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r_b_bergstrom

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Posts posted by r_b_bergstrom

  1. Posted

    Can't imagine sending PCs to Morrslieb would be survivable in any sense.  It's not likely to be a healthy experience for the characters, nor for the player's willing suspension of disbelief.

     

    First off, it's made of Warpstone. Every warpstone-based item in the game gives Corruption in one way or another, some of them with every single action. An entire environment full of the stuff would almost certainly be guaranteed mutations for the PCs within a few scenes. If not, then that should have ramifications for all those corrupting items.

     

    Then there's the orbit. IIRC, there's two nights a year where Morrslieb is reliably full, and the rest of the time it's size and position in the sky are unpredictable.  So, if you look at that from a scientific perspective, you'd end up with disastrous gravitational and acceleration-based effects. Not just for and on Morrslieb, but also for the planet it orbits.

     

    Now, you are probably hand-waving all that with the notion that it's chaos-y / magical / supernatural, but at that point, why try to shoehorn in any real world science anyway? Basically, the whole notion that the moon(s) and planets are places you could even go to is a fairly modern and scientific perspective. Since modern science can't really handle Morrslieb, why assume it's a place at all? If it's just a magical vision in the sky, a portal to hell, an extended metaphor, the sign of the gods, or a mobile manifestation of the vibrations of the celestial spheres, etc, then we don't have to bother ourselves with thinking about how little sense it makes. The moment you let PCs set foot on it, all those scientific ramifications we try not to think about come crashing into the front of your mind.  That would spoil immersion for me, anyway. YMMV.

  2. Posted

    I actually like the Party Tension Meter, and wish it were tied in to more things in the game. I like how party tension provides a tiny little incremental penalty, as one more way for the GM to track or model all the little intangibles of life (and social relationships) that usually get glossed over in RPGs. Used well, it can set the tone of a scene and enhance the roleplay.

     

    Any of the following would be okay with me:

    • a 1 bane universal effect on social checks that raises tension by 1, and a 1 boon line effect that lowers it by 1
    • assess the situation or guarded position affecting party tension
    • a general ruling that firing into a melee upped party tension
    • any time a PC is wounded party tension increases, any action taken to heal or defend another PC reduces tension

    I use it for those sort of things sometimes, when I think about it, but not as often as I might if it were expressly reminded on various cards or in the rules.

     

    Per the rules, all it takes is 3 or 4 Stress to make most characters literally go insane. That makes me somewhat reluctant to use Stress as an ad-hoc "something bad just happened, and you're very worried about it" effect. In theory Party Tension should be the go-to mechanic there. You can click up a point or two of it with minimal concern, just enough to build dramatic tension and remind the PCs that they need to work together.  

     

    It's a really cool idea, but I'm not convinced the current execution is ideal, at least not for all the existing party cards.

     

    What I don't like about the Tension meter is how uneven the triggered effects are. I wish the effects were smaller and more gradual. You get this weird dynamic because of the uneven spaces: 1 or even 2 party tension are usually far less troublesome than 1 stress, unless your counter is sitting on space nine when that last point of party tension means the entire party gains 1 stress each and something else bad happens. Then, assuming you survive the bad thing that happened, the tension that had been building doesn't seem to matter again (for another 4 to 9 steps on the track).

     

    I also don't like how abilities that lower tension are great if you're in the middle of a track, but useless (or even dangerous) once you've already triggered an event space. It's not ideal, especially when the thing that lowers tension is on a power thats unreliably triggered (such as a boon line).

     

    A better execution might be if the Tension meter ihad stages and continual effects, kind of like the Secret Society and Organization cards do. Something like "when tension is 4 or more, add 1 bane to all PC die rolls" and "when tension is 8 or more, all PC actions gain: '1 bane: pick a member of the party, they suffer 1 stress". Don't have it wrap around at the end, but just max out stuck at 8 or 10 until the party works together enough to lower it again.

    Emirikol reacted to this

  3. Posted

    Bodyguards with low stats themselves (other than Willpower), who stay engaged with the boss and use Guarded Position plus the Assist Maneuver?  Or just abstract their action into big A/C/E spends defending the boss.

     

    Give the boss the "Half-Dead" card from the Dreadfleet POD, so he can heal a little and make another attack the turn after they kill him.

     

    Rally steps with reinforcements.

    • Round 1 & 2: Fight with lots of minions, boss is nowhere to be seen.
    • Rally Step: Boss enters, with 2 buff spells (or other buffing actions) already active.
    • Round 3: Fight with boss and minions. 
    • Second Rally step: New wave of minions enters in.
    • Round 4+: Fight with boss and both waves of minions.

  4. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    It doesn't quite work out the way you're envisioning. Technically, there's nothing that prevents you from returning to a career you've already completed - you just can't make any further career advances in it since you've already marked them off. It seems kinda silly, but it's legal with the rules as written.

     

    EDIT: In other words, you're not just choosing between:

    • ABCDcomplete > 3 (4-1) advances > EFGHcomplete > 3 (4-1) advances > BCDX  (Total advances spent = 6)
    • ABCDincomplete > 4 (4-0) advances > EFGHcomplete > 0 (1 -1) advances -> back to ABCD to complete > 0 (1-1) advances > BCDX (Total advances spent = 4)

    There's also:

    • ABCDcomplete > 3 (4-1) advances > EFGHcomplete > 0 (1-1) advances > back to previously completed ABCD and do nothing > 1 (1-0) advances > BCDX (Total advances spent = 4)

    That's legal as near as I can tell (though I probably wouldn't argue with a GM who interpreted otherwise).

     

    It costs the same number of advances as your second option does (4 total). It also means that you get access to two different career abilities throughout your second rank, unlike the path you proposed which would abandon one of the career abilities for 11 sessions.

     

    Interestingly enough, this path actually works out better for humans (who save an extra 1 advance per transition that would have cost 1 or more). For them the costs are 4, 3, and 2 instead of 6, 4, and 4. Weird.

     

     

     

    EDIT #2: Probably the easiest house-rule solution for those who are bothered by the numbers above would be to let people count their transitions as if taken from their current career or any completed career. That's certainly more elegant, mildly less weird, and somewhat fairer for the dwarves and elves.

    tcrudisi reacted to this

  5. Posted

    Hey everyone,    ...*snip*...

     

    Can I use the Hand of Dust on the Ironbroken's Gromil Armour?

    Can I use it on the SwordMasterbator's Greatsword of Hoeth?

    Can I use it on the Sigmarites Blessed Warhammer?

     

    Damaging and destroying special items like an Ironbreaker's armour or a Swordmaster's blade... that's pretty harsh.

     

    On the one hand, those items are stupidly good and overpowered and the armor in particular was a bit much for a starting character - what were they thinking?!

     

    On the other hand, you're effectively stealing from the player an item that they saved up 11 sessions of XP to get  (effectively, because that's how much it cost to get career completion and dedication so they could keep the item card regardless of what other careers they went into).  Expect some really upset PCs over that, possibly really upset players. The ironbreaker would almost have to go Trollslayer after disgracefully losing their precious gromril.  The sigmarite's hammer is less an issue than the other two, because they probably didn't build their entire character from day 1 around having that hammer.

     

    Still, it seems pretty harsh to me.

     

    One could certainly argue that this kind of harshness is very much keeping in the tone of a game where characters can lose limbs, mutate, or die from the galloping trots the morning after they contract it. So, if you're already using Severe Wounds, Corruption, and Disease mechanics, and your players are fine with all that danger, you might be able to get away with wrecking their toys without any hard feelings. If you've shied away from any of those mechanics in the past because your players didn't think they sounded like fun, then don't suddenly up the ante now.

     

    Certainly, if you're going to permanently wreck someone's high-value item, it's probably a good idea to foreshadow the possibility. Perhaps the day before the climactic confrontation, have the bad guy kill an NPC they know. The PCs find their friend's body, and note that his prized possession is on the corpse but inexplicably corroded and barely recognizable. At least then they won't be surprised and feel they had no warning.

     

    Remember this isn't D&D where everyone realizes 9th level spells are out there and you'll eventually have to save-or-die. The players probably haven't read the spell listings in the creature guide and have no idea their precious gromril et al could ever be imperiled. If you blindside them, it may not go over so well.

     

    Alternately, you might treat it like the Knight and Outrider's special horses (see their cards for details). In a nutshell: if the item gets wrecked, they lose access to it for a week or two until they can find, and get accustomed to, a replacement.

     

     

     

     

    Is there such a thing as putting a RUNE on Gromril armor?

     

    Yep. The dwarf book specifically mentions that Gromril armour is special enough to hold a Rune even if it doesn't technically have the "Superior Quality" trait. Buh-roken!

  6. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    What's the formal definition of defense for effects that need a numerical value?

    ...*snip*...

    Is it all the blacks you're making the DM roll or some subset?

     

     

    It's a subset. Your defence rating contributes black dice to incoming attacks, but not all black dice in the attack count as (or originate from) your defence rating.  Defence rating generates misfortune dice, not the other way around. Armour and shields usually contribute defence rating, most (but not all) other things usually just add black dice instead. The phrasing of the card or ability is critical to determining if it's just +1 misfortune die or +1 Defence (which then generates a misfortune die if and only if the attack card says "vs Target Defence").

     

    In most cases they are functionally identical, but there are a few corner case interactions where the distinction matters. The action card you're asking about is one of those corner cases.

     

     

    I'm pretty sure Ranaldite here is inquiring about "Armour Expertise". It is an action card that reads:

     

    Effect: When you are hit by a Melee Attack or Ranged Attack, you may add 6 recharge tokens to this card to turn and catch the blow on your armour and shield. Add your Defence value to your Soak value against this attack.

     

    If Ranaldite's PC were wearing cloth (Defence 0, Soak 1) and carrying a buckler (Defence 1, Soak 0) her total Defence rating would be 1. If those were the only factors involved, using "Armour Expertise" would add 1 to her soak.

     

     

    Now let's say Ranaldite's PC has the mutation "Feathers" (because the character we're almost certainly talking about actually does). "Feathers" says:

    "Colourful feathers sprout from your skin, providing +1 Defence."

     

    So now "Armour Expertise" adds +2 to her soak (including the 1 from the buckler), because the mutation specifically mentions that it grants Defence (not just misfortune dice).

     

    If the fight was taking place in darkness, during a rainstorm, and the Ranaldite where on the high ground and using Guarded Position, then there might be half a dozen additional black dice in the attack pool... but her actual Defence rating would still only be a 2 (1 from the buckler, 1 from the feathers), and thus Armour Expertise would only add +2 soak.

     

     

    Answers to Ranaldite's laundry list of black dice and which ones count as Defence:

    • Armor black dice: Yes
    • Shield black dice: Yes
    • Defense black dice from mutation: Yes, in the case of the specific mutation card mentioned.
    • Spells: Depends on the exact phrasing of the spell card.
    • Active defense blacks: Probably not, because of how they are phrased. It seems a little odd, because they're called "active defence" cards, but technically they don't mention modifying your defence rating. The most likely reason why they are phrased the way they are is because of the Improved versions, which add a purple die instead of a black.
    • Self guarded position blacks : No.
    • Black dice from allies: Depends on the phrasing of the ability the ally is using, but in most cases no. If you mean "from allies using Guarded Position" the answer is no.
    • Other: Depends on the wording.

    So "Armour Expertise" will generate roughly 1 to 3 points of bonus soak for most characters and situations (and 2 for our friend the Ranaldite given her current gear). That makes it roughly balanced with other soak-boosting powers that cost 1 XP, such as the "Roll With It" Tactic Talent or the "Shrug It Off" Action (both of which soak 2 damage each). It may be slightly better or worse than those cards for certain builds, but it's not some sort of crazy combo piece that's going to suddenly soak an arbitrarily large amount of damage when the stars are just right.

    Emirikol reacted to this

  7. Posted

    This is specifically addressed in the sidebar on page 65 of the Player's Guide. (It's also talked about on pages 82 and 87, but the clearest statement is on page 65.) 

     

    As k7e9 said:

    For one success, the attack does normal damage (Str + DR), 1 of which is a crit.

    For three successes, the attack does 1 more damage than normal (Str + DR + 1), 1 of which is a crit.

     

    Relevant quote from Page 65:

    "Normal Damage" is defined as the sum of the key characteristic for the attack (Strength for melee attacks, Agility for ranged attacks) plus the Damage Rating of the weapon used. "Critical Damage" is calculated the same way, but one of the wounds suffered is critical.

     

  8. Posted

    The dice make POD-ing the core box stuff difficult. You can't really play the game without them, and I'm not sure you can just export them to existing lightning press shops. That said, I'm sure it'll be more doable in the near future as 3D printing tech improves and proliferates.

     

    POD stuff is also typically a lower quality card stock than the other WFRP3 cards. No problem for things like talents and actions, but it does make POD a less optimal great choice for wounds, miscasts, mutations, insanities, etc. Anything you have to shuffle would then need opaque-backed sleeves, which are not common at that tiny card size.

  9. Posted

    Gallows said:

     

     Why do you have four expertise boxes for skills?

     

     

    The idea is that at some point, if the characters survive long enough, there will be sufficient expansion material for them to advance beyond the third tier.

     

    Per the rules, the 4th rank in a skill doesn't give a yellow die, it gives a set of bonus effects collectively known as "Skill Mastery".  The Mastery rules aren't in the player's guide or core set, so most players won't have read them. Having four yellow boxes for each skill may make players misunderstand that rule and expect to get to 4 expertise dice.

     

    Suggestion: Make the fourth box different in some way, like a white circle or "m" instead of a yellow square. Then the players will know something's unusual about it and ask for details.

    Emirikol reacted to this

  10. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Please forgive the major thread necromancy, but I needed a place to put this stuff, now that real-world impediments are resolved and my campaign is running again. My group is just now arriving in Middenheim.

     

    The non-linear multi-threaded nature of the Middenheim chapter seems a bit of a pain to me. Great scenario design, but poorly organized text. So I made myself an index to the topics and locations.  I think it might be useful to other GMs.

     

    Also, I included page references (marked AOM# below) for the Ashes of Middenheim sourcebook from 2nd Ed. This is useful if you have Dwarves in the party, or any characters interested in anything local other than Inns and Ulric. I have a Dwarf, a Ranaldite, a Wizard, and a Knight of Myrmidia at my table, so having ready info on their local peer groups was pretty important.

     

    For the Ranald stuff, I chose to use the Templar’s Downfall and the Last Drop. Readers of Ashes of Middenheim will see there’s a lot of talk of the criminal activity in the city, but little mention of Ranald, so I picked two locations that would fit my needs for the PC Initiate-of-Ranald/Gambler in my group. You could just as easily choose entirely different locations from AoM if you wanted to separate Ranaldite cults more clearly from other less savory cult activities.

     

     

    Index to Middenheim section:

     

    What Do We Know about Middenheim?”    TEW 77
    Arriving in Middenheim:             TEW 87
    Wizard’s Task: Prof R v Oppenheim     TEW 87-93
    Captain’s Task: Adele Ketzenblum        TEW 93 - 97
    Noble’s Task: Wolfgang v Ashenback    TEW 97-102

    Hotel Reccomendation: The Scholar’s    TEW 81    


    Locations and People in Middenheim:
    Adele Ketzenblum    Prospect (Brown, Half)    TEW93-102
    Aschenbeck Bravos    Nord-Graft, Freiburg    TEW86, TEW100-101
    Aschenback Manor    Nord-Grafsmund    TEW78-79
    Aschenbeck Warehouse    Freiburg        TEW81
    The Cockerel     Freiburg    TEW81, TEW94
    Dwarf Stuff        The Wynd        TEW24-25
    Elf Stuff        The Harvest Goose    AOM15
    Black Plague Memorial    Ulricsmund        AOM15-16
    Brenner            Freiburg / Draken    TEW99-102
    The Brown Owl     Ulricsmund            TEW 80, TEW95-96   
    Castle Rock Coaches    Freiburg        TEW81-82, TEW87

    The Cockerel     Freiburg    TEW81, TEW94
    Collegium Theologica    Frieburg        TEW80-81, AOM24
    The Draken         Freiburg            TEW 99-100   
    Graf Wulfgang        *info gathering*        TEW98
    Graf Wulfgang        *trial at Verena*        TEW99-100
    The Graf’s Repose     Nordgarten-Grafsmund        TEW 79
    Gregor Helstrum    The Graf’s Repose    TEW79
    Guild of Dwarf Engineers    The Wynd        AOM25
    Guild of Physicians    Ulricsmund        AOM17
    Guild of Wizards & Alchemists    Freiburg        AOM23-24
    Halfway House     Freiburg    TEW81, TEW94
    Hot Springs, Medicinal    Begierbaden (Ulricsmund)    AOM17
    Jade Scepter        (Koch’s, or Templar’s Downfall)    TEW84-85, Aesthetes
    Koch’s         Ulricsmund        TEW 80
    Merchant District    Merchant District    AOM27
    The Prospect         Nordgarten-Grafsmund        TEW 78, TEW 93-94
    Purple Hand        (Draken)        TEW84-85, TEW102, AOM61-63
    Ranald Stuff*        (Templar’s Downfall*, and Last Drop*)    AOM21-22, AOM18
    Red Crown        ?            TEW84-85
    The Scholars             Freiburg    TEW 81, AOM
    Sewers            Sewers            AOM28-31
    Templar’s Downfall    Eastgate, near Freiburg        AOM21-22, Aesthetes
    Temple of Grungni    The Wynd        AOM24
    Temple of Myrmidia    Westgate-Sudgarten    AOM26
    Temple of Shallya    Westgate-Sudgarten    AOM26
    Temple of Sigmar    Freiburg        TEW81
    Temple of Ulric        Ulricsmund        TEW79-80, TEW89-93, AOM16
    Temple of Verena    Ulricsmund        TEW80, AOM17
    von Oppenheim    Frieburg (Collegium)    TEW87-88

    Wizard stuff    Freiburg        AOM23-24
    Wolf Hunt    outside the city    TEW72, TEW77, TEW90

    Hope that's helpful to somebody!

    Keeop reacted to this

  11. Posted

    > Yes, the minimum damage on a hit is 1 wound.  However, piercing attacks ignore soak. Skeletons simply ignore criticals. Piercing attacks have nothing to do with skeletons (unless they are wearing armor!).

     

    I actually had no idea about the bolded part of #1. This means we've been doing it very wrong. (Surprise, surprise!) 

     

    Are arrows considered piercing? (I would assume so.) And, where can I find the rule concerning piercing attacks ignoring soak? Ditto for #16. Where can I find the rules for that? I'd like to read up more on both.

     

    "Pierce" is a special quality some (ranged) weapons have. It doesn't make them ignore all soak, just a point or two. If a weapon has Pierce: 1 (such as a longbow or a pistol), that means its attacks treat the armor of the target as if that armor had one less point of soak. Out-of-the-box, default by-the-books skeletons have 1 point of armour soak, which would be cancelled by the Pierce quality. Meaning that a longbow per the rules does more damage to skeletons than a hand weapon would.

  12. Posted

     This is where another problem of wfrp3 comes into play. The miscast effects are too weak

     

    Seriously? That's not my experience at all.

     

    The bright wizard in my campaign drew a miscast card that made her the target of her own high-damage blast. She KO'd herself and gained a permanent injury. It was several sessions before she dared cast a spell again. There's at least two cards in the deck that do that (hit you with your own spell), one of them for a single chaos star so it can happen on an otherwise great roll (and thus really nail you for damage).

     

    There's also cards that give you Crits, Insanities, Corruption or even Mutations for a single chaos star.

     

    The effects for 1 star seem to me to be much more potent than the "Expanded Minor Chaos Manifestation" chart in Realm of Sorcery. The 2 and 3 star effects seem to be at least roughly comparable to the "Major" chart. I'll admit that there's only a couple cards that are the equivalent of the "Catastrophic Chaos Manifestations"... but that chart came into play on about 1 in a 1,000 rolls in 2nd Ed, IIRC, so there's not much value to having a lot of cards dedicated to replicating their effects.

    Emirikol reacted to this

  14. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    I also use "Influence the target" as "Inflict 1 Shame" at my table for normal social encounters (not just the specific outlined "duel of wits" situations), and let people use Social actions during combat. It's still never mattered enough to actually take a PC out of a fight with Shame.  It just doesn't come up that much, and the actions that can do it aren't very powerful.

     

    The biggest problem I have with the Shame and Influence mechanics as written is that there's no scaling and no way to improve your output. I think there's only one action that says "Influence the target a second time" on the triple-hammer result line.  Shame Thresholds are so low,  I don't really feel comfortable giving out extra Influence/Shame for a bunch of hammer or comets.  The equivalent would be if all melee attacks did exactly 1 damage, and all non-noble characters could take exactly Toughness hits before passing out, regardless of armor. Kinda lame.

     

    In my 40k-using-EotE-and-WFRP-mechanics campaign, I've had some luck using much higher Shame Thresholds and inflicting 1 shame per success on the roll. Wouldn't work with the existing WFRP actions, though.

     

    Hmm... maybe some new Social Action cards are in order?

  15. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    As they said, the Player's Guide clarifies that you can only be healed by each spell or blessing once per day.

     

    Even without that, fear of death isn't completely gone. Sure you could (prior to the Player's Guide) heal repeatedly outside of combat, but a single large battle would be likely to overwhelm the healer's ability to respond fast enough.

     

    That said, I'm really glad the rules-hole got plugged.

     

    EDIT/ADDENDUM:

     

    A GM could just assume that, eventually, I'll roll enough hammers to heal everyone.

     

     

    The problem with that assumption is in the stars. Wizards trying it would eventually get bit by a really bad miscast. Even many of the Shallyan blessings have amusing/dangerous Chaos Star lines. 

  16. Posted

    Hey! Was hoping to get into warhammer fantasy. But not sure what I need to buy and the core sets are all sold out!

     

    Which books are an absolute must for my gaming group and which ones are just nice to have?

     

    Minimum purchase is probably:   

    • Player's Guide + GM's Guide + Creature Guide + GM's Vault + 2 Dice Sets 
    • -or- Player's Guide + GM's Guide + Creature Guide + 3 Dice Sets
    • -or- Core Set + 1 Dice set

    Any of those 3 configurations would work.  Honestly, extra dice beyond that minimum will be a huge benefit.  The dice sets are currently listed as "in stock" at FFG, which is rare. They've been out of stock for a really long time. Get them while you can.  

     

    If you've got lots of money sitting around, I'd highly recommend the purchases listed above, plus all 3 vaults (GM's, Player's, and Creature Vault), and all 4 "Ruinous Powers" expansions (Lure of Power, Omens of War, Signs of Faith, and Winds of Magic).

     

     grab the GM Vault or the GMs Toolkit for a set of dice

     

    I don't think the GM's Toolkit comes with dice. The GM's vault definitely does.

  17. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Seeing how black dice do not matter at all you can even wear platemail as a wizard in wfrp3 without any problem.

    In the end the rules are flawed because the black/purple dice are just not balanced in comparison to the number of positive dice you will have in your pool.

     

    I know individual black dice are no big deal, but the +5 black (to both channeling and casting) from wearing platemail would be noticeable. First rank bright wizards can have ~83% success rate when quickcasting flameblast, but that armor would drop it to ~52%. That's a big drop.

     

    Even if you still succeed, you're much less likely to score the 3 successes, 3 boons and a comet that you'd need to max out the damage on the spell.

    Emirikol reacted to this

  18. Posted

    Gallows, I see you make statements throughout this thread about how long the fights are... but not just in terms of time, but in terms of turns. You mention how long a 10-round fight takes... and that makes me suspect that you must have house-rules in play that are causing those fights to last 10 rounds.  Are you perchance setting Defenses at higher than the RAW would indicate? In other posts in this thread, you say you like how a Savage Worlds character can be taken out in one or two hits. If that's not happening in your campaign, it's probably because of your house rules.

     

    I'm looking at one of your old house rules documents right now (I downloaded it ages ago), and I think I've found the problem. Not sure if it reflects how you're playing these days, but once upon a time anyway you had house rules that seriously reduced the numbers of good dice PC's could roll, increased the numbers of black dice they'd be rolling, and also included a house-rule that said "Chaos star = chaos star + 2 challenges + roll one extra challenge die". 

    With all that in play, I imagine attacks don't hit very often, and that's what's leading to the really long fights.

     

    WFRP3e as written has such a high hit %, and such low Wound thresholds, that it's really unlikely fights will go to 10 rounds. I have yet to see a fight that went 4 full rounds. With the exception of Ironbreakers, a PC goes down to the 2nd or 3rd hit (which means the 2nd to 4th attack rolled against them). A really "big" fight in WFRP usually follows a pattern of 2 rounds then rally step followed by 1 or 2 more rounds.  If you throw in more bad guys then the PCs can reliably kill in that time frame, you end up with a really high rate of PC death. Pretty much if the bad guys aren't all dead or fleeing by the middle of the 3rd round, it's gonna be a TPK. At least that's my experience.

     

    It seems to me that the design paradigm of WFRP3e is basically "we can afford to make each die roll take longer via narrative effects, because each scene is short and uses relatively few die rolls". If you're lowering the success rates, that means the fight scenes take more turns, and thus more rolls, which means more time.  Knock your difficulties back down to what the rulebook suggests, and you'll have much faster-paced fights.

    Keeop reacted to this

  19. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Well, thank you, but the game master's guide has also not been released yet. So I think that I'll wait for the core rulebook

    to come out and in the meantime I'll get what this nice website tells me to get. http://diceofdoom.com/blog/2011/03/warhammer-fantasy-roleplay-core-set-vs-guides-and-vaults/

     

    Thanks a lot anyway!

    -YB

     

    The GM's Guide was available at the start of the big sale, but at $10 they sold out quick. I hadn't noticed they were sold out when I was typing my earlier list.

     

    That said, the lack of the GM's Guide really wouldn't stop you from running the game, because it's almost entirely content collected and reprinted from the earlier boxed sets. So instead of the GM's Guide, you could get these four items:

    1. GM's Vault (currently $5)
    2. Winds of Magic (currently $15)
    3. Signs of Faith (currently $15)
    4. GM's Toolkit (currently $5)

    Between them, they cover nearly everything (95%, basically everything but the appendices and the adventure) in the GM's Guide, and would give you a full set of Wound, Insanity, Miscast, Mutation and Disease cards. It's very much a playable game out of just that and the Player's Guide (and probably the Player's Vault, as mentioned in my previous email).  So $65 instead of the $45 it would have been if the GM's Guide hadn't sold out.

     

    In other words, it's still cheaper to get a playable set of the game right now than it will be when the core box set is reprinted (at $100). If I were you, I'd get what I can now.

  20. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    In order (start from the top, and work your way down as your budget allows)

     

    1. Player's Guide - **Required**
    2. GM's Guide - **Required**
    3. GM's Vault - **Required** (for the dice)
    4. Player's Vault - for the cards
    5. A second copy of the GM's Vault (for the extra dice)

    Those first 3-5 items will get you what you need to play. Some folks play the game without all the cards and tokens, so they would skip item #4, but I don't recommend it personally. Besides, at the sale prices going on right now it's like $45 total for all of the above. That's a heck of a deal.

     

    EDIT: Since the GM's Guide is now sold out, there's an alternate and somewhat more expensive way to get enough products to play the game:

    1. Player's Guide
    2. GM's Vault
    3. Winds of Magic
    4. Signs of Faith
    5. Player's Vault
    6. possibly GM's Toolkit
    7. possibly a second GM's Vault

    With the sale going on, that's like $65. Not as good as the $45 I listed initially, but still much better than the $100 the corebox normally retails for. Items 2-6 on that list collectively include everything important from the GM's Guide.

     

    After those "mandatory" purchases, what to get is pretty much up to you depending on what character types and supplemental mechanics you want. I'd roughly put them in roughly the following order, but it's pretty subjective...

    • A third copy of the GM's Vault (for the extra dice)
    • Lure of Power - expanded social rules
    • Black Fire Pass - dwarven characters
    • Creature Vault
    • Omens of War - nastier critical wounds, more "fighter" stuff
    • Hero's Call - higher level careers and actions
    • A fourth copy of the GM's Vault (because really, you can never have too many dice, and 5$ is a steal)
    • Creature Guide

       

    If you've still got money to spend after that, you might as well get 1 of everything (and extras of the vault for the dice). All of the adventures have another couple actions / talents / useful bits squirreled away in them, so even if you don't run the adventure it's still generally worth the $5 or $10 at the sale price.

  21. Posted

    What are your groups up to lately?

    I'm GMing four campaigns currently (and providing round-the-clock healthcare for the injured). Mostly exhausted, in other words.

    1. Warhammer 3rd face-to-face/tabletop: The Enemy Within. Players currently half way from Averheim to Middenheim. Would be further, but a real-world injury (my wife fell off a cliff and broke multiple bones) put all our gaming on hold for nearly 3 months.
    2. Warhammer 40k via Roll20. PCs are agents of the Ordo Xenos, so it's kinda straddling the line between Dark Heresy and Deathwatch. The rules, however, are a hybrid of WFRP3e, EotE, and a lot of homebrewed rules and elbow grease.
    3. 7th Sea via Roll20, but using Fate instead of 7th Sea.
    4. Scion via Roll20, but using Fate instead of Scion.

     

    The later two are using Fate not because I particularly like it, but because the campaigns started on either Skype or Tiny Chat before I discovered Roll20. The original systems were a little too complicated to run in just chat without being able to see people's dice pools and character sheets. If I had them to start over  now I'd totally use their systems instead of Fate. Roll20 can handle it easily.

  23. Posted · Edited by r_b_bergstrom

    Maybe I'm a bit stingy, but I wouldn't allow really any of those bonuses maybe beyond one white..

     

    You're not stingy, you just misunderstood what I was saying because I wasn't as clear as I should have been when I spoke.

     

    When I said:

     

     

    I would argue that one could assist a ranged attack by any of the following:

    • gauging the wind or distance to the target,
    • providing advice on proper archery form,
    • helping brace their aim,
    • being "Johnny on the spot" with the ammo,
    • watching their back so they can concentrate on their aim,
    • distracting or baiting the target,
    • or even just stepping aside so you're not in the way of the shot.

     

    I wasn't trying to to argue for (nor would I even allow) all 7 of those things to be done to give 6 or 7 assists to a single Ranged Attack roll.  I see why you'd interpret it that way (given the context of the thread being about gaming WFRP with 7 or 8 players) but that's not what I meant at all.

     

    Instead I was merely trying to say that as GM I would have no problems with a player using any one of those rationales to explain them giving an assist on a Ranged Attack roll. Some of them are better justifications, or more universally applicable then others, but none of them would make me say "no" to a player.

     

    My list of ranged attack assists was in direct reply to the post above mine (which I should have quoted then) where Gazery said they didn't allow Assists on Ranged Attacks at all. Quoted here for the sake of clarity and completeness:

     

    We don't use assists for ranged combat, but archers can aim as a manoeuvre - which enables them to gain a white die to an attack. (kind of like them assisting themselves)

  25. Posted

    I need to ask about the Fatigue cost. Characters have one free manouvre. They can use that for Assist and do not need to take the Fatigue penalty right?

     

    Yes, PCs can spend their 1 free manuever to assist. In my experience, though, most turns PCs have something else they want to do with that free manuever: draw a weapon, reload a pistol or crossbow, engage or disengage or move, change which talent they have socketed, control their horse, etc.  

     

    Basically the choice players are frequently confronted with is:

    • Do the things I desperately need to do.
    • Give a white die to one other player.
    • Do both but suffer 1 or more fatigue because of it.

    Beyond that remember that assists must be declared on your turn, NOT the turn of the person you're assisting (unless you have the one Talent that over-rules that). Often this timing prevents players from assisting because they don't yet know what their comrade is planning to do three initiative numbers from now.

     

    So with 7 players you may have the occasional freak turn where one or two PCs get +3 or more dice in assists, but that's not going to happen very often, and almost never in the first turn of any fight.  I've run over 20 sessions with a table of 4 or more players each time, and during combat I have never seen anyone get more than 1 assist on any single action. YMMV.

    HashKey64 reacted to this
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