Just about to start playing WFRP and doing characters. One of the players has elected to be a Pistolier.

The trappings on the card list armour a horse and a 'brace of pistols' as being typical for the Career.

However - even with a starting wealth of Affluent a character will only be able to afford one pistol (5G) and this is without armour and a horse.

Alternatively he doesnt have a Pistol - which kind of negates the point in playing a pistolier.

Am I missing something or would you give the player a pistol as part of the career?

Shieldstromme said:

I wouldn't give the player a pistol. If he wants one he needs 5g and then not buy anything else. That's just fine. Black powder weapons should be rare

This is a tricky issue with a few careers, iconic gear that is beyond purchase ability starting out. In some cases the career card gives the possession of the item in question, but in others not.

You can look at that a few ways.

One, though it's basic you can't really start in it with the gear unless you've built up the cash to get it, so really take it a career transition or two down the road.

Two, you start without it, narratively explain how you're impoverished, left for dead on battle field without gear or similar. Work your way back to having one.

Three, explain how you have one but it's not yours. You're in service - this may require the entire PC group being soldiers, servants of a noble house or similar. Make that "felt" and not a freebie - you are not your own master.

Others may have other suggestions.

When we did character creation I let my guys purchase career trappings listed on the career card with creation points. That way they were limbered up to pay cash for items they knew they'd need if they wanted to survive my usual shenanigans (clothing, detailed equipment, bags, food/water, etc). But that is more in the territory of a house-rule and isn't really anything "official."

My house rule is that beginning characters start with a POOR quality item of everything listed in their trappings. If they want to pay the difference to average, ti's up to them.

For the pistolier, I'd have him start with two POOR quality pistols.

jh

Actually, reading rules, no need for major tinkering.

Player spends 5 creation points to be wealthy and has 5 gold crowns, and that is the cost of a pistol. Let him/her trade in 12 shillings worth of other gear to have 12 powder/shot uses. If he wants two, same money gets 2 poor items as 1 regular given they have half value. One one poor one and a poor horse etc.

I allow heroes to buy anything listed in career trappings without having to make rolls to find it, as long as they don't have it currently.

2 poor quality pistols is 5g

jh

As has been said, poor quality could work. However it is important to remember that an unreliable weapon of poor quality also gets it's unreliable rating lowered by one, hence the pistol will have a rating of Unreliable 1 and explode when rolling one chaos star on any attack roll with the weapon (even if the attach succeeds), so two poor pisols won't last for long and will need to be repaired constantly and will cause damage to the pistolieer as well.

An alternative solution might be to come from a poor noble family which did not afford to buy a brace of pistols, so they gave you a brace of crossbow pistols and sent you off to become a pistolieer. Of course all the other pistolieers laughed at you and therefore you are out adventuring, to get the coin needed to buy real pisols. Might be a good start for a back story eh?

Otherwise I like the idea of creation points to buy trappings, talk to your GM.

Heh. We've created three groups of characters from which none started with the "suggested items". On the top of that in every group there was one player who "suffered" the wealth and bought all the trappings the group needed so that other players could max. their stats.

I would also go the route that your Pistoleer is no longer in the service of whatever army/force he was part of when he had all his gear. He's managed to scrape together whatever he chooses as his starting wealth in gear when he left. I may optionally (on a case by case basis) make some exception to that rule if the player came in with a convincing (and fitting to the story) back story of how he perhaps was a deserter and brought some of his equipment with him that he couldn't normally afford at character creation. But that would be a big exception and he has to be happy with the fact that he's a deserter and is going to be tracked down at random times by bounty hunters or other forces.

Good point Kryyst. Probably another example of why he may have a poor quality item and whatnot. When you're decommissioned or desert from the army, they don't let you take their best stuff

On a related note: Why does it seem taboo that a new character start with a poor quality item (e.g. poor pistol)? Are they supposed to be epic and powerful at first level like in D&D or something? Yea, it sucks to be level 1. Deal with it

jh

Emirikol said:

It's just a bit pointless unless you change the price and availability of normal quality items - melee weapons especially (Or make sure the players stay VERY poor).

Do you consider thi an issue with the presentation of the rules or should poor items not really ever be used?

I would prefer to see a weapons/eq chart with poor/average/superior quality listed. I think it would allow for more diversity and usage. Of course the math isn't usually that hard (except for people who went to school in CO , but the presentation of obvious things can be useful. I think this is why I dislike the paragraph style of equipment presentation. I'm a visual person. I like to see it, not search for it and then have to improvise evertime someone wants to buy a tool that should be listed as obvious to their trade (rant off

jh