Careers in WFRP 1e and 2e - The Artisan's Apprentice & The Tradesman

 The Artisan's Apprentice (1e) and the Tradesman (2e) are another interesting comparison in that although in one sense they are equivalent careers in that they are the basic career 'feeder' career into the 'Artisan' advanced career which is common to both 1e and 2e, the Artisan's Apprentice is really not conceptually like the Tradesman.  The Artisan's Apprentice, the Alchemist's Apprentice and the Wizard's Apprentice are clearly mapped out as basically being:

Now, in and of itself there is no problem with this as a workable fantasy RPG character concept.  The problem in 1e though is that other characters - say, outlaws - already start at the level where they can legitimately pull their weight as one of Robin Hood's merrie men and women, if not the hooded man himself.  

The designers of 2e seem to have realized this and upgraded the "baby Artisan" character concept to the level of at least a working blacksmith.  So that leaves us a few choices here:

We can keep the 1e concept the same and modify the character to be a more useful version of the same thing

We can recognize that the designer of 2e did kind of know what he was doing when he made the change and follow his logic.

We can incorporate the Tradesman as an option into 1e and use both concepts.

At first glance, the latter option might look best, but it runs quickly into two issues - not insuperable, but worth thinking about.  Firstly, 1e has an 'all-or-nothing' approach to skills, you either have them or you don't and better performance in those skills is achieved by increasing the mental and physical attributes related to them.  In practice, this looks something like:

A character has 'Smithing' skill.  This enables them to construct anything that a Smith might realistically be able to make.  In 1e, Smiths can double as Armourers and Bladesmiths too, which makes them very useful.  I forget if there are special rules relating to weapon and armour construction lying around in one of the source books (I have a nagging suspicion that there are, perhaps in Warhammer City?) but ignoring that for a moment and just using the rules in the core book, the character rolls against Dexterity +10 to construct whatever it is they want to build.  There is a suggestion that for armour the character may need Metallurgy skill was well but there are no details as to whether these should be sequential tests or averaged tests.  No matter, the point is that if the 'Apprentice' has the skill, then they can make the thing and the only advantage the Artisan will have is that the Artisan may have a higher Dexterity score: the Artisan's Apprentice career allows the character to increase their Dexterity by 10, the Artisan by 20 and this is the only measure of difference. In WFRP2 by contrast, skills can be taken up to 3 times, so a character in theory can get another +20 from additional skills in addition to their relevant characteristic.

As an aside, dwarves should be rubbish at making stuff in WFRP v1 since their Dexterity scores are so low, averaging 21: humans by contrast average 31 and those of elves and halflings average 41.  The top percentile dwarven artisans are marginally less talented than the most fumble-fingered halfling...don't worry, the writing team in WFRP1 loved elves, but the dwarves got their revenge in WFRP2!

In any case, then if the 'include both' option is taken, then we need to decide if Tradesman is a 'Basic' career (i.e. one that a starting character can enter into) or an 'Advanced' career (i.e. a character must have been in one or more Basic careers prior to entry).  The logic of WFRP 1e indicates that the Tradesman should be an 'Advanced' career, which would then lead onto the Artisan career, which could no longer be entered into directly from Artisan's Apprentice. There is a lot to be said for this, in particular this would justify the advance scheme for Artisan having somewhat higher possible bonuses for Dexterity and Intelligence and Tradesman having some intermediate level.

This should really all be looked at then in conjuction with the Advanced careers, just like for Alchemist's Apprentice, but as a temporary suggestion:

Artisan's Apprentice:

Skills: Drive Cart, Evaluate, Haggle, Read/Write, Secret Language (Guilder), 50% chance of Animal Care, 25% chance of Very Resilient, 25% chance of Very Strong

Trades: 75% chance of one of Art, Boat Building, Brewing, Carpentry, Chemistry, Cook, Gem Cutting, Metallurgy, Smithing, Stoneworking, Tailor

This obviously retains the 'Apprentice' nature of the Artisan's Apprentice but makes some nods to being a much more competent character.