cogollo
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Posts posted by cogollo
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I suppose Halflings will come with an expansion exploring the Empire outside Reikland as it will, hopefully, include the Moot.
Still, if you are very interested in playing a Halfling before the appropriate expansion comes out, I don't see what is stopping you from playing one. It should be pretty easy to agree with your GM to create appropriate stats for a Halfling by taking into account the relation between races in 2nd edition and adapting the initial 3rd edition races accordingly.
So:
Halflings had 10 points less than Humans in WS, Strength and Tougness, but 10 more in BS and Agility. They had 2 less Wounds and some extra Skills and Talents (see page 19 of the WFRP 2nd edition) (man, they were weak, no wonder many people did not want to play with them; I liked them though, one of the funniest experiences of my gaming life was playing a Blood Bowl Tournament with a Halfling team). So there you go, take a Human from 3rd edition and apply those changes to him and you can play with a Halfling. Should take less than 5 mins.
Remember also to change the starting equipment of the Human appropriately (you know, silver cutlery, pan on the head as helmet, beer-tray for a shield, etc., etc.).What about roleplaying tips? You can get those from WFRP 2nd edition or any of the many books that feature Halflings in the Warhammer world.
Some of you would then say: "And what about 15 year old newcomers to the game? They'll miss the wonderful experience of playing a Halfling and poisoning the bad guys with dubious ratmeat pies!! What an outrage!" Right, but anyone interested enough in playing them will surely be able to do what I just told you: adapt the Reiklander Human a bit to get a Halfling... and remember The Hobbit (the film) is coming in one year or two, so FFG will probably wait for that movie to go out so that their sales of Halfling related products go sky high...
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I should also add that spells like "Detect Magic", "Detect Evil", "Detect Lies", "Resurrection", "Remove Disease", "Remove Poison" and similar make a very big difference in the style of campaign and adventures you can play.
I am not 100% against the above spells, but just want to say that if you have them without a clear in-game sacrifice for the characters (i.e., high chances of getting crazy, corrupted or devoured by a Daemon) then there are some kinds of adventure you will never be able to play correctly. That's the reason why D&D is interesting for high fantasy adventures but usually sucks for mistery or horror adventures.
I hope 3rd edition will maintain this sort of spells out of the player's hands...
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Mikael Hasselstein said:
It seems there are two issues here, the speed with which weapons cause death and the difference between the abilities of high-level characters compared to low-level characters.
I agree with your comment and would like to add also a third issue: money and treasure.
A world of grim adventure requires a system where:
1. Your character has no "stoneskin" against the weapons of poor commoners. Even a well placed pitchfork could kill you. I must say that 2nd edition lacked here a bit, as combat was not so dangerous as I expected. I hope they improve this a bit in 3rd edition and get something more in Rolemaster style (I mean in deathliness, not in number of tables to look). This has also a direct relation to the difference in abilities between high and low-level characters.
2. There are horrors that even the most advanced heroes fear. Here 2nd edition did an amazing job, thanks to the incredible "Tome of Corruption" which is one of my favourite RPG books to date.
3. Magic is dangerous and very risky. Here, again, 2nd edition did very well, as every spell you cast could bring Insanity, Corruption and/or a Witchhunter Interrogator calling in the middle of the night.
4. Every penny counts. Here I must say that 2nd edition was, in my opinion, very weak. The "Old World Armoury" had inconsistent prices for items and presented costs of items the D&D style.
After some research in the old BI forums, I created my own list of prices and my campaigns always had the characters fighting against poverty and destitution... the pains they took to avoid paying taxes when entering cities such as Nuln or Altdorf offered hilarious moments, and I still remember the joy in my player's faces when they made their first Gold Crowns smuggling some bits of wyrdstone into Delberz... they also were treated as Beggars and Vagrants when appearing with Average or Poor quality clothing and buying a nice set of clothes was very expensive and a real sacrifice...
these are the kind of experiences you could never have with the treasure system of games such as D&D (which, btw, I also like for a relaxed Munchkin-style evening). Again I hope 3rd edition will improve this. Although I already have my list of prices and I don't need much in this respect, I would like newcomers to WFRP to experience a different sort of "adventure" than the usual high fantasy game.
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NewTroski said:
I have played some games with random stat generation in which (for instance) the healer is a better fighter than the warrior. The other players then start to feel marginalized and don't have as much fun. So, this is something I endorse for RPG's due a game balance issue, and so that all players can feel like they contribute just as much as everyone else, in their given medium.
I agree with you here, though most times the problem is caused more by players and GMs than by the character's stats. There are players who are very eager to participate, always have something to say and always want to be in the middle of the action, while others are more shy or need more time to come up with interesting ideas.
As a GM, it is good to keep an eye for this and try to gently poke the less participative players into action and try to limit the amount of spotlight given to the most extroverted types (though it's better not to overdo this, to avoid annoying both the talkative and meditative players). Also, if the GM sees one character has been very unlucky (or even too lucky) with the stats rolls, he could talk with the players and try balancing the situation a bit.
I see both random-stats and buy-stats systems as having their problems. Random rolls can bring into the game all manner of strange characters (as in real life) but can marginalize unlucky players. Buy-stats systems have the danger of giving only standard "optimised characters" plus you still can have issues with unbalanced careers...
Myself, I prefer random character creation. I have used it in my WFRP 2nd edition campaigns and only allowed Shallya's Mercy to those that deserved it due to very bad rolls (once I even allowed one player to reroll two stats). I like a lot the strange results you come up with, as they really add to the grim of WFRP.
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Gruuber said:
The sheer unwieldiness of this task resolution system will destroy the flow of the narrative, the building of tension, take up a lot more time and probably test the patience and goodwill of the players involved. Previous editions of WHRP presented a quick and easy way of task resolution (although combat can be clunky) with elaboration being the Provence of GM and Player as befitting the context and mood at that time. From Call of Cthulhu to 4thEd D&D it’s all about rules that resolve quickly and keep the pace, whether it’s slow burning terror or high-octane God-bashing. This new edition boldly eschews these tried and tested methods which makes it quite a gamble for the $100 price tag.
"The sheer unwieldiness...."!!!!
Have you ever really played D&D 3.5 or 4th edition? How much time do you need to calculate all your bonuses/penalties when the heroes are 5th level or more?... the Wizard casts Haste, the Priest Bless, the Druid casts Barkskin on your Fighter and you decide to give yourself a -2 to your attacks for a +2 to your Damage... then you charge the Hobgoblin and roll 1d20 +7 (Str+basic attack + weapon focus) +1(charging)+1(haste)+1(bless)-2(Power Attack) against the AC 18 of the Hobgoblin... wait, your Rogue colleague is flanking the Hobgoblin, so you get an extra +2 to the attack...
and that's only to decide whether you have hit or not! And WFRP 2nd edition was not so messy only because the combat system was simple and, sorry to say, a bit clunky (though I liked it and only created a couple of house rules for my campaign).
Anybody who has played Descent can tell you that interpreting the results of a pool of dice takes a few seconds at maximum...
now, the time wasting part of pools of dice is indeed grabbing the correct dice, so that's why I bought 3 extra sets of dice for my Descent game, then I let the players have only the dice they need to roll 90% of the time... so you can do the same with WFRP 3rd edition...
"sacrilege!!" - say some people in this forum- "FFG wants to get rich selling us weird-looking dice"... exactly what my grandpa said when he saw me opening the D&D Basic Red box 20 years ago... the irony.
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Gruuber said:
I would interpret the results very slowly indeed. Maybe I'm a bit stupid, or my heads wired up the wrong way, but I find this pictorial display more of a riddle than an aid. Sure, with practice I can get familiar with their meaning but I'm still looking at a time consuming process. For every task resolution one must take into account stance and all manner of effects to construct a dice pool unique to any given situation, from there the dice are rolled and in some cases extra dice are rolled again, then comes the task of giving these symbols meaning by consulting all manner of charts depicted on bits of card that may cause other effects that may result in the to-ing and fro-ing of tokens on said bits of card then the GM must finally make up a story that he thinks the dice represent (and as we are now dealing with interpretation rather than absolutes the player may see things very differently.).
1. You've got to be kidding saying interpreting this result is slow...
There are 3 hammers (successes) and 1 crossed swords (failures)... 3-1=2 successes, so the action is a success... you don't need to be Einstein to interpret the basics of that pool of dice...
WFRP 2nd edition and/or D&D have a lot of bonuses/penalties you have to take into account, so at the end you end up spending more time than what you think deciding whether the action was a success or not...
plus you got a lot of extra details you can decide to use or not (these details were not in WFRP 2nd edition, so adding them to the maths is comparing pears and apples).
2.You also say "...then the GM must finally make up a story that he thinks the dice represent... the player may see things very differently"...
I thought we were talking about roleplaying here, not about algebrae or Tide of Iron. I thought the GM interpreted a lot of things in RPGs but maybe my gaming club is full of even freakier people than I thought.
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Tang86 said:
I just sold all of my 4th Edition D&D books in order to make room for this game upon release, however, I kept all of my 1 inch square grid cardboard maps that Wizards sells for 4E in case WHFRP3 used grid maps. I have never played WHFPRP - so does it use grid maps?
I can always buy Games-Workshop miniatures at my gaming store down the road and from the GW online store in order to have that extra Warhammer feel to the game. Just wondering what will be the "norm" for WHFRP3.
Thanks.
WFRP 2nd edition rules gave combat speeds in yards and its combat examples used grid maps (each square being 1 yard). Also, the maps in published adventures had a grid, so you could indeed use miniatures in WFRP without any conversion work.
Also, one of the best selling games of FFG, Descent, is mainly a grid map + miniatures game, so I would be surprised if 3rd edition did not give at least as much support to playing with miniatures as 2nd edition.
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In 2nd edition you could use miniatures if you wanted, but it is not really necessary. I guess the same thing will happen with 3rd edition, but it's my guess.
I tend to like using miniatures when playing out combats, as it makes it easier to the players and GM to know what is going on without losing much time, but that's a personal preference as I like a lot tactical games. On the other hand, there are people that prefer more "narrative" combats, but then they usually prefer other type of rules, so that's why I think that the 3rd edition will leave miniatures as optional, but will also probably have as main rules using them.
Also, I love maps, specially the beautiful ones you usually get in RPG products. I actually think the main reason D&D is business leader is because of their adventures and maps (which I have used once and again in my WFRP campaigns) because the rules of D&D are, in my opinion, mediocre.
And, sorry now for disgressing, at the moment, a friend of mine is GMing a D&D 4th edition campaign (with a lot of house rules) in our club and we are using an LCD screen. He creates the maps using Photoshop and then he uses Maptool in a laptop to send the maps to the LCD screen. We place miniatures on top of the screen. The results are amazing and, thanks to fog of war, we can automatically take into account things like light, hidden enemies and other stuff that are difficult to keep track of. He once ran an scenario through the warrens of Kruthik (an Alien-like monster) and it really felt like the movie... we never knew where the Kruthiks would hit us next... it was a great experience.
Anyway, the system adds a lot of extra tactical component and even storytelling components to our games. The main problem I see is that my friend needs a lot of time to prepare the maps, but with time we'll have a big collection of maps that we'll be able to use for our adventures (he already has a big one). Also, sometimes the maps get too much attention over the story, but usually that's not the case.
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timberww said:
Yet once again a company in attempt to increase profits takes an item that is not broken and breaks it. Nice going.. I understand you inherited this product from another company which was doing a fine job. It had its issues yes but this redesign seems a be created to increase your profits with these new cards ( an attempt to gain card gamer interest) and silly dice with icons so we need your dice to play. I love your board games and own many of them. I also play two of your rpgs, well one now since I assume all warhammer 2.0 stuff will now be axed. RT has my hopes up and am waiting for ever for a true release date. PLEASE DON'T CAST YOUR DEVOTED CUSTOMERS TO THE WIND IN AN ATTEMPT TO INCREASE YOUR BOTTAM LINE. THERE ARE BETTER WAYS TO INCREASE PROFITS. Ladies and gentlemen $100 for the basic set for an RPG/ Card game, come now.
So much vitriole about an unpublished game... it happens every time someone publishes a new edition for an RPG... I'm sorry, mate, but this kind of messages are becoming very boring.
1. There's already a post about the price of the game. I think many people that write better than me have already given good explanations why 100$ is not so much money when you compare it with what you get: 4 books, so that's a paltry 25$ per book, and you get a lot of extras within that money. It seems, if not cheap, at least completely reasonable.
2. Why was WFRP 2nd edition not broken? Why is FFG going to break it? Have you playtested the game? Has Tzeentch sent you visions of FFG developers devouring WFRP 2nd edition players? Is FFG creating a secret police that will prevent you from keeping on playing 2nd edition and using the new material to be published for your campaigns? (man, I have used material from D&D, MERP, Rolemaster, Call of Cthulhu, even Alternity and Paranoia in my WFRP campaigns, what will make 3rd edition material more difficult to convert if needed?).
3. To all the naysayers, keep playing WFRP 2nd edition and having fun and hit the snooze button, when the game comes out try and decide for yourselves or read a review from someone who at least tried the game... don't waste your time getting blue and/or angry about what could or could not happen... you don't know yet.
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I'm Spanish, leaving in The Hague in The Netherlands at the moment.
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lordsneek said:
I thought that the 3 power had something to do with the ingredient because it was right next to it. I have a feeling that the "recharge tokens" mean that when you use them all you have to cast the spell again to benifit from it's effect. So I guess they are just for the spell duration.
This is also a very interesting interpretation... So the number of successes you rolled could determine the duration of the spell or how powerful its effects... That would make a lot of sense! You could still cast the spell as many times as you want, each time risking the dreaded Bane or Chaos Star appearing!
Now I'm really itching for the next developer's diary entry! The more I read about the game, the more I like it (I have already agreed with some friends to start a campaign after Christmas).
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ejacobs said:
I may be wrong, it happens, but I interpreted the Rank # on the spell cards to mean how skilled you are in that particular spell, kind of like the different levels of training with regular skills, allowing for more "skill" dice to be rolled while casting to effect a better outcome.
E
I like this interpretation. I prefer it to limiting the caster artificially by having "spell levels". I liked the 2nd edition Magic system because even a newbie wizard could try to cast a powerful spell, though with a lot of risk.
When I saw the first diary entries, I thought that in the new Magic system, to cast a spell, you would need to obtain a certain number of successes and that Banes obtained in the dice would bring with them Tzeentch's curses.
Maybe the "3 power" means the number of successes you need to cast a spell, I would prefer it to your Wizard having x power points per day and "spending" them to cast spells. I always thought of such systems as being extremely artificial and not fun at all (that's also the reason why D&D never was my favourite game).
Anyway, one other thing I would like is if they can provide variant rules. The game could come with 2-3 mechanics to interpret the results for combat and magic specially.
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ynnen said:
In this diary, I provide an in-depth look at of the different types of dice, briefly discuss the core mechanic, and provide a downloadable PDF symbol reference. Check out the diary here.
I really enjoyed writing this diary, and am glad to be able to "pop the hood" on the game design a bit more and showcase one of the signature elements of the new edition -- the dice system.
UPDATE: I've added some additional sneak peek content to the end of the diary, providing a look at how dice pools are created, and have inclued an example of assembling a dice pool in the game.
Thanks a lot for the information. The dice pool mechanic looks great so far and I think it was a corageous and innovative move to apply it to an RPG
. I hope the game will be a success: I would like to see more designers seeing here a success and start using dice pools in their RPGs, as I think they make a more interactive story and help interpreting the results.One question, though, I see you have included the copy of a spell in the article but have not commented anything about the card. The art, as usual in FFG games, is amazing, but I got a bit anxious with the words "Rank 1" and "3 Power". What do they mean? Please don't tell me the magic system is moving in the direction of D&D (meaning "spell levels" and artificial limitation of the number of spells you can do per day), as that would, in my opinion, be a step back in the design of magic systems when compared with the 2nd edition.
In my opinion, the dice mechanics you have designed for 3rd edition would be a perfect match for the sort of Magic mechanics created for the 2nd edition of WFRP. The new magic system does not need to be a copy of the 2nd edition one, of course, but the idea of being able to cast as many spells as you want to but always with a risk was innovative and fell in the mood of the Warhammer universe. WIth pools of dice plus cards for the spells, such a system would rock!
So, thanks again for the info (the game is looking better every day) and I look forward to your next diary entry (hopefully about the Magic systems
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ynnen said:
And for a bit of fun, now that folks are armed with the dice descriptions and symbol references, how would you as a GM interpret the results of Mellerion's Athletics check from the example I provide at the end of the Designer Diary, based on this dice pool:
Mellerion starts scaling confidently but, halfway through the climb, a section of wet dirt crambles, loosening the rock he was holding onto. He soon realises he is tumbling down the slope, damaging his clothes and hands before his training allows him to get a hold on another rock. He decides the wet section that gives a quick access to the top is too dangerous and descends a bit to search for a better spot for continuing the climb; after some minutes of more or less horizontal movement, he finds a drier area of the cliff he uses to finish his climb.
As mentioned by other posters, Mellerion still gets to add another Expertise Die, so the results could still change.
As for the Banes, I would make him roll one less Characteristic Die next time he needs to use his hands (Bane result). Also, his actual set of clothing is now ruined so, until he buys a new set of clothing, he'll roll one extra Challenge Dice in social interactions with people that are suspicious of beggar looking types (Chaos Star).
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kristof65 said:
My biggest problem with dice pools is the averaging issue. Like someone said previously, it becomes boring if the result can be predicted 90% of the time.
How can you predict getting a skull in the chaos die (black) or in the difficulty die (purple)? I think you are talking here about rolling several dice and adding their results together, but that's not what a pool of dice is, at least not how they have introduced it for WFRP 3rd edition. Let me give an example about a system I know, Alternity.
Say you are rolling damage for a laser attack, a d10, and the victim has an armour that allows him to roll a d4 and subtract that from the damage taken. What's predictable about rolling a d10-d4?
But even more, the advantage of such systems is that they give a lot of extra information, if:
- damage roll was a 4 and armor roll was a 1, you can describe it as the laser hitting the victim somewhere where he was not well enough protected and thus the victim suffers some wounds.
- damage roll was a 4 and armor roll was a 4, you can describe it as the laser hitting the victim where the armour was thickest, thus absorbing all the damage.
Please, give the idea some more time and think it through. You'll realise it gives the GM and the players a lot more information in less time than you get using normal probability rolls, be they 1d100, 3d6 or 1d8+1(Str bonus)+1(morale)+1(haste bonus)+etc...
If they design these dice pools only as good as TSR designed Alternity back in the day (and it's already around 15 years) I can assure you the system will rock.
PS: I just posted an example of how I would use the dice pool to use armour during combat. No way you could create a simpler system to convey the same information using only probability dice and weapons and believe me that I tried hard with WFRP 2nd edition to get something similar for gunpowder weapons, but the results were too time consuming for it to be fun... dice pools make the mechanics quicker, leaving more time to do the roleplaying.
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DeathFromAbove said:
Dice pools are open to other issues. Many others.
Please say which.
Myself, I see them as much more elegant and flexible than rolling 1d100. Good example was Alternity, an old-school game by all standards that uses dice pools.
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I guess the rules for 3rd edition will already be almost, if not completely, finished, but I wanted to mention this idea for the developers' consideration (maybe they already have considered it, but just in case...).
One of the advantages of rolling pools of dice is that you can easily get lots of related info with just one roll. Some background: In Alternity, when you were attacked, wearing armor allowed you to roll dice and subtract that number from the wounds caused by the attack. In Tide of Iron, you roll at the same time attack and cover dice; for each cover dice that gets a success you get 1 less hit.
So, why not do a similar thing in WFRP 3rd edition? It would be very simple:
1. Each armour's stats would come with a number of dice you have to roll as your "defence roll".
2. Parrying or dodging manoeuvres would add dice to the "defence roll" pool.
3. When rolling the attack, the defender would make his "defence roll" at the same time and for each success obtained reduce the successes of the attack (similar to Alternity or Tide of Iron).
Advantages of such a "defence roll" mechanics:
1. You get all results in one roll. No need to keep track of all the myriad bonuses or penalties.
2. You can personalize a lot each armour and obtain a lot of results that now are very cumbersome to calculate using only numerical dice.
Examples: maybe you find the breastplate of a Chaos Marauder, it's very protective (roll many armour dice) but is slightly corrupted (your defense roll would include a black die) so every time you get a skull on the black die you run a risk of corruption or insanity.
- a chainmail allows you to roll more defense dice than a leather armour, but maybe it also adds a purple (difficulty) die. The chainmail will protect you more than the leather armour, but when you get a bad result in your purple die, your character would suffer some fatigue.
- all defensive equipment would come with a number of "sunder" dice. If you get a "success" in this "sunder" dice, your armour/shield would become damaged and less useful for defence. Your armour's card could come with several stats for several levels of damage taken (i.e., you would roll less armour dice if the armour is damaged and at some point it would be completely useless or even give penalties to your movement and attacks). Poor quality equipment would add extra "sunder" dice to the pool.
3. Each armour could come with its card showing special results that you can achieve with it (like getting rid of more damage against a certain type of weapons) or maybe you have to spend more to reduce some types of damage (ex.: breastplate reduces better the damage from blunt and slashing weapons but is less effective against piercing weapons).
4. You will get a lot of info about the "story of the blow". You will know if you survived the attack because you parried the attack, dodged it, maybe your shield took the full brunt of the attack, or maybe you deflected it enough for the armour itself to do the rest... no need for the same boring drone "attack misses, next..."
This is the beauty of a dice pool. With the correct combination of cards+equipment stats you can easily and elegantly obtain a lot of extra info just with one dice roll.
What do you think?
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Erik Bauer said:
Erik Bauer said:
Houseruling that on any double on a D100 something bad happens to your gunpowder weapon lets you hit the target even with such a critic result (11 means both hit ad crit). Then you need a 10/20 rows long table to roll a D100 on to get enough variability.
I know well the linearity problem of the D100 system but Dice Pools suffer from Averagity Problem aswell...
Exactly what I was pointing to in my post: you need at least 2 rolls plus looking at the table to decide what happened. With a pool of dice you need 1 roll plus the GMs imagination and maybe a card in front of you detailing what can go wrong with the weapon.
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NewTroski said:
I agree with those that say the d100 system is not that great. When it came out, yeah, it was probably a pretty good alternative to AD&D in which every single stat had a different modifier, sometimes you wanted high number, sometimes you wanted low numbers, etc.
The problem with d100 is that mathematically, you're only rolling one die, and the probability curve for that is actually a line. You have a 60% chance of succeeding, but you have the same chance of getting a 1 as a 60 as a 100 - shouldn't you be most likely to succeed, but not spectacularly, while doing super awesome and critically failing happen infrequently? I say yes.
Another example of d100 vs. dice pools where dice pools show their extra flexibility: gunpowder weapons (this is just me "creating" a possible example, no hard facts yet, of course).
1. With d100. You roll the d100, you check the weapon stats and if you roll high enough the weapon jams, explodes, etc. ... The dice told you what happened, not much to interpret. The linear probability makes it difficult to get much variability in the end results without getting into gigantic timewasting tables (I tried some houserules with this as I like gunpowder weapons more deadly for both the user and the victim... it was too cumbersome using only d100). Also, you always missed the shot when something bad happened to you, which is not realistic at all.
2. With dice pools. You roll X dice for your attack and, depending on how experimental the weapon, a number of difficulty (I think purple dice) and/or chaos (black dice) tokens.
- A gunpowder pistol
would roll one purple die. Now, if you are reckless and the purple (difficulty) and red (reckless) die comes with a skull on it, then you were too quick reloading the pistol and it explodes in your hands. If you were cautious and got a skull result in the purple, I could just say that the gun jammed, if on top of that you got an hourglass in your cautious die, I could interpret it as you spending more time than needed reloading the gun, then shooting and the gun getting jammed.... But all the above results are independent of whether you actually hit your victim or not, i.e., the gun could explode/jam before or after shooting the bullet... both user and victim could be killed at the same time, precisely the sort of mayhem I would like to convey to my players so that they know gunpowder weapons are dangerous things.Now try to get the above using d100 and tables and you'll sweat at the time you'll need to come to similar results.
- A jezzail
. This weapon is mean. I would force the user to roll both a purple and a black die. With the purple die you could get similar results as with the gunpowder pistol above, but the black die adds a 3rd dimension to the roll. If you get a skull die on the black die, then some noxious wyrdstone vapours escape and you'll have to check some sort of Toughness test to avoid getting a minor Mutation or some Corruption points (I use them in my game to simulate Mutations the same way as Insanity).Again, try now to get the above using d100 and tables... I have experience trying and I know it's very very difficult to come with an elegant way of doing it.
So, long live dice pools! (I started discovering their beauty with the Alternity system) I hope this game is a success so that other companies also copy the dice pool mechanics.
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Erik Bauer said:
Erik Bauer said:
Game mechanics does matter since they are the backbone of the game. If the backbone is broken then the game is broken.
A quick example: A level 12 D&D Paladin enters a Tavern hunting a badass Chaotic/Evil sorcerer. Casts Identify Evil, discovers the sorcerer, extracts his +4 longsword of Evil Bane and charges the sorcerer without thinking about the fact the sorcerer charmed the whole customers of the tavern: what are a bunch of level 2/3 commoners against a level 12 paladin?
In WFRP the same situation is: a full career Witch hunter enters a tavern, hunting a badass Champion of Tzeentch that has the ability to change his aspect to a commoner. He starts to try scaring the people and try seeing through the illusion of the champion, but he isn't sure of his results. Then he discovers this was a trap! Three thugs with barely 2 advances and 1 crossbow each start shooting at the witch hunter who runs for cover to save his life. Now he has to fight 4 foes! But he was prepared, puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles, the rest of the party kicks in and tries to get rid of the thugs while they are reloading while he charges towards that chanting commoner whose image seems to fade and change.
You are completely right here, but I'm 100% sure they won't introduce "Detect Evil", "Resurrection" or similar nonsense spells in 3rd edition, so I think here you are hitting a straw man.
Even if they did, it's easy to house rule them away (that's what we are doing in the D&D 4th campaign a friend of mine is running).
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I have read only two trilogies of Warhammer novels.
I liked a lot the Witchhunter one (Witch Hunter, Witch Finder and Witch Killer) and it gave me a lot of inspiration and ideas for my own campaign.
I did not like so much "Vampire Wars: The Von Carstein Trilogy". I found the plot obvious and the writing not so good. It did not inspire me much for my RPG campaigns.
So, the only novels I can recommend is the Witchhunter trilogy.Another book I can recommend you is Liber Chaotica. If you want to run adventures using Chaos cults it's a great source of material... don't show it to kids (this one is for mature people) or to people not into RPGs (they'll think you are completely nuts and dangerous) because some of the illustrations and texts are really scary... they make great handouts for the PCs when dealing with chaos cults.
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lordmalachdrim said:
And my old game that is dead but still loved and played: Alternity (just check out alternityrpg.net)
Great game! Which, btw, used pools of numerical dice. I still organise a game of this from time to time.
Still, I don't think the way WFRP used d100 was special or elegant. I think that the strong points of WFRP (in order of importance for me) are:
1. Grim world, dark humour, lots of lore from other Games Workshop games, Blood Bowl and Mordheim being my favourite.
2. Career system.
3. For the 2nd edition, the Magic system.
4. Fate and Fortune.
If FFG is able to keep these 4 points more or less intact and improve the other, average and sometimes mediocre mechanics, of 1st and 2nd edition then they'll have achieved a success and rendered WFRP a big service, no matter what some "old school roleplayers" say.
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dvang said:
The 'big' issue is that it is a big commitment to find out if you even *like* the game. You can't (as of now) just go buy a single Player's book and get the basics of how to play. That is the true detriment to the $100 price point.
I agree with your post above.
I only wanted to comment that FFG regularly publishes the rules of their games in PDF format in their website for free for their boardgames. Also, for the RPGs they publish, they have regularly published preview versions where you can play an introductory adventure and get the basics of the game.
I'm pretty sure that at this moment someone in Jay Little's team must be creating this sort of starting guide. In theory, you would need the special dice, but for a basic introductory adventure they may come up with some simple table to convert numerical dice into custom dice so you can use the"good ould dice of yore" (no problems for later sales here, as playing with the custom dice will be quicker and cooler than constantly checking the tables).
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Erik Bauer said:
I know, Knight, I know...
That's why every time I envision a party playing WFRP V3 I always see youngsters playing it as it was some sort of Magic or Pokemon game.
Jokes apart... It is sad to see the RPG that made our group learn how to play in a mature way and we GM learn how to GM in a mature and improvisative way being transformed into something to be used mostly by inexperienced players because experienced ones will find so many limitations in it. That's what I call lack of respect.
I still don't get the pessimistic attitude. Why should the mechanics of a game force you to play an RPG only as some sort of Magic or Pokemon game?
Two short stories to lift your spirits
:1. When I was a youngster and started playing D&D Basic with my cousins and friends (I was 13 back then), it was pure munchkinism... nobody remembers those 10'x10' rooms with a dragon inside? I do...
but my friends and I played on, the plots thickened, and soon the real roleplaying took more weight. Why deprive kids from discovering RPGs as we did? D&D Basic was a cartoonist, ridiculously simple RPG, easy to start a game in no more than 15-30 minutes; let's admit it, its rules were quite crappy, but it gave many of us hundreds of hours of fun and sleep deprivation... Let more youngsters come into the hobby...maybe when you become 20 years older you'll meet great 20 or 30 year players that will take their first "munchkin" steps with D&D 4th or any other simple game (if WFRP 3rd turns to be this way).2. After designing and playing a Descent campaign (with house rules I designed before Road to Legend came out) one friend of mine decided to GM a D&D 4th campaign. His initial intention was to have an MMO style campaign, "à la Descent" , because he loves tactical games. But then, little by little, we started roleplaying more and more until we went from 3 combats per session to 1 combat and 2-3 hours of roleplaying per session; the plot thickened, our interest in the story grew and, after a TPK (trapped by nasty Goblins after a cave-in), we decided to change a lot of D&D 4th edition rules that, in our opinion, disrupted the RPG aspect of the game and give much more weight to diplomacy and character story progression... there you have, roleplaying with D&D 4th edition!!! Exactly, that's what makes us roleplayers, we adapt and invent and imagine and have good time with the old good friends and with the acne-ridden newcomers...
So, take a step back, play some WFRP 1st or 2nd edition sessions to get in good mood and hit the snooze button for a couple months. When 3rd edition finally comes out, take a decision by what you see, but don't waste too much time of your life getting blue about what could or not happen...
Is the rune Ghost Armor considered an armor when hit by effects that ignore armor such as traps?
in Descent: Journeys in the Dark
Posted
I ran into this today while playing an RtL campaign:
Traps usually ignore armor. Is the Ghost Armor rune also bypassed by this kind of damage? Or is it considered only a rune, thus useful also against traps?