Skills and Advancement: The Long Road from Incompetent to Mediocre
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[Use characteristic if untrained]
C --> F[Need training to attempt]
C --> G[0% chance if untrained]
D --> H[Gossip, Dodge, Climb]
F --> I[Language-Magick, Lore, Trade skills]
E --> J[Usually with penalties]
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. It's simple math, which is good because your character probably can't do complex math.
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[25-30 XP per advance]
D --> G[10-15 XP per advance]
E --> H[100+ XP each]
F --> I[Maximum +25 total]
G --> J[Maximum +40 total]
H --> K[Career-specific only]
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're expensive, career-restricted, and absolutely worth it when they save your life.
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.
Common Endeavours:
Training: Find a teacher and learn a new skill (costs money, takes time)
Income: Use your Trade skills to earn a pitiful wage
Banking: Convert your copper to silver (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
Research: Study that mysterious artifact (50% chance it's cursed)
Real Advancement Example
Gottfried's Progress After 10 Sessions:
Starting Point: Rat Catcher with WS 31, no combat skills
XP Earned: 650 total (survived a lot, somehow)
Purchases:
WS +5 (25 XP) - Now hits on 36 instead of 31!
Dodge +10 (10 XP) - Slightly better at not dying
Melee (Basic) +10 (10 XP) - Can swing a club properly
Endurance +20 (25 XP) - Tougher from all the beatings
Perception +10 (10 XP) - Spots danger 10% more often
Combat Reflexes talent (100 XP) - Acts before getting stabbed
Completed Rat Catcher career, moved to Sewer Jack (200 XP)
Result: Still weak, but now weak with options!
Remaining XP: 270 (saving for Hardy talent)
The Reality of Advancement
Character advancement in WFRP is slow, painful, and absolutely earned. Every +5 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