find the answer.

Thanks,

Michael

Welcome to WFRP, Michael. You'll get 30 careers in the core set. As a PC gains advances they'll be able to transition into new careers. I haven't seen a hard-limit on careers thus far, but 5 seems to be the most I've heard anyone playing up to. So a player could easily complete Ratcatcher and then transition to Roadwarden, then jump to Dockhand*, pick up Gambler, and end up on Soldier, all from the core set (and that'll take a LOT of sessions!).

Having said that there are some specific career paths. The core set'll give you 2 levels of the wizard career path, for example (Apprentic Wizard and Acolyte) and then the Winds of Magic box will give you another career (Wizard) that requires the previous two careers to be completed. From what I've seen of the future supplements it looks like we'll have another magic box at some point that'll give us another 2 wizard careers so if it was desired a player could take wizard careers 5 times in a row, each time transitioning higher up in his order. Priests have a similar career progression (Signs of Faith for their tier 3 career) and the Witch Hunter and Zealot also have some career progression.

In short - if you haven't got a Wizard or Priest, it's really not an issue. If you do, pick up the relevent box, and then hope for another box with the 4th and 5th careers to come rolling in or have the players choose different careers (like scholar) to represent what they're doing in-game. No reason a Priest of Sigmar couldn't take Soldier, for example!

Good luck!

*Is that an Adventurer's Kit career? Mine are all mixed up. You get my meaning though!

Hey, i started with core box quicky followed by advenures toolkit (i can recommend it btw), and to be honest here, i dont like the whole advanceing neither did our entire group or gm. So we said **** IT! lets do something else!

Either we missed something or whatever, but we just found ourselves to stupid to find advancement easy

• Max 25 (25pts stil subject to change to less though) advancement points to invest in your career
• Max 3 fortune dice to a characteristic
• Change career costs 4 advancement points. (and you keep your advancement points from previous career)
• Max advancement points in wounds = Refeer to your career advancement table for wounds.

With still the rules for extra costs for stats that you dont start with or have trained etc.

We just felt it was all build up to be more rewarding to advance advance advance back and forth, what if you truely love what you are? I mean i like my Norse Berserker (custom made), why should i change?! >

And about our 25pts to use almost everywhere, "will characters loose their unique feel"? maybe alittle maybe ALOT, depends if you have people trying to make a deadly shaylla priest for example, we are pretty decent in our group to play what we are and stay real with the backside of our careers.

Anyways, dont know if you make any sense out of this at all
But this was our awkward way of handling it.

Good luck dude!

FTG said:

Michael:

You could conceivably just use the core and just have characters "re-take" a career as their advancement. For example: Soldier ---> Soldier2 (call it a sargent) -->soldier 3 (call it a captain). This works just fine.

You could also just purchase the PLAYERS GUIDE for $15 (PDF) and that has ALL of the careers, including the advanced careers and still do the above, which will give you nearly limitless combinations. I've actually done that in my house rulebook. I've even gone so far as to include ANY 2nd edition careers (theme material only of course) which gives us even more combinations.

I think a good way to do it as a GM is to look at what your players have chosen for characters and then:

1. Create an "optional" advancement tree using just that career (see re-taking soldier career above)
2. Create a couple sentences of background for that career (soldier/sargent, soldier/captain) relevant to the current PC. If you're in Reikland and you want to name the unit he's associated with and note that he's on leave/training-assignment, you can expand the player's experience.

Here's how I did it in my house rules: dl.dropbox.com/u/167876/WFRP3%20Hafner%20house%20rulebook%20v3.1.pdf

I also added halflings, ogre and foreigner characters.

I'm also with an earlier poster in that I believe the "advancement/career change" mechanic is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more complicated than it needs to be. Give the Reiklander a different ability instead (like double use of the expertise dice) and just call it "4 to switch careers. IMHO of course

Thanks for the replies, I think you've basically cleared things up for me.

The last rpg I've played was AD&D - and that was 20 years ago. I like the sound of a system where the characters are vulnerable and every time you get into a fight there is a chance you could die - makes you think!

I'm guessing the whole career and character advancement system will make more sense when I've got the game in my hands.

I'll probably get an expansion or 2, but I guess my main concern was of the game needing you to keep expanding and buying more stuff (a bit like the 1970s D&D, where you start with Basic book (for first few levels) then get the Expert (for the next levels)).

Thanks also for your ideas such as Soldier->Soldier2 etc. I like the thought of tailoring things to suit your players' needs and not just sticking to a prescribed path.

I'm looking forward to reading (and finally playing!) the game.

All the best,

Michael