Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, 2nd Edition Questions

[Glarx]

I know there's a Warhammer thread, but I don't know if character generation and rules questions really belong there. I didn't want to disrupt the thread, so I've started my own.

I'm new to this system and I've been invited to participate in a WHRP2e game. We have 1,200 experience and can select our careers. I want to play The Face, someone focused on talking, and so I think going Noble->Ataman is my best bet there.

I have lots of questions, but most pressing is: is that a worthwhile career progression for a social character? How much experience in a career do I need to spend before I can pay the 100 XP to move into a new one?

[Rhynn]

Ataman looks pretty excellent for a social character; +25 Fel for a second career is great, you can snag a bunch of useful skills (get Blather and Charm as a Noble, Command and Intimidate as an Ataman). It looks strictly better than your other main options (Courtier and Politician), and makes you a bit more worthwhile in combat than them, too. Noble Lord is a solid exit from Ataman.

Other good options for a social character:

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• Charlatan is completely awesome, as good as or better than Ataman; but obviously it lacks, by itself, the political power and prestige. +25 Fel, great skill selection, and you can go into Spy, and then Assassin, one of the top-tier combat classes (it's a 3rd+ career, with no basic entries, so it's perfectly great as a 4th career for a character who didn't focus on combat originally but has maxed out social abilities). Charlatan has several basic entries: Agitator, Camp Follower, Entertainer, Envoy, Hedge Wizard, Rogue, Smuggler, Thief... I'd probably start with Rogue, but Hedge Wizard would add some petty magic to your repertoire (and you could go Apprentice Wizard and the whole wizard path later).
• Captain is maybe a surprising way to go, but it's got +25 Fel, is a top-tier combat class, and can be a 3rd career (Squire to Knight to Captain, or Kossar/Marine/Mercenary/Militiaman/Berserker/Roadwarden/Shieldbreaker/Soldier/Squire/Watchman to Sergeant to Captain). Sergeant as an entry is much better than Knight IMO; it's already got +20 Fel (good for a second career) and is a great combat career, and it offer you Menacing, Intimidte, Command, Gossip, and Perception. Squire would be the best first career either way (+5 Fel, Charm, an extra language, Genealogy/Heraldy, Etiquette).
• Demagogue is great; +30 Fel, talents and skills, and you can enter Crime Lord (see below) from it - and it's a 2nd career (from Agitator, Initiate, Outlaw, or Rogue). I'd go Agitator or Rogue to Demagogue, then Crime Lord. The big advantage here is being an independent, self-made character. You could also go Outlaw Chief afterwards for combat skills.
• Crime Lord! It's got +30 Fel, awesome main profile overall, great combat ability (+20 WS/BS, +1 A, +6 W), geat skills and talents, and can be a 3rd career. (Valet to Steward to Crime Lord; Bone Picker/Burgher/Grave Robber/Smuggler/Thief/Tomb Robber to Fence to Crime Lord; and a bunch of other routes). Valet to Steward to Crime Lord would be a progression of solid social careers.
• Guild Master is probably a bit too sedentary for most campaigns, but it's got +35 Fel and great talents and skills. It can be a 3rd easily enough, except for that pesky trapping required: "Guild." (That is, you have to actually become a Guild Master before taking the career.)
• Herald is a solid enough second career, but nothing spectacular. Enter from Messenger or Valet.
• Highwayman is another twist; a solid combat career with great firearm ability, +25 Fel, Charm & Gossip. Unfortunately, the basic entry careers aren't too great at social stuff.
• Master Thief. Hey, +25 Fel! A 3rd career no matter what, though... you could always tack it on to Spy (from Camp Follower or Servant).
• Merchant, from Burgher (an "OK" basic social career) or Tradesman (not a good one). You could go on to Guild Master or Spy.
• Minstrel is a good one, and a 2nd career after Entertainer (a decent basic social career). Charlatan and Highwayman as exits are a bonus.
• Outlaw Chief is another perhaps odd option, but it gets +20 Fel and has good exits; but it has no basic entries.
• Sea Captain is a pain to get into, but has +30 Fel, and if you have Shades of Empire (or the Career Compendiun) it exit into Admiral, with +35 Fel and more of the usual skills.

There's other obvious ones, like Herald/Noble to Courtier, Agitator/Bailiff/Noble to Politician, the priest track (with a possible visit into Demagogue), Camp Follower/Servant to Spy, and Valet to Steward.

Depending on the books available, there's other options (there's are all in Career Compendium)...

• Ambassador (Realm of the Ice Queen) is hard to get into (Captain or Noble Lord, basically), but gets +40 Fel and all the skills and talents you could ever want. A good cap if you go Noble-Ataman-Noble Lord.
• Astrologer (Sigmar's Heirs) gets +20 Fel, Gossip, Etiquette, and can be entered from Noble, Student, etc.
• Cadet (Shades of Empire) is a solid basic career that can go into Sergeant (then Captain) or Herald.
• Cantor gets +20 Fel, Charm, and can be entered from Initiate and exited into Priest.
• Cloaked Brother (Tome of Corruption) is a solid combo thief-fighter-socializer, a sort of "Spec Ops Templar" (but not a templar), and can be a 3rd career (from Demagogue, Spy, Veteran, etc.). +30 Fel, Charm, Gossip, Suave, Linguistics, Schemer... very exclusive, though!
• Dilettante (Career Compendium only) is decent enough, with a wide skill election that includes Blather and Gossip and the Etiquette talent, and exits into Charlatan and Courtier.
• Dung Collector (Forges of Nuln) is a great social basic career. If the bag of maggots can't bribe you past someone, you can hit them in the head with the shovel. And you can go onto become a respected Rat Catcher or an illustrous Sewer Jack!
• Faceless (Knights of the Grail), a sort of Robin Hood/Zorro folk hero outlaw, gets +35 Fel, great combat skills (especially ranged), Charm, Command, and outdoor skills, and can be entered as a 3rd career (from Veteran, Steward, Politician, or Demagogue). On the down side, you'll be a stinkin' Bretonnian.
• Farmer... uh, bear with me... Farmer (Career Compendium) is actually kinda good for a basic career. You can take Charm, get Dealmaker, and can become a Merchant, Politician, or Steward. Pretty sedentary, though.
• Gambler (Sigmar's Heirs) as basic, then into Charlatan or Demagogue...
• Hedgewise is another unusual one. Go Hedgecraft Apprentice to Hedge Master to Hedgewise (all Shades of Empire) for +10/20/35 Fel and up to +3 Magic. The problem is you'll miss out on some really sort of necessary skills; but you could stray into Charlatan or Demagogue for those (exits for Apprentice and Master respectively).
• Horse Coper to Horse Master (Realm of the Ice Queen); a bit narrow on skill selection, but there's Charm, Evaluate, Gossip, and Haggle, plus Dealmaker and Suave. You could then proceed into Ataman.
• Lay Priest (Career Compendium only) gets +20 Fel, useful skills, an can be entered from Initiate, and then out into Prelate (Career Compendium) for more social skills.
• Monk (Tome of Salvation) is a basic career with +15 Fel but not much skill-wise; exit into e.g. Demagogue.
• Newssheet Vendor into Pamphleteer (Shades of Empire), not stellar but decent.
• Rapscallion (Career Compendium only) gets +30 Fel, some combat skills (including +1 A), good social skills and talents, and can be entered from Raconteur (basic, Sigmar's Heirs) or Dilettante or Gambler (see above) for stacking social skills. Then out into Charlatan, Duellist, or Spy.
• Village Elder (Knights of the Grail) is a weird one, but that's +30 Fel, Charm, Gossip, Intimidate, Master Orator, and other useful talents - it's very focused, with pretty much nothing that's not directly useful for a social character, and easy to get into (Mediator basic career, same book, good skills & talents), and leads out into e.g. Demagogue and Faceless. Surprisingly good, if you don't mind waiting for your 3rd career for any combat advances (but then it's a great one)!

I think I went a bit overboard.

In summary, go with your Noble-Ataman idea (and then Noble Lord-Ambassador); but my personal favorites are Agitator/Rogue-Demagogue and Rogue-Charlatan (or Rogue-Demagogue-Charlatan), and for a combat-heavy campaign, Squire-Sergeant-Captain is awesome.

You'll have to ask your GM about the specific rules interpretation; the wordings on pages 27-29 are ambiguous. There's talk about finishing careers, about changing careers once you've taken all the advances, etc., but you're not actually told that you can't leave a career early.

I've always (since 1E) let PCs switch careers without taking all the advancements; it just makes more sense to me. People, and adventurers especially, move from career to career even if they don't master their previous one (and often because), according to their circumstances. Even careers like Noble Lord or Knight of the Inner Circle aren't, to me, about being superbly competent - if you have amassed the trappings (wealth and power) and can bring about the circumstances in-game (e.g. get yourself inducted into the Inner Circle of a Knightly Order), you can take the career. Some Noble Lords are fat, lazy, weak, unpersonable fools with little in the way of skills at governing! Some careers may involve more rigorous screening, of course - for instance, I can imagine situations where an incompetent could rise high in the Orders of Wizardry, but it would definitely be an exception... generally, I'd require at least Mag +3 to have been taken for someone to become a Wizard Lord.

But your GM might require you to take all the characteristics advancements for Noble before moving on!

Also, remember that you can use old careers' exits if you find you don't like your current options!

[Glarx]

Great, thank you! Noble Lord and Ambassador were definitely where I intended to go next!

Would it be possible for me to actually start the game as an Ambassador? Could I spend 300 experience to buy up to that? If so, would I be able to spend experience on all of the things I failed to buy during my mad rush to the finish line?

[Morty]

Spending more XP to buy into a career you don't normally qualify for is subject to GM adjudication, I think, so it's really up to them.

[Rhynn]

Totally check with your GM; I'd probably set a hard limit like "you can be in a second career," and probably check on a case-by-case basis. Some advanced careers have trappings that are supposed to make them harder to get to, and starting with them could be unbalancing. (Hundreds of gc, full plate armor and a warhorse, etc.)

And you can only buy things from your current career. The problem with speeding through careers (if it is allowed by the GM - I'd probably put a stop to a player trying to just switch from career to career without taking any advancements) is that you're going to miss out on buying great skills multiple times; you can buy skills 3-4 times (I forget; each time you buy it after the first is +10% to tests), but you can only take a skill once per career.

Also, it's just not very useful. Why wouldn't you buy +10 to Fel from your first career, then up to +20 from your second, up to +30 from your third, etc? It's not any cheaper to start buying it from +0 in the third career. There's no advantage to just having careers and no advancements under your belt, except to start out with super-expensive trappings if you're creating an experienced character. And if you don't have such trappings, you're basically just throwing away XP you could have used on advancements to make yourself better.

It's just an all-around better idea to buy everything useful from your first career (all the characteristic advances you think you'd ever get, basically), then the second career, etc. Skip stuff you specifically don't need, like duplicate skills you don't need the bonus for, talents you have no use for (like Specialist Weapons), and advances you just don't find useful (like Int for a berserker warrior, etc.) ... even then, it's generally a good idea to just get all advances, IMO, to round yourself out a bit.

[Glarx]

I see! Thank you for the responses -- I'm on my phone and my reply will be paltry in comparison.

What is a superior hand weapon? The bulova the Ataman gets isn't started anywhere, to my knowledge.

Skills can be taken multiple times, but what about talents? Will multiple Marksmans get me multiple ballistic skill increases?

I intend to go ranged, with a crossbow as my current weapon. Is that wise, or should I try and get my strength higher up for melee weapons?

[Rhynn]

I intend to go ranged, with a crossbow as my current weapon. Is that wise, or should I try and get my strength higher up for melee weapons?

Going ranged is fine, provided there's someone in the party fighting in melee. You'll want to be capable of melee combat, too - in WFRP, even wizards (especially wizards, in some cases) need to be good with a sword...

You'll want to consider getting the talent Specialist Weapon Group (Gunpowder) somewhere, because firearms are a pretty great ranged option (especially once you have a brace of Best dueling pistols, or maybe a couple braces... fire and forget, baby!). Pistolier is an exit for Nobles; you could go from Noble to Ataman to Pistolier (an exit for Noble) to pick up some great combat advances, then to Ambassador (an exit for Ataman) to Noble Lord. Pistolier is a very solid "mid-tier" combat career (+20 WS, BS, +10 S, T, excellent talents & good skills) and not very hard to finish. Many of the Pistolier talents are also useful for crossbows.

What is a superior hand weapon? The bulova the Ataman gets isn't started anywhere, to my knowledge.

It probably refers to Best craftsmanship weapons. The Old World Armory has rules for specific weapon types. The general rules are +5% to hit (WS or BS), -10% encumberance for the weapon. The optional rules include Best craftsmanship maces (hand weapons) getting the Pummeling quality.

Skills can be taken multiple times, but what about talents? Will multiple Marksmans get me multiple ballistic skill increases?

Talents can only be taken once, unless it's something like Specialist Weapon or Lesser Magic where you can take different versions. So "once only unless an exception is stated."

[Glarx]

I see that guns are nice because of Impact, but Unstable seems so terrible by comparison...

I'm not concerned with being a real combatant, because we already have four of those (including two wizards!) and I'm just there to be a pretty face and do some talkin'. Pistoleer is interesting and I'll investigate that further after Ambassador.

[Cikomyr]

WFRP is a great game meant to define more who your character is rather than what he is good at.

Just 'cause you want to be a good "face", that shouldn't be the sole determining characteristics. Why do you want to be a "face"? To manipulate? To negotiate? To get into certain social circles? To inspire troops? To agitate crowds? To intimidate weaker souls?

You can go into respectable to disrespectable, and any shade of grey in between. Hell, you could even go for Priestly careers.

[Rhynn]

I see that guns are nice because of Impact, but Unstable seems so terrible by comparison...

That's why you get dueling pistols (and a crossbow as a backup is a good idea), i.e. Best craftsmanship pistols. Best craftsmanship firearms either lose Unreliable, or upgrade Experimental to Unreliable. They're expensive as heck, but what else is a Noble Ataman Pistolier adventurer going to spend gold on?

You stick as many pairs of pistols into your belts and baldrics as your GM will let you get away with (the pirate Blackbeard supposedly wore something like 4 pairs) - at least two front, two back, and two on your chest (and at least two in holsters on your saddle) - and Quick Draw them, fire, and discard, until you're at the last one (or switch to a crossbow after the last one).

Edit: Also, yeah, Priests are really quite good for social stuff, especially if you have the Career Compendium and can mix in some Prelate, maybe some Warrior Priest (also in Tome of Salvation)...

[Glarx]

Interesting. Thank you all very much! I may have additional questions in the future, but I think that covers the curiosities I've had while making my character!

[Rhynn]

Also, in case your GM gives you trouble about trying to carry loaded pistols upside-down, assure him that the ball would not roll out because it's either wrapped in something to make it stick to the barrel, or tamped down with a small obstruction of fabric (that it will easily blow through on firing). That's why you needed to ram the ball/charge down the barrel, because it was meant to "stick" just a bit and stay in place.

For that matter, crossbows could be carried loaded without much danger of the bolt falling, provided they had the right bits - although because a loaded crossbow is under enormous tension, you wouldn't want to do it for very long, because you'd damage it.

[Cikomyr]

I remember a player arguing that he was travelling with his crossbow loaded all the time.

Me and the other players were arguing that he'd wear the crossbow damn quickly if that was the case...

[Rhynn]

I remember a player arguing that he was travelling with his crossbow loaded all the time.

Me and the other players were arguing that he'd wear the crossbow damn quickly if that was the case...

Yeah, basically it's feasible to keep your crossbow loaded and drawn for a long time, but it's going to stress the prod and the string which will eventually break. In games, I generally allow it when you're expecting a fight (so you can be loaded at the start of a fight), but no one goes around with their crossbow constantly loaded. (There's limits to what kind of jolting and tilting the bolt is going to stay put through, too.)

It's not worth getting too picky over, I think, unless you also enforce carrying your self bows (longbow, etc.) unstrung - obviously, a strung longbow is also under great stress, and would deteoriate over time. (Wearing a strung bow like baldric is one of the most hilariously stupid things you see done with bows in TV shows/movies, right up there with drawing and holding a bow for an entire scene.)