Agmar_Strick said:

This is true, they complete one path and move on to another. However, the next bit isn't quite right according to the codex:

Eldar Codex pg 9

Once an eldar has mastered one path he chooses another, and in this way builds up a repertoire of abilities over which he has complete control. An eldar may travel many different paths in his life, and the skills he learns in each path serve to enrich further accomplishments.

Hellebore

After reading this thread I'm growing increasingly more annoyed with Amazon. First I have to cancel my DoW2 preorder with them because they completely screwed up all of their preorder stuff, and now they say that Creatures isn't out yet even though folks already have it. Grr. I'm going to give 'em a few more days, and then it'll be time to cancel yet another preorder and try to find the book somewhere else. (I suppose I could just wait it out, since I have an Amazon gift certificate and all... but I want to read the section on the daemons so that I can add them to my Daemon army mod for Dawn of War, dangit! *sighs*)

Cifer said:

Before the Fall they used to have machines eliminating any need for physical labour (as shown in 4e codex) and legions of thinking machines waging war for them (Torturer's Tale). Now they use only spirits of the ancestors, but that's because of tabletop flavour: no two armies can have the same theme, no matter how logical that would be.

Hellebore said:

I don't think it's that clear cut - afterall, we're also presented with the notion of many Guardians being former Aspect Warriors who are able to utilise their combat experience and some of their prowess, but who are unable to tap into all the lethal skills they once mastered. The truth of the matter seems to be somewhere between the two extremes of "keep the skills of all previous paths" (which would logically result in WS 70, Psy Rating 6 psykers with all the combat skills and talents, all the psychic powers and a boatload of other abilities on top) and "lose all skills from previous paths".

Now, remembering the disconnect between mechanical character advancement and narrative 'learning', a fair amount of what any character learns during his career remains unrepresented by XP-bought skills, talents and characteristic increases. I'd even go as far to say that such unrepresented learning makes up the majority of what any given character knows and understands (especially when you're dealing with investigative games - if you had to drop XP to pick up a new and painfully specific skill every time you found a new clue, character sheets would swiftly become unmanageably large). Things like the Dire Avenger's affinity for the flow of battle, as described in CA, is another example of acquired abilities unrepresented by mechanics.

Beyond that, however, I agree to an extent that when dealing with player characters, allowances need to be made. Remembering that the Eldar most likely to be found working with non-Eldar or otherwise wandering the galaxy are Outcasts (generally very young Eldar in their own right, helping to account for a relative lack of initial skills compared to what one might expect from an older Eldar), and that the period of time encompassed by a campaign will be a small fraction of a human lifetime, additional rulings aren't necessarily needed to cover the bulk of advancement.

At the upper end of things, I pondered adding 1-2 extra Characteristic Advances to certain xeno-specific career paths (so Eldar might be able to buy up to 6 Agility advancements, rather than the normal four), naming those advancements "Inhuman" and "Superhuman" respectively, and giving them costs that worked along the same progressions (even with cheap Agility advances, the fifth one might still cost 1,000, and the 6th 2,500...), and I've considered the idea in WFRP of certain careers for the long-lived races giving access to talents that simply allow another level of skill mastery with specific skills (in the case of DH, this would be more easily represented by making the +30 advance for a skill very expensive). An assortment of Xeno-specific skills and talents, and access to certain traits helps further give this impression of unattainable prowess... but they should be used sparingly even then (in my rough draft Eldar NPC stats - soon to be revised to account for the material in CA - the Farseer had Unnatural Willpower x2, and that alone is enough to represent a considerable degree of psychic mastery).

All that in mind, going mad with advancements for extremely long-lived characters seems impractical - such special treatment should still be done carefully and sparingly (and with commensurate cost) within the context of actually running a game including such characters, rather than simply going "this Eldar has masted twelve martial disciplines and is six times your age while still in the prime of his life... he thus has 130,000xp to spend" or something equally absurd.

That's why I like the concept of allowing Eldar to cash in Skills and Talents not on their current Career for a portion of the XP they put into those advancements. It justifies them not having the 100,000 XP that they "should" have.

Hellebore said:

If I were making an advancement scheme for eldar I would have discrete Paths (no lv 1 aspect warrior, or whatever) with a sizeable list of skills, talents, etc. and a short list of 'completion skills', skills, talents and advancements that remain after completing the Path.

So if you wanted to represent a really old eldar, just give them a boatload of completion skill sets from their previous paths.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I agree. On Dark Reign I was discussing similar things. I was thinking that non path skills learnt previously would drop by a level or two, or perhaps drop to counting as a Basic skill that they haven't taken (so after a long enough time an eldar will have every skill with some chance of success and some skills with a very high chance of success).

It was also why I was thinking of skill mastery as a possible means. If there are only those skills, perhaps the eldar can simply master them far more than anyone else, rather than coming up with dozens of new ones.

There is also the idea of creating a few Path specific Talents or skills that are lost when the path is changed. So they accrue everything else as normal, but those specific ones are only available when tapping into the otherself of the path. This is similar to Kage's approach, with skill groups (for GURPS) seperated into Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary levels for each Path.

Hellebore

I seems to me that the best way to deal with long-lived human-like beings in almost any of the current generation of game systems is to give each individual a Capacity. You could measure it in XP, skill ranks, whatever works best for you. That represents what the individual can currently maintain in terms of practiced expertise, commonly used knowledge, etc. All the game mechanics work exactly the same for these long-lived people as for anyone else, except that when they hit Capacity they have to start losing old skills and knowledge when they gain new skills and knowledge.

It's a pretty simple patch - simple is always better - but works well and matches up to what we humans experience in our own lives as we move to new expertises and get rusty with the old ones from lack of use.

I've just had a gander at the book and it all looks great. One thing that struck me was the Verminspeakers and how they reminded me of the Thorian Signs of the God-Incarnate:

• He shall have a great doom upon his brow.
• he shall be a witch of great power.
• he shall be altered in the physical form.
• he shall be able to talk and walk with the animals.

Bingo. Instant plot-hook.