Hi, I've owned the core set for a couple of years. Found it difficult to digest, so I kept putting it away. Finally took it out last Sunday when there was a low turnout, and had a couple folks make characters. It was more illuminating than all my various readings, at least as far as character creation goes.

One thing that I couldn't find out was what it takes to cast spells or blessings. The respective don't seem to state it clearly anywhere, but I guess you have to be an apprentice wizard or initiate, or have spellcraft or invocation trained, or something like that?

Are there any expansion that provide more races than the core four? Since we get "Reiklanders" instead of "humans", that opens the doors for other derivations, like Kislevites. For that matter, I'd love to see a "Dogs of War" type of party that fields races that would normally never work together.

Are there any more careers than those in the core and Adventurer's toolkit? I noticed there's no assassin, which one player was looking for (and yes, I suggested that there are otehr careers that can serve in its stead).

steveg700 said:

Yes, only wizards/priests can use spells/blessings (Witches can use spells as well, but that career is included in "the witch's song adventure).

steveg700 said:

Hero's call provides rules for character creating for different provinces of the empire, some other dwarven holds, plus ruled for creating ogre and halfling characters. Rules for creating kisleveits are not present (at least at the moment). No other expansion provides new races at the moment.

steveg700 said:

Yes, most expansions avaliable for WFRP3ed contain about 10 careers, adventures beeing the exception. Some adventures do include careers, but often fewer.

And yes, there's an assassin career, but I don't remember what expansion contained it (could be Lure of Power, but I'm not at all certain).

Thanks for the wealth of info.

How is a career designated as being a wizard or priest, and thus capable of casting spells? Is this all implicit, or is there an explicit explanation of what makes a given class capable of using magic

Fpr omstamce, a player eyeballs the mystic career. How does he determine whether or not this is a class with access to spells or blessings?

An easy way to quickly see if a career is able to learn/cast spells/blessings is to look if they have an order/faith talent slot avalible on their career card. The careers that does can learn to use spells/blessings- I.e. the only basic careers you own at the moment that can cast spells/blessings are Apprentice Wizard for spells and Initiate for blessings. A character starting as an apprentice wizard recieves the basic spell cards (channel power, counterspell, magic dart) for free, same goes for an initiate, who recieves the basic blessing cards for free (curry favour, minor blessing, blessing of health). Then wizard/priest characters can only learn spells/blessings corresponding to their order/faith.

The witch/warlock careers from the Witch's Song have a "witch craft" talent slot and this enables them to learn and cast spells. The Witch basic career doesn't get any cards for free I believe. Learning spells without beeing part of a college of magic (order) makes you a witch, which is a crime punishable by death.

Most player spellcasters should start as apprentice wizards and move along to acolyte and then wizard, higher ranking wizard and priest careers can be found in the Hero's call. If you want more orders of magic to choose from, the Winds of Magic (WoM) expansion add more orders (so that all the orders present in the empire are covered), same goes for priests where all faiths of the empire are covered in the Signs of Faith (SoF) expansion.

These two expansions also add new (fun) rules for you as a GM, as WoM adds corruption and mutation rules and SoF adds rules for diseases.

As a last note, the mystic cannot cast spells/blessings.