Am I right in thinking it's a lot cheaper, if you're juggling two lines of dissimilar careers, to do mid-career transitions? Say you have a giantslayer who wants to take a career with no matching words and then go back to the slayer path. He spends the four outright, caps out in the new career, gets to switch back for one advance (covered by capping), and then can do an easy switch to the next slayer career at the end of giantslayer. Versus finishing the career, paying through the nose to switch out, then paying to switch back in. Seems to unduly penalize finishing each career in turn if you're doing wildly different things with your careers.

There's not a lot of reason to switch mid-career unless you're just spamming White Characteristic Fortune Dice by taking Mystic, but yes, it seems more of a pain to swap at the end, but you also get the benefits of:

• bonus specializations for anything you trained while in the completed career
• keep the career ability permanently
• etc.

In the example above all of the careers still end up getting the dedication bonus, just 2 less dead xp is spent getting there with the mid-career switch. Seems weird.

You can swap out of the Slayer path?

*sigh*

I must die to cleanse my Honour. But wait a second I need go learn how to a barber I can always die with honour later.

Mental slap at FFG if thats possible.

Never seen why anyone would change mid career, unless they were in a starter career they hated.

a) careers are abstractions - also the principle holds for any set of incompatible careers. As for why you'd do it, you end up spending two less xp for the same result which seems a weird rules artifact -

ABCDcomplete > 4-1 adv > EFGHcomplete > 4-1 adv > BCDX

is more expensive than

ABCDincomplete > 4 adv > EFGHcomplete >1 -1 adv -> back to ABCD to complete > 1-1 adv > BCDX

the weirdness arising from transition costs only being based off the current career, not past completed ones. It's explicitly cheap to go back and finish a career you didn't finish, and then use that career's keywords for the transition, but you can't do that for a career you've actually finished.

It doesn't quite work out the way you're envisioning. Technically, there's nothing that prevents you from returning to a career you've already completed - you just can't make any further career advances in it since you've already marked them off. It seems kinda silly, but it's legal with the rules as written.

EDIT: In other words, you're not just choosing between:

• ABCDcomplete > 3 (4-1) advances > EFGHcomplete > 3 (4-1) advances > BCDX (Total advances spent = 6)
• ABCDincomplete > 4 (4-0) advances > EFGHcomplete > 0 (1 -1) advances -> back to ABCD to complete > 0 (1-1) advances > BCDX (Total advances spent = 4)

There's also:

• ABCDcomplete > 3 (4-1) advances > EFGHcomplete > 0 (1-1) advances > back to previously completed ABCD and do nothing > 1 (1-0) advances > BCDX (Total advances spent = 4)

That's legal as near as I can tell (though I probably wouldn't argue with a GM who interpreted otherwise).

It costs the same number of advances as your second option does (4 total). It also means that you get access to two different career abilities throughout your second rank, unlike the path you proposed which would abandon one of the career abilities for 11 sessions.

Interestingly enough, this path actually works out better for humans (who save an extra 1 advance per transition that would have cost 1 or more). For them the costs are 4, 3, and 2 instead of 6, 4, and 4. Weird.

EDIT #2: Probably the easiest house-rule solution for those who are bothered by the numbers above would be to let people count their transitions as if taken from their current career or any completed career. That's certainly more elegant, mildly less weird, and somewhat fairer for the dwarves and elves.

The troll slayer to giant slayer transition is a poor example since:

Special: A character can only enter this career after he has completed the Troll Slayer career. Furthermore, a Troll Slayer may not become a Giant Slayer until he has slain a troll or performed a comparable feat of combat prowess.

However- I see no problem in transitioning back to an incomplete career to benefit from the transition bonuses.

As a GM, from a strictly RP-wise viewpoint, I would heartily frown on a player attempting to bounce back and forth between two careers. By "frown upon", I mean I probably wouldn't let them unless they had a REALLY good RP reason for their CHARACTER to want to do so, but also how they accomplish it.

Just saying. You're the GM. There is no reason to allow min-maxing if it doesn't make sense. The rules for WRFP are fairly loose for a reason: To allow the GM to tailor the story how they want.