r_b_bergstrom
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Posts posted by r_b_bergstrom
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I've had some experience tweaking this system in strange ways, and I've done a lot of mathematical analysis. So the one bit of advice I would give you is that if you're not going to use the action cards, leave out the stance dice entirely. As just dice (i.e.: random probabilities), the red ones are surprisingly much worse than the green, and the way the game balances that is mostly by making the red sides of the cards better. That part of the dice pools is really finely tuned and can quickly fall apart if you remove the action cards.
The other dice (white, black, blue, yellow, and purple) work pretty well as a mechanism for various other systems and settings without the cards, as long as you figure out what you're doing with Comets and Chaos Stars. I've run two very non-Warhammery games using those dice, and had good results.
For one I'm continuing to run, "Everhammer" I ported over those dice, fatigue, critical hits, and variations on party-cards and SBVD cards to fit the framework of the old Everway RPG. Everway was always too light for my tastes, and this did a good job of crunching it up in all the right places. It uses much higher attack difficulties than the default in Warhammer 3rd, and is a lot lighter overall, but has been working really well. We've enjoyed about 16 hours of that so far, and plan to play again soon.
I also did a one-shot that used those dice in a humorous sci-fi setting. For that one I streamlined it too far, and wasn't as happy with the results. It worked okay for a one-shot, but was a little too unpredictable for a longer game where you actually cared about your characters. Mainly, I had no way to distinguish between a Chaos Star and 4 or more Banes. If they're not mechanically separate, things can get pretty slapstick. It was too much GM fiat for my tastes. Only one player complained, and I his point was really more about the pregen he got stuck with, but as GM I wasn't happy with how arbitrary I was having to be.
My point is that, other than the complexities of the stance system, most of the core mechanics can be safely ported over to other settings and systems. How well it will adapt is mostly about how you handle boons, banes, comets and chaos stars without the action cards. Focus there first. Get that stuff working at levels you're happy with, and the rest will follow suit.
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gruntl said:
An evil GM will put the delay on active defenses (of which you can have a maximum of 3) or on action card that is most useful at the moment. Conservative dice are better if you only care about succeeding (i.e. getting 1 success) and want to play it safe, red dice are (exactly like described in the rules) the high risk - high gain option, where you will have a larger chance of getting 3+ successes and multiple boons.
I'll grant you that the potency of delay icons is totally in the hands of the GM. If you game with a GM who feels his or her job is to kill or punish characters, they'll be much nastier than if you play with a GM who feels their job is to facilitate a good story or encourage maximum fun.
That said, If as a player I want to mitigate the impact of the less pleasant icons on the stance dice, it's much easier to render yourself immune to green than to red dice. I can spend 1 xp to gain an extra attack card, which essentially means it takes 1 more roll with a Delay icon before I'm shut down on attacks. To make it so that I can suck up one more Exertion icon, I have to raise at least one attribute, which means spending at least 2 xp and possibly much more. This is countered somewhat by the fact that your first fatigue or stress point has no impact, whereas the first delay will mess with your plans.
Your point about active defenses carries heftier weight, but has solutions as well. Anyone using Green dice a lot in melee should probably try to have a shield handy so they can Block. If you buy Advanced defenses, they can make up for having one locked down. The Dirty Tricks action is basically an extra defense. The rat-catcher's SBVD can boost defense. One of the less combat-oriented PCs can shore up that weakness for the whole group via Assess The Situation or Guarded Position. Etc. Exactly which options are available to you depend on character concept and stats, but again, for most characters the XP cost to mitigate the Delay Icon is less than the XP cost to mitigate the fatigue. Don't get me wrong, there's ways to get around fatigue and stress as well, but overall I think it's pretty balanced.
As you said, Red has a higher chance of delivering the high successes accompanied by some boons. However, it also has the higher chance of delivering banes (regardless of success or failure). I've run some pretty serious number-crunches on it, and come to the conclusion that if the Red and Green sides of the cards were identical, the Red dice would almost never be worth it. That's why the red sides of cards tend to look better than green, because you'll pay for all those goodies with more banes. Vegas casinos would love those red dice and cards, because they look so much sexier to the players than they actually are.
By Rank 2 at least you should be able to run just fine deep in the green. If you can get 2 yellow on a skill, it'll more than make up for not having the double-successes of a red die (you're only ever trying to get to 3 successes, after all), and make your boons much better as well. Each green die you add is always helping your odds, but that's not always the case with red dice. I've run some interesting graphs of the probabilities involved, if anyone's interested, check out transitivegaming.blogspot.com/2010/05/stance-matters.html
Of course, if you're using the higher-lethality options in the GM's toolkit, then that invalidates some of my argument. Without that optional rule, 6 successes and 2 banes is worse than 4 successes, so lots of red does you no good. With that rule, you'll often want the extra successes even if it does run a higher bane risk. That optional rule really changes the underlying math of the system.
All IMHO, YMMV, etc, and I do not pass judgment on anyone who prefers a particular die color or character build.
Given the immense opaque complexity of the dice mechanics in this game, I'm often surprised at just how balanced the dice and action card combined system is. Somebody over at FFG must have a strong math background.
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commoner said:
Also, a thing to consider as I see you stacking greens. The delay can make you actually fail, as per the raw, as the attack falls too late.I can't recall anything in the RAW that supports this. Delay icons can screw up your future turns initiative, or deprive you of an offensive action for a round or two in the future because of recharge times, but I don't remember it ever saying that they can make your attacks fail.
Maybe I'm putting a literal reading on what you meant more figuratively?
Assuming I didn't miss something, you really don't have to buy very many action cards to be able to step around the big drawback of the green dice. They're much better than the red ones in my opinion.
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A few points you may want to consider:
1. As others have mentioned, A/C/E can be used defensively. The FAQ addresses this, and the GM's toolkit has some additional optional things you can do with A/C/E. The implication is that the GM can improvise applications of those budgets on the fly, and use them for anything that strikes them as reasonable.
2. You make no mention of Active Defenses. All characters (not just PCs, but technically also all NPCs) have access to every Basic Action they qualify for, and that includes Parry, Dodge, and Block if they meet the requirements. A character with Weaponskill trained doesn't have a higher defense across the board, but they're likely to add at least two black dice to at least the first attack against them. Effectively your defense varies blow by blow, and you get to pick and choose which attacks you concentrate your defenses against.
3. Guarded Position and Assess the Situation are also basic actions, and while not as flexible as the Active Defenses, they are really good defensive options. Base defense is low, but there's a lot of things you can do to pump it up turn-by-turn. One character doing Guarded Position can cover the vulnerabilities of the rest of the engagement.
4. GMs should be handing out lots of white and black dice based on situational modifiers. Higher ground, good tactics, somebody backing you up, bad weather, etc. Use some interesting location cards, and make sure your players know about the assist manoeuvre. Drop white and black dice on them fast and plentiful like water from the sky. It's a rare roll at my table that doesn't have both black and white dice added to it. The way the dice stack up is one of the cool things about the core mechanic, don't be afraid to use it.
5. Combat in this game is meant to be bloody and quick. Both sides will hit more often than they miss. Most fights are 3 rounds or shorter. Players who regularly charge into combat unthinking will end up dead. That is all an intentional design choice to match the grim and gritty setting, and the high hit percentages back it up nicely.6. As to your specific example, Beastmen are great attackers, but not necesarily great defenders, especially Ungor. They lack discipline, as mentioned in their special rule called "Unruly". That gives us a clue to their Defense of 0. When I GM them, I narrate their half-crazed attacks that leave them open to counter-attack. Note that the Gor and Wargor have higher Defense ratings, and thus are a little harder to hit. I play them just as wild, but mention that their higher skill and thicker hides make them harder to score a meaningful blow on. I'm also much more likely to use active defenses and the like for those beefier Gors than for the unruly Ungor.
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Fresnel said:
I was imagining people tranistioning to this career - not starting with it.
Then the first bit of feedback is easy: I suggest changing it from a Basic career to an Advanced Career. That's probably a good idea anyway, what with 6 skills. (Most of the basic careers have 5 skills, and the Slayers have only 4.)
Also, I noticed a typo. For skills, you listed "Disciple" instead of "Discipline".
It took me a couple minutes to warm up to it, but the more I think about the career ability, the more I like it. It seems perfectly appropriate for people who put their lives on the line in all sorts of crazy situations. Good job.
I wonder if the stance meter shouldn't be 1 conservative + 3 reckless? That would provide a tiny bit of extra flavor and make it less "generic".
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To clarify what Dramatic Exit said...
If you look at the back of the Character Sheet (not the Career Card) you'll see an area that has a check list with 10 advances to complete a career. Four of these are fixed advances, namely a wound, a skill, an action, and a talent, which are an mandatory to complete any career. The other six advancement slots are called "open" advances. For those six, you can fill them with either advances to your primary characteristics (which use up a bunch of slots to raise even one die), or you can fill them with things from the box on the Career Card. If you're not raising your primary characterstics at all, then you'd pick 6 of those options from the career card. The numbers on the career card (which always add up to 10) represent the limits of how many things you can buy in each category.
Dangit, that's not terribly clear either. Hmm...
The best explanation is in the main rulebook, on page 36. It shows a picture of the relevant sections of the sheets, and explains how it works. There's some additional relevant information on pages 35 and 37 as well, but page 36 gets the general concept across pretty well.
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Thug said:
New higher lethality rule inspired by GM's toolkit one.
If more successes are generated than necessary to trigger the maximum success line of an action, the action reduces the target's armour soak value by one per extra success against this attack.
Note that there is no maximum amount of extra damage related to skill level. I think that the GM's toolkit rule overvalues already very powerful skill training. This rule also attemps to address the issue of armour being maybe too protective when compared to unarmoured style. Armour still is very effective against opponents with lesser strength, but more powerful opponets have better chance to pierce through armour.
I like this idea a lot, but it's worth noting that one perhaps non-obvious side effect is that it devalues Actions (and other things) that already reduce soak. Things like ***** In The Armor take a big hit from this house-rule, because they not only lose their specialness (as any attack can now diminsh soak), but they also have no benefit (unlike all other actions in this system) for getting a really good roll. That's really only a problem if you have players who already have a "ignore soak" action, and far less important if the rule were in place and explained before anyone made characters.
If I were implementing this rule, I'd probably come up with some sort of compensation for ***** In The Armor, as IMHO it's the prime attack card for high-Intelligence, low-Physicals characters. (It lets them make an attack roll using Int + Observation.) If you don't compensate it, you've just cut out a major route for many supposedly "non-combat" characters to contribute in a meaningful and aggressive way to a fight. You're pushing them further into a support role (or to just flee), and I'm not sure that's what you intended.
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A few kneejerk reactions to your numbers:
It seems like in some cases you're making the more valuable things cheaper. Like, if a skill might only cost 80xp per die, why would I spend 100xp for a specialization die? Same thing can be said for a characteristics die vs a fortune die. I mean, I like that there's some cost increase between buying your third fortune die and your fourth, but I'm not sure these numbers are quite right yet. Just picturing a character with say Willpower 4 and 3 Fortune dice in it. If Willpower was his Primary char, he could buy the 5th die for 400 xp, or he could buy the 4th Fortune die for 400 xp. Clearly, the 5th Willpower point is much more potent than the 4th Fortune die, but as written they cost the same. It's not a huge problem, but it's something worth turning an eye too.
Another case would be the Stance pieces. You're making the first one free, and then increasing (over the RAW) the cost of the third and higher advances. But my experiences with the system suggest to me that no one will ever buy the fourth extra stance piece even if it cost 1/2 what it does now. Each successive stance piece is less and less likely to see use. They only apply to your highest characteristics, and to even get into that stance you have to either wait till late in the battle (and most fights take 2 to 4 rounds in this system) or take a bunch of fatigue. If anything, the costs on those should perhaps be going down.
Also, just to make sure: you do realize that the overall affect of your changes is to increase the rate of advancement in a game that's already known for really fast advancement. At least, the above reads like you're handing out 100 xp per session. In the RAW, it's basically one upgrade earned per session, or half that rate if upgrading something that's not your career primary. In your proposed system, you appear to be moving to double speed on non-career advances and 20% faster on career advances. Is that your intent?
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It's hard to give you feedback on secondary skills and the like without knowing how many a career would have. Are they being added to the existing careers, or are you downgrading some number of skills to secondary status on each career, or what? Maybe you're making entirely new career sheets?
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I for one am extremely pleased with today's announcement that there's going to be 10 new careers in the Winds of Magic, most of them not being spellcasters just careers that are likely to have other interactions with the colleges, like Scholar, Servant, GraveRobber and Apothecary. Very cool.
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Necrozius said:
On a side note, how do most people handle boons when rolling initiative?
I'm considering having them count as successes. Way too many times has the initiative track been concentrated at zero, one and two.
I too have noticed that the initiative track is often really compressed, and I don't care for it. I had a fight a few weeks ago with 6 PCs vs a bunch of beastmen. 9 initiative rolls, and they came out as roughly 4, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0. It was kind of annoying, like the system's not quite living up to it's full potential there. Probably gets a little better with higher Rank PCs, but not much.
Your idea of just converting boons to successes would probably solve that, but it may (as Silverwave suggested) just move the same tight range further up the chart. It would certainly be preferable to just the default "2 boons removes a fatigue or stress" rule, since most of the time PCs won't have any Fatigue before they roll initiative.
What I have done a few times is that if they have 1 or more boons they are well positioned at the start of the fight, and get a bonus Fortune die on their first action. 1 or more banes results in being briefly exposed, poorly positioned, or caught flat footed - so either a misfortune die on their first action, or a fortune die on anyone attacking them. It varies a bit on the situation, and I don't think I've been consistent. It's a little clunky and requires some memory, too, so it's not perfect. (If you've got enough white and black dice, you can set them next to the cardboard standups as reminders.)
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Gotta say I really like Bindlespin's idea about "bigger" refering to size of cardboard standup, and Fabs' idea about TFS being "active" when there's a situation that would purge your dishonor if you died. Those are both cool interpretations.
Troll-Feller Strike certainly can't literally mean "if they're half an inch taller than your character, it counts". In this edition, we don't roll up height or weight, so you could totally metagame that by just describing your character as being short for his or her race, and thereby get the bonuses against more targets. There has to be a cutting off point, and that grey area is totally GM perogative. I wouldn't let a Troll Slayer use that particular move against a scrawny elfin teenager or sickly human senior that was technically an inch or two taller than the dwarf, for example. I think spirit of the rules trumps the letter.
A couple weeks ago, I was running WHFRP for my weekly one-shot group. We're a big group, and there were 6 PCs at the table. One of them was a troll-slayer, and he had Troll-Feller Strike. They were fighting a bunch of beastmen, I think it was 7 beastmen to 6 PCs. I told them that he couldn't use it against the Ungor unless they outnumbered him in his engagement. Him against 1 ungor was a no-go, even if 6 more of them were within medium range. 2 ungors double-teaming him up close allowed for TFS, though. I also allowed TFS on the Wargor regardless of numbers, because he was a big enough threat. The player didn't have any trouble with this ruling.
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Leondgorance said:
Than,chaos star should be worst thing you can roll in game and in combat its best thing you can actually roll in like 90% of situations because chaos star when not noted have same result as empty place.My players when rolling are like "Comon chaos star,comon chaos star".
Per the RAW, a chaos star without anything special to trigger doesn't count as blank, it counts as a bane.
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Exactly how to compare Delays vs Exertion though is tricky and subjective. I think, on average, per roll, one Delay bites you more than on Exertion, but when Exertion starts piling up it's worst effects get pretty nasty.
IMHO, being set up for Red Dice requires a bigger initial investment in terms of character points. For a character to be good at dealing with Exertion, they pretty much have to be built to do so right out of the gate. If you left yourself vulnerable to it (by having very uneven Characteristics scores) from the beginning, it takes a lot of XP to fix that. There are some Talents that can help, but the really effective ones require exhausting, which shuts down your other talent options. And of course you can Assess The Situation, but that's effectively just turning Exhaustion into Delays anyway, since you're trading your aggressive action in for fatigue management.
Delays, on the other hand, can be accommodated for more readily after character creation. Every extra action you pick up not only does whatever the main purpose of the new action card is, it also takes some of the sting out of Delay icons. And every character (regardless of career) can add at least 2 actions during Rank 1. So if you're character is getting nerfed by the green dice, there are other ways to fix it in the long term. It occurs to me that it might actually be easier even in the early campaign to make a character that laughs off Delays than laughs of Exertion, since 3 character points gets you 4 starting actions. Having 4 to 6 special actions will insulate you pretty well from Delays.
Unless, of course, you're a wizard. Wizards are indeed very vulnerable to Delay, because they often need to Channel on specific turns to do anything significant. Spellcasters definitely get hit more heavily by Delays, which may be a motive behind the "Spellcasting while Reckless can affect Party Tension" rule.
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jahonen said:
We've scheduled our first session for next week, and we will have a temporary fourth player for that session only. He will not be joining our sessions on a regular basis, and I wanted to know if I should just make him buy the Kit, or if we could do without one (no idea where to get the Kit, anyway).The Kit is kinda expensive. $30 US. Not sure what exchange rate and shipping does to that, but it seems a bit much to make someone pay that just to play with you for one session. You and your group will probably eventually want a copy of the Kit, because it has a lot of really cool material in it. You might talk to your regular players about splitting it four ways with you to keep your costs down.
For one session, though, you can probably make do without the extra basic actions. Make a photocopy of the Basic Action cards, or just type up the text from all of them onto a single piece of paper for the extra player. Or look for the Strange Eons thread (I think it's in the House Rules section of the forum) and download that software to make your own fancy full-color cards. If you can't make or acquire some version of the basic cards, though, it'll be really hard to run your first session for 4 players. If you're having to do so without the cards, I'd avoid combat entirely and just make it a casual session with role-played conversations and only a few simple challenges. Later, when people know the game better, and characters have a lot of non-standard actions purchased with XP, it'd be easy for them to loan their copies of the basic cards to a guest for a session or to share them, but for your first session, that's gonna be tricky.
Are you making characters before or at that first session? Cause making your first characters in this system can take a long time. I wouldn't recommend it for a session with a one-time-only-guest.
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Unless you're using the "Higher Lethality" optional rule from the GM's toolkit, the green / conservative dice are in actuality better than the red / reckless dice. The red dice have a better chance of scoring the triple-hammer line, but they also have a much higher chance of scoring banes and actually result in slightly smaller chance of scoring a basic success.
If the effects of Delay icons and Exertion icons on the dice are roughly equivalent, then the green dice are significantly better than the red because of the extra banes. I suspect then that the intention of the game designers is for a Delay to be on average more troubling than an Exertion. That's also why many (but not all) of the action cards provide a more potent effect on the red side.
Here's a couple color-coded charts that illustrate the effects of using red dice in a typical pool.
Playing around with different dice pools will of course vary how much the gap is between the red and the green dice, but the general statement holds true that the red dice will score a lot more banes and only outperform the green dice at the 3-success line. The pools used for those graphs were (1 Challenge Die, 2 Misfortune, 1 Expertise, 1 Fortune, and 2 Characteristics dice) plus either 2 more Characteristics dice or 2 stance dice. It should be pretty representative of the majority of rolls made during Rank 1.
To create the above charts, I used John Jordan's Warhammer Dice Probability Generator (www.jaj22.org.uk/wfrp/diceprob.html), and Open Office.
I've also been analyzing the odds of the various warhammer dice on my blog this past week, and will probably write a couple more articles about the math behind the dice in the coming weeks. transitivegaming.blogspot.com/
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Fresnel said:
Actually you can 'Perform a Stunt' with cantrips, so you can have a little more power - but again is this meant to be the 'do anything' magic of WFRP2 Petty and Lesser magic or not?For example, if my bright wizard is running over rooftops can I 'Perform a Stunt' cantrip to jump 30 feet to the next roof? Or can I featherfall to the ground?
If yes, than the case is closed - wizards are the most versitile people in the game - but it is not clear to me this is 'true'.
Jumping 30 feet? Probably not.
Featherfall? Maybe. Seems similar in power to the two dice difficulty examples in the books. Probably depends on Order, and character description. I doubt I'd allow it as a reaction to falling, but I'd be most likely be cool with it as a prepared descent, especially for a Celestial Wizard.
My thoughts that Cantrips are as good as Skullduggery all stem from page 38 of the Tome of Mysteries.
That page lists "making an object the size of a book vanish while being observed" as 1-die difficulty and "pulling a small object into your hand from across the room before your rival can get it" as 2-die difficulty. Pick pocketing seems pretty comparable to those.
It also lists "shattering a bottle" and "causing someone else to 'just happen' to open a book to the page containing a vital clue" as being 1 die of difficulty and "pulling a rabbit from a hat" as 2 dice of difficulty. Given all these examples, I'd be surprised if it couldn't turn a couple tumblers or slip the bar on the other side of a door.
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PanzerKraken said:
Unless an encounter runs for a very long period of time, most characters are fine suffering the fatigue or stress as most will focus on their willpower or toughness stat depending on type of character.
Just checking to see if we're all on the same page, here. You do know that your other stats are affected by fatigue and stress as well, right? And that your other stats determine whether or not you're strained? I ask because you only mention Willpower and Toughness - and those two stats only matter for determining at what point you pass out, but stress and fatigue can do a lot nasty things while you're still conscious.
Probably, you're already aware of all that, but I figured it was worth asking since you focused on Willpower and Toughness in your explanation.
Example: A character with a stat line of Str 3, To 5, Agi 4, Int 3, WP 5, Fel 2 that is suffering 4 fatigue and 3 stress would be strained. He'd draw a temporary insanity, and suffer a misfortune die on all Str and Fel checks. Each additional point of stress or fatigue would result in more misfortune dice on more attributes, and more chance of the insanity becoming permanent. He could take quite a few more points of stress or fatigue without passing out, but he'd be hurting pretty bad and probably insane for quite a while if he did suffer any.
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Fresnel said:
r_b_bergstrom said:
would normally take various other skills. Let's say a character wants to pick pockets or locks - a soldier would have to buy skullduggery at 2 xp, a thug could buy it for 1 xp, and a wizard would just roll Spellcraft via Cantrip. That's a strong factor in the "Wizards are more versatile" argument, but it is subject to the whims and tastes of the GM. Some GMs will definitely let you get away with more via cantrip than others would.
Well, actually Skullduggery is a basic skill - so the agile elf with Agility 5 and fortune dice is going to be quite good a picking pockets even without.
You are of course correct that Skullduggery is a basic skill, and my phrasing of "a soldier would have to buy skullduggery" was a poor choice of wording on my part. My post was in response to the OP saying that wizards had to spend all their points on spells, whereas an archer could afford to spend his points on other interesting things, such as lockpicking. Maybe I could have made my point more clearly.
I was just trying to say that thanks to Cantrip, the wizard's points spent on spellcraft could do most of the things skullduggery does, as well as powering flashier spells. If you just want to talk about dice pools, the Wizard's likely Int 4 + Spellcraft 1 will be a comparable dicepool to the archer's Agility 5 (Skullduggery 0). In fact, it's a percentage point or two in the Wizard's favor, because Expertise dice are better than Characteristics dice.
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gruntl said:
r_b_bergstrom said:
- Most PC wizards should start with a free item with the "Attuned 1" quality, granting them 1 bonus fortune die on channeling rolls. This attuned item can be a free melee weapon, such as a sword or staff. (All per the Tome of Mysteries, page 11)
You do not get a free Attuned 1 item as a wizard apprentice. Normally you would be given such an item when you pass from apprenticeship (from ToM), but it's really not specified in the rules (it's basically just fluff, the GM is of course free to give one out if he wants to).
Did you check the page reference I listed? From the large sidebar on page 11 of the Tome of Mysteries:
"When an apprentice enters a College, he acquires the raw materials for making his own arcane focus. ... The apprentice creates the object ... With your GM's permission, an Apprentice Wizard may begin the game with a single item with the Attuned 1 quality."
So, per the RAW, it's suggested, but not required, that a PC apprentice wizard start with an attuned item.
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I can see where someone pulling the "step back and fire" trick could strain suspension of disbelief. Other than that, I don't think it's a real rules issue. Ever since watching the Fellowship of the Ring, I haven't particularly had a problem with skilled archer / heroic PC firing a bow in melee, (or in the case of WHFRP, stepping back and firing). Obviously, though, it's an issue for you and your group, so I'll try and help.
Due to how fast melee soldiers can close the gap, the ability to step back and fire functions well to balance melee and ranged combat. Melee takes a fatigue toll in the first round or two as you close with the enemy, depending on distance apart when the fight broke out. Once you've closed the gap, the burden falls on the ranged combat master, who has to keep moving back in order to take a shot. As you indicated, someone with a crossbow can keep it up for a few turns in a row, but eventually the fatigue will get to them. I'd be hesitant to rule against the step-back-and-fire entirely, as then melee characters would find it very beneficial to suck up fatigue closing ground at the start of the fight.
I'd say the problem has more to do with the specifics of a crossbow or black powder weapon. Those are the ones where it really strains credibility to believe you can reload and fire again while people are trying to hack at you. Even then, given the way Hollywood presents such weapons, they rarely have any reload time, either. Realism vs Playability is a sliding scale, and not everyone adjusts it to the same setting.
- Maybe making those weapons take 2 manoeuvres to reload would be in order?
The freedom of movement (and ability to disengage easily) has more ripple effects than just allowing archers to avoid ever drawing a melee weapon. It also allows Scribes, Students, Agitators, Wizards, Dilletantes, Messengers, etc, to get out of the fight, take cover behind terrain, flee, etc. So I'd be somewhat wary of increasing the disengage costs, as it would tend to make the squishier characters die that much faster.
- If you were to add an extra cost for disengaging, I'd consider making it be payable in either Stress or Fatigue, at the acting player's choosing. That way, the soft-skinned social characters don't get fatigued into unconsciousness right away, they can instead choose to spread it out, or put it into stress if their mental traits are better.
Of course, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The warrior-types will be able to eat up an extra point or two of it as stress as well, so it's not a perfect solution.
- Yet a third solution might be to just make some new action card(s) that gives a bonus to attacks vs an engaged foe wielding a ranged weapon. An attack that damages their bow, or an attack that gives you an extra defense against their next ranged shot, or an attack that adds fatigue to the damage to wear down the retreating crossbowman faster.
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Radish said:
Is there any limit for players or monsters using fatigue/wounds for free actions?
And just to make sure, you mean "for free manoeuvres?", not actions, right? A character only gets one action card per turn*. So you can pay fatigue to move around and do various assorted minor things, but you only ever get one attack in a turn.
*: aside from a few exceptions such as Quick Casting for spellcasters, and actions such as Riposte, Mighty Blow, Executioner's Shot, etc, all of which state on the card exactly how they work.
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The only limit is roleplaying, but it should be enough. The movement rules are abstract to allow for situations where drama demands something special, or where the PCs are willing to take a huge risk to get something accomplished. If someone insists on constant Kamikaze tactics, then they're abusing the letter of the rules to undermine the spirit of it.
Sounds like the problem is "he's a monster so he doesn't really care". Yes, monsters are meant, out-of-character, to die for the furtherance of the plot, and to provide challenges to the players. But in-character, most people, and even most beastmen or orcs, don't truly consider themselves expendable. Religious zealots in a frenzy, sure. A monster defending it's mate or offspring or den, probably. But watch a few nature shows, and you'll see that real predators (lions and tigers and bears, oh my) won't often run themselves into unconsciousness. They'll take (reasonable) risks, but will also flee if injured. Someone taking half their wounds just to get into melee should be fairly rare. Orcs and Beastmen may be stupid and/or fearless, but they can't be that extreme, at least not across the board, or else they'd never be a real threat to the Empire. It's pretty easy to defend a city if half the invading army kills themselves trying to cross the last quarter-mile. In-character, taking wounds is painful, and shouldn't be done lightly.
If your GM is doing these extreme rushes real often, then you might have a talk with him or her about how it's limiting the number of viable character concepts, and diminishing your fun, in addition to straining credibility.
If you are the GM, and the players are doing this in fight after fight, then you're probably not hitting them with enough fatigue from external sources. There's several monsters with fatigue-inducing actions (Skaven, for example) that could effectively deter players from doing this, or at least teach them a lesson their next character won't forget.
You might also be able to curb some of this behavior via Location cards, by putting obstacles in the way, or by making an ideal spot for the PCs to make a stand that's not where the monsters begin the battle. -
Radish said:
In order to cast Blade in the Dark I have to either channel magic or have done so in the previous round which can fail.
Considering that the spell in question only costs 3 power, you shouldn't always have to channel magic immediately before casting it. I'm wondering if maybe you missed the part where Wizards start every encounter with Power equal to their Willpower. Have you been using the Equilibrium rules?Radish said:
To top it off I have to spend specializations on learning magic (Rank 1 magic, Rank 2 magic, Channeling, etc) while once a person learns how to use a bow, they are good to go and can get other stuff that can be used for more varied story uses (such as pick pocketing, languages, athletics, etc).I'm not sure why you feel Wizards have to spend specializations that the fighter-types don't. There's nothing that forces you to have a specialization to use spells. All a specialization does is give you a bonus white die.
Cantrip allows you to use the Spellcraft skill to perform stunts that would normally take various other skills. Let's say a character wants to pick pockets or locks - a soldier would have to buy skullduggery at 2 xp, a thug could buy it for 1 xp, and a wizard would just roll Spellcraft via Cantrip. That's a strong factor in the "Wizards are more versatile" argument, but it is subject to the whims and tastes of the GM. Some GMs will definitely let you get away with more via cantrip than others would.
Here's a few other things you might have missed because they're scattered through-out the books, any of which would alter the starting power level of a wizard character.
- Starting wizards begin with Channeling and Spellcraft acquired, this is in addition to the normal skill allotment. (Per Tome of Mysteries, page 42)
- Channel Power, Counterspell, Cantrip, and Magic Dart are all Basic Actions, so all Wizards start with them for free. (Per main rulebook, page 31)
- Most PC wizards should start with a free item with the "Attuned 1" quality, granting them 1 bonus fortune die on channeling rolls. This attuned item can be a free melee weapon, such as a sword or staff. (All per the Tome of Mysteries, page 11)
You might also be able to curb some of this behavior via Location cards, by putting obstacles in the way, or by making an ideal spot for the PCs to make a stand that's not where the monsters begin the battle.
Make your own cards : Strange Eons Extension v2
in WFRP House Rules
Posted
W1nterKn1ght said:
Can I Print more than one card on a piece of paper? I created some cards and want to print out all of them on one page.
One of the pull-down menus has an option called "make deck" or "print deck" or something like that. (Don't have the program open at the moment and haven't done it in the past month, so I don't remember what the screen is called.) It will let you arrange cards manually on a single sheet, or it can do so automatically for you and then print them out. Some printers don't handle the offset / back-to-back printing so well, though, so I recommend printing the two sides separately, trimming, and then gluing them together or putting both sides in a single card sleeve.