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Catullus64
2021-04-27, 10:06 AM
I've just recently discovered and started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2E) with friends, and I may have fallen in love with it. This thread serves two purposes: The first purpose is to try to see if there's anyone else on this forum who plays/has played this system before and generate conversation about it. The second purpose is to try to convince everybody else to try out this system!

I absolutely must sing the praises of the character generation. It's mostly random. The game requires you to determine your starting characteristics (ability scores) randomly, in order. It also strongly encourages determining your starting Career (sort of like your class) randomly, and you should do so. The majority of the careers are non-combat oriented randos; you could roll a Mercenary or an Apprentice Wizard, but you're more likely to roll up a Ferryman or Charcoal-Burner. Just about any character you roll up will be distinctly un-glamorous, a factor helped if you use random height, weight, coloration, and Distinctive Traits, most of which are minor deformities.

Group character creation in this game is a fantastic gameplay experience all on its own. There's a weird kind of fun in the experience of rolling a bunch of dice, and letting them fill out the strange, often incongruous features of a unique human being (or Elf, or Dwarf, or Halfling being). Most RPG char-gen feels like trying to invent a fictional character. WFRP feels like discovering a real person and then trying to inhabit them, warts and all. Laughing with friends as the dice dream up a gang of idiosyncratic nobodies, and then sending them off to likely doom in the dark grimness of the Old World is one of the best RPG experiences I've had all year.

I've got a lot of other praise for the combat mechanics, the artwork, the darkly comic low-fantasy tone, this particular presentation of the Warhammer setting, but I should probably wait to see more responses before going on and on.

MrStabby
2021-04-27, 02:11 PM
Well not played it... but put me in the bucket marked Eager to Hear More.

What mechanically sets it appart. What are the beneficial impacts of that? What does it lose relative to other systems? How diverse can my characters be? How complex is it? How does it keep you engaged and pulled deeper after the first 9 months of a campaign? Is it fast paced? Is it combat focussed? Is it well balanced?

Catullus64
2021-04-27, 04:14 PM
Well not played it... but put me in the bucket marked Eager to Hear More.

What mechanically sets it appart. What are the beneficial impacts of that? What does it lose relative to other systems? How diverse can my characters be? How complex is it? How does it keep you engaged and pulled deeper after the first 9 months of a campaign? Is it fast paced? Is it combat focussed? Is it well balanced?

I'll try to answer those questions in order.

It's similar to many other Warhammer-related systems, like Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader. Each of your main characteristics is a percentile value, typically between 10 and 50, and you're trying to roll percentile dice under that characteristic to succeed on a given test. If you're not trained in a Basic skill, you roll against half the corresponding characteristic. If you're not trained in an Advanced skill, you can't attempt the test. Circumstantial bonuses and penalties can modify your effective characteristic for that skill. Given that all of your characteristics start in the 10-50 range, you tend to fail a lot of tests. Also, since Read/Write is an advanced skill, most characters will be illiterate, at least at first.

Combat is on a full-half action system; you can take either two half actions (which includes things like a short move, a regular attack, entering a parrying stance, feint, aim, ) or one full action (a long move, a charge attack, Disengage + Short move, make multiple attacks on some characters). The system generally favors close-quarters combat; ranged weapons tend to have action-consuming reload times. There is an active parrying mechanic available to all characters. Most characters start with 8-12 Wounds (Warhammer-speak for HP), and a very high-level character may have 16-18. Since all weapons deal 1d10 damage (the only differences between weapons being damage modifiers and special properties), combat is very deadly, and healing is very slow.

In terms of character progression, it's all centered around careers. As mentioned before, you roll to determine your starting career; the available careers are determined by your race, as there are race-exclusive careers. Each career has specific skills, talents, and characteristic increases that you can spend your XP on to improve your character. Once you have purchased all of the available increases for your career, you enter a new career; you can either move into another basic career, or take one of the "Career Exits" available to your starting career, some of which may include advanced careers. So if my character begins as a Miner, and I purchase all of the upgrades available within that career, I can become an advanced career like Engineer or Scout, or move into a more basic career to take my character in a different direction, like Soldier or Student. One of the quirks that I like is that in order to enter a new career, you must first acquire all of the starting items associated with that career.

Magic is a bit complicated, and available to very few characters; a Human has an overall 3% chance to start off with access to any kind of spellcasting, an Elf takes that up to a whopping 7%. For Dwarfs and Halflings, 0%. There are no limits on how many times you can cast a spell; each time you do, you roll d10s equal to or less than your Magic characteristic (1-4), and try to beat the number required by the spell's casting value. If you roll doubles, triples, or quadruples, you trigger Tzeentch's Curse, and bad stuff happens.

I honestly don't know whether most of that sounds like a Pro or a Con to you. I personally love all of that.


Depends on your metric for diversity. There are only four races in the game, and the game assumes that most characters come from in or around the Empire of Sigmar, the assumed setting. The career system means that every party has people from diverse walks of life, and who often don't fit the mold of traditional fantasy heroes. Our current party consists of an Apprentice Wizard, a Miner, a Charcoal-Burner, and a Rat-Catcher. In a system where skills are restricted and gear is expensive, each character's abilities feel very meaningful; the Apprentice Wizard's ability to read and write feels huge (plus, you know, magic), as does the fact that the miner actually owns a piece of armor. Now, because those careers are chosen randomly (mostly; you roll two careers and pick which one you want), it means that your ability to actually customize your character on a mechanical level is limited; as mentioned above, you've got a fixed set of available upgrades that you can purchase within a career. If you want to change the direction of your character, it'll cost you a lot more XP than someone who wants to stick with the path they're already on.

In short, it's not a good system for making exactly the character you want. It is a great system for discovering a fun character and trying to help that character survive.

In a way, the fact that so much of your character is determined for you at the start means that the game is fairly simple to pick up. Combat is probably simpler than any modern edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and there's a unified skill system. Later on, things get more complicated as your character potentially picks up more talents or gets more complicated weaponry. The Insanity system also adds another layer to the gameplay, but you're unlikely to bump into that until after at least a few sessions, by which point you've got the hang of things.


Well, I'm just speculating here, since my friends and I have only been trying it for a few weeks. But the vast number of careers, plus the slow pace of progression means that there's no shortage of character milestones to chase after; our Apprentice Wizard is already dreaming of the spells he'll command if he makes Journeyman, and our Rat-Catcher is planning a character arc that will eventually take him up to Grave Robber. Plus, if you already like the Warhammer Fantasy world, there's tons of lore-rich locations ready to serve as fodder for adventures.

If you want a benchmark, our group of fairly experienced roleplayers were able to play the whole of the adventure that comes with the rulebook in about three and a half hours. Said adventure included two combats, three prolonged social encounters, and a decent amount of exploration and investigation. Each combat took about half an hour.

Relative to Dungeons & Dragons, my baseline, I'd say no, but on the whole yes. Many characters will have virtually no special combat skills, and the game seems to assume that to be the case. Since natural healing is slow (1 Wound/day if Lightly Wounded, 1 Wound/week if Heavily Wounded), medicine isn't much faster (1d10 Wounds if Lightly Wounded, 1 Wound if heavily wounded, and you can only receive medical attention, success or failure, once per 24 hours) and magical healing is rare to the point of being a non-factor, combats tend to be spaced out by prolonged roleplay that covers many days of activity. But the game still assumes that monsters and swordfights will figure prominently in the plots of your adventures, even if they don't take up the majority of playtime.

Uhh, no, not really, and I consider that to be part of its charm. Some of your characters will be immensely better equipped for a life of adventure than others, you just need to accept that and roll with it to enjoy this game. There'e enough randomness and lethality to mitigate that imbalance; after all, nobody in your party is all that great at anything, at least compared to your average D&D character. And if you're not fond of a character, it's not that hard to get him killed and start over.

Tanarii
2021-04-27, 04:24 PM
Yeah, playing a bunch of nobodies who are almost certainly going to die is a lot of fun. The later WFRPGs lost a lot of the feel.

The mechanics are a touch klunky though, as with all warhammer games.

Game I've always wanted to try because it had simple mechanics combined with the nobles nobodies destined to die feel is Dungeon Crawl Classics.

It might be worth taking a page from that game, and rolling up 3 WFRPH 2e characters each, and putting them into some real sticky situations and see who walks out. :smallamused:

Telok
2021-04-28, 02:17 AM
Dis not the lowly rat catcher. For they are good with animals, can always find work, access nearly any building by offering free service samples, and start with a combat trained dog.

The rolling ethos of WHFRP is very different from D&D, which can cause some serious culture shock. D&D uses easy rolls, high bonuses, and is built around those rolls succeeding. In combat you expect to hit and have no defenses except passive AC, HP, & saves. Fall into a river and D&D expects you to rack up more success than failures and punishes you with drowning that bypasses all your "don't die" stuff. WHFRP expects you to fail several times before succeeding. It has that base roll being effectively like a d&d 5e dc 20 check, basic stuff like singing for your dinner at a tavern should be at +40% bonus or something. In combat you look to stack things in your favor, allies, terrain, etc., and you get actions to negate or reduce hits. Combat is dangerous and a sword to the face is a bad thing, unlike many nerf-sword RPG combat sysyems. Fall in a river and the system expects you to fail several rolls, probably taking a wound for each failure as you bash on rocks and breathe water, until you make one and get out. Then even if you fail 10+ rolls you can toss a fate point to barely survive.

Just a different style of rolling is all.

Wraith
2021-04-28, 03:06 AM
I'm a big fan of WFRP. I haven't played it for a few years, but at one point it was quite easily my Most Played system.

Low fantasy, dangerous combat, very dark sense of humour.... It can be a shock to new players who are used to being the big D&D hero only to end up in WFRP with limbs missing, two forms of PTSD and a vestigial tentacle, but once you get over that and revel in the experience it's a lot of fun. :smallsmile:

Glorthindel
2021-04-28, 03:22 AM
WFRP is my favourite system; it was the first rpg I played (I have been playing its different versions for 25 years now!), and it is still my go-to to run to today. My favourite edition is 2nd, although I was never much a fan of the Storm of Chaos background setting, so usually ran it in the time before. At the moment I am prepping to start a 4th ed campaign - I must admit I have my doubts about some of the things they have done, but am prepared to give it a fair trial before writing it off.

I will give one warning to a new guy starting off a campaign. Unlike other systems, campaigns do have a finite length due to how the character progression system works. Once your characters have passed through four or five careers, you'll notice the natural career progression sort of falters, as the character can't get anything useful out of staying in his lane, and they start having to wander incoherently around chasing that vital Talent, or the +30 in a stat they can't get elsewhere. It does sort of jump up on you fast, and if you aren't prepared for it, can result in you having to truncate a campaign early, if the players are no longer looking forward to those skill ups.

snowblizz
2021-04-28, 05:03 AM
RE: Diversity.

Isn't there additional books that increases your available options?

I am not rp-er but as a Warhammer player some of the sourcebooks have passed through my hands. And I have one of the Chaos ones somewhere. I seem to recall there were options for playing e.g. a Chaos worshipper or a Beastmen e.g.

There's still a lot of randomness lurking there of course. And I vaguely recall you were supposed to doing some kind of "evil campaign" thing too. So you wouldn't be mixing regular run of the mill characters with Beastmen e.g.

And I remember Tzeentch's Cruse to me seemed like a "k thx no magic" kind of deal. That chart was brutal.

For fan's of random ofc can't beat the chaos mutation tables.

Wraith
2021-04-28, 06:01 AM
RE: Diversity.

Isn't there additional books that increases your available options?

In short; there are more books, but even with them 'diversity' is limited to 'different nationalities of white people'. Or rather to be more charitable, the Auld World is set in an equivalent to medieval Europe which has been cut off from the rest of the world by Orcs, daemons and worse. The default is definitely white-"German", and with very occasional white-"French" or "Scandinavian" characters. There's virtually no contact with "India", "Africa" or "China" so different ethnicities are stated to exist, but hardly ever appear in-game unless you or your DM specifically say so.

Gender is treated quite a bit better; there's all of 2 classes (out of about 40) which have a default gender role, which are the Bretonnian Shepardess and the Grail Knight, but everything else is fair game for whoever wants it. Everyone can become an adventurer and get horribly mutilated by the forces of Chaos regardless of the circumstances of their birth! :smalltongue:

Transgender characters are wrought with unfortunate implications, sadly. While there's nothing to stop you playing such a character, the only time it's even alluded to in the rulebook is that some mutants (ie, NPC antagonists) are hermaphrodites, in the image of their Patron God of Hedonism so if you want to follow that archetype.... yeah, that could do with an update.

snowblizz
2021-04-28, 06:09 AM
You're not using the word diversity the way I am.

Since neither India, Africa nor China are real things in WH am more thinking along the lines of "not Empire human".

The OP says only 4 races are available, I distinctly remember having a sourcebook that let you play Beastman and whatever the heck one would call a mutated follower fo chaos. So am asking are there Lizardmen and Orc books too, e.g.

Glorthindel
2021-04-28, 06:39 AM
You're not using the word diversity the way I am.

Since neither India, Africa nor China are real things in WH am more thinking along the lines of "not Empire human".

The OP says only 4 races are available, I distinctly remember having a sourcebook that let you play Beastman and whatever the heck one would call a mutated follower fo chaos. So am asking are there Lizardmen and Orc books too, e.g.

Yes, I believe the Chaos sourcebook has rules for Beastmen and Norse Characters, the Skaven sourcebook has rules for making Skaven characters, while the Bretonnia and Kislev books have rules for their variant human types (I believe the Kislev book had two racial varient, one for the more Russian-flavoured Kislevites, and one for the Mongol-inspired Steppe Nomads). Due to the nature of the Old World however, Beastmen and Skaven characters are not going to be welcome in a "normal" party, but are viable for monster-party groups.

Also, while that is the extent of the "official" racial rules, the nature of character creation, it is not that difficult to create base templates for any race, and a lot of fan groups have put together rules for other races over the years; if Lizardmen is your bag, I put together some rules for them some years ago now, that I thought burned when the Black Industries website was taken down, but I was amazed to learn recently were still out there on the internet https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B78tEyor-_2DWG92R2dqTG5QQ1E/view :smallredface:

Corsair14
2021-04-28, 07:45 AM
I have seen this at the store and looked briefly through it. What edition are we on now and how does it compare with whatever edition you guys are playing?

Catullus64
2021-04-28, 08:47 AM
I have seen this at the store and looked briefly through it. What edition are we on now and how does it compare with whatever edition you guys are playing?

Currently, the only version of this game in publication, as far as I'm aware, is WFRP: Soulbound, which is not set in the Warhammer World but rather in the current spin-off setting, Age of Sigmar. Haven't checked it out, but from what I know of AoS (less historically-grounded, low-fantasy and more cosmic-scale high fantasy in the vein of most D&D settings), I suspect it's nothing like the game that I've been getting into.

On the diversity subject, I will say that the Empire of Sigmar, in the cities, is probably the closest thing this setting has to a melting pot. Playing a character descended from one of the setting's non-European-coded nations is at least feasible.

On a side note, I've just realized that there is a supplement for playing as a party of Skaven. That sounds like either the best thing in the world, or a GM's nightmare.

Glorthindel
2021-04-28, 08:55 AM
Currently, the only version of this game in publication, as far as I'm aware, is WFRP: Soulbound, which is not set in the Warhammer World but rather in the current spin-off setting, Age of Sigmar. Haven't checked it out, but from what I know of AoS (less historically-grounded, low-fantasy and more cosmic-scale high fantasy in the vein of most D&D settings), I suspect it's nothing like the game that I've been getting into.

There was a new edition released only two years ago - 4th ed is very similar to the 1st and 2nd editions (such that I have been running earlier edition adventures for 4th ed characters without having to modify the adventures in any significant way), though it has made a few changes that is highly controvertial in some circles (be wary about starting a discussion about Advantage on a WFRP forum!)

On that point, if you are looking for a WFRP community, the Winds of Chaos forum is probably the best, but like anything, beware of older edition grognards; bizarrely for a system that is so similar across the editions (apart from 3rd, nobody talks about 3rd edition), there can be a lot of edition vitriol in the community.

Catullus64
2021-04-28, 09:06 AM
bizarrely for a system that is so similar across the editions (apart from 3rd, nobody talks about 3rd edition), there can be a lot of edition vitriol in the community.

That, I believe, is what the kids call "self-demonstrating." :smallwink:

Glorthindel
2021-04-28, 09:16 AM
touché :smallamused:

Morty
2021-04-28, 09:40 AM
I played WFRP 2E a couple of times. It used to be the most popular RPG in Poland for some reason. I wasn't impressed. The basic task resolution is incredibly swingy, but combat for beginning characters can take ages because it's entirely possible a hand weapon wielded by a 31 strength character will just bounce off someone's TB and armor. Random character generation is bad and the careers are clunky. I don't know how 4E compares, but allegedly its attempts to fix those issues don't work all that well.

Catullus64
2021-04-28, 10:19 AM
I played WFRP 2E a couple of times. It used to be the most popular RPG in Poland for some reason. I wasn't impressed. The basic task resolution is incredibly swingy, but combat for beginning characters can take ages because it's entirely possible a hand weapon wielded by a 31 strength character will just bounce off someone's TB and armor. Random character generation is bad and the careers are clunky. I don't know how 4E compares, but allegedly its attempts to fix those issues don't work all that well.

Could you say more about why you dislike the character generation and careers? As someone who has really taken a liking specifically to that aspect of the game, I'm curious to know more before arguing against your take.

As for swingy task resolution and combat, it is true that combat can very often devolve into people standing in place and missing each other round after round, if the GM doesn't know how to shake things up. And out of combat, you will probably fail more tests than you succeed on. These don't bother me, but I suppose it's a fair warning to give to other new players.

Xervous
2021-04-28, 01:16 PM
Could you say more about why you dislike the character generation and careers? As someone who has really taken a liking specifically to that aspect of the game, I'm curious to know more before arguing against your take.

As for swingy task resolution and combat, it is true that combat can very often devolve into people standing in place and missing each other round after round, if the GM doesn't know how to shake things up. And out of combat, you will probably fail more tests than you succeed on. These don't bother me, but I suppose it's a fair warning to give to other new players.

Excessive rolling tends to kill games for some group types. Involuntary time delayed death to incompetence is another acquired taste. Generally I’d lean for the All/No Jedi approach unless all the players were explicitly on board with an unbalanced start (not even asymmetrical...). Either let them all have Paranoia grade survival expectations or set them up so it’s the dice or plot killing them rather than circumstance Q wiping out the one character who rolled divergent from the group.

TheSummoner
2021-04-28, 03:43 PM
Given the way careers work, power spread between characters is very much going to be a result of conscious player choices. Every character starts with an average of 31 in each stat (+/-10 in some if you play a non-human characters). You're typically looking at a maximum of +10 to any given stat in your starting career (some can go as high as +15, but they're the minority). You can develop your character in any direction you want or that feels natural over the course of the game and free to switch to any starting career you like at a small XP cost. If you want to play a Charlatan and succeed through trickery and guile, you have that option. You won't be as deadly in combat as a Daemon Slayer, but you'll perform far better in social situations.

wilphe
2021-04-28, 03:58 PM
And I remember Tzeentch's Cruse to me seemed like a "k thx no magic" kind of deal. That chart was brutal.

Magic is serious business and very literally involves manipulating forces you only barely understand.

For a "magic as technology" or Tippyverse setting it would not fit at all, but for the setting as a whole it fits nicely

Magic is not to be used for trivial purposes

wilphe
2021-04-28, 04:01 PM
I've just recently discovered and started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2E) with friends, and I may have fallen in love with it. This thread serves two purposes: The first purpose is to try to see if there's anyone else on this forum who plays/has played this system before and generate conversation about it.

There are few PbPs happening, and I'm in one. It's not an unpopular system here unless you compare it to some version of D&D

Tanarii
2021-04-28, 07:40 PM
I will give one warning to a new guy starting off a campaign. Unlike other systems, campaigns do have a finite length due to how the character progression system works. Once your characters have passed through four or five careers, you'll notice the natural career progression sort of falters, as the character can't get anything useful out of staying in his lane, and they start having to wander incoherently around chasing that vital Talent, or the +30 in a stat they can't get elsewhere. It does sort of jump up on you fast, and if you aren't prepared for it, can result in you having to truncate a campaign early, if the players are no longer looking forward to those skill ups.
The amount of XP it takes to pick up advances and most of the skill advances and feats, means finishing off 4-5 careers is going to take a LOT of playing the same character. It's pretty unlikely unless you are skipping most of the skills and feats.

Anonymouswizard
2021-04-29, 04:25 AM
There are few PbPs happening, and I'm in one. It's not an unpopular system here unless you compare it to some version of D&D

Didn't we have a thread for the Warrhammer games at one point? Sadly both that and the World of Darkness thread have died deaths of apathy.

But yeah, WFRP is relatively popular here, although sadly I've only played the 40k RPGs (Dark Heresy with a bit of Deathwatch). I have read I think 1e, maybe 2e, and own
4e which I'd love to ruin at some point.

We do not talk about 3e because it used a different system with FFG's tendency to try and squeeze money out of you with proprietary dice. 4e is also going to be hit and miss if you played the earlier editions because of stuff like the streamlined career progression. But at the end of the day it's Warhammer Fantasy Battle, it's not the most original world out there, but in stealing from everybody it's built it's own flavour that many enjoy.

I have no clue about Soulbound, I left the miniatures game before Age of Sigmar happened and thus have no intention to play it.

Wraith
2021-04-29, 01:21 PM
You're not using the word diversity the way I am.

Since neither India, Africa nor China are real things in WH am more thinking along the lines of "not Empire human".

The OP says only 4 races are available, I distinctly remember having a sourcebook that let you play Beastman and whatever the heck one would call a mutated follower fo chaos. So am asking are there Lizardmen and Orc books too, e.g.

Fair enough. In that case, by default they're right in that there are 4 races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling. Most of the other books offer different kinds of Human, and all of which are very 'local' to the Empire so the difference between them is usually 1 extra or different language. Either that, or they expand on cultural differences rather than racial ones - Elves can be High or Wood, but mechanically there's little if any difference.

There are other books that have other races in them, as explained above - Chaos followers, Skaven, etc. The problem is, these sorts of characters don't play well with the existing ones - an Elf and a Dwarf have no business being in a party with a Skaven for example, unless you're willing to hand-wave away BIG pieces of lore. They're also notoriously poorly balanced compared to the default races too, so that could be an issue if it's not properly addressed by you and your players.

As for there not being India, Africa or China in the game.... they kind of are. The map of the Old World is basically the same as the real world map, with appropriate equivalents found in similar areas. There isn't India, but there is the Kingdom of Ind which can be found in approximately the same place. "Africa" doesn't have that name, but the Southlands is there and its full of jungles and Lizardmen - except for the dry, sandy bit at the top called Khemri which is full of pyramids and preserved skeletons.....

Despite what I had just said above, the Dragon Empire ("China") is a remarkably cosmopolitan place where vampires openly serve in the Imperial Court, which in turn recognises Skaven ambassadors as politicians. None of this is in the RPG books though, it's taken from the wider lore so you can sort-of cobble it together in-game but mostly it's homebrew.

So there are non-Empire humans. The only ones who get any kind of description or rules, however, are Bretonnians (the "France" equivalent), Kisevites (sort-of Scandinavia, which even then is partially owned by the Empire) and a little bit about Albion ("Britain"), and in play the only difference you'll see is that they get a different first language. The rest is entirely RP'd.

MrStabby
2021-05-06, 05:47 AM
I'll try to answer those questions in order.

It's similar to many other Warhammer-related systems, like Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader. Each of your main characteristics is a percentile value, typically between 10 and 50, and you're trying to roll percentile dice under that characteristic to succeed on a given test. If you're not trained in a Basic skill, you roll against half the corresponding characteristic. If you're not trained in an Advanced skill, you can't attempt the test. Circumstantial bonuses and penalties can modify your effective characteristic for that skill. Given that all of your characteristics start in the 10-50 range, you tend to fail a lot of tests. Also, since Read/Write is an advanced skill, most characters will be illiterate, at least at first.

Combat is on a full-half action system; you can take either two half actions (which includes things like a short move, a regular attack, entering a parrying stance, feint, aim, ) or one full action (a long move, a charge attack, Disengage + Short move, make multiple attacks on some characters). The system generally favors close-quarters combat; ranged weapons tend to have action-consuming reload times. There is an active parrying mechanic available to all characters. Most characters start with 8-12 Wounds (Warhammer-speak for HP), and a very high-level character may have 16-18. Since all weapons deal 1d10 damage (the only differences between weapons being damage modifiers and special properties), combat is very deadly, and healing is very slow.

In terms of character progression, it's all centered around careers. As mentioned before, you roll to determine your starting career; the available careers are determined by your race, as there are race-exclusive careers. Each career has specific skills, talents, and characteristic increases that you can spend your XP on to improve your character. Once you have purchased all of the available increases for your career, you enter a new career; you can either move into another basic career, or take one of the "Career Exits" available to your starting career, some of which may include advanced careers. So if my character begins as a Miner, and I purchase all of the upgrades available within that career, I can become an advanced career like Engineer or Scout, or move into a more basic career to take my character in a different direction, like Soldier or Student. One of the quirks that I like is that in order to enter a new career, you must first acquire all of the starting items associated with that career.

Magic is a bit complicated, and available to very few characters; a Human has an overall 3% chance to start off with access to any kind of spellcasting, an Elf takes that up to a whopping 7%. For Dwarfs and Halflings, 0%. There are no limits on how many times you can cast a spell; each time you do, you roll d10s equal to or less than your Magic characteristic (1-4), and try to beat the number required by the spell's casting value. If you roll doubles, triples, or quadruples, you trigger Tzeentch's Curse, and bad stuff happens.

I honestly don't know whether most of that sounds like a Pro or a Con to you. I personally love all of that.


Depends on your metric for diversity. There are only four races in the game, and the game assumes that most characters come from in or around the Empire of Sigmar, the assumed setting. The career system means that every party has people from diverse walks of life, and who often don't fit the mold of traditional fantasy heroes. Our current party consists of an Apprentice Wizard, a Miner, a Charcoal-Burner, and a Rat-Catcher. In a system where skills are restricted and gear is expensive, each character's abilities feel very meaningful; the Apprentice Wizard's ability to read and write feels huge (plus, you know, magic), as does the fact that the miner actually owns a piece of armor. Now, because those careers are chosen randomly (mostly; you roll two careers and pick which one you want), it means that your ability to actually customize your character on a mechanical level is limited; as mentioned above, you've got a fixed set of available upgrades that you can purchase within a career. If you want to change the direction of your character, it'll cost you a lot more XP than someone who wants to stick with the path they're already on.

In short, it's not a good system for making exactly the character you want. It is a great system for discovering a fun character and trying to help that character survive.

In a way, the fact that so much of your character is determined for you at the start means that the game is fairly simple to pick up. Combat is probably simpler than any modern edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and there's a unified skill system. Later on, things get more complicated as your character potentially picks up more talents or gets more complicated weaponry. The Insanity system also adds another layer to the gameplay, but you're unlikely to bump into that until after at least a few sessions, by which point you've got the hang of things.


Well, I'm just speculating here, since my friends and I have only been trying it for a few weeks. But the vast number of careers, plus the slow pace of progression means that there's no shortage of character milestones to chase after; our Apprentice Wizard is already dreaming of the spells he'll command if he makes Journeyman, and our Rat-Catcher is planning a character arc that will eventually take him up to Grave Robber. Plus, if you already like the Warhammer Fantasy world, there's tons of lore-rich locations ready to serve as fodder for adventures.

If you want a benchmark, our group of fairly experienced roleplayers were able to play the whole of the adventure that comes with the rulebook in about three and a half hours. Said adventure included two combats, three prolonged social encounters, and a decent amount of exploration and investigation. Each combat took about half an hour.

Relative to Dungeons & Dragons, my baseline, I'd say no, but on the whole yes. Many characters will have virtually no special combat skills, and the game seems to assume that to be the case. Since natural healing is slow (1 Wound/day if Lightly Wounded, 1 Wound/week if Heavily Wounded), medicine isn't much faster (1d10 Wounds if Lightly Wounded, 1 Wound if heavily wounded, and you can only receive medical attention, success or failure, once per 24 hours) and magical healing is rare to the point of being a non-factor, combats tend to be spaced out by prolonged roleplay that covers many days of activity. But the game still assumes that monsters and swordfights will figure prominently in the plots of your adventures, even if they don't take up the majority of playtime.

Uhh, no, not really, and I consider that to be part of its charm. Some of your characters will be immensely better equipped for a life of adventure than others, you just need to accept that and roll with it to enjoy this game. There'e enough randomness and lethality to mitigate that imbalance; after all, nobody in your party is all that great at anything, at least compared to your average D&D character. And if you're not fond of a character, it's not that hard to get him killed and start over.

Thanks for the comprehensive answer. I think I will look into this a bit more.

It sounds a very different play experience, I wouldn't mind giving it a go.

Misery Esquire
2021-05-06, 07:00 AM
On a side note, I've just realized that there is a supplement for playing as a party of Skaven. That sounds like either the best thing in the world, or a GM's nightmare.

Ever wanted to play Paranoia, except ratty and with a greater chance to knife Friend Computer the nearest Grey Seer in the spine? And for your bones to be melted with magic for trying?

Otherwise the same. Suicide missions, murderous superiors, incompetent murderous inferiors, experimental explosive devices, explosive experimental devices, beauroratcy, surprise mutants, secret cults, and saying whatever's necessary not to get your bones melted...

:smalltongue:

Tanarii
2021-05-06, 08:16 AM
Ever wanted to play Paranoia, except ratty and with a greater chance to knife Friend Computer the nearest Grey Seer in the spine? And for your bones to be melted with magic for trying?

Otherwise the same. Suicide missions, murderous superiors, incompetent murderous inferiors, experimental explosive devices, explosive experimental devices, beauroratcy, surprise mutants, secret cults, and saying whatever's necessary not to get your bones melted...

:smalltongue:
So the difference between working for the Skaven and working for the empire (in either WFRP or WH40k) is a bit more bone melting Magic on your team?

GloatingSwine
2021-05-06, 08:29 AM
Dis not the lowly rat catcher. For they are good with animals, can always find work, access nearly any building by offering free service samples, and start with a combat trained dog.

Just remember to call the witch hunter if he starts talking about rats the size of men in the sewers of Altdorf....


You're not using the word diversity the way I am.

Since neither India, Africa nor China are real things in WH am more thinking along the lines of "not Empire human".

The OP says only 4 races are available, I distinctly remember having a sourcebook that let you play Beastman and whatever the heck one would call a mutated follower fo chaos. So am asking are there Lizardmen and Orc books too, e.g.

Expect Grand Cathay to make its way to WFRP. It'll be getting a full roster, lore, characters and geography for Total War: Warhammer 3.

Brother Oni
2021-05-06, 09:48 AM
So the difference between working for the Skaven and working for the empire (in either WFRP or WH40k) is a bit more bone melting Magic on your team?

With more speech tics-tics

Misery Esquire
2021-05-06, 11:37 AM
So the difference between working for the Skaven and working for the empire (in either WFRP or WH40k) is a bit more bone melting Magic on your team?

I had meant to say the same as playing Paranoia but that's not a bad read either, depending on how... Comedic you like your Imperials. :smallwink:

Quertus
2021-05-06, 03:47 PM
WFRP (2e) is, IME/ IMO…

Highly random, failure-centric, limited control, gritty, dark mirror / parody of our world.

Stats hover around 30(±10). Careers give the option and requirement to boost stats and buy skills. So (pretend, AFB) a(n Apprentice) Wizard career might allow and require you to buy "Int +10"; a more advanced Wizard career might allow and require "Int +15". Skills can be bought 3 times - the first time makes it "known" (allowing you to roll the skill); each of the next two purchased grants a cumulative +10 to the skill.

But what does that mean?

So, a(n Apprentice) Wizard who rolled a 25 Int, and bought "Int +10" and "Read/Write" would have a 35 Int, giving them a 35% chance to make any read/write rolls. If in their next career they purchased "Int +15" and "Read/Write" again, they would have a 40 Int, and a 50% chance to make any read/write rolls.

"Number of attacks" is *also* a career-based attribute; a Soldier career character can start with 2 attacks to everyone else's one. So, with ~30% chance to hit, everyone fails a lot, but the soldier gets to try a lot harder. (I don't remember whether or not they also therefore fumble more - probably so)

IIRC, XP is… 200 for a 4-hour session. And almost everything costs 100 XP (new career or "GM is being nice and letting you buy something outside your career, because you trained, or became a Mutant and therefore technically qualify for 'Flee!', or some such" costs 200 XP). So the character is improving every session, and changing careers every…6-8 sessions, maybe? But since you *start* with all the skills of your starting career, plus 200 XP, your first caster change is even faster.

The system has Fate Points, giving you a limited number of rerolls per session. Or you can permanently burn one to stay alive when you would have died (usually at cost, like limb loss or something).

Damage is generally something like "d10 + 10's digit of strength stat, minus (10's digit of target's toughness stat, and armor (max…6?))". With humans having… subverting like 8-20 Wounds. Once you run out of Wounds (HP), you take crits (which can cause things like limb loss, bleeding out, and death). Other common sources of bad things include disease, insanity, and mutation.

I really want to run the epic fail "you meet in a tavern", where the waitress rolls for hearing and remembering the items you order (with about a 30% chance of success on each roll, mind), the cook rolls to create the order, the waitress rolls to balance the food, all with disastrous fumbles on 96-100, and play it for pure comedy.

I generally like the system. But… I haven't become as strongly attached to the characters in WFRP / they haven't really developed the depth and variety of goals as characters in other systems.

Mr Beer
2021-05-06, 04:05 PM
WFRP flavour is amazing. Just this rich great world, and you're mere plebs potentially struggling with vicious barons, lurking mutants, hordes of outlanders, the Skaven, the Inquisition. There's adventure all over but it's far from the traditional D&D dungeon-bash model, it's rooted in a more realised, gritty Renaissance-type setting. If you survive long enough, you can become full-fledged heroes but the world itself remains dangerous. The background profession model is also highly flavourful and offers meaningful choices, while some are objectively better than others, you can fun with any profession.

It's worth mentioning that the tendency towards grimdark is leavened with a fair bit of humour. This is important; without it WFRP could easily have become a VTM setting - super dark and edgy and EXTREMELY SERIOUS REAL ROLEPLAYING TM, we are not like those childish peons who play D&D.

However, the combat system itself is bad. It's swingy, you spend a lot of time just outright missing and it's relatively easy to randomly roll up a high Toughness character with OK armour that's very difficult to take down, while everyone else is a squishy meatbag.

I recently ran a WFRP campaign using GURPS, everyone had a 125 point character to start and much fun was had. That fixed the ****ty combat system, I will say though that no-one wanted to go Ratcatcher. Given the choice there was a Witchhunter, an Officer, a Dwarf Runesmith and a Dwarf Trollslayer. On the flip side, since everyone had the same number of points, it's not like that's powergaming. But it lost some of the charm of having a Beggar or a Farmer in the group.

TheSummoner
2021-05-06, 05:46 PM
EDIT: Everything I'm saying is about 2E. I haven't played 4E, so maybe some of this isn't the same there.


"Number of attacks" is *also* a career-based attribute; a Soldier career character can start with 2 attacks to everyone else's one. So, with ~30% chance to hit, everyone fails a lot, but the soldier gets to try a lot harder. (I don't remember whether or not they also therefore fumble more - probably so)

There really are no fumbles by RAW outside of magic and gunpowder. A 2 attack soldier gets to roll 2 attacks with his halberd per combat round and very well night miss both of them, but nothing worse happens to him than failing to hit the enemy. As for actual fumble mechanics, I'll elaborate for the sake of anyone whose never played...

All spellcasters have a magic stat of 1 to 4 and whenever you cast a spell, you can roll any number of d10 up to your magic stat. Each spell has a casting value, with bigger spells having higher numbers and your total roll of however many dice you choose to use has to be equal to or higher than that number or else the spell fails. If a wizard roll doubles, triples, or quadruples on your magic rolls, something unexpected happens. Doubles tend to be light or purely flavorful penalties - your wizard gets a nosebleed or starts to glow for a while or he takes a single point of damage. Triples are a bit more inconvenient - your character gains an insanity point or takes 1d10 damage or takes (temporary) stat penalties or even is possessed by a daemon for a minute. Quadruples are far more rare, partly because of the odds and partly because even being able to roll 4 magic dice is rare, but that's where the really bad stuff comes in - your wizard is knocked unconscious and completely helpless or they lose the ability to cast magic at all for a while or they take a random critical hit* or even outright kill your character by pulling them directly into the realm of chaos. Priests have a similar mechanic, but there's only one table to roll on. Most of the priestly results are fairly minor - your spell automatically fails even if would've otherwise succeeded or your spell takes more time to complete - but there are a few nastier ones roughly on par with a wizard rolling triples (you take 1d10 damage) or even quadruples (you're rendered helpless for 1d10 rounds or even roll on the wizard's quadruples table because it isn't your god who is answering your prayer).

As for gunpowder, all gunpowder weapons (except the blunderbuss for some reason) are classified as either Unreliable or Experimental. Unreliable weapons have a 4% chance to jam when fired and a 1% chance to explode outright, destroying them and dealing their damage to the wielder instead of the target. Experimental weapons have a 3% chance to jam and a 2% chance to explode and deal even greater damage if they do. The chance to jam/explode is built into the attack roll, so if your character has any fortune points left (rerolls that refresh at the start of every ingame day), you can (and probably should) reroll any actual explosions.

*Criticals in WFRP are the most common way a character can die mechanically. If you're reduced to 0 wounds, you're not dead and you're not out of the fight, but any further damage causes a critical hit with a severity based on the amount of damage taken. Low value critical hits can stun you or knock you out or cause minor penalties. Medium value ones will take you out of the fight with the higher end of that having a chance to permanently main your character. The highest value crits are instant death.


However, the combat system itself is bad. It's swingy, you spend a lot of time just outright missing and it's relatively easy to randomly roll up a high Toughness character with OK armour that's very difficult to take down, while everyone else is a squishy meatbag.

Depends on how far you are into the game, I'd say. There's definitely a problem with missing outright early on since an average human character starts with 31 in each stat and thus a 31% chance to hit. My group houseruled this so if you take a single attack, you get a +10 bonus to the attack roll (multi-attack characters swing more, but don't get the bonus). The absolute highest Toughness a human could start with is 50 (roll a perfect 40 for Toughness in a class with the Very Tough talent for +5 and use your free starting levelup for another +5), but that's both incredibly unlikely and only 2 points of less damage taken than your average human. If armor is a factor early on, you're probably either playing a class that starts with it and benefiting or picking fights you shouldn't be. Strength and Toughness tend to grow at roughly the same rate, so if two characters with similar stats fight, your strength will cancel out their toughness and each hit will typically deal 1d10 wounds. Armor reduces damage taken by between 1 and 5 depending on the kind worn. Against a fully armored opponent with similar, half of your hits do nothing, but by the time you're facing that, you're also more likely to have higher WS (or BS) and a higher chance to hit in the first place and have 2 or even 3 attacks per round. Likewise with dodge and parry rolls - you can potentially negate up to two attacks per round, but by the time you can do it reliably, those attacks are far more likely to land in the first place. Overall, it balances itself out fairly well, but it does help to bring the baseline for success up just a bit.

You also get bonuses for ganging up on opponents, so when in doubt, do that. The longest fight in the campaign i'm currently in dragged on for something like 20 rounds and was basically a series of 1 on 1's where the party was slowly was slowly being worn down by an opponent just outclassed us and his henchmen who were roughly on par with us or slightly weaker. It started with one character, a knight, fighting him and being worn down while my character, a mercenary, and a third character, a halfling rogue handled one of his henchmen and various other warriors. Once the henchman was down, I swapped in while two more of his henchmen forced through and were held off by the knight and halfling. It just wasn't working and eventually the knight was injured (though still able to fight) so I ignored my own fight, charged in to help her and wounded the henchman she had been fighting (taking him out of the fight, though failing to kill him). The fight changed from being three 1v1s to a 3v2 melee and it swung in our favor. In about 2 rounds, we overwhelmed them and the knight was able to kill the enemy leader. Both henchmen escaped, but beaten and bloody, we managed to narrowly win the battle. Numerical advantage really is the strongest thing you can have in your favor in the system.

Tanarii
2021-05-06, 07:19 PM
Stats hover around 30(±10). Careers give the option and requirement to boost stats and buy skills. So (pretend, AFB) a(n Apprentice) Wizard career might allow and require you to buy "Int +10"; a more advanced Wizard career might allow and require "Int +15". Skills can be bought 3 times - the first time makes it "known" (allowing you to roll the skill); each of the next two purchased grants a cumulative +10 to the skill.

But what does that mean?

So, a(n Apprentice) Wizard who rolled a 25 Int, and bought "Int +10" and "Read/Write" would have a 35 Int, giving them a 35% chance to make any read/write rolls. If in their next career they purchased "Int +15" and "Read/Write" again, they would have a 40 Int, and a 50% chance to make any read/write rolls.Yeah, the skill chances aren't BECMI Thief bad, but they aren't General Skills or NWPs good either. OTOH I believe the GM is empowered to modify the skill test up to -/+30% depending on difficulty. I just can't remember if the system and sample adventures encourage it or not.


I really want to run the epic fail "you meet in a tavern", where the waitress rolls for hearing and remembering the items you order (with about a 30% chance of success on each roll, mind), the cook rolls to create the order, the waitress rolls to balance the food, all with disastrous fumbles on 96-100, and play it for pure comedy.At the least it'd certainly make a good GM horror story posts on how not to do skill checks, even if all the checks had +30% to them for being Very Easy. :smalltongue:


I generally like the system. But… I haven't become as strongly attached to the characters in WFRP / they haven't really developed the depth and variety of goals as characters in other systems.Because they were all dead? :smallamused:

Glorthindel
2021-05-07, 03:32 AM
The combat system is definitely a matter of training yourself that 'things work differently'. Yes, there is a high whiff factor, but a starting character with 31% WS does not (usually) only have a 31% chance to hit.

Just as in D&D where you would always try and get Advantage if you can get it, in WFRP, you chase the bonuses. Outnumbering an enemy increases your chance to hit by +10% 2-1, +20% 3-1. If you are already in combat and only have one attack, taking the Aim half action grants another +10%, and if your not already in combat, the Charge Action grants +10% instead, and if you really want to land that hit, the All Out Attack Action gives +20%. So that 31% is nearly always 41%, and quite often 61%. And that's for an average character who has taken no upgrades in Weapon Skill. Sure, if you are used to a system where you nearly always hit, its definitely an adjustment to expecting 1/2 - 1/3 of your attacks to miss, but it is hardly the 2/3 chance that it looks like on paper.

Morty
2021-05-07, 04:21 AM
However, the combat system itself is bad. It's swingy, you spend a lot of time just outright missing and it's relatively easy to randomly roll up a high Toughness character with OK armour that's very difficult to take down, while everyone else is a squishy meatbag.


It's a common belief that the combat system is lethal... which it can be, but you haven't experienced it if you haven't seen several PCs and goblins/bandits/cultists try and fail to hurt each other with 31 WS and 1d10+3 damage.

Quertus
2021-05-09, 11:08 AM
OTOH I believe the GM is empowered to modify the skill test up to -/+30% depending on difficulty. I just can't remember if the system and sample adventures encourage it or not.


At the least it'd certainly make a good GM horror story posts on how not to do skill checks, even if all the checks had +30% to them for being Very Easy. :smalltongue:

Actually, the designers seem to have decided that the players had it too easy, and made the max penalty -60%.

Anyone have eyes on modules, to answer regarding the prevalence of bonuses to rolls?


Because they were all dead? :smallamused:

Hmmm… certainly, a lot of them did die. And they all felt quite fragile - like they were a single ___ (fury?) of Sigmar or nearby sneeze or glowing rock away from death. Or maybe the combination of their extreme mortality and the ability to burn Fate Points to avoid such death made the "trials"of their existence seem meaningless. Or maybe the struggle to acquire the trappings of the next class being so tedious and difficult made thoughts of aspiring to accomplish anything in the system seem ludicrous. Or maybe the issues were deeper into group dynamics, rails, which paths we followed, spotlight sharing, sources of fun, what people could tolerate - and, not getting to run these characters in multiple groups, the group issues bled over into my perception of the characters. Or maybe there was too much stuff that felt like "NPC only" to bother even trying as a PC.

I don't know - I haven't really thought about it.

farothel
2021-05-09, 12:47 PM
I like the system and the world (I also used to play Warhammer Fantasy Battle with Wood- and High elf armies). We have played it two times in our tabletop group and it was heaps of fun both times. However, our GM allowed us to choose race and career rather than rolling it (of course, we could still roll if we wanted it).

One thing, the wizard apprentice with 25% int will almost never happen (unless you want it o), as you have a rule called Shallya's Mercy (SM), where you can change one stat to average (in most cases a 31). If you play a wizard and knowing they need int for just about everything they do, you will probably use SM on Int to get it to 31. And if you get the Savvy talent somewhere (I don't know all the careers, but there are some who give this or other 'add 5% to a stat' type of talents), you add another 5% to Int.

sethdmichaels
2021-05-12, 01:41 PM
WFRP was the first system i ever learned and played, and there's a lot i like about it. the careers model is pretty cool, i like the way the discrete magic systems get divided up, and it's super flavorful. it has a very specific lore framework so it boxes you in to a detailed-but-narrow world; it's much less customizable and flexible than D&D5e.

Mr Beer
2021-05-13, 03:07 AM
It's a common belief that the combat system is lethal... which it can be, but you haven't experienced it if you haven't seen several PCs and goblins/bandits/cultists try and fail to hurt each other with 31 WS and 1d10+3 damage.

Yep, I would say that my complaint is more that it's "bad" and "swingy" than exceptionally lethal. You can easily miss 3 or 4 times in a row with 30 WS and its frustrating.

Telok
2021-05-13, 10:33 AM
Yep, I would say that my complaint is more that it's "bad" and "swingy" than exceptionally lethal. You can easily miss 3 or 4 times in a row with 30 WS and its frustrating.

The WH combat system does not lend itself well to D&D style combat where people stand around and trade hits in a race to run out of hit points. It's closer to some of the older Errol Flynn type adventure movies where you see lots of sword swinging and parries for a couple minutes that ends with one or two hits.

Ganging up on people, positional advantages, taking time to set up a strong attack with a feint or aiming, stuff that seriously tilts the odds in real combat works wonders for your "hit rate". And it's not like D&D where you have to stab someone in the face five times before they even think they're in danger of maybe losing the fight.

Quertus
2021-05-13, 11:24 AM
What makes the combat system feel "bad" is…that a skilled Fighter (say, base 30, +20 weapon skill) can easily miss 3 times in a row in a 1-on-1 fight (1 in 8 odds). While an unskilled youth with a rusty knife *could* instajib them or their opponent.

Yes, in D&D, it could happen that the Knight drops the foe down to just a few HP, and then their squire / boy with a rusty knife / untrained Wizard with a dagger lands a lucky hit, and gets the killing blow. But it's still obvious that the Knight did most of the work.

In Warhammer, yes, skill (both player and character skill) will help, in the aggregate, but it's far too possible for the most skilled character to not contribute at all, and for the least skilled character to solo / one-shot the foe.

How seriously would you take a movie where, more than once, the skilled marine misses repeatedly, then the clueless geek one-shots the foe?

Xervous
2021-05-13, 11:41 AM
How seriously would you take a movie where, more than once, the skilled marine misses repeatedly, then the clueless geek one-shots the foe?

I wouldn’t even blink if the marine barks “lucky shot kid”.

Or if someone whined aim-bot

Are we playing combat for an expected outcome here or are we rolling the dice and taking uncertain risks?

TheSummoner
2021-05-13, 01:36 PM
In Warhammer, yes, skill (both player and character skill) will help, in the aggregate, but it's far too possible for the most skilled character to not contribute at all, and for the least skilled character to solo / one-shot the foe.

How seriously would you take a movie where, more than once, the skilled marine misses repeatedly, then the clueless geek one-shots the foe?

In a realistic scenario, one good hit is lethal. It doesn't matter if it's the local village idiot fighting the local lord's champion, if the fool gets lucky and lands a good hit before the champion does, the champion is still human and still dies if the pointy bit goes into his vital parts. Maybe the champion was drunk. Maybe the sun was in his eyes. Maybe he just underestimated the fool and it was his undoing. Weirder things have happened.

Personally, I find it far more preferable to a system where combatants are a sack of meat and hitpoints that can survive several hits. It's very much a question of what you're after and thematically, Warhammer in general is very much geared towards relatively normal people facing off against horrors that could easily kill them and victory or survival is often more about being more clever or just more lucky than being more skilled. Or knowing when to run away.

And I'm in agreement with Xervous. If you want a pre-determined outcome where the numerically superior combatant always comes out ahead, why roll dice at all?

Telok
2021-05-13, 01:56 PM
What makes the combat system feel "bad" is…that a skilled Fighter (say, base 30, +20 weapon skill) can easily miss 3 times in a row in a 1-on-1 fight (1 in 8 odds). While an unskilled youth with a rusty knife *could* instajib them or their opponent.

Keep in mind that WH, unlike D&D has built-in active defenses. An experienced fighter can easily have a free parry, dodge, or both, in addition to a regular one. Depending on edition I think I recall some weapons offering a parry bonus and maybe a defense bonus or attack penalty for long vs. short weapons. It's also why people historically used shields and as much armor as they could afford.

Yeah, a skaven pup shoving six inches of rusty steel into your lung is going to hurt you even if you're a extra-tough slayer. That's sort of the point of not having a combat model of 150+ hp and attacks doing 2d6+5 damage.

Quertus
2021-05-13, 04:01 PM
Agreed that a "good shot" (even from the village idiot) should be fatal.

But Warhammer has the *worst* (OK, maybe sight exaggeration) combination of rules for that.

On the one hand, unlike HP, it can't model slowly wearing down the stamina of a skilled Fighter. (Treating HP not as meat, obviously)

OTOH, its monsters often *do* have massive Wounds (HP), and thus *aren't* vulnerable to that lucky shot.

So you can get the village idiot coming in after the skilled champion has whiffed multiple times, and see him one-shot the foe that the champion failed to even hit. But you can't have the skilled champion one-shot the dragon Smaug. The unskilled character can bat above their skill level much more easily and much more memorably and much more often than the skilled character can. Whereas the "skilled" character… doesn't follow any recognizable patterns (wearing down the opponent, owning / toying with inferiors, holding off multiple opponents singlehandedly, etc) of feeling skilled.

There's things I like about the system (including its handling of armor), but there's things that have just never felt right to me.

TheSummoner
2021-05-13, 05:02 PM
Agreed that a "good shot" (even from the village idiot) should be fatal.

But Warhammer has the *worst* (OK, maybe sight exaggeration) combination of rules for that.

On the one hand, unlike HP, it can't model slowly wearing down the stamina of a skilled Fighter. (Treating HP not as meat, obviously)

OTOH, its monsters often *do* have massive Wounds (HP), and thus *aren't* vulnerable to that lucky shot.

So you can get the village idiot coming in after the skilled champion has whiffed multiple times, and see him one-shot the foe that the champion failed to even hit. But you can't have the skilled champion one-shot the dragon Smaug. The unskilled character can bat above their skill level much more easily and much more memorably and much more often than the skilled character can. Whereas the "skilled" character… doesn't follow any recognizable patterns (wearing down the opponent, owning / toying with inferiors, holding off multiple opponents singlehandedly, etc) of feeling skilled.

Well, one thing I think you're discounting is the Ulric's Fury rule. If the roll 10 on your D10+Whatever damage roll, you can add another D10 wounds. If you roll 10 for that roll, you continue rolling and so-on. So while it's highly unlikely that any single character could one-shot or even one-round a dragon (2E stats: 6 attacks, 55 wounds, 6 Strength and Toughness Bonus, 5 points of armor), in a straight 1 on 1 it's not impossible... You're just looking at maybe 1 in a million odds (literally). It would have to be an incredibly good shot if you were using a normal weapon. Should a single human (or dwarf/elf/halfling) be able slay a dragon in a fair fight, though? Probably not. It's a massive superpredator and among the most dangerous creatures in the game and the player characters are ultimately a sack of flesh wrapped in metal (if they're lucky) and wielding a pointy stick. Something like that is the sort of thing you bring a small army for.

A couple of anecdotes from the game I'm in. Our party had an encounter where we saw a wyvern. We're a fairly strong party at this point and a wyvern is nowhere near as deadly as a dragon (2 attacks +1 special attack, 44 wounds, 6 Strength Bonus, 5 Toughness Bonus, 4 points of armor) and the thing was actually asleep when we were in position to fight it. We were still terrified of the thing and ended up getting past without actually fighting it. The fact that it was sleeping meant we had a massive advantage in the first round of combat, but if we had failed to kill it right away, it was just too dangerous to deal with. We probably could've taken it, but decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

The opposite extreme is when the ancient vampire who has been the closest thing to a main villain our sandboxy campaign has was basically killed by a dozen slightly above average NPCs with crossbows. This was a villain who had a toughness bonus of 7, was wearing armor (probably 4 or 5 points worth), was a level 5 wizard, and had over 30 wounds, and that we had only survived by being stupidly lucky every time we encountered him.


There's things I like about the system (including its handling of armor), but there's things that have just never felt right to me.

Now I feel like you're just contradicting yourself. The way the armor works is specifically what makes it harder for a single weak character to wear down a stronger one. If you've got enough toughness and armor, you ignore most damage outright. If that's a serious problem, however, you could always try to offset it with a houserule. My group uses one your to-hit roll sets a minimum damage for the attack (better roll, higher minimum). Another option is to rule that any attack that connects always deals at least one wound regardless of toughness and armor (4E does this, I believe). And numerical advantage is absolutely huge - it doesn't matter how good you are, a big enough horde of goblins will mess you up.

The system definitely has some flaws, but I think you're overstating them.

Quertus
2021-05-14, 09:30 AM
Well, one thing I think you're discounting is the Ulric's Fury rule. If the roll 10 on your D10+Whatever damage roll, you can add another D10 wounds. If you roll 10 for that roll, you continue rolling and so-on.

Kinda the opposite, actually - I'm all but counting on it.


Now I feel like you're just contradicting yourself.

Not at all!

In an unarmored, Errol Flynn / Princess Bride scene, it is sufficiently likely that the "skilled champion" could whiff 3 times, then the (very strong, or backed by Ulric's Fury) village idiot one-shots the foe.

And it's probable enough that you can see it multiple times in a campaign without questioning the dice gods.

Whereas the champion managing to one-shot a Dragon / wyvern / whatever? No, it's far too improbable for the skilled character to hit above their weight class that way.

It's that pairing that I don't like, that makes the game feel… wrong. It's "the hobbits accidentally took down Lars… but Bard died to Smaug, as did Éowyn to the witch King's wraith." It's removing all the epic scenes, and adding in comedic ones. For no apparent reason, no real gain.

Whereas the armor (and Toughness) as DR is a perfectly reasonable system - and, as implemented, is fairly well calibrated to the damage numbers.


The system definitely has some flaws, but I think you're overstating them.

Overstating? Quite likely. Sometimes I need to point all the way to the north pole before people will catch on that I'm pointing north.

Glorthindel
2021-05-14, 10:05 AM
It's that pairing that I don't like, that makes the game feel… wrong. It's "the hobbits accidentally took down Lars… but Bard died to Smaug, as did Éowyn to the witch King's wraith." It's removing all the epic scenes, and adding in comedic ones. For no apparent reason, no real gain.


I think it comes down to a preference in game ethos. Yes, in a heroic saga, the skilled swordsmen getting shanked by the gutter-scum with a dull knife would seem out of place. But that isn't what WFRP is portraying. Its portraying something a little more darker. Sadly, contrary to heroic fiction, any scrub with a sharp implement is dangerous, regardless of any "proffessional training". And that is what WFRP is portraying; any time blades get drawn could be a characters end, all it takes is a moments lack of concentration, and its game over. Flying arrows aren't a minor annoyance, they are a very real threat of death. It is less Wheel of Time, more Game of Thrones (TV season 8 not included).

Honestly, if you are rolling out Dragons in WFRP, you are sorta missing the point. Sure, they are in the monster list, because they have to be, because someone is always going to want to use a Dragon (same with the Greater Daemons, you are doing a disservice to the game if you roll one of these out for anything other than a big campaign finale), but the game is much more suited to more 'human' conflicts. And for them to work, that gutter-scum with a dirty knife has got to remain a threat.

TheSummoner
2021-05-14, 10:56 AM
It's that pairing that I don't like, that makes the game feel… wrong. It's "the hobbits accidentally took down Lars… but Bard died to Smaug, as did Éowyn to the witch King's wraith." It's removing all the epic scenes, and adding in comedic ones. For no apparent reason, no real gain.

Well, if you want to put those two events in WFRP terms...

Bard got off the one in a million shot with a special dwarf-forged arrow (or if you want to use the Peter Jackson version used a friggin' ballista bolt). Smaug would've been counted as unarmored and possibly even received a penalty to toughness due to where he was hit. A possible interpretation that makes the odds less astronomical is that the shot itself dealt heavy but non-lethal damage, but it was enough to knock him out of the sky and the fall finished the job. Even with that rather generous interpretation, the fact that it was so unlikely is specifically what makes it so impressive.

As for Éowyn vs the Witch King, the comparison I'm leaning towards is to a particularly powerful wraith. Warhammer wraith to Ringwraith isn't a perfect comparison, but unless you have a better suggestion, I'm going to go with it. Wraiths are stronger than average humans, but they aren't on par with a dragon. Assume that both she and the Witch King are stronger than average and it becomes a fight where she's the underdog, but still close enough that she can win. Either because she gets a lucky Ulric's Fury, because it was already wounded earlier in the battle or a combination of the two, she slays his fellbeast quickly. She then faces off with the Witch King himself and is outclassed. Merry charges in to help her, deals some good damage, and weakens him enough that she can land the killing blow.


I think it comes down to a preference in game ethos. Yes, in a heroic saga, the skilled swordsmen getting shanked by the gutter-scum with a dull knife would seem out of place. But that isn't what WFRP is portraying. Its portraying something a little more darker. Sadly, contrary to heroic fiction, any scrub with a sharp implement is dangerous, regardless of any "proffessional training". And that is what WFRP is portraying; any time blades get drawn could be a characters end, all it takes is a moments lack of concentration, and its game over. Flying arrows aren't a minor annoyance, they are a very real threat of death.

This too. The tone is very different. Heroic fantasy is about great heroes rising to the challenge and overcoming impossible odds. Dark fantasy is about average or slightly above people trying to survive and victory is never without cost.


It is less Wheel of Time, more Game of Thrones (TV season 8 not included).

Not this though. We don't talk about season 8.

Quertus
2021-05-14, 07:16 PM
LotR (in which the Dragon and the mount for the Witch King are both killed by one-shot by… not even Legolas, and the hobbits *don't* one-shot Lars) is the wrong pattern, but that's kinda my point: I don't have a pattern that matches the Warhammer "tune".

Got any example movies where the combat says, "clueless loser can *repeatedly* solo a foe that the skilled guy is useless against, yet the skilled guy cannot reasonably bat above their level to one-shot a big monster"?

If so - if I had a pattern to match it to - I might not dislike it as much.

Telok
2021-05-14, 11:40 PM
I don't have a pattern that matches the Warhammer "tune".

Got any example movies where the combat says, "clueless loser can *repeatedly* solo a foe that the skilled guy is useless against, yet the skilled guy cannot reasonably bat above their level to one-shot a big monster"?

If so - if I had a pattern to match it to - I might not dislike it as much.

Try running some simulations. Roll up half a dozen or a dozen starter characters, pick out the losers, pick the ones that qualify for the decently fighty classes and advance them a bit. Then try the combat system, by rolling dice with the parries, the dodges, and using the actual combat options.

TheSummoner
2021-05-15, 12:20 AM
I would say that...


Got any example movies where the combat says, "clueless loser can *repeatedly* solo a foe that the skilled guy is useless against, yet the skilled guy cannot reasonably bat above their level to one-shot a big monster"?

...really isn't the case. Especially the repeatedly part. You're looking at about a 1% chance for a starting character to one-shot a stronger character with good equipment. Toughness Bonus 4, full mail armor is what I'd call moderately strong. A character probably about 15 or 16 wounds at that point. The starting character deals D10+3 damage, so max of 6 for a non-Ulric's Fury hit. You'd have to roll max damage, confirm Ulric's, and roll max damage again (1% chance) for even a +1 critical and any chance of lethality, which even then isn't guaranteed because a +3 critical is the lowest possible to outright kill the target.

The moderately strong character likely deals D10+5 (4 Strength Bonus & Strike Mighty Blow). If we're generous and give the starting character full leather armor, they still take at least 1 damage per hit and can take up to 11 for a non-Ulric's Fury hit. The average starting character has 11 or 12 wounds. One Ulric's hit (10% chance) or on average, 3 non-Ulric's hits will mean the average character starts taking criticals.

Add to this that the moderately strong character has a better parry chance, and is more likely to have Dodge Blow and 2 Attacks than the starting character. It's possible the starting character gets lucky and wins 1 on 1, but it's not likely. And the gulf between the starting character and even the strongest possible human character is still smaller than the gulf between that strongest possible human character and something like a dragon or a greater daemon. The fact that the monsters have 5 attacks and twice the wounds is absolutely huge. The daemons in particular represent apocalyptic level threats that bend nature around them just by manifesting. They aren't meant to be the sort of thing that can be soloed.

Mr Beer
2021-05-15, 03:12 AM
The WH combat system does not lend itself well to D&D style combat where people stand around and trade hits in a race to run out of hit points. It's closer to some of the older Errol Flynn type adventure movies where you see lots of sword swinging and parries for a couple minutes that ends with one or two hits.

Ganging up on people, positional advantages, taking time to set up a strong attack with a feint or aiming, stuff that seriously tilts the odds in real combat works wonders for your "hit rate". And it's not like D&D where you have to stab someone in the face five times before they even think they're in danger of maybe losing the fight.

I like simulationist combat systems and WFRP is superior to D&D in that regard, but at the expense of being more frustrating. We can do better. What's impressive about WFRP is that it's 40 years old and has a fantastic setting that IMO still feels fresh today.

farothel
2021-05-15, 06:35 AM
One of the main things that the GM need to do when you are a few careers in is to up the monster's strength and toughness bonus (and wounds), as those are build mostly on the stats of the fantasy battle (at least in 2E) and that's based on a standard human. For instance a treeman has a TB of 6, but after three careers humans can get there as well, so if you want to keep it challenging, you have to make the monsters better. It's not all that much fun if your Bretonnian knight has better strength and toughness than the ogres you're fighting.

HappyDaze
2021-05-15, 09:13 AM
For those that don't object to some increased complexity, WFRP 4e changes up the combat situation by resolving attacks through opposed Weapon Skill rolls and basing damage off of the margin of success. This means skilled melee fighters not only hit more often, they also tend to do more damage when they hit. Additionally, those skilled melee fighters are harder to hit and tend to take less damage when a blow does land on them.

There is also an advantage rule where successful hits offer a bonus to the next roll, at least until your opponent hits you. This means that the momentum of a fight will usually favor the better skilled warriors, and in a even fight, just getting off the first strike can matter a lot.

Note that these change makes the difference between a skilled warrior (soldier, guard, mercenary, even a watchman) and a commoner (many, many examples) much larger than in previous versions. This means that the idea of servants and burgers that get tossed into an adventure coming out in one piece is probably less viable than in earlier editions.

druid91
2021-05-15, 11:30 AM
For those that don't object to some increased complexity, WFRP 4e changes up the combat situation by resolving attacks through opposed Weapon Skill rolls and basing damage off of the margin of success. This means skilled melee fighters not only hit more often, they also tend to do more damage when they hit. Additionally, those skilled melee fighters are harder to hit and tend to take less damage when a blow does land on them.

There is also an advantage rule where successful hits offer a bonus to the next roll, at least until your opponent hits you. This means that the momentum of a fight will usually favor the better skilled warriors, and in a even fight, just getting off the first strike can matter a lot.

Note that these change makes the difference between a skilled warrior (soldier, guard, mercenary, even a watchman) and a commoner (many, many examples) much larger than in previous versions. This means that the idea of servants and burgers that get tossed into an adventure coming out in one piece is probably less viable than in earlier editions.

Though to be fair, even though I really enjoy WFRP's combat mechanics, magic is basically suicide for 90% of the game.

Tanarii
2021-05-15, 11:44 AM
Though to be fair, even though I really enjoy WFRP's combat mechanics, magic is basically suicide for 90% of the game.
Yeah, that's one of the best parts about both warhammer fRP and 40k. I like it in Forbidden Lands too.

druid91
2021-05-15, 04:00 PM
Yeah, that's one of the best parts about both warhammer fRP and 40k. I like it in Forbidden Lands too.

Eh, I don't mind magic being *dangerous* but that's not what I mean. In WFRP 4e Magic is quite literally more likely to kill you than your opponent until you've dumped tons of XP into making it safer. Meaning the wizard is more aptly called 'The guy with a stick who does no magic until the day he gets really good and suddenly tosses around magic like it's nothing because he can't miscast anymore.'

Anonymouswizard
2021-05-15, 06:20 PM
Although I generally her the impression from WFRP that you're not really supposed to play a wizard. I'll agree that magic does swing hard from 'too dangerous' to 'too powerful' at a certain point in your build, but honestly that is at least somewhat fitting to the setting. Although I'll agree that if they didn't want you playing wizards they shouldn't have given you the option at all.

And now I'm trying to remember if petty magic has a chance of misfires, I'll have to check my book in the morning.

The bit I like the least about 4e is that making a random character gives you a lot of XP compared to playing what you want. I haven't run the numbers and seen just how significant it is, but to me it feels like punishing players for having a concept and, at the same time, being a solution to a problem that never existed.

Morty
2021-05-15, 06:26 PM
Both in fantasy and WH40K, "you have a random chance to roll on a random table of bad stuff" is a very, very poor way of introducing dangers to magic.

Tanarii
2021-05-15, 07:49 PM
Eh, I don't mind magic being *dangerous* but that's not what I mean. In WFRP 4e Magic is quite literally more likely to kill you than your opponent until you've dumped tons of XP into making it safer. Meaning the wizard is more aptly called 'The guy with a stick who does no magic until the day he gets really good and suddenly tosses around magic like it's nothing because he can't miscast anymore.'
Looking at the 4e rules, looks like a 10% chance of a minor miscast (unless you have Instinctive Diction), which has a 5% chance of turning into a major miscast. So 1/2% if something really bad happening per spell.

That's pretty low odds by Warhammer standards.


The bit I like the least about 4e is that making a random character gives you a lot of XP compared to playing what you want. I haven't run the numbers and seen just how significant it is, but to me it feels like punishing players for having a concept and, at the same time, being a solution to a problem that never existed.Giving XP to encourage behavior is a time honored tradition. OTOH WHFRP where you can choose at all, as opposed to being required to be random, just sounds weird.

Looks like going fully random is about 1 sessions worth of XP. That sounds pretty good for just doing the traditional thing to me!

But you can advance tiers in your career. Level 4 ratcatchers? WTH? :smallconfused::smallamused:

KineticDiplomat
2021-05-15, 08:55 PM
Given WFRP is cleanly in the “lemonade out of lemons (or maybe die a horrible death)” genre, I see no issue with encouraging the random rolls. The whole point is that you aren’t a “cool wizard of duly dramatic and unique backstory”, but rather more likely a random person living a crap sack life who is now trying adventuring, perhaps against their will. Letting you pick at all is rather a concession away from the theme that they’ve just done.

I mean you’re free to have a character concept, but Mary Sue By Another Name is not really in keeping with the theme. Alas, games like D&D have taught us all that Sue-dom is the norm, so some mechanical actions that help counter it may be required.

In terms of magic, it’s pretty established in WH and 40K canon that magic is not a safe, fun, basically-different-science thing. It is an almost unknowable force that few can even understand the surface properties of, driven by forces that are wild and indifferent to mortals at best, maliciously hostile to them at worst. Magic is scary in setting for a reason - not only are mages feared, but they are feared not just out of “oh noes, the non-gameplay effecting prejudice of ignorance”, but because they really can accidentally cause a calamity. Without some sort of hard limit, preferably with serious consequences, players are likely to default to Mary Sue Who Does Magic With Maybe a Throwaway RP Line.

Telok
2021-05-15, 09:26 PM
Both in fantasy and WH40K, "you have a random chance to roll on a random table of bad stuff" is a very, very poor way of introducing dangers to magic.

For some reason this always sounds to me like complaining that you can't play a cleric in a Lord of the Rings RPG. That's not the fiction that the rules are emulating. In the fiction magic is dangerous and the people who lasted long enough to get it to a reliable level are seriously dangerous and often more than a bit twisted by their experiences. How would you change the magic system to keep that fiction without going into a D&D or ShadowRun type set-up where magic is safe and predictable?

druid91
2021-05-15, 10:57 PM
Looking at the 4e rules, looks like a 10% chance of a minor miscast (unless you have Instinctive Diction), which has a 5% chance of turning into a major miscast. So 1/2% if something really bad happening per spell.

That's pretty low odds by Warhammer standards.

Giving XP to encourage behavior is a time honored tradition. OTOH WHFRP where you can choose at all, as opposed to being required to be random, just sounds weird.

Looks like going fully random is about 1 sessions worth of XP. That sounds pretty good for just doing the traditional thing to me!

But you can advance tiers in your career. Level 4 ratcatchers? WTH? :smallconfused::smallamused:

For most things you won't be using basic casting until MUCH later on. You'll be channeling.

Which is a fumble on something ending in 0 or a double. Meaning you have a 20% chance of a major miscast *every roll* when everything but the magic that's literally illegal to cast requires multiple turns of rolling that's basically suicide.

Tanarii
2021-05-16, 12:08 AM
For most things you won't be using basic casting until MUCH later on. You'll be channeling.

Which is a fumble on something ending in 0 or a double. Meaning you have a 20% chance of a major miscast *every roll* when everything but the magic that's literally illegal to cast requires multiple turns of rolling that's basically suicide.
Okay I missed that. So powerful spells you get a major miscast on doubles or ending in 0 over your Language (Magick). Looks like a starting character would reasonably have 33+ in that unless they didn't start a Wizard (high chance if random rolling). So that'd be 14% per round of channeling. Yeah, I can see that makes things beyond a Petty spell pretty dangerous.

Edit: Can you apply Advantage to Language (Magick) casting or Channeling? If so that'd make staying in the back and not getting hit pretty crucial.
Edit2: okay I see it's for casting but not channeling. Still, very useful to get the SL >= CN in a single cast. Also use of ingredients to lower mistcasts seems critical to the process.

Anonymouswizard
2021-05-16, 06:00 AM
Giving XP to encourage behavior is a time honored tradition. OTOH WHFRP where you can choose at all, as opposed to being required to be random, just sounds weird.

Looks like going fully random is about 1 sessions worth of XP. That sounds pretty good for just doing the traditional thing to me!

But you can advance tiers in your career. Level 4 ratcatchers? WTH? :smallconfused::smallamused:

I have issues with (individual) XP as an incentive anyway, I much prefer to give out Fate Points/Bennies/Moxie/whatever instead. So I already have issues on that front, but I have no issues with random character generation and wouldn't have cared if it was the only option (because it's a legacy element and 'just pick your race and career' is really easy to say). My issue is the idea that they need to bribe people to play random characters, because of a table is willing to pay random characters they will play random characters, and if they're not they'll just choose. At the end of the day you're not going to convince group B to use random characters by giving them a big slab of XP.

And yeah, 4e streamlined Careers. Every Career gets four tiers, and instead of going Apprentice Wizard->Wizard->Wizard Lord->Wizard Supreme you go from Wizard Tier 1 (Apprentice Wizard) up through the ranks. It causes some weirdness, and it admittedly isn't as flexible (no Careers you can enter from multiple options anymore), but at the same time they removed the need to change careers to keep building associated Characteristics and Skills and moving down is incredibly easy.

But yes, level 4 Ratcatchers are literally an option. I can't remember what they're called or what trappings they get, but you don't have to stop being a Ratcatcher if you don't want to.


Given WFRP is cleanly in the “lemonade out of lemons (or maybe die a horrible death)” genre, I see no issue with encouraging the random rolls. The whole point is that you aren’t a “cool wizard of duly dramatic and unique backstory”, but rather more likely a random person living a crap sack life who is now trying adventuring, perhaps against their will. Letting you pick at all is rather a concession away from the theme that they’ve just done.

I mean you’re free to have a character concept, but Mary Sue By Another Name is not really in keeping with the theme. Alas, games like D&D have taught us all that Sue-dom is the norm, so some mechanical actions that help counter it may be required.

Going a bit extreme there. Sure, the system discourages starting as Gloomhaven Spellbourne the wizard. But it also means that if you want to play a farmer who's visage was destroyed by beastmen, but you survived because you were chasing a cow that managed to escape it's pasture then you had better hope those dice land on the Farmer career or shell out hundreds of XP.

Again nothing wrong with random characters, they'll probably be a more interesting mix than choosing, it's the XP for randomness I have a problem with because in my mind people not rolling isn't a problem as long as they're using the same set of Careers.

I've run games using random careers in Dark Heresy, and only had one player have an issue (a very atheistic player rolling Priest, who honestly did roleplay it to the best of their ability).

I mean, if I wanted to play a Mary Sue concept I'd play Age of Sigmar' Soulbound. But these days if a player rolls Wizard and wanted Apothecary, or University Student and wants Noble I don't see why they should be docked XP for the swap as long as the final character fits in the setting.

HappyDaze
2021-05-16, 08:06 AM
It causes some weirdness, and it admittedly isn't as flexible (no Careers you can enter from multiple options anymore), but at the same time they removed the need to change careers to keep building associated Characteristics and Skills and moving down is incredibly easy.


That's not really true. You can enter into a career level from any other career of equivalent level in the same class, and possibly even from a different class with GM's permission.

Anonymouswizard
2021-05-16, 08:51 AM
That's not really true. You can enter into a career level from any other career of equivalent level in the same class, and possibly even from a different class with GM's permission.

Huh, to be fair it's been like a year since I went over the book. Things slip your mind, I also forgot that Hedgecraft and Witchery were two different Lores.

That does mean that you can theoretically do things like Hedge Witch 1->Hedge Witch 2->Jade Wizard 2 with GM permission, which is cool and still somewhat lore appropriate (Hedge Witch 1->Wizard 1 is more reasonable from what I remember).

HappyDaze
2021-05-16, 09:13 AM
Okay I missed that. So powerful spells you get a major miscast on doubles or ending in 0 over your Language (Magick). Looks like a starting character would reasonably have 33+ in that unless they didn't start a Wizard (high chance if random rolling). So that'd be 14% per round of channeling. Yeah, I can see that makes things beyond a Petty spell pretty dangerous.

Edit: Can you apply Advantage to Language (Magick) casting or Channeling? If so that'd make staying in the back and not getting hit pretty crucial.
Edit2: okay I see it's for casting but not channeling. Still, very useful to get the SL >= CN in a single cast. Also use of ingredients to lower mistcasts seems critical to the process.

This is actually the answer to spellcasting that is somewhat counterintuitive. Channelling is sometimes seen as a trap, and wizards are often better off accumulating advantage and skipping Channeling.

druid91
2021-05-16, 04:24 PM
Okay I missed that. So powerful spells you get a major miscast on doubles or ending in 0 over your Language (Magick). Looks like a starting character would reasonably have 33+ in that unless they didn't start a Wizard (high chance if random rolling). So that'd be 14% per round of channeling. Yeah, I can see that makes things beyond a Petty spell pretty dangerous.

Edit: Can you apply Advantage to Language (Magick) casting or Channeling? If so that'd make staying in the back and not getting hit pretty crucial.
Edit2: okay I see it's for casting but not channeling. Still, very useful to get the SL >= CN in a single cast. Also use of ingredients to lower mistcasts seems critical to the process.

Yep, and for some reason they decided to make Petty Spells illegal. So using them is a good way to get witchhunters after you.

Morty
2021-05-17, 02:59 AM
For some reason this always sounds to me like complaining that you can't play a cleric in a Lord of the Rings RPG. That's not the fiction that the rules are emulating. In the fiction magic is dangerous and the people who lasted long enough to get it to a reliable level are seriously dangerous and often more than a bit twisted by their experiences. How would you change the magic system to keep that fiction without going into a D&D or ShadowRun type set-up where magic is safe and predictable?

I really do not understand why every time I protest against WFRP/WH40K handling of magic mishaps, people assume I want it to be safe and predictable. No, I'd rather the risk was more directly tied to what the wizard/psyker is doing and how often, rather than having an entirely random chance every time they do any magic at all - with the odds increasingly only if they push, in whatever way it works in a particular system.

Glorthindel
2021-05-17, 03:57 AM
I really do not understand why every time I protest against WFRP/WH40K handling of magic mishaps, people assume I want it to be safe and predictable. No, I'd rather the risk was more directly tied to what the wizard/psyker is doing and how often, rather than having an entirely random chance every time they do any magic at all - with the odds increasingly only if they push, in whatever way it works in a particular system.

That is something the latest version has slipped on I think; in 2nd ed, the more Magic Dice you rolled, the higher the chance of a mishap (and a bigger mishap), which is as it should be, while as far as I can tell (no-one is playing with magic in my current game) the faliure chance is much more static in the recent edition.

TheSummoner
2021-05-17, 09:47 AM
That is something the latest version has slipped on I think; in 2nd ed, the more Magic Dice you rolled, the higher the chance of a mishap (and a bigger mishap), which is as it should be, while as far as I can tell (no-one is playing with magic in my current game) the faliure chance is much more static in the recent edition.

2E Magic
Roll any number of dice up to your magic stat. Equal or beat the casting value of the spell and the cast is successful.
Roll all 1's: Spell fails, test willpower or gain an insanity point.
Roll doubles: Minor bad thing happens.
Roll triples: More serious bad thing happens.
Roll quadruples: REALLY BAD thing happens.

Certain special rules (for either the character or the environment the character is in) may allow or force you to do things like roll an additional magic die and discard the lowest. Or just roll an additional magic die that counts towards the chance of mishap but not towards the actual casting of the spell. Arcane magic has the three bad thing tables, divine magic only has one table that you roll on for any double or triple (priests can't naturally reach magic 4 IIRC). The effects range from minor to more serious with a 1% chance of just directly rolling on the REALLY BAD thing table.


I really do not understand why every time I protest against WFRP/WH40K handling of magic mishaps, people assume I want it to be safe and predictable. No, I'd rather the risk was more directly tied to what the wizard/psyker is doing and how often, rather than having an entirely random chance every time they do any magic at all - with the odds increasingly only if they push, in whatever way it works in a particular system.

The problem with that is it results in more bookkeeping. You could houserule it in any number of ways where the wizard has options and has to choose between safety/stability and power/reliably casting, but pretty much anything you do is going to require more work on the part of the GM and wizard's player.

Telok
2021-05-17, 09:57 AM
I really do not understand why every time I protest against WFRP/WH40K handling of magic mishaps, people assume I want it to be safe and predictable. No, I'd rather the risk was more directly tied to what the wizard/psyker is doing and how often, rather than having an entirely random chance every time they do any magic at all - with the odds increasingly only if they push, in whatever way it works in a particular system.

That's reasonable. The last time I got to really play was 2e and you could mostly choose your risk/reward level. It seems the most recent version may be a bit more random. Most of the time it comes up it's people complaining about there being any risks at all.

druid91
2021-05-22, 05:14 PM
Although I generally her the impression from WFRP that you're not really supposed to play a wizard. I'll agree that magic does swing hard from 'too dangerous' to 'too powerful' at a certain point in your build, but honestly that is at least somewhat fitting to the setting. Although I'll agree that if they didn't want you playing wizards they shouldn't have given you the option at all.

And now I'm trying to remember if petty magic has a chance of misfires, I'll have to check my book in the morning.

The bit I like the least about 4e is that making a random character gives you a lot of XP compared to playing what you want. I haven't run the numbers and seen just how significant it is, but to me it feels like punishing players for having a concept and, at the same time, being a solution to a problem that never existed.

It's basically insignificant. It's one sessions worth of XP more or less.

The max you can get is around 120 if you completely randomize your character. Keep in mind, average XP per session is 100. XP if you do poorly is 75.