I have a small rule question about starting Barding characters who took the Virtue King's Men.

In the desription about the virtue it is stated that the cost of raising the skill level in Sword, Longsword, Spear, Great Bow is lowered by 1 XP at every level.

Two questions came up concerning this:
A)is this available during character creation with the 10 free Points?
and
B)what about the broad Skill (Swords) Bardings could take during creation?

Thanks in advance for every answer.

Personally I would probably not allow it during character creation, unless the player came up with a really good background story as to why their character gained the virtue before the extra skills in their past. As such, this would apply to the Cultural Skill group as well.

Good question. You'd have to have Wisdom at 2 initially, of course.

Hm, the 10 points at character generation are not really XP (or AP), it would seem to me as they don't work in quite the same way, so I'd be inclined to say no, but I don't necessarily think it would be game-breaking if you did allow it.

I would think that it certainly wouldn't apply to (Swords), as that's a generic skill rather than the specific weapons mentioned in the list. I would think you could use it if you were splitting off a specific Sword or Longsword skill from (Swords) though, but again, not in character generation.

I'd say no, I see the Hero Creation Summary on page 31 as a series of steps you should take to build your character, and Prioritising Wisdom or Valour (and choose Virtue or Reward) comes after Spend Previous Exp to buy skill levels.

Aha, that's a good one. Sounds reasonable to me.

This mirrors my thought process on how hero creation process is done and have always done it following that step-by-step logic.

And by following a regiment such as this, it would prove to eliminate a number of "what ifs" when trying to put the cart before the horse.