Skills and Advancement: The Long Road from Incompetent to Mediocre

From Zero to Slightly Less Zero

Understanding Skills: What You Can (Poorly) Do

Skills in WFRP represent what your character has learned through bitter experience, formal training, or sheer desperation. Unlike other RPGs where you start competent, here you begin barely able to tie your own shoes—and that's if you're lucky enough to own shoes.

graph TD A[Skill System] --> B[Basic Skills] A --> C[Advanced Skills] B --> D[Everyone can attempt] B --> E[Untrained? Test the bare Characteristic] C --> F[Need at least one advance] C --> G[No advances, no test] D --> H[Gossip, Dodge, Climb] F --> I[Language-Magick, Lore, Trade skills] E --> J[No advances to add, so it's harder] G --> K[Can't even try]

The Skill List: Tools for Survival

How Skills Work: Rolling to Not Fail

Every skill is tied to a Characteristic. When you use a skill, you roll 1d100 against your Characteristic + Skill Advances (each advance adds +1). Your Success Levels (SL) are the tens digit of your target minus the tens digit of your roll. It's simple math, which is good because your character probably can't do complex math.

Skill Test Example: Dodging Death Base Agility: 32 Dodge Advances: +5 (five advances) Hard (−20): it's a giant's club Total Target Number: 17 SL = 1 − 7 = −6. Ouch. 7 8 Roll: 78 FAILED! Brace for impact...

Experience Points: The Currency of Not Dying

XP in WFRP is earned through suffering, surviving, and occasionally succeeding. You'll need every point to crawl your way up from "useless" to "somewhat useful."

Spending XP: The Advancement Menu

graph LR A[Experience Points] --> B{What to Buy?} B --> C[Characteristics] B --> D[Skills] B --> E[Talents] C --> F[25 XP per +1 at first] D --> G[10 XP per +1 at first] E --> H[100 XP per time taken] F --> I[Costs climb as advances pile up] G --> I F --> J[Cheapest inside your career] G --> J H --> K[Only from your career]

Career Advancement: Climbing the Ladder

Talents: Special Abilities for Special People

Talents are special abilities that make your character unique—or at least slightly less generic. They cost 100 XP the first time (more if you take one again), you can only buy the ones your career offers, and they're absolutely worth it when they save your life.

Combat Reflexes Cost: 100 XP +10 Initiative when working out combat order. Strike first! Hardy Cost: 100 XP Extra Wounds; the tougher you are, the more you get Sixth Sense Cost: 100 XP GM warns of unseen danger "Something's not right here..." Luck Cost: 100 XP +1 Fortune point each time your Fortune refreshes Resistance (Mutation) Cost: 100 XP Shrug off your first test against it each session. Tentacles delayed! Frenzy Cost: 100 XP Work yourself into a battle rage Hit harder, fear nothing, flee never Savvy Cost: 100 XP +5 to your Intelligence You're smarter than you look Night Vision Cost: 100 XP See well in the gloom, as long as there's a glimmer of light

Endeavours: What to Do Between Adventures

Between getting stabbed by cultists and running from beastmen, characters can pursue Endeavours—activities during downtime that might make them slightly more prepared for the next disaster.

Endeavour Ideas:

Training, Income and Banking come straight from the 4e Rulebook; the rest are this guide's suggestions to agree with your GM.

  • Training: Find a teacher and learn a new skill (costs money, takes time)
  • Income: Use your Trade skills to earn a pitiful wage
  • Banking: Stash your brass pennies with a banker (if you have any)
  • Carousing: Drink away your sorrows and maybe hear useful rumors
  • Shopping: Try to find that armor that might save your life
  • Treatment: Heal injuries, cure diseases, remove mutations (good luck)
  • Research: Study that mysterious artifact (it's probably cursed)

Real Advancement Example

Gottfried's Progress After 10 Sessions:

Starting Point: Rat Catcher with WS 31 and no Melee advances

XP Earned: 650 total (survived a lot, somehow)

Purchases (first five advances cost 25 XP each for a characteristic, 10 XP each for a skill):

  • WS +5 (5 × 25 = 125 XP) - Melee tests now at 36 instead of 31!
  • Dodge +5 (5 × 10 = 50 XP) - Slightly better at not dying
  • Melee (Basic) +5 (50 XP) - Can swing a club properly (Melee 41 now)
  • Endurance +5 (50 XP) - Tougher from all the beatings
  • Perception +5 (50 XP) - Spots danger a little more often
  • Combat Reflexes talent (100 XP) - Acts before getting stabbed

Spent: 425 XP

Result: Still weak, but now weak with options!

Remaining XP: 225 (enough to step up to the next career level, with change left over toward the Hardy talent)

The Reality of Advancement

Character advancement in WFRP is slow, painful, and absolutely earned. Every +1 to a skill represents blood, sweat, and probably some light trauma. But that's what makes it satisfying—when you finally become competent at something, you've truly earned it through suffering.

Remember: In most RPGs, you start as heroes and become legends. In WFRP, you start as nobodies and maybe, just maybe, become somebody who dies heroically instead of pathetically.

"I used to be terrible at everything. Now I'm merely bad at most things.
That's what we call progress in the Old World!"
- Albrecht the Survivor, former Beggar, current Mercenary

© 2026 Ray de la Paz. The Warhammer Fantasy RPG Guide. All rights reserved. · Ray's House of Fun
Warhammer and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are trademarks of Games Workshop; the 4th edition is published by Cubicle 7. This guide is an unofficial fan resource.