WFRP 4e House Rules: Character Levelling

 

Improving Skills & Characteristics

• Drop all use of Advances.
• Characteristics only effect Basic Skills on character creation, and Advanced Skills when taken.
• Skills cost 5xp * current tens score per point to increase, so a skill of 42 would cost 20 to raise to 43 (4 tens * 5).
• Characteristics cost 10xp  * current tens score per point so, a Characteristic of 32 would cost 30 to raise to 33 ( 3 tens * 10)
• Non Career Skills and Characteristics cost double to increase, so it would cost a 1st level Nun 40xp to raise her Strength from 23 to 24
• The minimum xp cost for increasing a Skill is 5/point i.e. a skill of 7 would cost 5 to raise to 8
• The minimum xp cost for increasing a Characteristic is 10/point

 

Level Completion Requirements

• 1st level - a 1st level Career Talent and Career Characteristics: 3 @35
• 2nd level - a 2nd level Career Talent and Career Characteristics: 3 @40, 1 @35
• 3rd level - a 3rd level Career Talent and Career Characteristics: 3 @50, 1 @45 & 1 @35
• 4th level - a 4th level Career Talent and Career Characteristics: 3 @55, 2 @50 & 1 @40 

 

Level Completion Costs

• to level up in current career when criteria met or move to another career within Class: 100xp
• Changing Career without completing current level: 200xp
• Changing to a Career in another class costs an additional 100xp
  

These changes were made principally to simplify things, having 3 values on the character sheet for every skill seemed messy and made things look more complicated without actually adding much. I'm sure, as with many aspects of WFRP 4e that the RAW version works just fine playing online, but in person with bits of paper not so much. At least for us who need reading glasses these days.

Removing Advances required new criteria for leveling, and given it also makes improving Characteristics less significant making them be the criteria hopefully helps balance this out. It is also handy from a GMing point of view as it makes NPC Characteristics more predictable - i.e. a 3rd Level Guard must have have at least 40 WS.

I did do some basic spreadsheet maths before making these changes, just enough to go this is ballpark ok, but looking at them now I don't really entirely understand what I did, or how valid they are. In play this all feels ok, though the players may say otherwise...