Useless Careers - more of them?

A quick question to all readers of this blog - do you think that we need more interesting but rather useless / helpless careers? And if yes - do you have some ideas of new careers? I'm completely clueless what could be added into MFRP.

Career groups

As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, I do not plan to add career classes, as I view it as absolutely unnecessary. However, lack of career classes leads to problems with determination of starting career - one huge table will lead only to confusion and almost no chance to hit a career desired by a player, even with multiple rolls.

Idea is simple - there will be several career groups, roughly divided by the nature of particular careers. No stat level requirements - any player may choose any group.

Preliminary list of the career groups:

• Academic - educated men, or pretending to be educated.
• Working Class - peasants, servants and various laborers, both from urban and rural environment.
• Military Men - professional fighters.
• Nobility - rather obvious group. Still I'm not sure if it will be included, mostly because of lack of many noble careers.
• Professional Criminals - from beggars and grave robbers to cutthroats and thieves.
• Townsfolk - various residents of towns and cities, from tradesmen to scum.
• Rangers and Woodsmen - hunters, poachers, roadwardens, toll keepers etc.
• Entertainers and Scroundels - always ready to entertain you. Or entertain themselves at your expense.

As these groups are very general and have fluent limits, some careers will appear in several groups. In example, Mugger may belong to Townsfolk and Professional Criminals groups, while Roadwarden may be picked from Rangers and Woodsmen and Military Men groups.

Skills, careers and traits

Some initial thoughts about these three very important aspects of the game mechanics:

• As in the second edition of the Original Game, skills and traits will be divided into two separate groups. Skills can be tested, traits only affect some aspects of the PC / NPC / monster.
• It doesn't make sense to divide talents (i.e. Very Strong or Ambidextrous) and traits (such as Inhuman stats or some monster abilities) into two separate groups as game mechanics treat these two in the same way. Even mutations are traits (but these will be listed separately, mostly because their impact on the role-playing aspect of the game).
• There will be no career class in the MFRP - now dumb PC can be a healer of wizard, just very bad one :D
• I'm not sure how to make random career determination without career classes, but I'll figure it out. Maybe one big table and three (or more) rolls and picking one result - what do you think about it?
• I want to keep the idea about basic and advanced careers - In my opinion it's very important aspect of the game. And it's absolutely logical.
• I'll use simple method of posting career descriptions: one post - one career.

Sorry for the lack of more creative posts - I'll try to post some career lists later today.

No fate, just luck

I thought a lot about using Fate Points and / or Luck Points in the Morgenstern game. Here are some initial thoughts and ieas about using luck in MFRP:

• PCs may use Luck Points to re-roll any one failed test, such as characteristics check, skill check etc.;
• PCs may use Luck Points to add one degree of success to the result of the test (even after rolling a dice);
• Starting number of Luck Points is equal to one plus one per each stat score ended by number seven;
• Dying PC may "push his luck" to avoid death but must have at least one Luck Point still available. I will make an appropriate table with some effects of such deed (see below);
• I don't know how Luck Points should be restored - in WFRP style, once per game session, or maybe during some extraordinary deeds / purchased with XP. Any help with it will be appreciated :)

I'm still not sure how to handle the role of Luck Points as Fate Points - it's fairly powerful option to not decrease number of LP by one, but if I create the table of "death and avoiding it" correctly, it may be enough. Basic ideas about table entries:

• It wasn't your day - you die anyway (result of 00 on d100);
• Bonus 100xp for surviving near-death experience;
• Additional insanity points;
• Demon or maybe even Chaos God sensing the "disturbance" and centering his attention on the PC;
• Wrath of god?
• Additional critical effect?
• Nasty mutilation?
• Your luck is ending - permanently decrease number of Luck Points by one.

If you have better / additional ideas about it - feel free to drop a comment :)

Differences between the editions

Click to enlarge

Short explanation of the differences

• Skill advances are now dependant on the selected profession - you can't just buy +10 advance for 100xp like in the 2ed WFRP.
• There are no Fate Points but players may "push their luck" to try avoid death (it will be explained soon).
• There are no mixed scale for the basic stats - all abilities are percentile.
• There are no Magic Points in Morgenstern FRP - all magic spells are based on Hit Points.
• Basic ideas about Hit Points were explained here.
• Corruption track (Taint Points) will have mechanics similar to the Insanity Points (and similar to the corruption rules from Dark Heresy).

Purposes of the Morgenstern FRP

There are several reasons why I started this blog (and writing of the Morgenstern Fantasy Role Play):

• I was extremely dissatisfied by the second edition of WFRP, especially even more broken rules and shitty world changes. Form of the game (tiny and empty rulebook + tons of crappy supplements) was even worse. Third edition is just too different and too expensive for me (imagine how much I must pay with up to seven, eight players!).
• Re-writing the whole system seems to be simpler than adding tons of house rules to the rulebook(s), especially when both editions have good and (very) bad things inside.
• I know that there is a Zweihander (still unreleased tho) but it seems to be more "2.5 edition", while I want to make Morgenstern as more "1.5" edition.
• We really need WFRP OSR and someone need to start it, along with Zweihander and Small But Vicious Dog.

About Hit Points

Contrary to the WFRP, there is no Wounds in the game. Purpose of the Warhammer Wounds was only a "life points counter", describing physical damage. Hit Points, originating from the earliest editions of D&D, are much more abstract - aside from physical condition they may depict almost every aspect of the character's status - effects of fatigue, magical drain or even hangover. Here are some more straight examples of additional purposes of HP in the mechanics of MFRP:

• Casting spells (1e-style spells, not 2e / WFB style) cost you certain amount of HP. There will be appropriate talents helpful in reducing the cost.
• Fatigue, aside from the negative test modifiers, may reduce HP (really screwed up CON tests).
• Character at 0 HP is not dead but just critically wounded / exhausted. Critical Hits are very important aspect of Warhammer FRP so they can't be missed :D
• Characters exhausted to the level of 0 HP are unconscious until they can regain at least one Hit Point.
• If critically injured characters become fatigued, they drop unconscious as well.

These ideas are still in very experimental stage and will be extensively tested in the next few weeks.

More information about the abstract Hit Points can be found here.