Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 15:22:30 -0600
From: aahz@hal.com (Tom Wylie)
Subject: first draft, submitted for your approval
To: C9221777@cc.newcastle.edu.au
X-List: The WFRP mailing list
Apparently-To: wfrp-list@cool.khis.com



I find the fact that most skills can only be bought once rather irksome.
For example, one can buy Pick Locks multiple times, and engineers get
Mining twice, but you can't get any better at History than your Int.
So, a new concept: buying skills multiple times.


The Warhammer skills can be grouped into four major areas:

        1.  Skills which add to a stat.  Fleet Footed, Very Strong,
etc.  These cannot be bought multiple times, and are uninteresting.
        2.  "Can or can't do" skills, which allow you to do something
which others can't, but automatically work.  Read/Write, Cast Magick,
Luck, any Specialist Weapon.  These can't be bought multiple times either
(but tend to lend themselves to optional skill rules, see below).
        3.  Skills which aid a standard test _or_ grant some special
knowledge or ability.  Examples include Concealment, which helps
the Hide test, or Identify Undead, which lets you do just that.
        4.  Skills which aid a standard test _and_ grant some special
knowledge or ability.  For example, Escapology allows the user to escape
from chains and such, _and_ gives a modifier to the Busk test.


The skills in groups 3 and 4 can be bought multiple times, but it gets
progressively more expensive to do so.  As always, buying the skill
in the first place costs 100 XP.  Buying bonuses for skills in group 3
is linear, so it costs 200 XP for +10%, 300 XP for +20%, etc.  For group 4,
the cost is exponential: 200 XP for +10%, 400 XP for +20%, etc.  In either
case, the skill bonuses affect _all_ rolls associated with that skill.


When can you buy up a skill?  Well, there are three places to get skills
from: background skills, careers, and as a non-career skill.
        1.  You can buy a skill once in any given career.  Thus, an
engineer can only get Engineering once, but he can then go into Gunner,
Sapper, and Artillerist, and buy it 3 more times (and so on).  This
overrides any special rules (such as the one for Pick Locks) in the
WFRP hardback.
        2.  You can try to buy it as a non-career skill at any time.
        3.  You can get it as a background skill.  This is a "free"
purchase of the skill: thus, if I'm rolling up a warrior and get Disarm
as a background skill, and roll mercenary as my career, I have Disarm at
+10% for free, and if I were to enter free lance, I could buy the bonus
to +20% for 100 XP...  and so on.



Note that for skills which specific subcategories, such as Specialist
Weapon and Art, each subtrack is considered its own skill for purposes
of buying and applying skill bonuses.


Exceptions to the above:
        1.  The Orientation (underground) skill for tunnel fighters
is considered its own type 3 skill.  Thus, if a tunnel fighter becomes a
runner, it only costs 100 XP to buy the normal Orientation, and he
has a +10% bonus to using the skill underground, above any additional
bonuses he buys with Orientation.


Optional skill rules (not necessarily related to skill bonuses):
        1.  Require Read/Write to be purchased for each Additional
Language.  Languages such as Arcane, which explicitly state that learning
the skills involves being able to read/write it, do not require
their own Read/Write skill.
        2.  Just to make life annoying for the warrior types...
Specialist Weapons are normally in group 2: either you can use the
weapon at your full WS, or you can't.  Under this option, Specialist
Weapons become group 3, and when bought allow using the weapon at
_innate_ WS, before any advances.  Skill bonuses can then be bought,
with a limit of the WS advances the character has taken.  (This option
makes some amount of sense from a "realism" point of view, but will
tend to bog warriors down, and discourage them from branching out.)


---------------------------------------------------------------------
These rules are copyright 1993 by Tom Wylie.  They may be distributed
freely so long as this copyright is attached.  Suggestions or comments
should be emailed to aahz@hal.com.
