Finishing the character

Career

Each character has a current career. This represents what the character would be doing if they weren't out adventuring and saving the world all the time. When not adventuring the character can progress in their career, and leave it for a new career. It is in this way that the character gets better as in each career there is the chance to learn more skills and improve the character's profile.

The way this works is that for every career there is listed an Advance Scheme. For example, for the Bodyguard, this is [WS+20, S+1, W+2, I+10, A+1]. The adjustments are the maximum the character can increase that charateristic above the initial value in that career. Thus if this character took all these advances, then went onto a Bounty Hunter, which has [WS+10, BS+10, S+1, W+2, I+10, Cl+10] the only advances that character would get are the additional ones, ie [BS+10, Cl+10] - they are not cummulative. The way I administrate this in a game is using my own version of the Warhammer character sheet, which is included in these pages. For each characteristic there is a large box for the current value, and lots of little boxes below it. These little boxes are for indicating possible and taken advances for that characteristic. The number of boxes corresponds to the maximum advancement in all the careers. When entering a career, lightly shade the number of boxes in that the advance scheme indicates; including the ones which are filled in heavily already. When you take an advance, fill the box in heavily. Then when you change career, rub out all the boxes which are still only lightly shaded.

The standard way of chosing your first career is to roll against a chart which is relative to your class and race. However, I usually allow the players to choose their career. For example, is someone wanted to play a magic user then the chance of their first career being a Wizard's Apprentice is only about 10-15%.

Having chosen the career, you then look it up. On each career is listed a description of what it is, a list of skills, trappings, career exits. There is also noted the advance scheme. There are two types of career - basic and advanced. Your first career will be a basic one; advanced careers are only got to by the careers exits given in the career description.

For your first career, you automatically get all the skills listed, plus all the trappings, plus one free advance. To get the other advances, you need to pay for them with EP - experience points (YES! a system that can spell!!). It costs 100 EP per 10/1 on an advance scheme, depending whether the characteristic is a percentage score (like WS, or Cl) or a 1-10/any value score (like S or A). So including the one free advance, a character created as a Bodyguard would need 600 EP to use up all the advances for that career.

For any other career after your first one, you don't get the free advance or any of the skills (although you still gt the trappings for the career). Each skill also costs 100 EP to gain. So if the Bodyguard went onto become an Outlaw Chief which has 5 skills and 18 advances not in the Bogyguard advance scheme, it would take an extra 2300 EP to use up that career.

There are several ways to change careers.

• The player may change to any career listed in the 'Career Exits' section of the career description. This costs 100 EP.
• The player may change to any basic career listed on the chart for the characters class. This costs 100 EP.
• The player may change to any basic career listed on another class. This costs 200 EP.

Generally you do not have to wait until you have used up all the advances/skills on your current career before changing career. However in some circumstances you may have to: ie moving from Wizards' Apprentice to Wizard Level 1.

Here is a warning to Dwarven Warriors: be careful of the 'Troll Slayer' basic career. The only career exit is the advanced career 'Giant Slayer' - which has no career exits.

Generally some common sense is needed when changing careers and gaining advances and new skills. EP is usually given out in the middle as well as the end of an adventure, so some players want to change career/gain skills in the middle of a adventure. The GM will have to be convinced that there is some source for this new knowledge - ie meeting and NPC character, etc.

Odds and Ends

Having obtained your career, you then need to note the new skills down, any trappings that you gain, and the advance scheme of that career. Then take a free advance!