Thanks for your advice and help! BCA said: A couple of places to find a good numerical place to start: 1) Take a look at the spell casters, they have the most pigeonholed career specific actions. How many rank 1 actions are available for a Grey Wizard, or a Bright Wizard, your total choices avialable should be at least that many. 2) The Careers that offer the highest number of action purchases, what is that number, is it 3? 4? 5? I don't remeber off the top of my head, but look at the front of the career cards. I think you should have at least 2x that many available to chose from per class if you offer less, then you get into having "cookie cutter" characters, almost everyone who takes the (career name here) will come out of said career looking almost exaclty the same. If Soldier offers 3 actions, and I only have 4 to choose from, then I'm guarenteed to have at least 2 of the same actions as anyone else who goes through the soldier career. Also take into account, character creation allows for purchasing actions, these are in addition to those the career offers through progression, so if you can get 4 from creation, and upto 4? from advancement, then thats upto 8 action I could have purchased with my first 4 advancements. If you only have 4 or 6 available, then you are now starting to limit some of the careers core potential. Good guidelines, thank you for suggesting them. I probably would have overlooked the whole prospect of buying actions before advancement, it just wasn't on my radar. Glad I put out feelers here. 1) Spellcasters all have 4 basic actions that they get for free, IIRC. Then each Faith or Order has access to 7x Rank One actions, and 3x Rank Two actions. So, as far as things they can actually buy for 1 advancement, they've got 7 essentially. 2) No existing career provides more than 3 Action advancements (and the only ones that do so are Wardancer, Acolyte, and Disciple, the rest give 2 or less). Add to that the 1 "general career advancement" that is an action card, and you face the prospect of characters buying up to 4 new actions in the course of a Career. Taking those two factors into account, I'd be inclined to say 8 is the number of actions I should link to each career. The bonus actions at character creation sure do complicate it, though. It's amazing how easily you can buy extra options for your starting character. For 6 out of your 20 points you can start with 3 extra talents and 4 extra actions. That'd be like a 1st level D&D character starting with 7 Feats! But I suppose that's beside the point... I think 8 will still work. If two PCs are both Wardancers, and started as Wardancers, and took the maximum starting actions and all their entitled career advances actions, then they will be very cookie-cutter by the end of that career... but I think that's enough of a "corner case" to not worry about it. I'll just make sure I have everyone choose their careers at the same time so that there's no doubling-up on starting career. That should solve the problem. I suppose I might eventually run into trouble down the line if someone is taking their 3rd or subsequent career. If it's very similar to their first two careers, then it's possible the list for the 3rd career could have 6 actions they've already taken and 2 actions they previously had access to but declined on. And then it's possible (but unlikely) that the 4th career could have only actions they've already bought. Maybe FFG (or the fanbase) will have come up with some new (or higher-Rank) actions by then, but I shouldn't count on it. BCA said: Lastly, I would make a smaller list of actions that are availble to only specific careers, and have a list that is available to any career, or at least a catergory of careers. That way ther are fewer actions to choose, but there is still at least a small amount of "Universal" actions available. My plan is to handle the actions just like skills. Per the RAW, anyone can buy any skill, but if it's not on your career card, it costs x2 xp and goes in the "non-career advancements" section. Same thing with actions, under this set of rules. If someone really wants a particular card, they can always buy it regardless of career, but it'll cost double. My inclination is that this would eliminate the need for any "universal" actions, but I could be persuaded otherwise if anyone feels strongly about it.

keltheos said: If you're planning on tweaking up the system in this way I'd suggest you listen to their complaints and see why they're pissed off and go from there. Ordinarily, that's great advice, and exactly what I'd do. Complication is, I'll be running this for a group of buddies that get together about 5 times a year. My wife and I take a train down to Portland every 10 weeks or so, get together with this group, and cram in about 20 hours of gaming into a long weekend. Then we take a train away and don't see them again for another couple of months. So it's important that character creation doesn't take up much time, since time is limited and then has huge gaps between visits. It's not a reasonable expectation for them to buy a copy of a $100 game to reference in the gaps in-between us playing, nor am I likely to loan them all my books and action cards for 2 and a half months at a time. In the off times in-between, our pattern has been to barely talk about the gaming, as we have busy lives 200 miles away. I ran Savage Worlds for them for a year and a half, and on our last visit figured out that one player despised the mechanics. She'd never given any indications, always seemed to be having fun, deep in-character all the time, excited and quick to get started, etc. As it turns out, her disatisfaction with the game mechancis was festering. She didn't want to spoil anybody else's fun, or eat up valuable game time grousing about mechanics, so she kept quiet for over a year about things that were really bugging her. (Funny thing is, her eventual complaints were about the same elements of Savage Worlds that I was least happy with, she just felt more strongly about them than I do.) Obviously, I'll be keeping an eye out for that sort of thing in the future, but it's hard to listen to someone's complaints when they keep them to themselves for so long. Which means there's a fair amount of pressure on me to get this right from the start, as opposed to adjusting it on the fly as problems come up.

Here's two "new" careers for Warhammer FRP 3rd. They're loose conversions of existing careers from 2nd Ed. A more faithful rendering of the Bodyguard would have had Strength instead of Agility, but then both careers would have had the same Primary Characteristics, and I didn't want that. The result was that the Bodyguard had a slightly less potent set of skills than it might have otherwise had, which encouraged me to give it a better-than-average Career Ability to compensate. I bought a Wacom "bamboo" tablet yesterday, and these are two of my first three pieces of art from it. Honestly, it shows on the Charcoal-Burner. I was having such a hard time getting the hang of the tablet, that I really goofed up his body proportions. Maybe I'll redo the art on him at some future point... but don't hold your breath. For the body-guard I found a better reference photo, and it really helped. The card backgrounds are from Hurlanc and Vendolis' Strange Eons plug-in. It's a super helpful tool for making your own cards, and I highly recommend it.

In addition to the excellent points macd21 made, another factor concerning this particular product has to do with it being released early in response to the printing problem with Gathering Storm. Since it wasn't expected for another month, the stores would have had fewer people asking about it, and the distributors might not have asked the stores for pre-orders yet. They may have had to "fire blind" in response to the sudden release of the product. This is bound to put extra complications into the supply chain, and no doubt contributed to the uneven availability we're seeing.

keltheos said: Did you also take into consideration the keywords on the careers and actions? Having at least one match both might help you pare down the lists you've created. Unfortunately, there's not much overlap between the Keywords available on existing careers and the keywords available on existing actions. About the only one that really overlaps is "social", and there's 12 social actions and 14 social careers. In general, the problem isn't knowing what to trim. That I can do, and thanks to skill and characteristic requirements, a lot of the trimming isn't even arbitrary. How far to trim is the question. Do I list just the 4 best actions for each career, or the 12 best actions for each career? My gut is telling me somewhere around 6 to 8. Should that number be at all influenced by how many Action Advancements are on the career's advance scheme? How far could I trim it down without players starting to get pissed off?

I love the new edition, but there's a couple minor gripes I have. I feel that character creation (and probably spending xp) takes longer than it should due to analysis paralysis as players feel inclined to read 100 actions and a couple dozen talents before making their decisions. I'm a little bummed that the Careers are less flavorful and less meaningful than they were in the previous editions. And I'm conflicted on the whole issue of, say, a Scribe being able to buy Troll-Feller Strike. I was thinking about this, and it occurred to me that there'd be a cool way to solve all of my little complaints. I could make a list of associated Actions for each career. When you bought Actions from the list for your career, they cost the normal amount. You could still buy ones that aren't on your list, but they'd cost 2 Advances each and count as non-career advances. Players would be less-motivated to dig through the whole deck at character creation, and careers would gain a lot of flavor and impact. I took the first steps towards this, compiling a list of the Actions, sorted by Skill and Characteristic rolled, and the side that was clearly better (if there was one). I compared this to the Career Skills, Primary Characteristics, and starting Stance pieces of the existing careers. What I quickly found was that there's about 20 actions that are a good match for a Thug, for example, but only 3 actions that take advantage of the skill and stat combos found on a Roadwarden. For the Roadwarden (and a few other careers) I'm going to have to pad out their lists with sub-optimal choices, or design a bunch of new Actions. But for careers like the Thug and Pit-Fighter, I'm not sure I want to give them 20 choices. I'd rather hone in on a smaller number, and in the process illustrate the differences between these two careers. So my question for the forum is "Assuming for the moment that I was going to go ahead with the plan / house rule outlined in my second paragraph, how many actions should I give each career?" Too large a number and it fails to feel flavorful, the careers just blend together. Too small a number, and the players may feel cheated or straight-jacketed. I'm trying to find a balance in-between. Any suggestions?

This idea sounds really fun and flavorful, and definitely solves the "let down" of rolling a single boon and not being able to do anything with it. It will, however, no doubt slow down play quite a bit... at least until the players are really familiar with the many different Condition cards that there are. A simpler, but admittedly much less flavorful, way to to make use of a single boon or bane might be to allow it to grant a single fortune or misfortune die to the same characters next action. That would be similar to the inspired and demoralized Conditions, but without the delays of the player hunting through a deck.

Emirikol said: What old careers should fall under "Commoner"? I'd assumed (and still believe) that "Commoner" is only intended to be the "Peasant" career, and not replace any others. I don't interpret it to be a generic placeholder, so much as specifically the 3rd Ed equivalent of the Peasant career. From the commoner card: They are rustic farmers, labourers, and herdsmen in the main... From the peasants entry on page 48 of the 2nd Ed rulebook: They are farmers, labourers, and herdsman. Sounds pretty similar to me.

Uebelator said: Another question: The Sniper Shot-Action Card says, it does critical damage with one success. What does that mean? Normal damage + 1 critical, or are all wounds taken criticals? One success on Sniper Shot does the normal amount of damage, but one card at random is turned face up to be a critical wound. Here's the relevant text from the FAQ: When an effect lists a result such as critical damage or +1 critical damage, that does not modify the attack’s damage potential – rather, it influences how many of the final wounds inflicted become critical wounds. ... An effect that states “inflicts critical damage” is mechanically iden- tical to an effect that stats “+1 critical damage.”

Uebelator said: The total Soak Value of a creature in the beastiary is Are both numbers under the "To" added together, right? The boar for example (page 48) has 6(2), so its total soak value is 8. A really strong fighter with a Strength of 5 and Handweapon equipped does normal damage of 10 (5 Strength + 5 weapon damage). Can it be right, that even if this strong fighter hits the boar, it usually only takes 2 wounds (of 15), because 8 of the 10 wounds are soaked? That seems pretty **** tough to me, considering the boar is only rated 3 Difficulty-Skulls. Is a boar really that hard to kill for starting characters, or am I just doing something wrong. Boars have a lot of soak. 8 total, as you correctly surmised. Yes, that means that most attacks from a Str 5 character with a Hand Weapon, with a single success, will only generate 2 damage after soak. Boars are really hard to kill. From my (limited) experiences (my wife and I have run several playtest battles, but I haven't run a real session yet), a relatively combat-oriented starting PC seems to be about a 2.5 threat rating - they'll almost always clobber a goblin or ungor, but have to get lucky or smart to beat a crypt ghoul, orc, or, as you point out, a boar. The threat rating system is pretty light and sketchy, it's not terribly precise, but anything with a threat rating 3 or more has the potential for a TPK unless the PCs outnumber it. Possible mitigating factors to keep in mind: The PC will lose the fight in a straight-up slugging match with the boar, but should be able to engineer the fight in a way that lets them win. PCs probably have ranged weapons, and/or the cleverness to climb a tree, use the terrain, etc. At the very least they should be able to generate some bonus Fortune dice, and depending on how you describe the terrain, they may figure out a way to prevent the boar from ever getting to attack. The 3-act structure in this game is meant to make the fights dynamic, and not just a point-blank slugging match, anyway, so use it. A combat-oriented PC should have at least one Action card that's better than basic melee attack, and will probably have at least one combat-relevant Talent or Career Ability. With the right cards, rolling three successes or a comet can be devastating. The boar's only equivalent to this is headlong charge, which it should only be able to do once per battle. For monsters and NPCs, fatigue is treated as unsoakable wounds. The PCs can either outrun the boar, or force it to pay wounds to keep up with them. The boar's two reckless dice will slowly whittle it away as well. And if the PCs have one of the actions that inflicts fatigue on the target, these can really shine against such high-soak enemies. Even with those factors, though, a boar is more than a match for most starting PCs.

The most common interpretation of the intent of the default rules is that there's one pool of A/C/E for use by all the Ungor, and one pool of A/C/E for use by the two Gors. It doesn't matter how many there are are, or where they a positioned at the start of the fight, they get the same pool and the distinction is only by NPC/Monster type. There's a little bit of room to argue/interpret that, as the rules aren't 100% crystal clear, but it seems to be the consensus of what the rules meant. That said, I've seen a lot of GM's on this forum house-ruling the A/C/E pools, and I don't really think there's anyone going to stop you if you choose to tweak it a bit. It all just comes down to where you personally tunes the nobs of "realism" vs "elegance". The rules as written make it really easy for the GM to track everything, but are a little wonky in that 1 beastman has the same amount of A/C/E as a platoon of 20 beastmen would have. Someone here recommended adding 1 to each pool for every NPC/monster past the first, and my playtests of the system suggest to me that that works pretty well.

I don't believe the numbers in parenthesis only represent equipment. They are merely the Damage, Soak, and Defence values, which are most commonly a function of equipment, but not always. Look at the "Beasts" spread. A giant wolf has stats of 4(4), 4(2), 5(2), but that certainly doesn't mean it wears armor and carries a weapon.

Necrozius said: I dunno 'bout that. Don't some attack actions require certain sub-types of weapons? If so, then a character holding two different kinds of weapons may benefit from a wider use of action cards without having to spend maneuvers swapping stuff out. Might I suggest you read my post again? The very next sentence and paragraph of it were about how certain weapons give specific benefits or unlock other actions, so I stand by my statement, in its original context. Honestly, if you're not using Double Strike or one of the other cards I mentioned, you probably get more out of a shield or a great weapon than a second one-handed weapon. But sure, for the sake of completeness, we can add that holding a rapier, dagger, or hand weapon in your off-hand lets you switch (for zero manoeuvres) to Dramatic Flourish, Insulting Blow, Nimble Strike or Acrobatic Strike even if you're making most of your other attacks with some other weapon. But again, doing any of those requires you buy such actions, at which point you might as well buy Double Strike unless your strength score sucks. I believe the original poster was more asking whether or not there was any general bonus or rule for double-wielding, and the answer to that is "not unless you've bought a specific action card, or are using one or more weapons with the Defensive trait." Unlike some other games, you don't get two actions, or any other mechanical bonus, just for holding two weapons.

The rules are a little vague, not just with that card, but with Fear in general, and other Actions that grant it. My interpretation is that you make your Discipline check against the Fear upon first encountering the critter which has fear, and don't normally have to roll again. If that's the case, then the main benefit of getting Fear for more than a single action would be for if the enemy got reinforcements, or if you wanted to prepare your horrifying visage ahead of the encounter or before doing something else with it. That said, there may be situations where I'd make someone take a Fear test a second time. Like if you tried to flee, but they caught up with you again. Or if the gates slammed closed, and now you're trapped in the courtyard with the Fearful monster. Leaving that sort of thing open also allows the GM to also use it to reward players whose characters can cause Fear. If they come up with some clever stunt or cool idea, you can have the NPCs roll again. Of course, there's some danger with this sort of precedent, as you don't want to create a situation where the GM has painted themselves into a corner. Like if the monster has knocked out 3 PCs, and the 4th is now all "alone" with the wounded monster. A fear test right then could easily result in a TPK, which may or may not be something your play group is comfortable with. Alternately, you could just give them a Fortune die on other intimidating actions made while they still have the Fear rating. A single fortune die is a small enough boost it won't break anything.

In addition to the examples a number of others have sited, there are also several Action cards that use opposed rolls. An example is the Twisting Words card which says "Guile (Fel) vs Target's Discipline (WP)".

GalaxyUC said: I cannot find any rules for this type of combat situation. What if a PC has two weapons to fight with. Can someone explain how this works or how GM's a handling this situation? I don't see anything in the rulebook. Maybe it's not even an option given the disproportionate size of the weapons to people in the illustrations (that's a kid). Please enlightne me or refer me. Thank you! There's a handful of action cards that simulate this sort of thing. Double Strike is the big melee one (and it's ridiculously good), but there's a few others. Twin Pistols for ranged combat. Execution Shot allows for either pistol and melee weapon (or pistol shot followed by pistol-whipping). If the character wants to specialize in fighting with a weapon in each hand, they should take one of those actions (probably Double Strike). If you don't have one of those actions, then effectively you're not trained in two-weapon fighting, and there's no automatic benefit for holding a second weapon. There are certain weapons, however, that give a small boost when used, even if you don't have Double Strike. If your second weapon is a main gauche (a parrying dagger), it gives +1 die when you parry. A shield as a second "weapon" increases your defence, and opens up a few other actions (Block is a basic action, and you can purchase Shield Slam, and Sword & Board).

Emirikol said: Advances (needs to total 10): Action (0-3), Talent (0-2) , Skill (0-4) ,Fortune (usually 1) Stance Advance: Cons (0-1), Reck (0-1) Wound = (0-3) (match it up) ... ADVANCEMENT BREAKDOWN THEORY. Action - is your career action-oriented (base 2) Talent - is your career talented? (base 2) Skill - higher in non-D&D careers, lower in fighters (base 2) Fortune - "luck-dependent" careers higher (base 1) Cons. or Reck. - (Base 2 total) Wound - has to do with combativeness (base 1) I made a spreadsheet and took a stab at analyzing and refining those numbers further. Don't know if any of this will actually be useful to anyone else, but here goes anyway... Actions: All existing careers have from 1 to 3 Action advancements. Those with 3 are quite rare, being just the Intermediate-level Spellcasters and the Wardancer who will be spending them on Ritual Dance cards. Having just 1 action isn't terribly common, either, and 29 of the existing 40 careers have exactly two Action advances. The average number of actions per career is 1.88. Talents: All existing careers have from 1 to 3 Talent advancements, and the highest number is a little more common than with actions - a total of five basic careers have 3 Talent advances. (As a side note that I'm not sure what to do with, I notice that all 5 of those careers have the Social Keyword, have access to Reputation talents, and do _not_ have access to Tactics talents.) The average number of talents per career is 1.7. Skills: All existing careers have from 1 to 4 Skill advancements. 4's are quite rare - just Student and Scribe. Just under half the careers have 2 skills, but there's a fair number of 1's and 3's as well. The average number of skills per career is 2.13. Fortune: All existing careers have from 1 to 3 Fortune advances, but only the Commoner has the full/max 3. All the intermediate careers only have 1 Fortune advance. The average number of Fortune Dice per career is 1.43. Conservative: All existing careers have from 0 to 2 Conservative advances. Note that these don't always match up with the starting stance pieces of the career. The average number of conservative per career is 0.98. Reckless: All existing careers have from 0 to 2 Conservative advances. Note that these don't always match up with the starting stance pieces of the career. The average number of reckless per career is 0.88 Wounds: All existing careers have from 0 to 3 Wound advances. 16 out of 40 careers have a big fat zero in this box, and only four have 3 wounds available. The average number of wounds per career is 1.03. I also noticed that all the existing careers have between 2 and 5 items total from the top row (Actions and Talents), and between 2 and 5 items total from the second row (Skills and Fortune) of the advances box. You can't have more than half your advances in a single row, (or at least none of the existing classes do). So there aren't any careers that have, for example, 3 Actions and 3 Talents, nor do any careers skip (have a 0 in) any one of those four things. Every existing career has from 1 to 3 stance advances total, so if they have a zero in one stance, they'll have at least 1 in the other stance. The commoner is the only career that has 3 stance pieces. 32 out of 40 careers have exactly 2 stance pieces. And, of course, as you mention, every single career's advances total out to exactly 10. Let's see if I can make that easier to read: ____ Actions: 1 to 3, typically exactly 2 Talents: 1 to 3 Total in this section: 2 to 5 ____ Skills: 1 to 4 Fortune: 1 to 3 Total in this section: 2 to 5 _____ Conservative: 0 to 2 Reckless: 0 to 2 Total in this section: 1 to 3 _____ Wounds: 0 to 3

Just house-rule it. As you pointed out, it could be interpreted multiple ways. Pick one for your game, and roll with it. Being "right" is less important than having fun.

Innommable said: It sounds pretty weird. Strength and equipment can influence the amount of damage a target take by being puked on? I mean, where is the logic behind that rule (and please, dont tell me that there is no logic in a fantasy game). I agree it sounds weird, and I personally would have included a special rule (or given it a special damage rating) if I were the one who created the Troll Vomit action. But I didn't make the card, I'm just a hopefully helpful guy on the forum. I think the intent of the designers is clear, even if the in-character logic behind it escapes us. They meant for Troll Vomit to do 12 damage, about the same as it's other attacks. If they didn't intend that, they would have specifically spelled it out. The folks who did make it chose not to include any special rules, so the default is that it's normal damage, based on Strength and the DR in parenthesis after Strength. The default rules assume that trolls will almost always have those stats, and that the GM is rarely going to bother kitting them out with special equipment. Chances are they didn't think too hard about the unfortunate implication that giving a troll a higher-quality weapon essentially makes their stomach acid stronger. Choosing to disconnect that damage from Strength certainly won't break anything, so go ahead and house rule it if it bothers you. You certainly could look at it as the troll vomit does a set, non-strength-based, damage value of 12. From this point of view, it has nothing to do with the Strength or weaponry of the Troll, but since it just happened to be the same numerical value as the damage the troll normally does, they chose to save themselves some page space / word count by phrasing everything in the simplest way possible. It's possible that's what actually happened, even. Alternately, you could assume they meant for some other damage value, and forgot to include it. Or you could even assume they're just crazy. Frankly, it doesn't matter to me which explanation you believe, and what damage you choose to have it do in your game. You asked how you're supposed to know what damage it does, and I told you the base rule. Now that you know what the rule is, as GM you can choose to ignore, bend, or break it as you see fit. Have fun!

I interpret the rules to mean: a group of X henchmen counts as a single figure. You could think of them as a single figure that starts with bonus dice that go away as that single figure takes wounds. The rules are a little vague, as you point out, but are definitely intended to do two things: simplify book-keeping make the henchmen weaker and more easily slain by PCs So, I would always choose the interpretation that best satisfies those two goals. Therefore, they get bonus fortune dice on actions, but not reactions or active defenses. If they added the bonus dice to their dodge or parry, they'd actually be harder to hit than non-henchmen. They have a single soak value, the default for individuals of their race/type, which is applied once to any attack. This makes them easier to injure / slay, and also involves the least book-keeping and math. (So in your example where 10 damage is done to a group of Toughness 4 (Soak 1) henchmen, they would soak 5 damage, one would die, and the "next in line" would take 1 damage. I think this is fairly clearly stated on page 42 of the Tome of Adventure in the "Henchmen Share Health" section, where it says "Against henchmen, there is no wasted damge. Inflicting 6 wounds with a single attack would kill three snotling henchmen." If you applied soak more than once, or in stages, that sentence and the one that follows it would read differently.) In the case of the spell you mentioned, the "squad" of henchmen counts as a single target, and thus adds only a single misfortune die, not four or five. As with the active defense situation, I rule this way so that the henchmen gain no benefit from being henchmen. Otherwise, a group of five henchmen is harder to attack with that spell than a single non-henchman of the same species/type would be, and that's definitely not the intent behind the rule. I suspect what's confusing you is that the henchmen group gets bonus attack dice, which feels like being henchmen somehow makes them more powerful, or is at least a balanced trade-off. It's not, that's an illusion. A group of 5 goblin henchmen rolling an attack of 4 characteristic dice and 4 fortune dice will almost always do less damage than 5 goblins in succession each rolling 4 characterstics dice. The four extra fortune dice are only adding, on average, 1.33 successes. Against a Defence 0 target, the henchmen goblins will have a 92% chance of hiting, and average about 7 damage total. Which sounds good until you realize that 5 non-henchmen goblins attacking in succession will get at least one hit 98% of the time, and on average as a group will score 3 or 4 hits for a total of over 20 damage on average. Being a henchman sucks.

Innommable said: Maybe i missed something when reading the rules but I was wondering what is the basic damage for the Vomit action card of the troll (Tome of adventure p.59). Do we have to use St for that attack or is it something else? I really dont have any clue. Unless otherwise specified, all the monsters and npcs in that section do base damage of Strength + the number in parenthesis behind strength. Since neither the "action card" nor the special rules for that monster type mention anything about it, it does the default. So, with a single success, they vomit on you for 12 wounds (minus soak), one of which is a critical as the "action card" states.

GalaxyUC said: Combat seems like it would move at a crawl compared to D&D 4E, what with assembling these Die Pools, then sifting for results instead of just adding, then referencing the card to see any other effects, then doing damage. Though I did read about henchmen and found that a great concept. I believe me, I really want to use this system, as I have abandoned D&D and love FFG products. Please let me see what combat looks like from the GM's perspective. The rulebook's poorly organized, and it comes off looking more complicated than it actually is. It plays much faster than it looks. Roll up some sample dice pools, and you'll get a feel for it. Once you get the hang of knowing what symbols cancel each other out, reading the dice becomes lightning fast. My 4th Ed D&D experience is pretty limited, but I can tell you that the current edition of WFRP plays faster than 3.X D&D. It's also faster than most White Wolf games, Chaosium games, and things like 7th Sea. Taking nearly all the math out of rolls makes up for whatever time is lost in assembling dice pools. (And in the case of WOD, Scion, 7th Sea, etc, those games already require dice pools so you're only coming out ahead.) WFRP 3rd is a bit more crunchy than most of the indy game titles (Wushu, Risus, PDQ#, etc) however, and thus runs slower mostly by virtue of having more options. In my experience, the biggest thing slowing down WFRP 3rd Ed is analysis paralysis when it comes to choosing the right action for the job. The solution to that is probably to purchase as few actions at character creation as possible. That way you'll get comfortable reading and using the cards before you have to start learning to compare them and trying figure out which is better in specific situations.

Darrett said: I hadn't noticed that, but it seems to be a typo; you could end up with two banes and a challenge, which would net you a single bane in the end; not enough to activate the Accurate Shot card's penalty. Seems like they modified the results to show what bad things could happen, and forgot to add in an additional Misfortune die to the original dice pool. They didn't forget. The fight happens just outside Stormdorf, so there's an extra misfortune die because it's raining. But it's always raining in Stormdorf, so they didn't think it was worth mentioning.

Venthrac said: I'm thinking that there should be an option for a character or creature that just wants to run flat-out during his (or its) turn. Here's what I've come up with as a possible solution RUN (maneuver) If a character wishes to cover a lot of ground by moving quickly, he may run. A character that chooses to run on his turn must declare this before taking any actions. Once this maneuver is declared, the character moves up to three range increments, but no less than two. When this move is complete, the character's turn immediately ends, with no actions allowed. A running character is sacrifcing defense for speed, and so can take no actions until the start of his next turn. Characters who are critically injured, engaged, or restrained cannot run unless the GM allows it. Does that sound fair? That sounds fair, but perhaps overly generous, for the runner. It seems a little unfair for archers, to be honest, and I think it will give melee too much of a boost over ranged combat and ambushes. I suppose I should back that up with evidence or arguments. Sorry if this derails your thread at all... I don't feel the game needs this running option (or any other homebrewed enhanced running option), because even without it, characters can cover ground exceptionally fast. To illustrate my point, let's explore how the standard compares to 2nd Ed. (My 2nd Ed is really rusty, so if anyone spots any mistakes, let me know). In 2nd Ed, most humans have a Movement statistic of 4. This allows them to move 8 yards per combat round normally, or up to 24 yards in an all-out run where they're doing nothing else. Within that system, bows and firearms have a range of 48. So if you were attacked by someone with a bow at long range for their weapon, it would take two full rounds of just running to get within melee range. If you were taking a more cautious approach (not running or charging) it would take 6 rounds to reach them. Now compare that to 3rd Ed, where the range for an equivalent weapon has range "Medium". Moving at a full run, you can get there in a single round, for 1 fatigue, and you still get to attack. (You spend your free maneouvre to move from Medium to Close, and then pay a fatigue to engage them.) If you take a more cautious approach (no fatigue), you get there in just two rounds. So, characters in 3rd Ed are, by default, moving much faster than characters in previous editions. Comparing it to D&D we'll again see that WFRP characters are by default moving really fast. In 3.5 D&D (likewise, my 3.5 is kinda rusty, so correct me if I'm wrong), a shortbow has a range increment of 60 feet, and it's maximum range is 600 feet. You won't often take shots at that kind of range because your odds of hitting at 10 increments are pretty dreadful, but a reasonably competent archer is likely to be willing to take shots out to four range increments, aka 240 feet. An unarmored human PC can walk 30 feet per round, or run 120 feet per round. So again, to travel from the likely archery range to melee range takes 2 rounds of full-out run, or more than 6 rounds of more reasonable exertion. And if you were taking fire from some hotshot archer who wanted to hope for natural twenties at the full 10-increment range of their shortbow, it would take you 5 rounds of full running to reach them. What I conclude from all those comparisons is: * a) WFRP 3rd Ed assumes your basic movement in combat is a hearty jog, not a calm walk. * b) If you're taking one or more fatigue from movement maneouvres in WFRP, it represents a full-on run. * c) WFRP 3rd, as written, is much kinder on the melee-only character than either 2nd Ed or D&D, at least in terms of them trying to get into range while under fire. So, given those conclusions, I see no need or reason to allow any better movement than the default maneouvre rules in WFRP. Just to make sure those conclusions hold up, I'll also run the results on a longer-range weapon. In WFRP 3rd Ed, a Hochland Long Rifle or a Longbow can hit to Extreme. It takes 7 maneouvres to reach that distance (3 from extreme to long, 2 from long to medium, 1 from medium to close, 1 to engage while at close). You can cover the whole distance in a single turn if 6 fatigue isn't enough to knock you out. Or you can cover the distance over 7 turns at a slow pace without fatigue. In WFRP 2nd Ed, a Hochland Long Rifle has a range of 96. A typical Move 4 human can cover that ground in 4 turns of all-out full running. If they try this without running, it'll take them 12 turns to get there. In 3.5 D&D, a composite longbow has a range increment of 110 feet, so from the point where they start having a better than 5% chance of hitting to when you reach melee is about 3 or 4 turns of all-out running. At a non-run pace you're looking at about 14 rounds of walking. So, in terms of getting somewhere in a hurry, WFRP 3rd is being very generous to the guy who rushes into melee. It does so, of course, at the expense of giving you a lot of fatigue if you want to run so remarkably fast. Then again, you may be able to shrug off the fatigue with the right talents or career ability, and you still get an action on the turn(s) you run, unlike the other systems. If my players complain about there being no running option, I'm going to politely tell them that spending fatigue for extra maneouvres is the running option, and that it's far more generous running rules than any non-supers game I know. If they have a problem with that, they should look at the "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" and/or "Made Of Iron" Tactics Talents. Either will let them get to extreme range in 3 turns for a total of 2 Fatigue. If they take both (and have the slots for them, so either Troll Slayer, Thug, or Wardancer, or a member of a Party Card with a Tactics slot), they can run the whole distance in 1 turn for 3 fatigue. Those without Tactics might consider the Strong-Willed Reputation, or even a stint as a Soldier or Commoner. Or, they could just describe some colorful trick they do while running, and hope for 2 boons on "Perform a Stunt". This would allow them to squeak an extra maneouvre (or fatigue refresh) into each turn spent just moving. I suppose I could see room for some sort of enhanced move Action being added to the game, as in one you pay an Advancement to purchase. You'd have to be careful not to make it too good, though, or else it would become an automatic upgrade for all melee characters.

Personally, I'm just fine with the Rules-As-Written, and that running the entire length of a longbow's extreme range in a single action should be extremely tiring. That said, clearly you want to change the rules for your group, and it does neither of us any good to argue over whether or not it's needed, so I'll try to restrict my comments to those that are genuinely constructive. limelight said: Sprint Athletics Check Difficulty: 1(d) challenge die. If Athletics is trained: 1 Misfortune die instead Requirements: Disengaged from opponent, must move a minimum of 2 range maneuvers Character runs at top speed and covers ground quickly Results For each success reduce the maneuver by one 2 Boons reduce the maneuver by one 2 Banes add one maneuver Comet: Gain the Energized condition (reads: Brief effect (recharge 3), cancels sluggish, During your turn you may perform 1 additional maneuver without suffering fatigue) Chaos Star: Suffer the sluggish condition (reads: Brief effect (recharge 3), cancels energized, During your turn suffer 1 additional fatigue for each maneuver you perform during your turn) Special: Racial Modifiers: Elves +2 Fortune die, Humans +1 fortune die, Dwarves +1 Misfortune, Halflings +2 misfortune. Also adds misfortune if encumbered. You may exchange fortune dice: 1 per maneuver So, working from the assumption that we want/need something like this in the game instead of the current rules, here's what I would change from what you wrote. I would make it a basic action (which may be what you intended) and make a card for it. Then I would tweak it until it followed the normal rules of basic actions as much as possible. Specifically: I'd set a default difficulty (probably Easy / 1 Challenge), and not count Athletics twice. If you really want some other boost so skills matter more, you could put in "If Resilience is trained, add 1 Fortune die to this roll" instead of the variable difficulty. Or Coordination, if you think that's more appropriate than Resilience. I'd also be tempted to gut the racial modifiers. I might use the GM's powers to sometimes give Elves and Humans an extra die when running on flat, open ground, but I don't think it's necessary to always give them a bonus. If I'm interpreting your "You may exchange fortune dice: 1 per manuever" line correctly, it seems like you're really giving elves and human a huge boost. I'd give it the typical one hammer and three hammer success lines, instead of an open-ended success roll. Then again, as I said, I prefer a character who runs all the way to extreme in a single round to feel a little pain. So this may just be a YMMV situation. I like the Energized and Sluggish idea a lot, so I'd probably move them to the 2 Boons and 2 Banes lines, so they'll happen more often. (If you really like the idea of having a Chaos Star effect, you could have a twist or sprain that does a single unsoakable wound.) Should you choose to keep the variable difficulty, I would definitely encourage you to move Energized and Sluggish to the Boons and Banes lines. As proposed, if you've got Athletics, there's zero chance of it winding you, and if you're lacking athletics, there's zero chance of being energized. On the one hand, that seems pretty realistic when looking at it from the lens of modern obesity. But medieval adventurers are probably relatively fit even if they don't have Athletics "trained", and it may be a little harsh on the 23 basic careers that don't have access to Athletics at character creation.