Wednesday 24 April 2024

WFRP 1e and 2e Careers: The Herdsman

 Next up we have the Herdsman basic career. This was an okay Ranger career, effectively being a missile fighter/musician combo (deal with it!), plus the Herb Lore and Animal husbandry skills are quite useful too. If we are being picky, it seems a bit generous to give the Herdsman a Strength advance and on the other hand, a little mean by the standards of WFRP 1e to not give a WS bonus. I think I might have been inclined to give the Herdsman a Toughness bonus rather than Strength. There is also a bit of me which thinks that a Herdsman might be in line for a Movement advance too, or access to the Fleet Footed skill: lots of movement in that particular job.

 
 
This career didn't make it into 2e, and Liber Fanatica proposed, quite reasonably, that it should be part of the Peasant career. 

 
 
So the only things that didn't really survive were the Herb Lore and the musical skills. This is possibly acceptable, although perhaps a little bit of a shame. On the other hand, one of the terrible, terrible mistakes in the Peasant career was to make the Drive or Trade (Bowyer) choice: if that choice were expanded a little then it could work quite well. And adding the relevant musical skills to the Performer skill would be easy. Not sure the Concealment, Gamble and Row skills work very well in there though: I think you would want slightly more role protection for other careers than that. Anyway, this is my suggestion for the Herdsman, really not that different.