Hello everyone. I'm pretty much brand new to Warhammer Fantasy, as I've only been playing it for 3 weeks now. Well, we did some character creation and completely bungled it, at least as far as the rules go. (I'll explain more on that later.) Well, I've recently found myself with 4 advancement points and spent 2 of them. I'd really like to get some input about classes to go into, classes to avoid, and general tips that I should be looking at.

I know now that our characters were created incorrectly, but when I approached the GM about it to ask if he wanted us to fix it, he said he preferred it as we created them. I am playing a High Elf Scribe (yeah, bad choices out of my 3). I began with Intelligence 6, Education 2, and Observation 3. The rest of the stats are obviously fairly mediocre to bad. I've spent 2 advancement points thus far: Fortune dice on Intelligence and to get Folklore 1.

As you can probably guess, this character is very 1-dimensional. It rocks the Intelligence checks and not much else. Well, that's leaving me a bit stuck.

I honestly have no desire to make myself good at combat. The GM is using a weird house-rule where all armors and weapons count as encumbrance 1 each and you only get 1 point of encumbrance per point of Strength. This means that me, with my whopping Str 2, can carry around my Elvish Bow (it's a longbow with an extra yellow dice when I roll it. God am I wishing I hadn't spent 4g on it.) and a dagger. This means I don't have the Strength for things like armor or posing like Ric Flair.

I was seriously thinking about going into a class which grants First Aid or Medicine, but another player scrapped his Fellowship-based character to create a Human that he plans on going into either Clericyness or Wizardyness. This has actually left our party in a bit of a bind and meant that I now have to re-think my plans for this character. He is taking First Aid, so that's pretty much covered. He also took Int 6, so he matches me there.

Unfortunately, he scrapped the only character that had Fellowship. Our highest Fellowship character is someone who rarely shows up and has Fellowship 3 ... with none of the skills based on it. Since the GM never throws less than 2 purple dice at us (including in combat), and the average is 3, it means that we basically can't pass a Fellowship check any more.

So I realize that glaring weakness. Right now we have: 5 combat characters, 2 Intelligence characters, 0 Fellowship characters. Ouch.

In summation thus far: I'm a high Intelligence Scribe in a party with a huge weakness and another character that decided to join me on the Intelligence path. I'd really like to continue that path, but I'm not quite sure how to best go about that. Since we are allowed to train skills above 1, it makes sense to keep being a skill-monkey and going after the classes which give me a lot of skills.

Based on all that, where would you go next? My current layout for Scribe is thus:

1 - Fortune Point in Intelligence (done)

1 - Skill Point: Folklore 1 (done)

3 - Skill Points: Discipline 1, Education 3, and Intuition 1

4 - Willpower 4

1 - Action Card? Conservative Stance? I dunno. (I only have 1 Action card right now: Conundrum)

And then what class should I go into? I'd really like it to be something else that helps expand upon my intelligence based skills, but I'm not sure where to go.

I'm really looking for both tips for a beginner in how to develop my character while also continuing along the niche that I've developed ... if that makes sense.

Thanks in advance for any help or tips!

Not sure how to answer this. This is more a question of what you wish to roleplay.

Your character setup makes your character fairly powerful as he has rank 3 skills.

Do you have a feel how your character in your roleplay would like to go?

With your high Observation or Education, you can go for many routes, Investigator or Mystic etc

You can buy stats with xp points you know. Increase your str to 3 = 3 xp.

2 questions:

1. What are your characters complete stats summarized a bit more clearly?

High elf scribe

St

To

Ag

In

Wp

Fe

Talents:

Advanced Actions:

Trained Skills:

Specialized Skills:

2. What is your GM planning on playing/Play-style?

The reason for this is to help decide how to better round out your character so he doesn't sit there like a bump on a log until the one moment where he's actually useful..and then go back to being a bump on a log. In order to get into roleplaying this character you'd probably want to have a lot of warhammer background at your fingertips.

jh

1. I'm going off memory here since I don't have my character sheet (the GM keeps it), but:

Strength 2

Toughness 2

Agility 3

Intelligence 6

Willpower 3

Fellowship 2

Advanced Actions: Conundrum

Skills: Education 2, Folklore 1, Observation 3

Talents: I don't remember the name, but I seem to remember them being something like, "when you spend a fortune point on an Intelligence check and roll 3 hammers, gain a boon." and "when you make an Education check and roll 2 boons, gain a hammer." I might have them a bit mixed up, but that's the gist of it.

2. This is a bit weird. The GM himself tends to run games with a LOT of combat and very little roleplaying. I've been playing with this group for about 5-6 years now and that's always held true. The one exception? This game, for some reason. It's only been 3 weeks, so this could be a temporary anomaly.

Currently we've been hired by some monks to map out a section of the world where there's been some recent turmoil. People disappearing, crazy monster attacks, and lots of ancient tombs that apparently have their inhabitants coming alive. My character actually fits this very well. This GM likes to make us roll observation checks (though he increases the difficulty so high that only I have a decent chance of success).

So right now we're basically doing a lot of investigation (finding clues and talking with people) mixed into one or two combats per session.

Next time you make a character, I'd advise you to avoid ever having more than one "2" as a characteristic ever again

Here are my thoughts:

• You're obviously craving playing something inside this campaign that doesn't focus on combat perpetually, but it seems pretty clear that it's a combat-heavy campaign (most probably are).
• With that much combat prowess in your party, you'd be wasting your time to go the route of taking offensive skills..some defense would probably be nice though.
• In a non-roleplaying campaign, well, it doesn't really matter what your fellowship is, as he'll probably never use any meaningful "influence" or "shame" rules. No problem there. The frequent absence of the "roleplayer" of your group is testament to the style of the GMing (not to be critical..it just seems to be a fact you pointed out).
• Your only other good stat would have been willpower, but you've only got a 3 in that as well... Welcome to crazy and fear land
• If your GM doesn't do much "roleplaying" then you're probably never going to go to stance for your intelligence checks either. Skip the stance shift to conservative.
• So, you're left with intelligence: You've already checked off the FOrtune point. That makes sense.
• You should train all of your skills as soon as possible (remember, the rules state you can only TRAIN a skill once per rank, that includes creation. That means that at current no character should have more than one yellow die in any skill..take a look at your fellows)
• Your major contribution to this campaign will be a) your ability to recharge the fortune point pool with eagles on your education checks, and b) your diversity of intelligence skill checks you can make
• I would consider out-of-career advances in skills to bolster your diversity of skill checks
• I would consider changing careers to also bolster the diversity of your skill checks
• Definitely get another talent socketed right away too.
• Skip the stance shift
• You essentially have no defense against: wounds, disease, insanity, corruption, poison, mutation, fear, terror, shame, influence, fatigue unconsciousness, or stress unconsciousness. (which is everything) You have little to no regenerative capabilities (are you regretting min-maxing that intelligence yet?)
• Raising your WP is also a good idea..but probably not as good as dumping this character and making a more well-rounded one next time
• Recall the rules: No character may begin with a characteristic higher than 5 (including racial bonus). You might be able to get out of your incredibly bad choice there by telling the GM you screwed up. That would give you a LOT of points back to help diversify your character better.
• As for a TALENT: "I seem to recall" is the best one for a min-maxed intelligence. it exhausts to give a 2 white bonus to an intelligence check..which is an advantage because I'm guessing your GM doesn't have you make "multiple" intelligence checks in a row and simply has you make a pass/fail check.

anyways, hope that helps

SUMMARY OF SCRIBE

Primary Characteristics: Intelligence, Willpower
Career Skills: Discipline, Education, Folklore, Intuition, Observation
Talent Slots: Focus x2
Hard working and reliable, with dreams of a better life

Conservative
2
Skill
4
Fortune
1
Reckless
0
Action
1
Talent
2
Wound
0

Hard working and reliable, with dreams of a better life
Most people in the Empire are illiterate; the peasantry
and even a great number of the nobility do not
know their letters. However, it is sometimes necessary
for an unlettered individual to understand or
write documents, perhaps to stay in touch with distant
friends or to keep on the right side of the law. For
this reason, the services of scribes are often sought.
Some scribes work in the streets and market squares.
They sit at small portable desks, taking down letters
dictated by their clients. They draft correspondences,
legal documents (such as wills and contracts), and
even diaries. They also provide a reading service,
letting customers know about local announcements,
bye-laws, bill posters, and other notices. The services
of a scribe are not cheap – they often charge by the
word, and writing materials such as parchment and
ink are costly. The better scribes in the larger towns
of the Empire are often employed by scriptoriums.
These writing houses employ ranks of scribes to work
on illuminated manuscripts, official documents and
important letters. Work in a scriptorium is hard and
dull, but the pay is regular and generous. Scribes can
also find employment with merchant houses, noble
courts, temples, and even with organised criminals.
Despite the service they perform,
the livelihood of scribes is under
threat. Printing presses in many towns offer similar services for
competitive prices. An appetite for learning amongst
the growing middle class means there are more literate
individuals about than in years gone by. Faced
with hard times, a scribe sometimes joins parties of
adventurers, where they are often appreciated for
their advice in tight spots of the law or when looking
for job opportunities in scurrilous news-sheets and
pamphlets. Some adventurers actually employ scribes
to accompany them and record their exploits, so that
their heroic deeds will be immortalised in thrilling
chapbooks.
Typical Trappings: A scribe typically carries a
number of feather quills, a bottle of ink, an inkhorn
and a leather folder containing a dozen pieces of
parchment.
Career Ability: Your Education checks gain:

¬¬ Add 1 fortune to the party fortune pool

Actions worth buying for this character:

• Trivial Knowledge (a folklore & education-based reaction that for you adds 2 white to anything another PC does once every 3 turns.)
• Improved Guarded Position (willpower-based defensive card that makes it harder for NPCs to hit you or any of the other PCs)
• ***** In The Armour (an attack that rolls Intelligence + Observation instead of normal attack pools.) EDIT: That is absolutely ridiculous that the forum software edited the name of the card. The word that got auto-edited out is a benign and innocent synonym for crack, cleft, fissure, or weak-spot.
• Hunter's Eye (Observation check that will, with your stats, effectively add +3 damage to all the other PCs attacks )

Skills worth training for this character:

• Intuition . It's a lie-detector, plot-deducting sort of skill. It's the closest thing to a social skill that plays to your character's existing strengths. (Once you've got the Intuition skill, pick up the Scrutinise action.)
• Education. Since the GM is letting you train multiple times per rank, you might as well get it up to Rank 3. You'll want it to power your career ability to boost the party.

Focus Talents worth taking for this character:

• Air of Authority . It lets you make Intimidation rolls using your Intelligence instead of Strength. Effectively giving you a real social skill, despite only ever rolling Intelligence.
• I Seem To Recall. Two bonus white dice on the education checks, mainly for use with the scribe career ability.

Thanks guys!

I decided to spend my most recent xp in picking up Education. The game has devolved into being 100% combat at this particular moment, which was fully expected, so I had a hard time deciding between Education and ***** in the Armor and Education.

Let me just say this: It was everything I could have possibly hoped for and more. That one action makes me absolutely giddy. Every 3 rounds in combat, I get to tell someone how to do their job better and that is so, so High Elf of me. "A more experienced Wizard channels more energy by actually ripping it from the undead." (Player rolls to gain 7 focus.) "I thought you were a Dwarf, not a baby human. Put that club under his rib cage and LIFT!" (Player rolls a critical hit.)

Best of all, my High Elf got to act so superior to everyone else by telling them how to do things that he himself has no clue how to do. I loved it. The other players loved it because it was 2 free dice and they aren't complaining about that.

***** in the Armor will probably be my second Action that I pick up when I go into a new career. At this point, I've spent 6 xp and I think I want to raise Willpower up to 4, so I'll be saving for a while.

Do you mean Trivial Knowledge?

Anyhow, glad you had fun.

Do you mean Trivial Knowledge?

Anyhow, glad you had fun.

Yep, I meant Trivial Knowledge. Sorry - I don't own the books myself and I haven't played long enough to have everything memorized.

You could play him overconfident with knowledge.

This can lead him to dangerous situations.

Don't worry I read this in a book and...holy ****! What's that!!!

The scribe in are group had the highest Observation and went crazy seeing things he should.

putting your character in difficult situations has two effect

1. Give some roleplay between combat encounters

2. Can putt your character in early retirement.