r_b_bergstrom
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Posts posted by r_b_bergstrom
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It is a little odd though that none of the Action Cards produced so far include any sort of "holding them off" or "set to receive charge" actions. You can't hold your action till someone else does something, and your only way to interrupt is with the Fake Out card or the Riposte card. The only way to keep people from engaging you is that one Trick card for the Small But Vicious Dog. Hopefully some future product release will fill that gap.
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In regards to the Halbardier on the steps, if I were running that situation, here's what I'd do as GM:
The Halbardier is on higher ground. That'd give him a white die on his attacks, and give his foes a black die on their attacks.
They can't get behind him, he's only got one direction to worry about, that's probably a situational bonus worthy of another black die on their attacks.
He's got a long weapon, and using it to keep people at bay. If the foes are armed with shorter weapons, that'd be another black die added to their attacks.
Total, he's got a white die boost against them, and they're looking at 2 to 3 black dice against him. They're still likely to hit, but the odds of getting the 3-success line went down pretty well.
Then I'd take a cue from the City Gates and Narrow Bridge location cards. They both talk about a character blocking a choke point, so no one can get past. If a PC were trying to get past him, I'd tell the player they can't move past him until they kill him, they Perform A Stunt to get past him, or he rolls a chaos star. (And if the people attacking up the staircase rolled a chaos star, they'd be taking a fall instead.)
As far as ganging up on him, I'd probably follow the lead of the Secret Passageway location card, and impose a maximum number of people that can engage him. 1 to 3, depending on the width of the stairway.
I'd also be likely (depends on the size of the staircase) to rule the bottom of the staircase is at Medium, and/or that going up stairs takes an extra manuoevre. That way you have to suffer a little fatigue to get close enough to attack him.
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Your players are correct. Even if you rolled 6 Reckless dice and got the fatigue symbol on all 6 of them, you'd only take 1 actual point of fatigue.
Remember that buying Stance dice is supposed to be a benefit, it's a thing that you spend XP on. They're supposed to be better than the blue dice. If buying more stance dice seriously increased the chance of you incapacitating yourself in a single bad roll, they wouldn't be a very attractive advancement option.
Also, the Stance system is part of what makes this game nuanced and unique. Making a deep stance position too dangerous would decrease the value and variety of the system. You only get to adjust your stance for free once per round, so a player with a lot of reckless dice will already open themselves to a lot of fatigue if they want to start rolling the good dice right from the start.
The same goes for Conservative dice and Delay symbols. If one bad roll could result in all of your action cards getting delayed (or one action shut down for all three acts of a major conflict), those dice wouldn't be worth the risk.
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Definitely the starting character with the most soak, for what it's worth. There are some fluff / lore arguments to making the Iron Breaker an Advanced career. Now I see a mechanical reason as well. I do believe I'll be houseruling that card. Thanks for the heads up.
As was pointed out, there is a minimum 1 post-soak damage rule. So you could swarm that character with lots of mooks, and nibble them to death. The three-act approach to encounter design is meant to encourage fights more interesting and involved than the party vs a single monster, anyway. Even if it turns out a fight with a Troll isn't a threat to that character, a fight with a Troll backed up by a bunch of Greenskins would be. Or, a fight with a Troll next to a big cliff, that the troll might hurl you off of even if you do soak most of his damage.
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How about:
1) Remove all the "Flesh Wounds" from the deck (and anything else that doesn't give an actual penalty) before the next time you play.
2) When you take a crit, suffer 1 fatigue.
Make those two changes, and you would get roughly the affect you're looking for without adding a lot of extra complexity. Crits would matter more, but without slowing down the game.
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Emirikol said:
I sacrifice for you GM's..I really do...I got heckled at sts for posting the reviews here
That pretty well sums up why I don't spend my time at Strike To Stun.
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Over allt, it looks really great.
For the healing section, though, the little "cards" are really hard to read. The font, shadow, and texture behind them all kinda works like camouflage.
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I started making some career cards with Strange Eons, and have mostly stuck to (and thus far only shared) Basic careers. The reason why is because we don't really know how good Advanced Careers are supposed to be.
All the current Advanced Careers have the keyword "Intermediate", so there's apparently going to be better careers down the road. I feel like the 5 Advanced Careers we have don't necessarily give us a complete picture of what a typical Advanced Career should look like. All of the ones we've seen so far are built to be the next step for a single Basic career. While that may in itself give us a clue where the game is going, all five are essentially the next step for one of the four least typical Basic careers. That makes it tricky to extrapolate what other advanced careers will look like.
Giant Slayer is just Troll Slayer with one Talent advancement traded out for a Reckless Advancement. But you can't do too much of that, because by the end of Giant Slayer you're already capable of having 6 Reckless dice.
Acolyte and Disciple are just Apprentice Wizard and Initiate with a Fortune Die advancement traded out for an Action. For spellcasters that's great, but for others there's a limit to how many special actions you really need. For a Rank 2 career, it's no problem, but the really high-end careers might need to have fewer action advancements (or we might need some higher-end actions somewhere down the road to make it worth it).
Witch-hunter has a 6th skill, and Flagellant has a third talent slot, but they both require you to have a permanent insanity. So, it's hard to say if that bonus is because they're intermediate careers, or if it's meant to compensate you for being insane.
Just thinking out loud... or, in print, I guess.
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Advancements stack in 3rd Ed, and once you've purchased something it's yours for good. What you can get out of a given career is independent of (and totally disconnected from) any careers that may have come before it, though they do stack if you've previously bought some of the same thing.
Example: I start as a Commoner, and during my time in that career, I buy both of the 2 available Conservative Stance pieces, as well as all 3 available Fortune dice. Later, I change careers to Burgher. I may now buy both of the 2 Conservative stance pieces available to Burghers, and the 1 available Fortune die, if I'd like. My total when I'm done with the second career could be as high as 4 Conservative pieces and 4 Fortune dice, a total higher than the number appearing on either Career card individually.
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fnord3125 said:
Well that makes sense, but it's kind of a bummer. That means if the group wants a good healer someone is kind of stuck in a complete support role... at least assuming we're talking first career/first rank characters.
I'm not sure why you're coming to that conclusion.
Starting characters can have up to 4 actions (in addition to automatically getting all the Basic actions for which they qualify). So there's no reason why you couldn't take 3 actions that make you a good healer, and then... Double Strike for the fourth action. Just sayin'.
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fnord3125 said:
-The Troll Slayer career ability gives bonuses to natural defence and soak, and prevents the character from wearing armor as long as he is in a Slayer career. If he completes the Troll Slayer career and takes the dedication bonus to keep the ability, but then transitions into a non-slayer career, he's clearly allowed to wear armor again.
In the fluff / flavor text of the setting, Troll Slayer is a one-way career. You either die gloriously in battle, or become a Giant Slayer. You never retire or otherwise change careers, except to go after things bigger than a troll. So the game assumes your question won't come up.
While I would entertain the notion of Troll Slayers have "sideline careers" as was discussed in another thread (www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp), I'd require they stay armor-less while doing so. The whole point of the slayer career is that you have a death wish, after all. There should be no "take-backs".
fnord3125 said:
-The Made of Iron talent allows the user to reduce Fatigue (and Stress? I can't remember now...) whenever he suffers 2 or more at one time. What counts as "at one time" and what counts as "suffering"? Could he, for example, do 2 extra manoeuvers in a turn and use this talent to reduce the fatigue cost?
Lexicanum interprets "at one time" a little differently than I have/do. My instinct would be to let Made Of Iron apply to multiple manoeuvers, since at best it's giving you 1 extra manoeuvre per turn and you're still taking fatigue. There's a relatively short list of things that give 2 fatigue at a go, if you use the previously offered definition. I tend to think that would make it a very poor talent, much weaker than "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead".
(P.S.: It only affect Fatigue, not Stress.)
fnord3125 said:
-Do characters have a natural defence rating, or does a defence score generally only come from armor?
Armor and shields both give Defence Rating, and there's a few ways to get the odd point or two temporarily. Otherwise, though, in general, unarmored characters have no Defence Rating.
Note however that any card that says "Vs Target Defence" generally has 1 Challenge/Purple Die in addition to any difficulty listed on the card. This is per page 58 of the rulebook.
fnord3125 said:
-Is there any benefit or penalty to wielding 2 weapons at once?
This has come up before, and is discussed at length in the following thread:
www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp
The short version, however, is just as Lexicanum explained. The main benefit is for Double Strike (which is a little broken, but that's a whole other can of worms... I guess www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp is as good as any other discussion of that topic, should you be interested.)
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In the deck of Action cards are a bunch of cards labeled "basic". These are cards everyone has access to, and don't cost an Action advancement.
There's a bunch of different basic actions, including one called "Basic Melee Attack". There's also one called "Perform a Stunt" that covers a wide variety of different skill uses. There's also a couple interesting defensive actions in the mix - more helpful standard actions for non-combat characters than most games will give you. You should definitely take a look through the basic actions if you haven't yet. There should be 3 copies of each in your core set, and 1 of each in the Adventurer's Toolkit.
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I like Stuntie's idea of branching out, but I don't necessarily think you need to make as radical a depature as was proposed (I've never read any of the Gotrek novels, so perhaps what you were proposing wasn't radical?).
Thug, Mercenary or Pitfighter are all careers that could easily represent your Troll Slayer's "side job" while looking for bigger challenges to face, without having to alter the character concept much. Thug, in particular, uses 2 tactics talents, so you won't find yourself investing in anything you'll regret later. You could move into any of those three for a rank or two, and then come back to Giant Slayer after you feel tough enough to kill the requisite monster.
The Zealot suggestion is also a great one, and very flavorful. Since it doesn't list Dwarf on it, though, you may have to talk your GM into it. For what it's worth, if you were playing in my campaign, I'd say yes. Unhinged crazy Troll-Slayer sounds great to me.
Of course, what career to go into is only half the problem. The other half is that you've got Double Strike, and don't feel compelled to pick up any other actions. As many on this forum have noted, Double Strike seems a bit... overly good. Bordering on broken. If it only had a recharge rate, you'd have some motivation to mix up your actions a bit more, but as-is it's so good you don't need another action. Which makes it not just borderline broken, but also boring. I'm afraid I don't have any good advice here, but at least your suffering has served as a warning to others that we may need to preemptively house-rule it. If your GM is cool, he or she might be willing to house-rule it, and give you a bonus XP (or other reward) for bringing to their attention? Just a thought.
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You also mentioned that you take a lot of hits, and don't like how much you need to patch up after fights. Here's a few cards worth looking at to help with that:
- Talents: "Catlike Reflexes" and "Roll With It". The former can boost dodges, the later boosts soak. If it's mostly ranged shots that mess you up, then you might look at "Untouchable".
- Actions: "Improved Parry" and "Improved Dodge". If you took Thug as your next career, you could train Guile and Skullduggery, and then buy "Dirty Tricks" to have effectively one more active defence available.
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The optional rules section is quite short, just 3 pages, which makes it tricky to summarize without accidentally spelling out the way the rules work. That's probably why everyone's been quiet.
This much is should be safe to mention:
- Extra things the GM can do with Aggression & Cunning pools.
- Some tricks and options for manoeuvres and recharge tokens.
- Using fortune points to give players lucky breaks.
- Option for preserving character niches and diversity.
- Spellcasting modifiers based on rank.
- Increased variety and lethality of combat roll results.
Now you know what optional rules are in it, but not how they work.
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doc_cthulhu said:
• The Will for Chaos: Norscan characters come from the most hostile lands in the Old World and march to war alongside unimaginable terrors. They don't scare easily! As a result of their hard-bitten nature, all Norscan characters accuire a Fortune Point for Willpower during character generation!
Do you mean Fortune Die? If not, I'm confused.
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mcv said:
Maybe you can link directly to a bigger version of the image?
Sorry about that. I thought I had uploaded a larger version. The only version I have on my computer is quite large, and I didn't realize that the forum software shrunk it down. Kinda weird.
Here's two higher-res / larger size versions:
transitivegaming.blogspot.com/2010/04/bodyguard-and-charcoal-burner.html
www.vendolis.org/forum/viewtopic.php
mcv said:
Anyway, I think I would have given the Bodyguard Strength, and maybe the Charcoal Burner Toughness instead. Tough, resilient ourdoorsy guy, but not necessarily a strong fighter. Then again, I think combat focuses a bit too much on Strength. Strength for damage and Agility to hit would make more sense, and then I'd have been okay with using Agility for the Bodyguard.
You raise good points.
My main concern was to make classes that are functionally different from existing ones. Strength, Toughness and Willpower seemed the likely candidates for his Primary Characteristics, being burly rural guy. There's already four existing careers that do the toughness + willpower combo, and five that do the strength + toughness combo. There was only one that does Strength+ Willpower, so I chose that. A similar line of thought went into the bodyguard.
I didn't create these two in a vacuum, either, I've prepped loose conversions of about a dozen careers from 2nd Ed, and I think the choices I made make more sense in the context of the others. A number of them suggested Str + To, or To + WP, whereas the 2nd Ed stats on the Charcoal-Burner didn't take a strong stance in any direction (he's got like +5 across the board). But since I have only completed art for two of them thus far, that's all I put up. I was thinking it was better to release things as I get them done, then to wait several weeks on artwork and release a bunch at once. But, looking at them out of context, my decisions are harder to justify.
Anyhow, I'll reflect on your comments, and possibly put up a revised version, but I might hold off till I have artwork done for at least half a dozen of them (or till I fix the artwork on the charcoal-burner, whichever comes first).
Thank you for the feedback!
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fnord3125 said:
So Adam rolls 3 dice for Strength, 2 expertise dice, an a fortune die for his specialty (right?), and if we figure Brad is opposing him with his own Strength, he has to add in something like 3 challenge dice because he only has half Brad's strength(?) Brad rolls his 6 dice for Strength but only 1 challenge dice and 2 misfortune dice(?) and then we see who wins. Or does that make things needlessly complicated and they should both just roll all their "good" dice and compare successes?9 times out of 10, at least in the arm wrestling scenario, I'd just have them roll the "good dice".
Challenge dice should really only be in the mix if failure is interesting or a necessary risk. By putting them into the dice pools in this case, you increase the chance that both players will fail to generate any successes. Do you feel that's interesting?
If both failing means they have a stalemate, and neither is strong enough to win, then maybe it's an interesting outcome. But if you suspect the players will insist on rolling again (and again) until there's not a stalemate, then it's not interesting or helpful, it's just annoying.
One way that it might be rendered interesting, is if you're likely to make the banes or chaos stars be fatigue or wounds. Even then, it's all about context. Fatigue or wounds is interesting if there's some chance of a fight breaking out later in the scene or day. If there's not, then honestly, whatever side effects it has will be recovered from in short order and there's nothing to be gained by it. There may also be situations where the GM knows there won't be a fight later, but wants to imply there will be, to keep the tension level high - but if the PCs are arm wrestling in the middle of a high-tension build up, you've got a strange scenario going on.
I suppose the challenge dice might also be warranted if there's a possibility the PC intends to arm wrestle everyone in the bar in succession, as then the fatigue could easily build up and matter.
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gruntl said:
While I agree that the spell by itself is not at all bad, I still find it a little bit weird.My defense of the spell was perhaps a bit overzealous. The point really wasn't supposed to be that the spell is super good. Rather, the point is it's a very cheap low-rank spel, so it doesn't need to be super goodl. It's not that you get a lot of bang, it's that you don't pay much for what bang you get.
gruntl said:
A regular wizard is not at all equipped to be in a meleeYes, a straight-up wizard isn't. As I understand the current career system, though, the only thing stopping you from starting as a Mercenary then transitioning to Apprentice Wizard is the extra 2 xp it would cost you. While it's not likely, it is possible. That's exactly the sort of wacky build that would really reap the benefits of this spell. Which is why bending the rules to make it give a free attack on round 1 would be bad, because it would most benefit the munckinly build, while still not really being that big a boost for the more traditional spellcaster.
As for the build you'd suggested with 21 points in characteristics... while it's true it wouldn't leave much room for Actions, Talents, Wealth, Skills, etc, but how much do they really need? Double Strike and the flaming sword are action cards enough (especially with the four extra basic actions wizards get). They can leave wealth at zero since they don't have to buy or weapon, or want to buy armor. The second weapon could be a quarterstaff (for the minor defense boost it provides), since that's listed as a one-handed weapon in the RAW. Your Order card is free, so you don't need the talent. Crazy as this build is, it might almost work.
Just rambling and conjecturing. YMMV.
I should probably go to sleep now.
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As written, the card is definitely intended to be an action. Dismissing or resummoning during the duration of a successful cast may be just a manoeuvre, but nothing on the card suggests to me that the initial casting was intended to circumvent the usual Action rules. He should have to wait until next round to attack, but he could still parry between now and then (if he has Parry, and it's not currently recharging).
Huntraxen, if that delay makes it seem underpowered, remember that it's the cheapest spell in the bright wizard's arsenal.
Only two power, but it gives DR 5, CR 2 (which is awesome), Pierce 1, +1 strength and a fortune die. Plus, it means you can never be disarmed. That's pretty hot, if you'll pardon the pun.
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Just want to second the nomination of Robin's Laws as the best GMing advice every printed. Well worth the $8 for the PDF.
It probably would be worth the $28 if the pdf didn't exist, but luckily it does. I've got my money's worth (I paid $10 for it a few years back) several times over.
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Lexicanum said:
"I think once you take all the drawbacks that being a wizard has into account, it only makes sense that they be granted Spellcraft and Channeling. Otherwise, you'd be getting all the drawbacks and none of the benefits. It's in fact because of "balance" that Wizards get these for free. If FFG didn't care for balance they wouldn't have made that special exception for them."
Well said! Great arguments! I agree 100%
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LeBlanc13 said:
I'm waiting to see what The Gathering Storm brings to the table as well. If it gives some meat to the setting, I may give this a go. If I get another product that is fairly over priced and doesn't offer me much, I'm trading the game system away to someone that will use it.... I can always use more Warmachine minis.
You won't have to wait much longer. www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp
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I don't think they were really motivated by game balance so much as by concept. As in: "not all priests have to be miracle workers, but part of the definition of being a wizard is that you cast spells."
But since you mention game balance, it could be that this is why the Rank 1 spells are a little underpowered - perhaps it's to offset the free skills. If you look around here a bit, you'll find a thread somewhere that talks about how a starting Bright Wizard can't do as much damage as a starting Pitfighter (or other combat class).
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Per a strict read of the cards, yes, they'd be useless if you move to a career that doesn't have an insanity slot.
That said, seeing as how these abilities are each "once per session", it probably wouldn't break anything too horribly to let a PC use those abilities with any insanity they have, and not just insanities that are slotted in. For this too even come up, the PC has no doubt been suffering from one or more insanities for an entire career, so it's not like they haven't paid their dues, so to speak.
Assuming the GM was cool with it, that is. Some GMs might hold out instead, hoping that a later expansion will provide additional careers with insanity slots, and I can't say that I'd take issue with that decision.
Dungeon Crawl - 2e
in WFRP Gamemasters
Posted
The4th1 said:
No. Why would you assume I'm talking about 3e?
Because 3rd Ed is the current edition of the game, and this is the forums put up by the manufacturer of that current edition. The vast majority of posts here are about 3rd Ed. You didn't specify that you were talking about 2nd Ed WFRP, so your post is a little confusing.
The4th1 said:
Am I wrong in assuming I can't get help for 2e?
There may in fact be someone here who can help you. But if you're posting questions about previous editions of the game, it's probably a good idea to specifically mention that your question is about a specific edition. The new edition uses some terminology, but is very different in a lot of ways. In some cases it may be clear from context, but some of the folks here have never played 1st or 2nd Ed and may not be able to follow what you're asking about. If you don't say you're asking about 2nd Ed, you'll confuse people, and the folks who do know enough to help might miss your message.
By the way, a really good forum and resource for 1st & 2nd Ed WFRP can be found at Strike to Stun. You might get quicker and better answers there, since the focus isn't just on 3rd Ed. Here's a link:
forum.strike-to-stun.net/viewforum.php