r_b_bergstrom
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Posts posted by r_b_bergstrom
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Lexicanum said:
What I do to stick with the RAW is queue a Rally Step when I want the villains to flee.
This allows both parties a breather in the combat and refreshes the A/C/E pool for the NPC, if necessary I'll re-roll initiative for the NPC. Then I just spend all of the remaining Aggresion and the free maneuver into moving away. Then I use the Perform a Stunt card to have the NPC run away, on extra successes or boons they get extra maneuvers.
That will usually get the villain far enough to drive the point that the villain is intent on fleeing. The player's are then free to try and shoot at it and give chase, spending fatigue as the case may be. In some cases they cease the chase, in other cases they give chase and murder the NPC. But that's as it should be.
Good points. Solid way to handle it.
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Aldred Fellblade said:
mcv said:
Fabs and mac40K: You seem to be under some misapprehension. I am not asking whether it is people's opinion that the game as a whole is not immersive, I am pointing out that a particular feature is bound to hinder immersion (that's really not debateable if I am right about it) and attempts to show that to be untrue have so far been unconvincing.
While you say this hinders immersion, many of us have been playing the Rules As Written and feeling very immersed. That is not debateable either. Nor is it easily quantified.
Perhaps without these recharge rules our immersion would be to some extent deeper, but the existing level of immersion is quite good, and certainly no worse than what's to be found when playing the majority of crunchy to semi-crunchy RPGs. If you can suspend your disbelief for hit points, or attacks of opportunity, or quantifiable attribute ratings, or a particular type of sword being "obviously better" than a different style of blade, you can probably must similar suspension for recharge. So while "on paper" the recharge rates look a little weird, in practice and in play they really aren't very distracting once you've got the hang them (and that only takes about a fight and a half to accomplish). The recharge mechanic meets our expectations, and doesn't particularly hinder anything in the process.
More importantly, the combination of recharging actions, boons/banes, and abstract movement creates fight scenes that are varied and memorable, instead of the static slug-fests that are the default in many other systems. The whole is more than the sum of it's parts.
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Kryyst said:
Depends on the NPC. The NPC's take wounds rule is more for the nameless unimportant NPC's. You may optionally use fatigue and stress for more important NPCs, which I would think the big bad villain would qualify as.
Not that it matters, but per the main boxed set it's actually all NPCs. "Enemies do not suffer stress or fatigue the way player characters do. An effect that would force an enemy to suffer stress or fatigue inflicts an equal number of wounds instead." Page 46 of the Tome of Adventure.
There's a specific exception made for Nemesis NPCs in the GM's toolkit, but nowhere does it say that all named characters must be Nemesis-level. Nor do I know if the OP has the GM's toolkit.
That said, I certainly wouldn't ever fault a GM for deciding a particular NPC was important enough or nuanced enough to use fatigue and stress just like a PC or a Nemesis.
I can also see situations where an NPC might start out as just the "miniboss" of a particular encounter or adventure (say, just a "bigger skaven" with a few bonus dice or A/C/E points) and then grow into a full-fledged Nemesis after they escape and plot revenge. That'd be cool.
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Beyond a certain number of options, the human brain exceeeds it's ability to evaluate. It's Miller's Law, also known as "the rule of seven" or "the magical number seven, plus or minus two", and some folks just call it "analysis paralysis". While practice and familiarity can improve on this, ultimately the limit is to a certain extent hard-wired. If given more than 5 to 9 options, the quality and speed of your decisions suffers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
This game puts your basic actions for a starting character right inside that range, and then just adds more as you go. It's an interesting design choice.
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Harlock said:
Action cards, Talents cost 1 creation point, 1 extra on action cards per rank.
Not exactly, but very close. There's some subtle differences that essentially just amount to a limit on how many points you can spend on each category.
There's a chart on page 30. Talents effectively cost 1 each, but you can buy no more than 3 total. So while it's mostly the same as buying them for 1 point each, there is a limitation to how many you can buy.
Actions effectively cost 1 each, plus you get one free, and the total number of actions you can have is 4. You could also look at it as you pay X to get X+1 Actions, where X = any number from 0 to 3. A rank 2 action (spell) uses 2 of those choices, a rank 3 spell uses 3 of the choices, etc. So if you spent 3 points (X=3), then you'd get to pick four actions. But if one of those choices was a rank 3 spell, it would use 3 of your 4 choices, and you'd only be able to take one more action (which would have to be a rank 1 action).
That chart also covers Wealth and Skills. On each of these 4 categories (talents, actions, wealth, and skills), you can spend 0 to 3 points.
Harlock said:
raising a stat cost the number of the number raising to, to raise.
Yes, so if my Strength is 3 and I want to raise it to 5, I have to spend 9 points (4 points to bring it up to 4 dice from 3, and 5 more points to bring it up to 5 dice from 4).
Harlock said:
where it says "you may only train a skill once per rank" that means One skill in total, or many skills only one time?
Many skills only one time. Mostly this means that on any given advancement sheet, you can only increase each individual skill once.
However, for your first career, it also means you can't upgrade with XP any of the skills you bought during character creation. There is a way around it, since it's tied to rank instead of career. If you spend at least one point on a non-career advance first, or hold off on spending your XP until you've accumulated 10 (enough to be considered rank 2) you could then spend the points to raise your skills. Being tied to rank is a little clunky, but seems intended to keep people from career-jumping to cherry-pick or artificially pump skills. Skill dice are really buff, so it makes sense they need to limit the rate you can gain them at.
Harlock said:
at character creation you can only train the skills on your career sheet, right? By my understanding, you can buy others with advances, just not at creation. Considered a non career advance?
Correct, you can only start with skills on your first career sheet. XP can be spent on other skills after you played at least a session, but skills that aren't on your career sheet cost twice as much XP and use up a "non-career advance" slot, so they don't count towards completing the career and earning the dedication bonus.
Harlock said:
Skill specializations, in the book i cant really find a detailed write up of all the skill specializations. All i see is "Okay, a specialization of skulduggery is Lockpicking, but how does this work? How does one quality for them, how does one pick them. Are they cards or something? If so, i don't see them (Biggest question)
The main thing a specialization does is add a fortune die to any die pool where that specialty seems applicable. Beyond that bonus white die they don't add any other benefits, and you don't ever need a specialization to take a particular action.
The game doesn't really provide a thorough break-down of specializations. The skill listings do mention some possible specializations, but they're far from ideal. Some of the specializations seem much more broad than others ("deception" vs "con games" or "appear innocent" under Guile, "violence" vs "combat" under Intimidate, etc.). There's two lists of specializations for Weapon Skill - The list amongst the skills in chapter 1 is almost completely different from the list in the equipment chapter (chapter 9). The various lists of specializations are not all-inclusive, and the GM is encouraged to make up new ones, so it's probably not worth sweating the details. If the player comes up with a cool idea for a specialization, I'd let them have it.
Harlock said:
The career mini cards are free, right? are those slotted anywhere, or just hung around next to the character sheet?
The career ability does not use up or fill a slot, and a higher-ranked character is likely to have several.
You get your career ability free for the career you're currently in.
If you change careers before completing it, the ability goes away. If you complete the advancement section of the career (with the 4 fixed advancements and the 6 open advancements) then you get to keep the career ability forever (it's part of your reward for completion, known as a "Dedication Bonus", and you also get bonus specializations with it).
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The fact that NPCs take wounds instead of fatigue is both a blessing and a curse. If they're just taking a couple little extra moves, wounds are much nastier than fatigue. But, if the NPC hasn't been hurt too bad yet, they could run far enough and fast enough a PC can't catch them without being KO'd (or at least severely handicapped) by fatigue. The NPC has to go for broke. If they underestimate the fatigue levels of the PC, someone will catch them, and they probably won't have the extra wounds available to try it again.
Or, depending on your group and situation, you may be able to just be candid about it. "Since this is the first fight of this adventure, the bad guy escapes behind a screen of mooks, and dissapears into the night. You'll be seeing him again later." Some players dig that, because it makes for a good story. Others feel cheated, because you bent the rules. As with all things RPG, you'll have the best results if you get to know your players really well.
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If the GM puts down multiple location cards for a fight, there ends up being a bit more reason to manoeuvre around. The more dynamic you make your battlefields and scenes, the more likely they'll need to move around.
Admittedly, though, eventually a character will end up on the most useful location for them, and then want to stay there. If I was happy with the engagement and location I was in, I'd use the free manoeuvres for assists, or to set up situational penalties / bonuses. In the session I ran last week, we had PCs doing this sort of thing quite often.
"I provide an fake opening so he'll focus on me, and that creates an opening for my ally."
"I nudge closer to my ally and cover his back. He doesn't have to worry about attacks from that side, so he concentrate on offense next round."
"I move so there's a tree between him and me, trying to make his next shot harder."
"With my free hand, I throw some of the debris at the enemy. Not enough aiming or force to really hurt him, just enough to distract him a little and make him duck."
"I jump up on top of the big rocks to get a height advantage."
"I force him back towards the cliff, so now he's distracted by paying attention to his footing."
etc
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monkeylite said:
Mordjinn said:
monkeylite said:
This sounds interesting, but how then do you handle someone who is engaged and doesn't use their manouvre to be engaged? Then they'd be in a limbo, not being engaged or disengaged?
If you're engaged then you have to spend that manoeuvre. If a character wishes to make other manoeuvres then he has to start burning fatigue.
So another way to look at it / phrase it would be: "Each player gets 1 free manoeuvre every turn, unless they are engaged." That would replace the current rule in the RAW of "Each player gets 1 free manoeuvre every turn."
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Part of the problem there might be Rapid Fire itself. Have you downloaded the version with the errata? If not, I can't blame her for just relying on that one card. It's the best of the bunch. Broken enough they issued an errata for it.
Not to say that you're wrong about there being too many options at the get go. A starting character has a ton of options, and a starting player isn't likely to understand the system enough to really tell which ones are better than others. I think I'd be happier with the amount of horizontal advancement if either a) characters started a little weaker, or b) the actions were easier to parse and evaluate.
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I'd say, figure out how often you want healing to happen in your game, and house-rule accordingly.
If you want a high-heroism game where people come back from near-death all the time, then photocopy the splints & bandages card and relabel it a basic action with recharge 0 or 2.
If you want gritty bloody combat where wounds are harsh and hard to heal, then rule more towards the opposite end of the spectrum, possibly even not allowing first aid during fights except for Rally Steps and if you've purchased the Splints & Bandages card. There is some logic in that. Patching up a sword wound does tend to take longer than swing a sword, after all.
As for the larger issue of why they didn't include an action card for first aid checks, and why "splints & bandages" is such a minor improvement over the default healing rules... well that's a whole other can of worms.
Ooh! I do believe I feel a rant coming on...
What we have here is a failure to communicate. It's a classic case of WWS, aka "White Wolf Syndrome", aka Right-Hand-Left-Hand-Disfunction. WWS occurs when multiple authors work on different portions of the rules of a game, and each believes that a particular concept logically falls in their section of the rulebook. So they each write up rules for how they'd handle that particular situation, and submit them as part of their portion of the manuscript. Because the editor gets the various chapters or sections one at a time from various authors, they might not catch that work has been duplicated, or that it's slightly different in the various chapters. In some cases, each author has their own editor, and there's no safety net in place to catch these things at all.
I'd be willing to wager money that the person who created the bulk of the action cards thought that all skill uses during combat required cards (or at least actions), and that someone else wrote up the paragraph about being able to make a skill check as a manoeuvre. Whether or not either of these two people were also the person who specifically wrote up the rule about being able to make a first aid check during the rally step is a fact unknown to me. Given that actions during a rally step are generally limited, and that first aid is also further limited in a different section to being once per act, and that episodes can have acts and acts can have episodes, I'm really unclear just who wrote what. Looking at the title page, I see we have 12 people with writing credits, and 4 with editing credits. That probably also explains why the list of specializations for weaponskill is so different in chapter one than in chapter nine.
These sorts of things happen, and have been happening pretty much since the industry began. Weeding through playtester's reports can be tiring, and while a GM might house-rule 5 things on a busy night, he or she will probably only remember to include the 1 or 2 most aggravating ones in the feedback. End result, anything that's a little confusing, but not game-breaking, doesn't get complained about. Remember there's various egos and social situations involved, and when some one's being so cool as to let you playtest a game 6 months before it releases, you're rarely motivated to bite the hand that feeds you. This isn't just FFG's problem either (or even just White Wolf and FFG's). The industry doesn't make enough money to fund extensive blind playtesting with cameras at the table recording problems as they come up, which is what it would take to prevent this from happening so often. Heck, a lot of games make it to market without any blind playtesting at all. As annoying as it is, we're kind of stuck with it.
I'd personally love to hold the editors responsible and "vote with my money" by only purchasing games where this sort of thing doesn't happen, but in general there's no way to know until you've already shelled out the dough, and have the contradictory rules right in front of your eyes. The larger the book or box, the more likely it'll happen. One of the advantages of the rules-light indy games is that they rarely have the page count to contradict themselves. But, you never know, sometimes even a really short rulebook can surprise you. Maybe we should start a petition demanding blind playtesting and rigorous editing?
Okay, I think my rant is over now. Apparently, I'm in a mood today.
My apologies for anything that comes off too terribly snarky in the above. -
Those are beautiful. Great work, Iffo!
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They are not basic actions, even though the things they improve upon are basics. So, to take one, you must spend either 1 xp, or count it as one of your 1 to 4 action purchases during character creation. And, as fnord3125 said, you must meet all the requirements on the card.
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r_b_bergstrom said:
A challenge die is worth right around 3 misfortune dice, depending on how harsh you get with the chaos stars. Just slightly nastier than 3 misfortune dice if your GM is particularly creative with the chaos stars, and just slightly less nasty if the GM tends to convert them into banes instead of having it trigger something dire.My bad. Those numbers are completely wrong. I redid a bunch of math this morning, and have come to the inescapable conclusion that 1 challenge die = 2 misfortune dice. That's it. Yes, if a really nasty chaos-star line is in play (on your action or on the location card) it can make the challenge die a little worse, but only a little. 3 misfortune dice have a much nastier impact on your odds of success and odds of boonage.
In light of the new math, Pitch Black is twice as bad as Blinded.
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mcv said:
r_b_bergstrom wrote:3, I can believe. But you're saying you want 8 attacks? How will you ever use them all?
Not all actions are attacks. He wants melee attacks, ranged attacks, support cards, defenses, social actions. There's more than enough options to build a serious deck.
Actually, he did say he wanted 8 attacks. Quote:
I have 2 ranged actions now, I'll want at least one more (and 1-2 more once I get a blackpowder weapon), that's two more. I have one support card now, I'm planning for at least two more. I have one melee action now, I want at least 3 more.
Has 2 ranged, wants 1 more, plus 1-2 more when he gets blackpowder.
Has 1 melee, wants 3 more.
2+1+2+1+3 = 8 all attacks. Then he wanted support cards, defenses, social actions, etc, on top of his 8 attacks he said he wanted. He indicated he wanted 14 action cards, 8 of which were attacks. That sounds a bit much to me.
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gruntl said:
Still, six actions cards? I have 4 on my soldier now and have planned to acquire at least 5 more. I want at least 2 improved defenses and improved guarded position is a great card, that's three actions. I have 2 ranged actions now, I'll want at least one more (and 1-2 more once I get a blackpowder weapon), that's two more. I have one support card now, I'm planning for at least two more. I have one melee action now, I want at least 3 more. And I'd like some social action as well, possibly connected to leadership. Thats 14 action cards in total. For me, it's not about making sure that I have at least one action available due to recharge, but rather to get actions that give me flexibility in combat and that allows me to do cool stuff narratively speaking without having to fall back on Perform a stunt every time.
How many of those do you actually use in a typical encounter?
In my experience thus far, fights are short and nasty. Most attacks hit, and most characters (PCs and NPCS) go down in two, maybe 3 hits. Last week I threw my party of 6 PCs against an equal number of beastmen of various ratings, the total fight lasted half-way through the third round. At 12 actions per round, there was enough down time between each players action, I certain wouldn't want to add very many more monsters.
As I see it, you only really need 2, maybe 3, attack cards. With 3 attacks, by the time you've used the third one, the first one is recharged. You cycle through them and you're good. You can do the same with 2, as long as you choose the right ones, or can rely on a steady stream of fortune refreshes. Maybe I'm being too generous with fortune refreshes when I GM? Let's assume I am, and that as a result, most people not playing with me will need a 3rd attack.
3, I can believe. But you're saying you want 8 attacks? How will you ever use them all?
Yes, extra actions can give you special attacks for specific situations you might find yourself in, but most of the time if you don't have one of those actions, you can also get around it by spending one fatigue, and sometimes easier than that.
- Say I'm an archer and I don't have any attacks that don't require me to be disengaged. While I could solve that by taking "Close-Quarters Shot" or "Knockback Shot" or a Melee Action, I could also solve it by using my free manoeuvre for the turn to disengage and move out to close range.
- The inverse is true as well - if you're a melee fighter there's no need to ever fire a bow, unless the enemy is behind a chasm or atop a castle wall. If they're on the wall, you can probably scale it if you've got Athletics trained. If they're at long range, you spend one fatigue to cut it to medium on the first round and do Assess The Situation to get rid of the fatigue, or guarded position to keep from being hit. On the second round, you spend 1 fatigue to engage. Yeah, it's worse at extreme range, but you should only be facing that during pitched battles on a big open field. Most fights should start much closer than that.
- And some character types just aren't going to fight enough to need those three attacks. A Student is probably better loading up on support and social actions, and then hiding behind the big burly guys.
So, I stand by my statement that three attacks are all you really need.
On top of those three, I agree you'll want 2 more active defense type cards. Improved Dodge and Improved Parry for those who's stats allow them. Others will work on Improved Block, Dirty Tricks or Shrug It Off. You literally can't have all of them (Block needs a shield, Shrug needs a Troll-Slayer). I was figuring the typical character will take 2 of these, but perhaps you've got a point that most characters will actually want 3 of them.
If you're taking melee actions, then Riposte or Counterblow would make sense, since (like the active defenses) they don't use up your turn. But the archers and the social characters won't find them useful, and not all melee fighters are going to use a shield (for counterblow).
Improved Guarded Position is, as you mentioned, great, but only if (for whatever reason) you couldn't attack anyway. With the RAW, attacks are so likely to hit, anything that costs you an attack has got to be amazing to be worth it. It's not like you can win a fight by just doing Improved Guarded Position all day, someone in your party has to be dishing out damage. I think most characters will find they don't need it. Leave the Guarded Position to the softest, squishiest member of the party, or the weakest hitter, and they'll be able to provide the effects for the rest of you.
Similar things can be said about most of the support actions. Any Soldier, Thug, Hunter, etc, is going to be better off using an attack. Attacks hit more often than they miss, and it only takes 2 hits to down most foes. Save those support actions for the Scribes and Barber-Surgeons, the ones who can't really afford to get into the thick of the combat, or who have small enough physical dice pools that they actually miss more than once every 4 attacks.
As for the social actions, most of them don't hold up well when compared to Perform a Stunt. I really love the idea of social encounters in this game, and the idea of social actions, but most of them are only a hair's breadth better than Perform a Stunt. Some of them are only as good as the bonus you get by doing an assist manoeuvre, but they take your whole action. I most of those cases, I'd rather make my own Guile check (or whatever) and provide an assist on the side. It's the same problem the other support actions have in regards to combat. Anything that actually makes progress is much more potent than something that only provides an extra die or two on someone else's roll to make progress. So the game has 13 social actions, but at least 4 of them don't compare favorably to just making an assist, so that leaves 9 social actions that are viable. Even assuming for the moment that a party of 3 or 4 players actually wants to have all the viable ones represented in the party, that's no more than 3 social actions per character.
Having walked through all that, here's my feeling on how many actions various character types need:
- Archers (Hunter, Bounty-Hunter, Waywatcher, etc) need 7 actions. That's 3 ranged attacks to cycle through, 3 defenses, and probably 1 social action so they have something to do in the negotiation and role-playing scenes.
- Melee fighter types (Thug, Pitfighter, Troll-Slayer, etc) need 8 actions. That's 3 melee attacks, 3 defenses, 1 social, and 1 other card for those times when they can't get to the enemy. That one other card might be a range attack, or it might be Improved Guarded Position, or some other Support action to boost up the members of the party who can do something effective in those weird situations where the fighter is unable to reach the enemy.
- Bookworm and Talky types (Scribe, Student, Dilletante, Burgher, etc) need about 8 actions. They really only need (or can benefit from) 1 or 2 attack cards, and only ones that use unusual stat and skill combos (***** in the Armor, Acrobatic Strike, Coordinated Strike, Insulting Blow, etc), to get past their amazing dice pool of 3 strength dice and no weapon skill. Instead of a third (or even second) attack, they're better off taking Support cards. So I'd say they need 3 Social actions, and probably 1 or 2 support cards that can be used (instead of attacks) in a fight with monsters that won't listen to reason or don't speak your language. Plus the 3 defense cards any PC might need.
- Spell casters may need slightly different numbers. Admittedly, I haven't looked much at them, as I have yet to have a PC spellcaster in my games. They need more cards, but they get some extra cards for free, as well. Cantrip looks to have as much flexibility as Perform a Stunt, so I imagine their needs probably run similar to the other character types, once you factor in the free basic cards. Someone who's played such a character would be able to fill us in better. Priests don't get as many freebies, so they may have to buy a few extra cards.
So, the off-the-top-of-my-head number of 6 was a little low. 8 is probably average. Everything past that is just unlikely to see much use. The 14 you're suggesting is mostly wasted on cards you'll almost never use. And if you only need 8, you should have them by the end of your second or third career.
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Aggro / taunt already exists in WHFRP 3rd. This is from an existing card in the Adventurer's toolkit called "Saga of Grungni":
"Effect: While this card is recharing, allies with whom you are engaged may not be targeted by any hostile effect that could target you instead."
The reckless side does something completely different (keeps enemies from taking actions if they disengage from you) which is I believe the reason why none of us thought of it in this thread. There's your precedent, though, the game already has something like what people here have been debating.
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Kryyst said:
This whole argument has been covered over and over again. So with that in mind I return to my original point. What's the purpose of putting up the 'I quit thread'. If you like System X because it fills a niche that System Y doesn't, play System X. This hobby as a whole is not filled with mutually exclusive decisions.
I don't believe the original poster intended it to be a "I Quit" thread. He said he'd been playing something else, but was missing certain elements of WHFRP. So it's more of a "I Quit a while back, and kinda miss this game. If FFG can do any of the following, I'll come back" thread. Which, while similar, is definitely different.
As obnoxious as "I Quit" threads are, they definitely have more usefulness than the "I've never really played the game, but I'm gonna bag on it anyway because it's different from the previous edition" threads. I agree those don't do us any good, but that's NOT what Emirikol was doing here, in my opinion. Honestly, if I were FFG, I'd want to read even those for the data points. Luckily, I'm not FFG, so I can tune them out instead.
It does sound on the surface a little like a "I'm going to Quit if you don't meet my demands" or an "I'm going to Quit unless you all tell me how great I am" thread, but I don't think that either of those was the point or intent of it, either. The greater context of the post will explain why that's not what was intended. So here's the context: The original poster had been an active member of this community for several months, and was collaborating with various people on various projects. Then he vanished. Today, he came back and said why he'd been gone. Speaking as one of the people who'd been informally collaborating with a few weeks back (brainstorming conversion rules for adapting 2nd Ed careers to the current system), I had been wondering what happened to him. In the weeks while he's been gone, the party tension meter around here has risen a bit because of several "I Quit" or "Here's why your favorite game sucks"
threads, but he may well have been blissfully unaware of such tension until you kinda unloaded on him. No offense intended. I too get really frustrated and annoyed at the various "I Quit" and "Edition War" threads, so I get where you're coming from. I try hard not to get worked up over them, though. (And I usually fail.) Whether or not someone else enjoys this game should really only matter to me if they're at my table. That's what I tell myself anyway...
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@Emirikol-
Good to see you, even if it's only temporary,
I agree we need more vertical advancement options, and fairly soon. I'm not just talking about the lack of advanced careers, either. When I get to the point where I need advanced careers, if FFG hasn't released anything yet, I'll just convert them from 2nd Ed using the conversion notes we'd brainstormed.
The problem I'm currently a little worried about may show up before my group has exhausted all the reasonable basic careers, though.
Currently, there's no high-rank actions unless you're a spellcaster. However, the advancement system forces you to buy a new Action and a new Talent every career. I think there's a point you'll reach where Actions, Talents, and Stance Pieces are no longer worthwhile purchases. I'd guess there's no need for more than about 6 actions and 4 talents for a character, and with the right build you could hit that level before finishing your first career. Beyond that point, every new card has less and less chance of ever getting used. Eventually it's even going to get hard to pick out cards that support your core character concept. I mean, how many melee attack actions does your 4th Rank Thug/Pitfighter/Mercenary/Soldier really need? He really just needs two good ones to alternate every other round, right? It's one thing if your Soldier starts taking social actions because of narrative character development, it's not nearly as cool if he starts taking social actions because there's a required purchase and he's run out of worthwhile combat options.
If they gave us some higher-level action cards, Improved versions of the existing ones, even, then this wouldn't be such a problem. That, or more Advanced Careers. I too am hoping a high-level box hits the release schedule soon. Obviously, I can fix all these issues for my own game if I break open Strange Eons and get creative. However, I'm reluctant to do so since for all I know FFG might release their own take on higher-level play and it might not be compatible with whatever direction I take my campaign in. At this point, it's not yet critical, but It'd be very comforting if FFG could let us know if something like this were in the works. -
gruntl said:
I think that it's kind of implicit when building characters, if you care about actually playing a role you will not pick actions that doesn't fit the concept.That's a noble sentiment, and in my heart I agree with you, but I'm not sure it's 100% realistic given that you draw careers at random.
I mean, if Joe Gamer is the sort of guy who likes to play big nasty melee brutes, and the three cards he draws are Scribe, Barber-Surgeon, and Gambler, chances are he's still gonna want to take some sort of melee attack card, because that's what he finds fun. Sure, those careers might mean he takes Nimble Strike instead of Reckless Cleave, but he's still probably gonna take at least one action of the type that appeals most to the player.
Especially if it's his first time playing the system, because the realities of the advancement system are a little opaque at first blush. He might not realize that he'll be able to justify and purchase that action after the first or second session anyway.
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Great points, Pumpkin. I was taking the card too literally, and not thinking enough about the way it gets handed out (which is from a single action card, IIRC). Having thought more about that, it's probably not literally blind, but rather can't see because there's blood in your eyes. And yeah, Pitch Black could be worse than that, at least in terms of penalty.
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Jericho said:
So I really wonder how it works out for people using the RAW, and if they have noticed that these Simple (0d) Action Cards rapidly start to dish out their most potent effects, as getting a few successes and a few boons when there is no difficulty is a cinch.
Back to the real topic of this thread - the Simple (0d) Action Cards:
As I said before, many of these have really small benefits. Call of the Wild, Big City Bravado, Predator or Prey, and Combat Focus all have their main effect being to add a single Fortune die to some number of rolls. In this regards, they're a lot like a talent, or a career ability, or a specialization. Except, unlike any of those three categories of power, they cost you an action to prepare to use them. To counterbalance and boost them in exchange for using up an action, they allow for slightly better results if you get a really good roll. If you start increasing the odds of failure on those, they become more and more dubious. Eventually you'll hit a point where they're not worth taking (and few of them are arguably at that point without any changes).
Things like Assess the Situation, Exploit Opening, Improved Guarded Position, Old Dog New Trick, and the conservative side of Who's Next are more effective, but remain non-aggressive and are done at the cost of preventing you from attacking. In general, these are the sorts of powers used by supporting characters that aren't very good at straight-up fighting. The point of these cards is to let the non-combat characters contribute to the battle in some way. One of the strengths of this system is that no one has to sit out during a fight, and it's these sorts of cards that allow it. The sorts of characters who take those cards are allready at a disadvantage in combat. These cards having low difficulties is what makes that possible, and boosting up the difficulty will reduce the viable options for characters who don't have Strength or Agility primary.
Berzerker Rage is an odd case. One the conservative side, all it does is let you shift your stance to 1 Reckless. If you're at neutral, it's not very good. If you're deep into consevative, it's better than paying a bunch of fatigue. But in and of itself, the conservative side doesn't do much of anything. It just sets you up to make better use of other cards next round, and only if you were standing in conservative. The reckless side, I'll grant you is pretty potent. But I'd take a good hard look at the chaos star line before house-ruling extra difficulty on that card. If I'm understanding it correctly, getting 1 chaos star means you'll suffer 8 fatigue over the next 3 rounds. That's a big drawback.
The Viper's Dance is one I really can't evaluate very well. I haven't seen a Wardancer in action, so I don't have clue how balanced it is. But since wardancers being squishy is a recent topic of another thread, I doubt this card is uber good. To make it better than a basic Dodge, you'd need to have at least 2 other Ritual Dance cards currently recharging.
And I believe that just leaves the Sagas. I must confess I haven't looked too closely at them. There may be a hidden powerhouse there that I'm not aware of. My gut instinct is that the trade off of losing an attack is enough to keep them in check. I mean, if the Ironbreaker is going to spend his turn singing instead of breaking someone's iron, there'd better be a strong benefit in it for him.
But I will say, if you've raised the difficulty of attacks across the board, then maybe upping the difficulty on these wouldn't hurt either. Currently, much of what keeps them in check is the fact that a basic attack is better more often than not. The more you downgrade a basic attack, the better these cards become.
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Jericho said:
r_b_bergstrom said:
The game is based on the concept that success is more fun than wasted actions. .... The degrees of success allowed in the game from comets, boons, and triple-hammer lines also makes these rolls interesting where a simple binary success/fail roll wouldn't.
Has the high success rate worked well for you ?
Don't you feel that rolling has lost some of its suspense if there is almost no fear of failing ?
Shouldn't benefits be larger in case of success and combine that with a lower success rate ?
Yes, the high success rate seems to be working quite well.
No, no suspense has been lost. Some of it has been moved around (see below), but none is gone.
No, that's not necessarily how it should be. In some games, most RPGs even, that's the paradigm that's used. "All or nothing" could some up the majority of the RPG system mechanics under the sun. Powerful successes but rarely occurring is one possible way of doing things, a comfortable old familar way, but not the only way. This game is almost unique in that it gives some measure of progress nearly every round. I find that very refreshing.
In my opinion, success is more fun than wasted actions.
There's still plenty of challenge and suspense. it's just been moved away from where it was before.
Part of the suspense moved from "Will I succeed?" into the territory of "To what extent will I succeed?" Every action feels more effective. Gone are the days where the dice just hate you and you failed 5 attacks in a row. Instead, even when the dice are rolling below average you hit 3 out 5 times, but just never get the triple success, or maybe you run afoul of some banes and chaos stars. You've had the seem streak of bad luck, but you don't feel like you played through an hour and a half of combat without even once accomplishing anything. The frustration of bad luck has lost much of it's sting. Players seem more likely to laugh it off. Since you still did a little damage, or got some boon affect, the sting of a below-average roll is much less.
The other part of the suspense moved away from the player's roll and into other areas. I find you actually fear the enemies attack more, because they are much more likely to hit you. Fights, are shorter and bloodier, and every bit as exciting as they were And a well-built encounter, with a progress tracker in view, has just as much suspense. Less of the suspense is in any given roll, and more of it is in the story and scenario. I like that a lot.
My wife's character, for example, has been KO'd three times now. In nearly every other game we've played, she's been a bad sport if that sort of thing has happened. (Sorry, dear, but you know it's true). Or she'll be a bit of a bad sport if she gets that string of bad rolls where an hour of combat goes by without her ever hitting. When she gets knocked out in Warhammer 3rd, she just smiles and says "Yeah, but I took 5 goblins with me!" And the hour of combat without ever hitting or accomplishing anything - that just doesn't happen now. Everything's fast and exciting, and you never really feel like you've wasted an action.
I compare that to the Savage Worlds game I wrapped up recently, or the Scion campaign I finished a year and a half ago, and I realize how awesome it is to succeed more often than you fail. In Savage Worlds, a spellcaster that's out of power points just gets to sit around doing nothing. If the enemy gets close they'll maybe try a trick, but the math of it is that they're best off staying far away from the enemy, as they can only hit them with a real lucky roll. (The ironic thing here is that Savage Worlds itself has a higher success rate than a game like D&D, but there's still plenty of characters who have to sit around twiddling their thumbs while the group's tank does his thing.) In Scion, you activate a bunch of powers and roll a huge pool of dice, do a bunch of math, and then fail to do any damage despite rolling 17 "successes" from your pool. A ton of math for zero damage three rolls out of four. And then a long wait till your next action as everyone else does their ton of math to accomplish nothing. Those sorts of situations are boring. The real fun and suspense and excitement comes when characters have a good chance of actually doing something round after round. That's my opinion, anyway.
Jericho said:
I know I should use the RAW for a while before house ruling, but all tests I have made (10 of them up to now, with different character types) make me consider that a higher fail rate should be used (and if that nerfs boons too much, then make these "more powerful", so when you do get some, they make a real difference).
When you're testing it, you're just testing odds and math, right? You're probably not getting a feel for the whole experience. Presumably, you're just rolling as fast as you reasonably can, and moving through the required parts to get to the end result. So it's telling you a lot about the mechanics, but not much about the fun that accompanies them. I really do feel that's the important part. Succeeding is more fun than failing yet again and having to wait 10 minutes for your next chance to maybe accomplish something.
Just a thought. You could probably find out for yourself by running a single one-shot with the RAW. If you and your group don't like it after one evening and couple of fight scenes, you really haven't lost anything and can happily revert to your higher-difficulty houserules. You wouldn't even have to make characters for the one-shot, just use your existing PCs from the campaign, and call the one-shot a "dream sequence" or "spin off".
Or, ignore me and keep doing what you are doing. That's okay too, as long you're having fun. That's the important part.
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The difficulty of the system is all front-loaded. Character creation takes longer than I'd like it to, but actual play tends to be fast and easy. There is a potential for analysis paralysis, as it's not always easy to compare and parse action cards. That can be solved by encouraging each player to take very different actions. If you take 3 melee attacks, you'll have a lot of trouble figuring out which one is best for the current situation, but if you take one Melee Attack, one Reaction/Defence, and one Social action, for example, you'll always know your best action for the current situation.
It's great for new players, though. The cards do a great job of putting all your options at your fingertips. There's plenty of visual aids to help you keep track of things. There's almost never call to look anything up in a rulebook. You can pick this one up pretty quick, as long as you don't get distracted by trying to read every single action card in the box.
3rd Edition is decidely more heroic than previous versions. Success rate on most skills is nearly double what it was for a starting character in V1 and V2, and that bothers some folks. Personally, I like it, as it makes for faster play and fewer wasted actions. And honestly, while I've loved the setting for years, I never ran the 2nd Edition because the rules struck me as not being the sort of system I'd be happy with.
There's not a lot of setting info in the V3 books, though, so it can actually help to have some familiarity with previous editions. At the same time, you're not particularly penalized for not knowing the setting. As long as the GM fills the PCs in on anything they'd know as it comes up, you'll do fine. You wouldn't want to have someone run afoul of the witchhunters if the player didn't even know witchhunters existed, for example.
I really like this edition.
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In some other thread somewhere on this forum, someone had posted the idea of putting the social encounter with the merchant into the middle of the beastmen fight. You run the first phase of the beastmen encounter, then put in some delay before the reinforcements show up. So the merchant encounter happens with a time pressure of more monsters gathering off-camera. Use a tracker to chart how long it takes the PCs to talk the merchant into cooperating, and if they stall out, you hit them with the second wave of beastmen. This also helps reduces the chance of the PCs using violence on the merchant, because if the beastmen come back early it'll be a three-way battle.
Group experience?
in WFRP House Rules
Posted
Neat cards, I especially like the Saga. The idea of using a Pendragon-like system is a good one, as well. It really fits the career model well. I'd be tempted to just call every "year" / adventure 10 or 12 xp, and only allow advancements at the end of years. When you complete an adventure, you spend a bunch of xp and then pick the new career that you start the next year in. Could be fun.
Here's some feedback on a couple of the specific cards:
Servant of Chaos seems overpowered. There's at least one action card that give you a fear rating, and it takes up your action for the turn and a pretty tough die roll. That card does Influence the target as well, but doesn't do well when compared to just having this talent to get Fear all the time, and using whatever social skill you have trained to Influence when that's needed. I'd definitely take this Talent over that Action every time, for any character that has a Reputation slot. Might at least be better balanced as "Exhaust this card to gain a Fear Rating of 1 until the end of the scene". At least that way you can't just swap it out the second every foe has taken their Fear test. Or even as "Your Intimidation and Leadership rolls gain Boon Boon: Gain Fear 1 until the end of the turn".
Will of the Northern Gods, on the other hand, is underpowered. If you pop over to the probability tool (www.jaj22.org.uk/wfrp/diceprob.html) you'll see that it's more often a detriment than a benefit. It increases the variance of the rolls, which makes them interesting, but not better. You end up with more triple successes and more multi-boon rolls, but also more failures and more mult-bane rolls. Changing that to 3 white and 2 black would make a world of difference.