If the item, secret door, etc. is well hidden, the search takes time or demands great deal of consentration and skill. To reflect this, I cap the search attemps using following rule: During a session/day/act (depends on scenario) a character may freely attemp search test a number of times equal to his Int score. Extra attemps cause him stress. So if castle has something like 50 rooms/locations it is impossiple to search everywhere. A character must pick his choices using careful hints placed by GM or by using his Intuition skill. I hope this helps.

Fresnel said: Also your premise that situational effects don't apply to spellcasting is GM dependent. A GM would be perfectly inside the spirit of the rules if he loaded the wizard with similar purple and black dice for hitting people in darkness and cover. You are right, it is a GM discretion. But, I think my example is in the spirit of the rules in the sense that non magical ranged attacks are vs Defence. I see that shields, armours, covers, guarded positions, darkness, etc. are defences. If fighting takes place in open field, wizard is more of an show-off. But when situation demands unearthly skills (in my example hitting almost impossible target) wizard should shine. This is good GM discretion because, as others have noticed, wizards need a little boost and it is good for the story!

Also, in the above example in my previous post, the psychological consequenses are important. The bandit(s) trusted in their cunning and superior tactics. They were supposed to be safe in shadows and behind cover. They were supposed to defeat their exposed opponents easily. Now they face unexpected situation. Opponents can hit them by mystical means. Possessed by panic they ignore their leader's orders and rush in the open. Now the wizard's fellow mercenary can pick his easy targets.

You should also note that spells hit more often than common missiles. While shooting with bow is BS vs defence, casting is only Spellcraft check with simple difficulty. For example, bandit(s) are lurking in the shadows behind cover aiming to fight Mercenary and Wizaard PCs. Mercenary aims a bandit with crossbow and GM assigns difficulty level as follows: +1 challenge (default), +1 challenge (cover), +1 misfortune (shadows), +2 misfortune (armour), +2 misfortune (dodge and block). Wizard throws his magic darts. GM will not throw in any additional challenge or misfortune dice (because darts magically find their ways to the target) and thus the Spellcraft check is only modified by 1 misfortune dice from action card. To me it seems that in these kind of situations(GM should always play npc characters smart and give challenge to the players) wizard's average damage output is better than archer's.

You are right, this card is overpowered. I see that this action should be really good at close range (where it somewhat balances itself out) and vs. pack of low soak enemies. But at longer ranges, some other actions like Sniper Shot, should be better. Moreso vs high soak enemies. So, based on these ideas i've made some house rules. Extra shots require maneuver for bow. (not for repeater weapons) This rule balances repeater crossbows vs. bows. Cannot use Rapid Fire action with long bow (kind a makes sense to me). Balances short bows vs. long bows. Extra ranges after close range add one level of difficulty. These seem to work and make the game (in my opinion) more tactically interesting. After these rulings RF is no longer best in all situations. It is most lethal at close range but then its risky.

But these are quite fresh (few advances earned) characters. Of cource they take Improved defences early because they are fighters. Guy 1 uses DS (one black) and other reacts using 2 (out of 3) of his improved defences. I assumed that one of the relevant skill is trained so 1 more black. That is 4 blacks with 2 blacks from armour/shield. Next round he can again use the same method by spending 1 fortune point. He can hold his defences up quite long so that the other guy starts to get fatigued (because he is vulnerable to it after spending his creation points to S). This is example that shows that 3rd ed. does not necessarily have hugely different success rates compared to earlier versions. This can be player vs. player or not, it does not matter. GM can use any tools he wants. And these tools are within the system without modifications. This also works if you give your npc orc just few cards. I would certainly give for example Chaos Warrior all possible defences, otherwise he would have not survived countless battles in the chaos wastes. The success rates go crazy when player characters or npc:s are ignorantly unbalanced. Those kind of characters deserve to die.

I'm a long time wfrp player and gm. I've played extensively all three incarnations. I was bored with 2nd ed. mainly because I felt that rules as written required lots of tweaking. I have been worried that it is the same old story with 3rd ed. I was looking at the action cards and at the first glance some of them are unbalanced. I've also read about too high success rate and weak monsters. WTF I thought, how can this be happening again. Well, after some study I learned that my panic has been unjustified and house rule frenzy of the community is to some extent unnecessary. Let me explain my views using some examples. In wfrp3 you can make cheesy combat machine from the start that has 5S, defense 2 (from armour), some pretty impressive action cards like: Set1: Double Strike, Disorienting Blow, Improved Parry, and Improved Dodge or Set2: Reckless Cleave, Improved Parry, Improved Dodge, and Improved Block There you have too high success rate, unbalanced cards (Double Strike vs. Disorienting Blow), and monster killing capacity that greatly surpasses previous edition characters. Or is it so? Lets do some very rough considerations: Equivalent 2nd ed combat character with few advances, say WS50, 2A. This is possible at close to the beginning with some luck. Two of these type warriors face eachother in duel. The succees rate of both attacks is roughly 25% so after two attacks about 0.5 hits go through. At the same time 3rd edition combat machines of set1 and set2 face each others in parallel warhammer universe. Warrior 1 has dice pool 3 blue, 2 red, 1 yellow, 2 white, 3 purple, 4 black. Suprisingly, success rate is only 51%. Moreover, there are likely more banes than boons. His double strike is not so hot afterall. It becomes also quite fatiguing which is bad in prolonged combat which seems now happening. What is more interesting is that Disorienting Blow now becomes better than anticipated. Staggered condition is really good and Blinded and Exposed are useful against those defences. What is now very different compared to the old version is that goblins and skeletons and other weaklings don't possess any threat against these 3rd ed. warriors. In 2nd ed. era they did which was cool and all. But Fate points are not needed anymore and weak vs. weak combats are more interesting. Its up to gms (as always has been) to provide enough challenge to those good combat characters in 3rd. To me atleast, it seems that tools are in correct order in the basic box. I'm looking forward to new bestiary that surely will contain many more toys to play with.

My main concern is that in your system, the Sigmar's Comet results would become too rare occurences. This is not good because they add flavour and randomness to already quite static (dare I say predictable) results.

You have a good point and I definately think that you have an opportunity to make some good house rules, but it would require some more work. First of all, this change would alter the balance of many action cards. Especially those that have Sigmar's Comet as a success line. According to RAW, skilled characters have higher chance to awesome results (Sigmars's Comet). Your modification increases boons for skilled characters which is not as good.

Rapid Fire is not overpowered because a) It is very fatiguing at reckless stance. You get exertion results and loading a bow requires maneuver. b) Archer becomes exposed to enemies which are at close range. Enemies will target the archer and banes grant free engage for enemies. Archer in melee cannot use blocks and parries. c) Sensible GM would not allow the archer to disengage from melee and then start shooting again. This can be best handled by house rule or alternatively even using RAW as follows: Enemies enclosing the archer take Perform the Stunt action and declare that whenever the archer tries to disengage them from melee in order to use Rapid Fire they immedietely follow him and stay engaged. GM deems this action as simple difficulty. I see this card to be powerful but very risky which propably was the intention.