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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 9022986" data-attributes="member: 6879661">Happy to oblige.So one of the big changes I like between earlier editions and 4th is the way advancement happens. In 1st Ed and 2nd Ed career completely controlled the limits of your advancement. If you're a Wizard's Apprentice you're limited too +15% WP and you buy that in 5% increments of 100 XP each. If you want to get better than that, you need to change career to one of a limited number of other careers right. In this case probably Wizard, but maybe scholar or scribe. This provides very clear paths for development but is also pretty constraining. Power is limited by the chain of careers you need to progress through to get to the really punchy stuff. Except we know this didn't really work and some careers were much much more powerful than others.In 4e power is balanced by diminishing returns. Firstly you don't need to purchase in steps of 5% you purchase individually a point at a time. Secondly the cost of advances increases the more you take. For instance increasing an advance in strength the first five points costs me 25 XP each point. The next five cost me 30 XP, the next five 40 XP, the next five 50, then 70, 90, 120, 150 etc. Careers say what skills and abilities you can develop but not how high you need to develop them. It the diminishing returns that set this effective limit. The end result of which is that now you can play a Bounty Hunter and keep on getting better and better at Bounty Hunter stuff without being forced to arbitrarily forced to switch to Vampire hunter or Targeteer in order to progress. At the same time if I'm a gribbly power player Guard who decides to throw all my advances into Toughness I'm going to benefit at first. But once I get to +20 advances I'm going to find I could put +15 into other skills for putting another +5 into toughness.The second element of advancement is that the distinction of base and advanced careers is gone. Every career has 4 levels and entry level for instance Troll Slayer and three more levels of that career. In this case Giant Slayer, Dragon Slayer and Daemon Slayer. Each layer opens more talents, a wider range of ability scores, and adds new skills. You can only move up a layer if you have completed the layer below which means buying one talent, putting 5 more advances into each ability stat and each skill at that level.There aren't career exists, instead you can progress to the entry level of any other career. If it makes sense and you have the advances, your GM might let you move to a higher level. For instance a 2nd level Road warden might move to a 2nd level River Warden instead of having to start as a 1st level River Recruit. Interestingly you can also train in skills and talents that aren't on your career if you find the right trainer, or it makes sense. This costs you a bit more experience than it would normally but worth it in some circumstances.To summarise, still very flavourful, but much more flexible and with the opportunity to play the character how you want to, rather than being constrained by artificial limits. Happy to answer any questions.</blockquote>

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