So I have a pretty basic question about careers.
When one starts their first career, let's say Rat Catcher, does the PC get all those bonuses listed in the character description, or do you have to buy them as you go along?
If you buy them as you go along does that mean the numbers listed represent the upper limit one can buy the skills, et.al. up to? (I assume they do but clarification don't hurt.)
I'm assuming you're talking about 1e or 2e seeing as you're mentioning bonuses and 4e doesn't have that in the same way. So you mean the bit in the career description that looks something like this?
These are your potential advances. You can spend 100 XP to either increase one of the values in the top row by 5%, or one of the values in the bottom row by 1, up to a limit of what the advance scheme says. So taking all the advances for a Rat Catcher would cost 1,000 XP (100 each for WS and T, 200 each for BS, Ag, WP, and W). When you make a character, you get one free advance, so you sort of get a head start – so you only have to pay 900 to get through it.
Careers also have some other stuff going on, like this:
For your first career, you get all the associated skills, talents, and trappings. In some cases the list says "A or B" in which case you get one of them. Career Entries are a list of careers from which you can enter this career (this is mostly useful for planning – if you want to become an Assassin, you can see that you must first become a Champion, a Duelist, a Judicial Champion, an Outlaw Chief, a Spy, or a Targeteer), and Career Exits is a list of careers you can easily enter from this one.
Going from your first to your second career only requires two things: acquiring the appropriate trappings (you can't become a Cat Burglar without rope, a grappling hook, and lock picks) and spending 100 XP. It's a bit unclear whether you also need to clear your advancement scheme – on one hand, it says "Eventually you will have bought every advance available within your first career. When this happens, it is time to change careers.", but on the other hand it's not listed as a requirement for taking your second career. Either way, I would strongly recommend taking them anyway.
If you are not happy with the career exits available to you, you can spend 200 XP instead of 100 and take any Basic career, with some restrictions based on background and race (you can't just decide one day to become a Noble). This doesn't require you to finish off your advancement scheme. Basically, you're starting over instead of working forward.
Changing careers gives you a new advance scheme, where you replace any lower value with a higher value. The Cat Burglar's scheme looks like this:
These are all just higher than your old scheme, so they just overwrite it. Should you instead have taken the Tomb Robber career, for example, with BS —, you'd still keep your BS +10%. There's also a (partially) new list of stuff:
As previously said you need to have the trappings before you can start that career. As for the other skills, talents, and now advances, you
need to learn those to complete the career. In this case you already have Concealment, Perception, Search, and Silent Move from your time as a Rat Catcher, so you don't need to learn them again. You
can take them again, getting +10% to them, but you don't have to. You also
need to take all your advances to move on – no more ambiguity on that point. So finishing off the Cat Burglar career after having done the Rat Catcher career would cost:
900 XP for net WS +5%, S +5%, Ag +15%, Int +10%, W +2.
700 XP for Evaluate, Gossip, Haggle, Pick Lock, Scale Sheer Surface, Secret Language (Thieves' Tongue), and Secret Signs (Thief). You already know Concealment, Perception, Search, and Silent Move from your old career, but you have the option to spend 100 XP on each of them for +10 to that specific skill.
400 XP for the four talents.
So a total of 2,000 XP in addition to the 900 XP you spent to finish the Rat Catcher career and 100 XP to switch it up. And now you're ready to spend another 100 XP to become a higher rank of criminal: a Crime Lord, a Fence, a Master Thief, a Racketeer, or a Vagabond. OK, the last one is a step down, but the others are up- or sidegrades.
This is all for 2nd edition. 1st edition is similar, except:
- It doesn't separate skills from talents. Some skills are just passive bonuses, others open up new things to do, and others give you a bonus to things anyone can do. But they're all skills.
- Advances are +10% instead of +5%.
- Probably some other details, but basically the same.
It should also be noted that changing careers can often require some in-game events as well, depending on the career. Going from Rat Catcher to Cat Burglar is no big deal, but becoming a Steward of a castle might be hard to combine with the job of an adventurer (unless your campaign is focusing more on courtly intrigue, in which case: great!). In many cases this is expressed via the trappings needed to change career – you can't be a Sea Captain without a Ship.
