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r_b_bergstrom

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Posts posted by r_b_bergstrom

  1. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Thanks for the brainstorming, quotes, and the awesome skaven picture. All very helpful.

     

    The version I've been toying with actually uses a Resilience check for the targets (instead of an attack roll). I did that so the 2 yellow given by their own breathing equipment would always matter, assuming something weird happened like a globe getting dropped or used against them. 

     

    Every non-henchman in target engagement tests Resilience + Toughness against Difficulty 2 Purple, + 1 Black if the Globadier spends an Expertise. (For the sake of speed and ease at the tabletop, henchmen don't roll, they just die.)

    Success: Suffer 1 Fatigue

    Failure: Draw a crit, suffer fatigue = severity, then discard the crit.

    Boon: Free movement/disengage manoeuvre.

    Bane: Blinded condition for 1 round.

    Chaos Star: Damage = Skavens Agility + DR

    Chaos Star: 1 Fatigue

     

     

    So that's what I created yesterday, but I see two problems with it:

    1) There are 2 crits in the deck with Severity 0. (Meaning there's a tiny chance failure is better than success with the way I wrote it up).

    2) It doesn't combine well with the Clan Skryre group card, since it doesn't do damage by default. The bonus dice are easy enough, you'd just add them to the Resilience checks instead. Maybe this is not such a big deal, since that group card's tracker moves 1 per turn, and I've never seen a fight last more than 4 turns.

     

    I didn't have it lingering because I think it's just a one-turn template attack in WFB. (Though that could actually make for an interesting terrain card, now that you mention it.)

     

    I hadn't realized Green Ronin did WFRP2 stats for it, as I don't have that book.

     

    All things considered, the ideal situation would probably be for it to be an item card, not an action. Because eventually the PCs are going to kill the rats and take any globes that didn't get used.

  2. Posted

    I was looking at the stats on these guys, and I realized there are currently ZERO actions or item cards that could represent the weapons they use. The Globadiers themselves have stats, but no attempt was made to represent their one and only method of attack.

     

    As written, all they have is Basic Ranged Attack and a DR of 3. Technically that means it's not an area-effect weapon, it doesn't have the Poison ability (and is very poor at generating the crits that Poison needs to trigger), it doesn't avoid armour soak, and the double yellow provided by their masks are completely useless (they don't even interact mechanically with the Clan Skryre group card).

     

    Has anyone made an action for them in Strange Eons?

     

    I'm currently working on a card, but am a little uncertain just how potent to make it. I've never played a Skaven army in WFB, so I don't really know how powerful they are there or in the fluff. Any ideas?

  5. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Any of these could work for Mystic>Seer

    • If you're a genuine, insightful mystic, consider Scholar or Investigator.
    • If you're a huckster or conman, you'd probably go into Charlatan.
    • If you're out on the corner shouting "The End Is Nigh" then consider Demagogue (and maybe Agitator before or after it)
      • or >Zealot>(Flagellant?)>(Prophet Of Doom?)
    • If you're going to be the group healer then look at Physician
      • with possibly BarberSurgeon or Apothecary thrown in there somewhere.

  6. Posted

    Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't allow that particular transition at my table either.  Troll-Slayers are dishonored warriors that aren't allowed to wear armour. Ironbreakers are honoured warriors gifted an ancestral set of armour. You could fall from Ironbreaker to Troll-Slayer easily enough, but going the other way would require one heck of an unusual mitigating circumstance. I can't imagine I'd ever say yes to it.

     

    I would, however, allow plenty of other "Troll-Slayer into some non-Slayer career" transitions. Thug, Soldier, Mercenary, Veteran, for sure. Other less-military careers would depend upon the plotline and the character background. If the player of a Slayer wanted to take Ratcatcher because he specialized in hunting Skaven, I wouldn't stop him. If he wanted the Graverobber career to pay the bills while hunting undead, I'd be okay with that. If he was a Messenger or Smuggler to cover his expenses while traveling the land in search of foes, that'd be alright by me. I don't see the harm in it.

  7. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    I strongly disagree with Ralzar's assessment. There's actually a ton of new content in the Player's Guide and Creature Guide and Vault!  He is mostly right about the GM's guide though, it's of dubious utility.

     

    Lengthy post on exactly what’s new in the Player’s Guide:
    http://transitivegaming.blogspot.com/2013/07/whats-actually-new-in-wfrp-players-guide.html

    • TL;DR version of that link: While the Player's Guide is mostly a reprint, it actually has a ton of tiny corrections, advice, and corner-case rules. The biggest changes and most important new rules are to Healing, Advancement, default Difficulties, and the section on "Freestyle" banes/boons/comets/stars. Those alone make the book a worthy purchase for dedicated Warhammer fans. I’d say get it. You want to read the Healing chapter very thoroughly, but for the rest of it if you’re already familiar with the coreset you can mostly get away with just reading all the new sidebars. Those sidebars and the expanded healing rules fix a number of critical problems in the game system.

    Lengthy post on exactly what’s new in the Creature Guide:
    http://transitivegaming.blogspot.com/2013/08/whats-new-in-wfrp3-creature-guide.html

    • TL;DR version of that link: Creature Guide has a huge number of new monsters, some new NPC mechanics, plot-hooks and setting material. I strongly recommend it for all the useful content. Note, however, that it is poorly edited and organized. The Creature Vault has most of the crunchy mechanical content from the Guide in convenient card form, and can be really helpful. Sadly, certain critical new rules in the Creature Guide didn’t make it into the Creature Vault so it’s really hard to use parts of it (especially Swarms) without having the Guide as well.

    Lengthy post on exactly what’s new in the GM’s Guide:
      — Dang it, I never finished or published that post, and I don’t think I’ll get around to it today.
     

    • Looking at my notes and half-written draft of the post, I am reminded that there’s a lot less new material in the GM’s Guide. What new content it does have is mostly clarifications and ideas for getting better value out of some of the more controversial GM tools in the game. So if you feel like the Party Tension Meter, Rally Steps, or the 3-Act Structure are confusing, or clumsily-executed, you’ll appreciate the expanded coverage they are given in the GM’s guide. If you’re already happy with those mechanics as-is (or hate them so much you threw them out) then the GM’s Guide probably isn’t worth your money.

  8. Posted

    There's at least half a dozen old threads on this.

     

    There's a very intentional precedent set in the Player's Guide. Page 47, under "Careers as Story Aids". It talks about how you can use career cards to represent careers and development other than the ones they are literally named for. The specific example there has someone using Thug to represent "Sergeant of the City Watch". That implies much leeway and flexibility in the career system. Officially, you can use the mechanics to represent whatever plotlines and concepts sound good to you and your group. 

     

    It's probably also worth mentioning that starvation is not a glorious or honorable way to die... so unless the Slayer was independently wealthy from their previous life, they may have to perform a few odd jobs to put food in their belly and a roof over their head. At the very least, that justifies transitions like TrollSlayer to Thug or Mercenary, and I feel it could justify rather broader career paths if the situation where interesting and the play group amenable to it.

     

    That said, each GM and/or play group are free to decide how literally and/or restrictively they wish to apply not only the fluff but also the mechanical implications of the career system. If it bothers you, don't allow it.

  9. Posted

    I just realized the card I posted needs revisions. The Reputation slot for space 5 just isn't going to work. It would be really complicated in play since Players aren't supposed to be able to see the Secret Society card. I don't want my players attempting to manage Talent socketing when they can't see the card that has the talent.

     

    For that matter, it seems all the Secret Society sheets from Lure of Power have similar (but mostly milder) issues. Most don't give you talents, but they do all give the PC multiple special abilities... that they can't reference since they aren't supposed to look at the sheet. Those abilities from Lure of Power probably should have come on individual cards instead of a big tracking sheet. I suspect I'll break out Strange Eons and make little cards for each Secret Society granted ability, but that's still less than ideal for something like a Talent socket.

  10. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Thank you. Great ideas. Now you've got me thinking outside the box:

     

    More possibilities:

     

    The Pilgrimage of Fingers is actually an entrapment operation set up by the Vereneans or the Witch-Hunters or some other law and order enforcing group to fool criminals into marking themselves. (Insanity: Paranoia)

     

    There is no Ranald, it's just Tzeentch running a particularly long con. (Insanity: Mental Mutation... or maybe I just replace the Insanity slot with a Mutation slot.)

     

    There is no Ranald, or at least he was never a God. Any blessings and miracles are just manifestations of psychic group thought, or dumb unguided luck. All those crooks and gamblers have fooled themselves into thinking there's someone watching over them but there really isn't. (Insanity: Lack of Confidence or Faltering Steps)

     

    The entire cult of Ranald is secretly run by some foreign entity. A mob of crooks based out of Tilea or Marienburg, and some percentage of your "income" has to be passed along to this outside group. (Insanity: Paranoia or possibly Xenophobia depending on the group, maybe Don't Leave Me if they're likely to kill to keep the secret.)

     

    Ranald and Handrich are the same God... and this is... somehow... scary... or something... I dunno. 

     

    There is no Verena (or Sigmar, or Shallya, etc. Insert-your-favorite-God-here)... they are just Ranald running a particularly long Con. (Insanity: Dreadful Insight)

     

    Ranald is actually just the God of luck, and nothing else. All this "God of Thieves" criminal nonsense is a perversion of his cult that was inflicted intentionally by some outside meddling force. (Insanity: Thrill-Seeker?)

     

    The Pilgrimage of Fingers is actually dedicated to tearing down the institutions of nobility. The last few fingers aren't just fetch-it quests, they're assassination orders or market manipulations that will devastate entire provinces. (Insanity: Easily Goaded)

     

    You're not sure what the secret is, but there definitely is one. Everytime you meet up with the higher-priests who would give you your orders, you black out and loose several hours of memories. They must be using some sort of mind control blessing, but to what ends? (Insanity: Fading Memories or Straying Thoughts)

  11. Posted

    SPOILERS!

     

    Working on a Ranaldian Pilgrimage of Fingers card that uses the Secret Society rules from Liber Ecstatica / Lure of Power. Tried to post it here but the Forum Software doesn't like me. It should be viewable at dropbox:

     

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ba4vrwz5n1mij2/Pilgrimage-of-Fingers-Front-Face.png

     

    That's just the front. I've made a back, but it's currently just the three existing paragraphs of text about the Pilgrimage from 2nd Ed Tome of Salvation. So, copyright issues prevent me from sharing it. Not that the crossed fingers on the front aren't also somewhat infringing...

     

    Anyhow, I might write up a new back for it if I could figure out a good "secret" to reveal when the PC reaches the Inner Circle. All the standard Secret Society cards have a terrible dark secret that's revealed when you gain membership. I'm not sure what (if anything) to have as a dark secret for the Pilgrimage. It kinda works without it, since I can just lean on mafia and crime movie tropes. You might decide to leave the life after one last big score, etc.

     

    Thoughts on that, or on balance, etc, would be helpful. 

     

    I tried to follow the pattern of the existing Secret Society cards.  The most common configuration was Member track: Space 2 white die, Space 5 major power. Inner Track: Space 7 major power plus insanity, Space 3 major consequence, space 0 you're free.

     

     

    Emirikol reacted to this

  14. Posted

    1 & 2: These really puzzle me. You say you think it's too easy to recover from Fatigue & Stress, and you increase the penalties they give and lower (by 1) the amount of Fatigue it takes to get KO'd.  So far so good. But then you doubled the amount they automatically recover from at the end of the encounter!  I feel like I'm missing something.  Your solution doesn't seem to actually address the stated problem of "too easy to recover stress/fatigue" and instead actually eliminates the second and third biggest sources of fatigue/stress (those being banes and red dice).

     

    Unless there's something here I'm not seeing, I have to agree with Emirikol that simply adding +2 Misfortune to the base difficulty of everything would probably solve the problems you've identified with the system in a much more elegant fashion.

     

    3 & 4: Your alternate system for the exertion and delay icons are flavorful and elegant. I really like what you've done here. It's always bugged me that the delay tokens for being conservative could actually penalize someones defenses (by putting recharge tokens on them) but the penalty for being reckless never left you vulnerable to counterattack.  Your alternate effects here are especially nice for fixing that logic hole in the base system.

     

    That said, I'll chime in that I don't find the Exertion symbol on the Red dice to be all that dangerous in the game. Sure, a bad roll can produce 2 Fatigue (1 from 1 or more Exertion symbols and another from 2 Banes), but it's rare that such a roll actually drops a character. Even a Toughness 2 character isn't KO'd untill the 5th Fatigue.  The simple truth is it's a bad idea to make a low Toughness character that relies on physical actions and reckless stance, unless they have a talent that eliminates fatigue or have a high Intelligence to use with Assess The Situation checks. Anyone who starts an action only 2 fatigue away from passing out probably ought to be choosing their action and stance very carefully that turn, anyway.

     

    5: Yep, I agree that "once per session" effects are lame, and hate the way they get unloaded in the final scene of each session. I've done things similar to your chapters before, but in the end I actually found the per session effects to be slightly less annoying than the book-keeping needed to track which powers have been used from one session to the next. If it works for you, though, more power to you.

  15. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    In my experience, if you use the limits mentioned in the Player's Guide it's pretty hard for PCs to heal all their wounds in a single day. It sounds like maybe you're house-ruling to solve the loopholes that were in the core book, when they've already been closed via the newer text in the Player's Guide.

     

    The PG changed the healing limits to:

    • Each spell or blessing limited to once per person per day.
    • Each injury or act limited to one "Immediate Care" First Aid or Medicine check, beyond that all First Aid and Medicine can do is add bonus dice to the daily Recovery check.

     

    At my table most fights end up with at least one of the PCs KO'd. Even when the player's use every healing option available to them, that character certainly isn't looking to start another fight the next day. They'll recover a little less than 1/2 of their normal wounds per day on average, and I've frequently seen crits linger for a half a dozen days (or sessions) before finally being healed. This has held true into Rank 3 anyway.

     

    If the players can finesse the plotline so they have several days to recover between fights, good for them. Clever thinking and caution should be rewarded for the most part, in my opinion.  Even with 2 or 3 days to recover between battles, there's still a decent chance someone will have a nasty critical they haven't managed to shake off, so it's not a perfect reset button and battles still have meaningful consequences.

     

    Anyhow, I'm just suggesting that the PG's limits may already solve the problems you're trying to patch via house-rule. If that's not the case, and you already knew the PG had reigned in the healing rules but felt it didn't go far enough, feel free to ignore me.

  17. Posted

     

    It seems, then, that two black dice are pretty close to one purple in this respect, even though the purple is potentially more dangerous with chaos stars and multiple challenge and bane symbols.

     

     

    I ran the numbers on this a while back and also came to the conclusion that 1 Purple = 2 Black, not 3. I compiled some charts and graphs while doing the analysis. You may find them interesting:

     

    http://transitivegaming.blogspot.com/2010/05/purple-is-new-black.html

    Emirikol and Ambivalent Badger reacted to this

  18. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    If you were staging a race or a chase as an encounter in and of itself, that might use one or more Athletics or Coordination checks for "normal" running. You wouldn't want to use the standard abstract movement rules for that sort of thing, because there'd be no random element and dwarves would always win every foot-race despite their shorter legs, just because they had the Toughness needed to suck up Fatigue. Which sounds terribly broken, until you realize it's no more bizarre than D&D where every unarmored human runs at the same 40" pace. In either game, if a plot point hinged on a race or chase, the GM would be wise to ignore the movement-in-combat rules and call for some sort of attribute or skill check instead.

     

    Chases and races are relatively rare, so there's not a lot of value to taking a running specialization. It's pretty much a wasted specialization in most campaigns using the rules as written. That's ok, though, as specializations aren't really meant to be huge. They're just the door prize you get for training a skill in a career you intend to complete. Even if you roll a particular specialization all the time, it's still just a tiny drop in any given die pool. The best specialization is still much weaker than just about anything else you could spend an XP on. If a player was going to "waste" something on their character sheet for the sake of flavor and character development, a specialization slot is a pretty small sacrifice to make.

  19. Posted

    Unfortunately the sidebars are apparently much darker on Macs than PCs for some reason. We never managed to figure out exactly why that happens, so if anyone has suggestions please let us know.

    I am indeed on a Mac. A google search for similar problems with other PDFs suggests it has something to do with the color profile of the machine it was created on.

     

    Not sure what program you made the PDF in, but if it was adobe acrobat, one of the sites I just read says it can be fixed by:

    • -Open in Acrobat
    • -Look for "Preflight" option
    • -Convert to sRGB.

     

    For the end-user on a mac, there's something of a work-around:

    • Open the PDF with Preview
    • From the ‘File’ menu, choose “Export”
    • Click on the “Quartz Filter” drop-down menu and choose “Lightness Increase”
    • Choose “Save”
    • When it's done saving, open the new file, and repeat the process.

    This work-around increases the file size. It also wrecks the photos while it's improving the legibility of the text, so it's far from ideal.

  20. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Anybody test out this theory?

     

     

    I haven't specifically tested your formulas, but my gut instinct is that your chart over-estimates the amount of power-up that happens as PCs advance in rank. Your math suggests that Rank 3 characters can handle over twice as many enemies as Rank 1 characters, but I don't think that's actually the case.

  21. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Just downloaded Defenders of the Forest... man, who's idea was it to put black text in a dark grey box for the sidebars? I have to copy-paste to another program in order to read it.   *grumble*

     

    Anyhow, not sure I'll actually have time to help (my days are pretty packed) but if I find time and come up with anything useful I'll post it here.

  22. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Per page 101 of the creature guide (and the creature cards that come in the vault), zombies already can't run:

     

    "Shambling: Skeletons, Crypt Ghouls, and Zombies cannot voluntarily suffer fatigue (or wounds) to give themselves extra movement manoeuvres unless there is a controlling force or focus of great necromantic power within long range. That controlling force (such as a powerful vampire, necromancer, or wight lord) may choose to suffer stress to give its minions additional movement manoeuvres. "

     

    So it seems the rules intent for Vanhel’s Danse Macabre is for the zombies to move 2 manoeuvres total per turn (1 normal, plus a second extra move each turn from gaining Swift). Extra zombie moves beyond that would cost the necromancer 1 stress per zombie per move, which means there's a relatively modest practical limit to how long the zombies can run (and how large a pack of them can do so). A nemesis necromancer with the right stress-mitigation talents might be able to push it a bit, but honestly they probably have better things to do with their energies than simply making zombies run.

  23. Posted

    Rules state that you may use a skill as a Manoeuvre. So its possible for a Monster/NPC to first use his Intimidate on an opponent and then attack him/her with an Action?

    Player's Guide page 66 indicates that making an Intimidate check against an opponent would take your action, and is NOT allowed via a manoeuvre. To be a valid manoeuvre, the skill use should "affect only the active character, or interact passively with the environment".

    HashKey64 reacted to this

  24. Posted

    Answers to your questions, Wakeley:

     

    #1:  No, casting a spell or blessing uses your action for the turn.  Priests can "Curry Favour" the same turn they cast a blessing. Wizards can "Channel Power" the same turn they cast a spell, but only by using the "Quick Cast" card. Regardless of whether or not they curry favour or channel power, the spell or blessing they cast uses up their one action for the turn (unless that spell or blessing is a "reaction" card, as explained in #2 below.).

     

    #2: The "Support" trait has no bearing on whether or not the card uses up your action. In general, your action card always uses up your action. The only action cards that don't use up your 1 and only action for the turn would be cards that say "reaction" or "active defense" (or the aforementioned curry favour and channel power/quickcast for priests and wizards). Officially, it's not the traits ("reaction" or "active defense") that give the ability to use it out-of-turn and/or without using up your turn. Technically it's the other text instructions on the cards that let you use it outside of the normal rules, but in practice you can do it with any card that says "reaction" or "active defense" on the trait line. These cards also have a different shape of icon in the upper left corner. Compare "Find Weakness" (which uses your action) to "Dodge" (which doesn't) and you'll see the difference -- Dodge's icon is shaped like a shield, but Find Weakness just has the normal circle.

     

    #3: You can use any and all valid Active Defense cards you have on any given attack. Doing so puts recharge counters on the card, and you can't re-use a card that currently/already has recharge counters on it. As a further limit, regardless of the recharge counters, you NEVER use the same card twice (or more) on a single action.

     

    #4: It's a thing. I think there's a thread for it around here somewhere. Search the forums?

  25. Posted

    Okay, if we're talking about some sort of metaphysical / metaphorical / spiritual / mental / etherial /  astral projection, as opposed to flesh-and-blood physically being there, then I withdraw my objections. That'd be non-scientific enough to not erode my suspension of disbelief about gravitation etc. Not being there physically would also sidestep any problems with setting precedents about how much corruption you'd suffer being surrounded by warpstone. Overall, it could work.

     

    I'd probably make the experience trippy and surreal so that the PC's clearly grok that they weren't physically there. Preacherman's quite flavorful suggestions would do the trick nicely, though they'd probably be the end of the character in the process.

    Emirikol reacted to this
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