I know this could seems rude but that is a true question.

I am planning a new character and my gamemaster asked me what career I plan to follow.

I start thinking then realise it just doesnt really matter as the difference between careers are nearly inexistant. Except for the really specific career with special action cards all the career share the exact same actions.

All I will gain would be a few different skills or card slot, perhaps 1 box difference in attitude and a few HP but not really enough to justify calling that career.

Ivan Kerensky said:

Let me correct you

"I start thinking then realise it just doesnt really matter as the mechanics differences between careers are nearly inexistant. Except for the really specific career with special action cards all the career share the exact same actions."

Mechanically it is even worse, remember that the traits appearing in action cards are not, per raw, restrictions; and everybody can have action cards from slayers or wardancers for example.

Indeed then you are right. In the 3rd edition, careers are mechanically much more open, and therefore, differences are few. Mechanically you can divede them in Combat (melee & ranged), Support and Casting, but still in game terms, they are still very different. It is not the same playing a Witch Hunter than a Mercenary. While both of them can be good in combat, the roleplaying of the two and their intercation with the environment is very very different. The same for mages and priests for example.

One of the subtle brilliant things about Warhammer is that for the most part career matters more for roleplay inspiration than for distinct mechanical benefit (...obvious exceptions being obvious...). The role you play in a group is up to YOU. Instead of looking at a career path to define your output. Look at it as a way to define the actual character. Luckily with 3rd edition there is more than one or two routes toward being mechanically effective (in or out of combat now).

So I'd take a look through the career paths by looking at the back of the cards and decide what sort of miscreant you want to be in the Warhammer world. Then start deciding if you want to specialise or be sort of a 'jack of all trades' character. All are welcome, and all are equally in danger of being invaded by a nurgling and eaten from the inside out :-)

Career is what you come from. What your character develops into is your decision. WFRP Careers are no a min-maxer/powergamers wet dream (like in other generic systems like D&D or GURPS).

They are differentiated by roleplaying THEME, their skill set, and how good of a player you are. The other "abilities" are inconsequential, just as they were in previous editions of the game.

I've gamed with a lot of people over the years and if you handed some of these dorks two dwarf boatmen, other than by name, they wouldn't know how to think their way out of a paper bag regarding having an original personality, backstory, or going outside of "how to min-max" their skill at arms.

On the other hand, I've also gamed with a lot of people who are able to create an interesting character, without min-maxing stats, every time. These are the characters that you will remember YEARS after the game. They are characters who weren't measured by their damage per second or how many yellow dice they had in weapon skill.

Try not to look at their statistical aspects as the measure of a character. This game does a good job of making careers essentially equal..that forces players, like it or not, to have to do some thinking on their own during play on how to make the character live (or die) in interesting ways.

best,

jh

Ivan Kerensky said:

I think you are overvaluing action cards. In my experience, skill availability is much more important, and defines your character more.

How your character plays isn't defined by the career as much as earlier editions. Your career does set primary statistics though and those start higher. Your career also give you specific skills to train. The career ability is another defining thing about careers.

But mechanically your character is defined by his skills, specializations, action cards, statistics, stance etc,

There is a lot of mechanical freedom in the careers, but that isn't a bad thing.

I think this is probably a good time to talk about skill specializations. This is where a player should be looking at his career and saying, "What specializations can I add to my skills that are directly relevant to my career?"

jh

As said, roleplaying, the reason to play this sort of game and not a boardgame.

However, the mechanical differences do matter. Want not to pay xp through nose to learn a skills, pick the right career. Need more wound advances, pick right one. Want to increase a 4 stat to a 5 value, you need a career with it as one of two primaries. Do you like that tasty career special ability or that one for the other choice?

As said, you have choices abou how to get these things, which is where roleplaying comes in even more.

I love the career system and the way campaign background is given on them. Have starting players read aloud what is on the back if their cards, any 3 or 4 will give a good sense of the setting.

valvorik said:

That right there is the strongest aspect of the system. All the way since V1, careers have helped bring the Old World to life. Because of the wide variety of careers and rich descriptions of how they relate to the world, you have the strongest fluff you can dream of about the Empire ingrained in the career system.

Mechanics wise it is very open-ended and some careers are very similar, but that doesn't really matter if you play the social aspects of the careers in a semi-realistic fashion. Want to be a scout, a hunter or a roadwarden ? Whatever their stats, these roles are very different from one another.

I think the careers have a number of mechanical impacts on the character. As mentioned above they influence cost of developing attributes, they determine the cost you pay for your skills and they limit which talent slots you have. In fact the only thing they don't effect is action cards. I think action cards might look like the heart of the system to a new player but when you get into the game you will realise that skills and stats make more of a difference. After all most of the action cards only work if you can develop good enough results on the dice roll to trigger the effects and that dice roll is determined by other features.

However I would agree that the most important feature of the careers is to help develop the flavor of the setting. Characters in WFRP are not classic heroic adventurers of some other RPGs. They did made a living some how before they took up a life of adventure. In fact the odds are they are going to have to do a normal job to earn a living whilst they are adventurers (WFRP bad guys don't generally drop gold coins when they die so being the hero is often not financially rewarding).

Careers also help give guidance on your social caste and what organizations you could potentially belong to (see 2e Career Compendium for examples of organizations and 3e's "Secret Societies" ideas).

Careers cannot simply be broken down into statistical munchkinisms, and that's the beauty of them. ..and along those lines, I wouldn't have been too depressed if there werent' "career abilities" in 3e.

jh

Besides agreeing with the others regarding careers and roleplaying ...

Keep in mind that careers determine:

Skills

Talent Slots

Characteristics

What careers it is easiest to transition to

All these are pretty important things.

Skills -> Yellow skill dice are the best ones in the game. You pay twice as much XP to train a skill that isn't part of your career. Additionally, starting characters will start trained in skills ONLY from their career.

Talent Slots -> Without the appropriate talent slots, talent cards will go unused. Talents can be *very* handy.

Characteristics -> Starting characters gain initial free stat increases based on their career. Additionally, similar to skills, increasing non-career characteristics is more expensive. Also, your maximum is lower for increasing a non-career characteristic.

Career Transition -> Even for humans, career changes can use up valuable XP. This gets worse if the careers are quite dissimilar.