We played our first chargen+mini skirmish session of WFRP last night. I'm pretty sure we messed up almost every rule, but we'll work our way through. I had a few questions looking at the advancement rules afterwards:

1. Is there some limit on how often you can change careers? It seems like a Reiklander can get to almost any basic career (except the casters) through free career changes with 3/4 matching traits. Do most humans end up freely changing between the basic careers?

2. Is there a limit on fortune dice for an attribute? I seems to remember three from somewhere, but I can't find it. Again, with Human free career changes, it seems like it would be pretty easy to pice up fortune dice on your primary attribute with almost every advance. Do most groups limit this in some way? three per, one per rank, no more than the attribute's value?

We have an all-human party of three, and the way we drew/decided on the premise, I think we're going to be changing careers quite a bit, at least near the start.

lurkingowl said:

No limit that I know of, but it sure will be hard to get the dedication bonus if you jump around too much. But well, the Reiklander special ability is called "Adaptable" after all. Remember that it's not until you dedicate a career that you get to keep the special ability of that career, so really there is little point swiching between more than two or three careers for a human.

lurkingowl said:

No, there's not really any limit for that. But in our group we use the "one per rank" houserule. It works out well. Also, fortune dice are not that super powerful. So jumping between careers just to gather fortune dice for attributes are not especially well spent advances in my opinion, but sure you could build a character who specializes in beeing lucky (fortune dice) and not have any (or few) skill trainings. That would be kind of cool.

lurkingowl said:

There's a thread discussing this a little here: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

As k7e9 said. We limit characteristic fortune dice to 1 per rank like skill training.

Also, I recommend you enforce roleplaying for career changes, especially if they aren't some sort of progression. So, if a character wants to change their career without finishing it, there should be some story-based reason for it as well as a story-based way for them to begin learning that career. If they want to switch to a Soldier career, then they need to find a way to get enlisted in some sort of military or para-military organization. If they want to switch to Apothecary, then they'll need to find someone to mentor them, or pick up a book of alchemy/herbology and study it and spend time experimenting, etc.

In addition, if you are finding players switching careers too often, even with roleplaying/story enforcement, then you can simply impose a limit that a PC can only switch careers after every X number of experience, such as 3xp. That way, they must spend at least 2-3 sessions in a career before they can move on.

Remind PCs too, that by not finishing a career they lose access to the Career ability, which they can permanently retain if they finish the career.