Career & Out of Career Advances

I consider a Career a field of experience. This usually means a socially recognised career, which is how people refer to a role of someone executing some specific tasks, works or skills. That is to say, a profession. But more than this social representation, a Career (as we are using them in our campaign) is a field of experience. What dictates a character from following a Career or another is the actual ingame reality of the actions this character is taking: which skills is he really developing, and from that, which Field of Experience he would better fit in, more than the role people say he is performing.

An example of that is Lenora. From the things that she used to do for surviving she would be considered a Bone Picker. And that was what she did, she moved from battlefield to battlefield to ruined village picking what was left and selling it. But the way she did it was slightly different from the usual Bone Picker. Because she spent much more of her time traveling through the lonely and cold lands of Nordland than bone picking, and because she did it mostly alone (trying to get away from danger as best as she could), the Career we chose for her as representing best her Field of Experience was Vagabond.

These considerations open to other discussion. While the absolute majority of a character's advancements will fall inside his Career's proposed Skills and Talents, maybe, if he try hard, he will search for things that are out of this specific Field of Experience as the rulebook dictates them. That is to say, it is possible for a character to enlarge his Field of Experience beyond that of a given Career.

So, if a character is trying to learn something that his Career advancements don't contemplate, I usually study the possibility of permitting the Player to give me arguments in favor of this Out of Career Advancement and specially roleplay this effort ingame. If the character tries hard enough, for a considerable period of time, and maybe if he passes one or more rolls of an appropriate characteristic (usually Intelligence, as it represents his ability to understand and apprehend the new Skill or Talent), then the advancement opens itself to the character.

How much will it cost varies greatly. I usually try to measure the difficulty of the Skill or Talent in question, as well as how much time ingame the character spent studying and training it (and the quality of the study and practice, such as having a teacher or not, passing ability rolls or not, and so on). For a Skill I usually imagine it starts as costing 200xp and if the character continue to apply himself in it´s study it eventually turns to be 100xp. An Out of Career Talent must be much more difficult to acquire, and I would only permit so with excellent roleplaying.

Example of this efforts are in the disposition of both Thorne and Berthold to learn the Read/Write Skill. They are both learning it from Chades. Thorne had started sooner, right after the group has reached Middenheim for the first time. So he already has access to the skill at 100xp. Berthold's disposition to learn how to write was what made him contact Chades and thus enter the group in the first place. He got access to the skill at 200xp, being studying it for a shorter period, but he will probably just get it when it comes to 100xp or when he reaches the Verean Investigator Career (his programmed third Career, after Watchmen). This will vary from what happens ingame, if Chico and Dani roleplay a way of Berthold getting the Knowledge (Law) from the Watchmen Career without he having to learn how to read first.

If you are following me, it will be apparent that the Out of Career Advancement House Rule is a completely subjective one. That is the intention. We really try to base the rules we use in the ingame occurances. Our goal as Warhammer Players is to focus in the story, and take from the story every modification that we use. In this sense, the Game Master is not the enemy of the players, but first and foremost the mediator of the story.

This House Rule we use is not really a new one. If you run through the Warhammer books you will see that sometimes the stories permit some Out of Career Advancements that are usually brought to characters from reading special books, or having out-of-the ordinary experiences (such as a Wizard getting access to the Dark Lore (Chaos) Talent through a Major or Catastrophic Chaos Manifestation).

An example of Out of Career Advance through reading a book is in Ashes of Middenheim, where reading the Liber Mutandis a character can learn the Knowledge (Magic) Skill if passing an Intelligence Test and spending 100xp. Other more complex example I have created myself: the Luck of the Fisherman book that is in Thorne's possession (and from which he will be able to benefit if he actually learn how to read someday…).