Sorry I feel such a noob trying to advance my character.

Anyway. I am a coachman, I can have two skill advances.

I take Education which is a non career advance for 4 xp, then I train it for another 4xp.

All well and good. Does this mean I have taken my 2 skill advances for Coachman? If so why does the character sheet show the 10 listed as fixed career advances and non career advances in a separate tab.

Should I put education in skill or specialization as well as in non career advances?

No, these are only Non-Career Advances, not General Career Advances. They should not count towards your career's advances at all and should be completely separate. Hope that helps.

Yes it does.

Thanks.

So I still have to train a career advance, which is good.

_{Also, aren't you paying a little much for those advances?}

Out of career advanced skills are expensive to train and acquire (as I found out when my own coachman acquired Education awhile back).

I halved the cost for out of career advanced skill advances for my group to encourage diversity of skills. 2 to acquire and 2 to train.

By the rules, 4 to acquire education might be worth it, but I doubt spending 4 for training would be worth the bother. Better off just changing careers if you're going that way.

jh

I'm allowing characters to advance in a second career in parallel to their first career, if the second one is justified by the story. This is actually working inside the rules.

For example, there's a Reikland Human Grey Apprendice Wizard in our group. He spent a week working as a hired help for an Apothecary fellow (this Apothecary was one of that cases of a person giving up being a wizard and spending the rest of his life as a servant to the Order, in this case being somewhat a guardian to the entrance of the missing resident wizard house).

I allowed the PC to spend 1 advance to have access to the Apothecary career. He then acquired First Aid from that career. As the rules permit, he can come back to any career he left unfinished as if it was a perfect fit. And being a Reikland human he can make the transition between careers by one less advance, even if it makes the transition cost 0. If in the future he spends more time in game training, let us say, dealing with herbs, I will let him buy Nature Lore from Apothecary even though he has never been using that career in-game.

We used that to allow another PC to increase his Willpower. It was in accordance to the story that he, a Reikland Human Thug, was also developing a role in society as a Mercenary. In this case, he made the transition without paying even 1 advance (as the Apprendice Wizard did), because of the similarities between Thug and Mercenary (and the Reikland Human ability).

I thought about it in part because I wanted my players to have a feel that their characters are going to where they want them to go. And also because this PCs were the first we made in 3e. So they didn't bought as much points in Attributes as they could, and we didn't know how important that was. So it made sense to facilitate things. But, as I can raise difficulties to fit a more powerful group, and as this is all being done with a careful look to the story, it's being so fun to let characters have a flexible approach to careers that I'm taking this way of looking to character development to any game I run.

Pedro, I think that's brilliant.

I too felt that especially in the first career, where a character spends what seems like most of his time, it is important to be less specialized. Considering that most players may get to only play a few WFRP characters in their lifetime,

I feel that your idea suits what most players would enjoy. That is, a little more freedom, and more potential for a character.

The Enemy Within has gone this way with character background ideas.

I'm going to add that to my house rules as an option. I'll probably stick with one standard advance. I already allow spellcasters to take a "lesser" faith or order. Perhaps it's time to allow all characters to do such.

Great idea!

jh

..

If your GM is not using the "minimum stay" optional rule from the player's guide, a Reiklander human coachman can acquire and train Education for a total of 2 XP.

Coachman to Bounty Hunter is 0 XP (Basic, Rural, and Urban in common).

Bounty Hunter to Watchman is 0 XP (Basic, Combat, and Urban in common).

Watchman to Burgher is 0 XP (Basic, Bureaucrat and Urban in common).

Acquire for 1.

Train for 1 more.

Return to Coachman for free.

I feel like the Reiklander Adaptable power is stupidly brokenly game-wreckingly good, so I use the "Minimum Stay" rule in my campaign.

That's exactly what I wrote about in my post above, r b, the exception being that I only permit spending advances in a career if that's based in the story being played. And I doubt the story would sustain such quantity of career changes without even spending some time in any of them just to prevent paying the cost to go from Coachman to Burgher straight away.

If the Coachman is developing some practices as Burgher ingame, I would allow (and actually promote, even if only by a suggestion) the PC to pay the advances needed to pass to Burgher and there spend 1 advance to get Education (if he has being studying it). Then, to come back to Coachman, that would be for free (since once you were in a career the rules states that it becomes a perfect fit), and if the character developed any new activity as a Burgher, he could go back and spend more advances as Burgher. That was what I tried to say as allowing parallel career development. The restriction is that the story backs it up.

I say "parallel career" because it happens at the same time as your "main" career development, but also because I allow that "going forward and back" between careers to happen between sessions. If the character has spend time ingame developing the skills and abilities (and place-in-the-world) of another career than his main, I don't request that he actually plays with this other career to spend advances in it.

I would even allow this happening focusing the specific skill the PC is wanting to gain. In the example, if the Coachman hires a classy Mentor to teach him to read and write and also some knowledges of the world, that would create the pillar for him to go to Burgher and spend the advances in Education there, as his teachings are being made in a Burgher-fashion. I don't see Careers only as jobs, I see them as the place you are in society, the role you play, how you connect with other people, how people see you, what kind of things you deal with everyday etc.

Cheers.