Please give some advice for a new player

[Please give some advice for a new player]

Do you mean Trivial Knowledge?  

 

Anyhow, glad you had fun.

[Scaling the Party]

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.

Given the abstract nature of the movement and manoeuvre system, it's not hard to flavorfully justify that you're doing *something* that helps. +1 white die is not a particularly large bonus, and the 1 fatigue is a hefty enough cost to keep it from getting out of hand. YMMV.

[Are any of these rules real or are they all house-rules?]

Answers by number. I put quotation marks around "right" and "wrong" here, for semantic reasons. I really don't like calling a GM "wrong" for making a house rule, but it's the easiest way to talk about this. House-rules are legit, but it's also legit to be upset about house-rules that are nonsensical or inconsistently applied.

 

 

1-8: These are all clearly either houserules or misunderstandings. None of those things work that way in the Rules As Written. Brief summaries of the official rules for each of these:

1.   Skeletons ignore Criticals, not normal wounds.
2.   Wizards do get bonus skills at character creation, but not if a character starts as something else and transitions into Wizard.
3.   Most attacks (anything that says "vs Target Defense") start at 1 Purple.
4.   Armor doesn't stack per the RAW, and Ironbreakers are ridiculously tough even with "just" their Gromril.
5.   There's a lot "wrong" here, and I can't elegantly summarize it all.
6.   Fortune points just don't do that, per the rulebook. They have a much smaller impact.
7.   The party Fortune Pool on the Party Card doesn't work like that. You can't just take them from the pool at will, the refresh has to be triggered which usually takes several turns, even with Brash Young Fools in play.
8.   Per the rulebook, Fortune points must be spent before the roll. Some folks house-rule otherwise.

9: It's _possible_ you've just gotten lucky, but given points 1-8, I'm guessing something's being done "wrong" there as well.  In practice, Insanity is relatively rare, but getting some amount of fatigue or stress is a thing that happens every single session at most tables. One very unlucky PC in my group suffered 9 fatigue in a single fight yesterday.

10: Sounds like your GM at least got this part "right". There's no general rule for becoming immune to Fear tests.  (At least one published campaign does suggest the GM skip the fear tests late in the campaign after the players have encountered a lot of same monsters, but that's not really a rule.)

11: House-rule, as you know, and it clearly has a big impact on play balance and power level.

12: True. Troll slayers can only earn back their honor by dying gloriously in battle against a much more powerful foe. Suicide by Troll (or Giant, or Dragon, or Daemon, etc).

13. Dedication bonus costs 1 XP. This is clarified in the FAQ, and wasn't terribly clear in the original boxed set.

14. The card you're thinking of is called "Guarded Position". It does not normally have a purple die. The automatic purple die is only for cards that say "vs Target Defense". Others just use the dice indicated on the card (remember to look at the upper left corner for extra dice symbols). Guarded position is easy, and effective, but it comes at the cost of not getting to attack that turn.

15. No purple dice on Magic Dart. Same reason.

15b. Quick casting adds 1 purple to the spell. If you read the Quick Casting card itself, this is explained.

16. Assuming you meant "Competitive Check" (and NOT "Opposed Check") when you said "contested action", there are many possible iterations where the dice pools mentioned would be "right", and it's impossible for us to know if this was done "wrong" without seeing the character sheets of everyone involved in the roll, and knowing all the terrain cards in play and other circumstances. So you're out of luck there. 

[Will there be any other PoD ?]

My group would love it if there were a Ranald Priest POD.

 

I'd also happily throw money at a non-wizard, non-priest POD with actions for use with just about any of the skills other than WS/BS.  Several non-Priest careers have Piety, for example, but there's only 1 Piety based card that isn't about Blessings. A couple actions for Tradecraft, Skullduggery, Stealth, Coordination, Ride, etc would be nice. And maybe some Epic Social actions?

[Scaling the Party]

Story-Mode Assist is definitely an issue with a group that size. I'm not thrilled with the idea of limiting them to 1 assisting PC per roll, though, that seems unnecessarily restricted to me. 1 or 2 white dice is just a tiny drop in the bucket. We regularly end up with 4 or 5 dice of story-mode assists at my table, and they still manage to fail on critical efforts  often enough to keep things interesting. 10 or 12 white dice, on the other hand, would definitely start to break things. I'd suggest: for most tasks allow a maximum of 3 people to assist.

 

Assists during combat shouldn't really be a problem. The need to pay fatigue for manoeuvres mean that in general each PC won't assist more than 1 person per turn. Often less than that, if the terrain is unfavorable or the NPCs have a fatigue-inducing action the PCs have to be wary of. Sure, if they're all in a single engagement, and really good at coordinating their teamwork, you may end up with 1 ridiculously inflated attack per turn... but it will usually be overkill and wasted effort. I'm frequently seeing overkill like 19 damage to an ungor with a whopping total of 5 soak and 8 health. I find that the three heavy-hitters in my party can pretty reliably one-hit kill one bad guy each per turn. I'd say on average they kill 2.7 baddies per turn as a group. Having 6 extra white on one of those rolls wouldn't change that at all, because they wouldn't know for certain which one attack was going to need the big bonus. 

 

I wouldn't be very worried about huge multilayered guarded position situations.  For starters, guarded position isn't very exciting, so some percentage of the players just won't do it because they'd rather be attacking or casting a spell. The number of NPCs it will take to survive a round with 7 PCs going offensive is pretty large. Which means that if the PCs do insist on turtling up behind the guarded position instead, you'll have the sheer numbers to squeak something past a defense from time to time. There's also plenty of other ways around guarded position: Fear Checks, spells, attacks that aren't vs Target Defense, terrain cards that limit how many characters can be in an engagement, etc.  Remember that henchman groups can be up to 7 monsters per token with that many players, so they'll attack at +6 white dice themselves which should make a dent on the guarded position. Combined white and black dice do not effectively cancel out, they increase the variance of the rolls.

 

Your biggest problem is actually likely to be the slow pace of combat with that many players. Assembling and resolving a dice pool can take a lot of time. There's going to be a lot of downtime between turns during bigger fights. It's not going to be easy to keep the players attentive and focused while you count up the dice for the 10th roll since their own last action.

 

You'll also want to decide up front if you're going to let players double-up on actions / talents / careers /etc. There are a few talents and actions that work just fine with 1 or 2 people at the table using them which could cause trouble if 5 to 7 PCs had them. For Example, the Tactic talent Flanking Manoeuvre is harmless as a singleton, but stacks ridiculously if a bunch of PCs all have it.

 

Important question: do you have a big enough table for 7 players? With all the cards and doodads, PCs easily take up double the table real estate here that they do in other games.

[Please give some advice for a new player]

Actions worth buying for this character:

• Trivial Knowledge (a folklore & education-based reaction that for you adds 2 white to anything another PC does once every 3 turns.)
• Improved Guarded Position (willpower-based defensive card that makes it harder for NPCs to hit you or any of the other PCs)
• ***** In The Armour (an attack that rolls Intelligence + Observation instead of normal attack pools.) EDIT: That is absolutely ridiculous that the forum software edited the name of the card. The word that got auto-edited out is a benign and innocent synonym for crack, cleft, fissure, or weak-spot.
• Hunter's Eye (Observation check that will, with your stats, effectively add +3 damage to all the other PCs attacks )

 

Skills worth training for this character:

• Intuition. It's a lie-detector, plot-deducting sort of skill. It's the closest thing to a social skill that plays to your character's existing strengths. (Once you've got the Intuition skill, pick up the Scrutinise action.)
• Education. Since the GM is letting you train multiple times per rank, you might as well get it up to Rank 3. You'll want it to power your career ability to boost the party.

 

Focus Talents worth taking for this character:

• Air of Authority.  It lets you make Intimidation rolls using your Intelligence instead of Strength. Effectively giving you a real social skill, despite only ever rolling Intelligence.
• I Seem To Recall. Two bonus white dice on the education checks, mainly for use with the scribe career ability.

[What does a horse cost?]

The GM probably needs to look at the rule that states you have to control your horse going into battle on the first round.  Sure, that's fine when you're going up against a giant, or a massive daemon or something that a novice horse might be afraid of, but I wouldn't make my players bother if they were just riding into combat against goblins or something like that.

 

Yeah, the rules as written are ridiculous. Horses are a horrible liability in battle.

 

At the start of every battle you have to roll Agility + Ride vs 2 Purple.

If you fail, you lose your turn, and have to roll again next turn.

If you fail and get a chaos star, you fall off your horse. 

 

So even a PC that's built specifically to be a good rider, with Agility of 5, and Ride trained and specialized, has a 20% chance of losing their first turn every fight. (Not to mention a 5% chance of falling off your horse and a 4% chance of losing 2 or more consecutive turns.)

[Warhammer Careers Project]

I've been working on attempting to get a few of the overlooked careers from Warhammer 2e instead into the modern game. All the below careers are not found in 3e core sets or official expansions.

 

Instead of posting the entire card, I'll post the element with the problematic potential: the career cards. Balance Issues, oversights and thoughts are appreciated.

 

You posted a lot of great ideas for career abilities. For the most part I like what you've done, but a number of them have rough edges that could use some polish. Here's some feedback on the ones for Basic Careers. I may provide feedback on the others later if that would be appreciated, but the basics seemed like a good place to start.

Bodyguard: Great ability. Feels like there might be a more elegant way to phrase it, but I like what it does. You might try it as "When your Guarded Position action adds dice to an action, add 1 additional misfortune die." You don't have to actually mention Improved Guarded Position because that card itself says it counts as Guarded Position for all effects and purposes.

Bone Picker: Awesome. Given how cruel the game's disease system is I'm in favor of this power-level for the ability. Diseases are way more deadly than wounds, so having a career option specifically for players who've been burned by that is a nice addition to the game.

Camp Follower: Made me smile. Well done.

Charcoal Burner: I don't particularly like the low-lighting thing. Does it represent the character actually lighting a small fire to see better? If so, that should be made more clear. The soak power sounds good, until your realize that as written doesn't help at all with "burning building" terrain, "scorched" condition, etc. Such effects tend to either inflict Fatigue, or else say "suffer 1 wound" which means they bypass soak.

Diestro: For the sake of clarity (or preventing abuse) should probably say "wielding" or "using" instead of "carrying".

Ferryman: I'm not understanding the first sentence… what makes this "free" if you're paying the normal 1 fatigue to do it? Are you just restating the normal rule for clarity's sake, or is there something I'm missing here?

Field Warden: Rapiers and Spears are widely regarded as the best weapons in the game, because of how good "Fast" is. I don't know if it'd be a problem on a Sling (as there's not many great attack cards you can use with a sling), but it's probably worth playtesting in a one-shot to be sure.

Fisherman: A spear is one of the best weapons in the game, and a net is probably the worst. I think the power you wrote here is fine and balanced, but I doubt the second half of the career ability will see much use.

Jailer: Good power, but I'd avoid the use of the word "target" as it implies you have to do something to them in order to trigger the ability. I recommend "Whenever an enemy disengages from you, he or she receives 1 fatigue."

Kossar: This seems over-powered for a basic career. The character will almost always have the bonuses active. A reliable +1 damage is on par with what many Intermediate- or Advanced-careers give. That alone is pushing the power envelope, and +1 Defense on top makes it just too good. (See my "Note About Damage", below.)

Marine: +2 Damage is probably too good for a basic career's special ability. I would reduce it to +1 Damage, especially since you're also giving a Defense boost. +2 damage is better than most damage-based Advanced careers give. (See my "Note About Damage", below.)

Militiaman: I'm less concerned about this damage boost (despite it being larger) simply because it requires such a dire situation (multiple turns to set up, black dice on actions, plus a temporary insanity) to trigger. That said, the wording is potentially confusing… rather than "you receive +1 damage" it should say "your attacks receive +1 damage." As written, it could be misunderstood as you suffering damage instead of inflicting it.

Outlaw: Disengaging can, per the RAW, be done for free every turn if its your only manoeuvre. So this is effectively +2 Defense _every_round_ once melee has started. That seems too strong to me for a basic career. I'd reduce it to +1 Defense.

Berserker: Flavorful, balanced ability. I like how the specification of Weapon Skill rules out the use of some of the more unusual attack cards that might feel too high-brow for a Barbarian anyway. Well done.

Protagonist: Good.

Runebearer: The power level here is fine, but it's worth noting that there's really not many (any?) existing terrain cards that provide a penalty this would eliminate. In order for this career ability to matter at all, the GM will have to go out of their way to create situations for it. (The same could be said about the Wood Elf racial ability from the core set, though, so perhaps it's not such a big deal.)

Seaman: I'm a little worried about the recharge-token power, but would have to see it in play to say for certain if it's going to be an issue. If the campaign involves a lot of time on boats, this is gonna be huge. Honestly, the talent-portion alone is probably a strong enough power for a basic career. Perhaps the second ability could be limited to "once per session"?

Squire: Very nice. Possibly a little under-powered, but very flavorful. I imagine it would be fun for the player to try to create situations where this was useful.

Toll Keeper: I really like what the power is trying to do, but I think it may fail in play due to the lack of concise timing or declaration rules. Whether or not an NPC wants to disengage on its turn is often a function of whether or not the action they took succeeded. Between that and boon-effects that generate free manoeuvres, I suspect the misfortune die here will frequently be avoided.

Tradesman: Interesting. Not exactly certain what it's supposed to be simulating. I imagine PCs would be tempted to make a lot of little trinkets and repairs right before anticipated battles in hopes of bumping up the fortune pool. That's actually kinda cool, now that I think about it.

Vagabond: Should probably be phrased as "You start each session with +1 additional Fortune Point" instead, so that it stacks with other abilities that do the same thing (such as the Ranald Faith talent).

Valet: Sweet. I like it.

Woodsman: The phrasing is somewhat confusing. It's nicely poetic as-written, but not mechanically clear.

Kithband Warrior: Presumably you mean "Talent" in the first of the two uses of "Slot" in the text. Also, since Basic careers only ever have two talent slots, you might consider limiting this ability to just the two talent types that the career can access (whatever they are).

Note About Damage: I think that you're giving away bonus damage rather more freely than the base game does. I know that +1 damage doesn't sound like all that much, but it's actually a very hefty bonus for a basic career.

Compare your Kossar (+1 damage and +1 defense effectively all the time) or Marine (+2 damage on a boat, and +1 defense all the time) to the existing damage-boosting careers. Both of those seem much better than Thug to me, especially if the campaign is in a coastal region.

 

• Thug is the only official Basic career that boosts damage. +1 damage is it's only career ability, and it only applies against Henchman and targets with lower Strength than the PCs.

 

There are several other career abilities that boost damage, but they are all at least Intermediate careers.

• Assassin (+1 damage for 1 boon, +1 crit for 2 boons)
• Giant-Slayer (+1 damage in melee only, and remember slayers are not allowed to wear armour)
• Prophet of Doom (+1 to +5 damage in melee, every 4th round, and you have to exhaust it before knowing if you hit or not. PS: the character must have at least one insanity)
• Witch-hunter (+1 damage only to chaos targets)
• Witch-hunter Captain (+1 to +3 total damage, but only to chaos targets and only if you roll 1 to 3 total boons).

   

In closing: Overall, I think there's a lot of good work and great ideas in your posts.

[Combat Modifiers]

It's pretty darned rare that I go above +1 black for any single factor/situation/modifier. When I do go above that, it's more likely to be +2 black than +1 purple.

 

Three main reasons:

1. To keep the Active Defenses (especially the Improved ones) from being irrelevant or washed out. Until the characters are Epic, the best they can get from dodging or parrying is +1 purple. If a common situational modifier is +2 purple or better, than there's no point in spending XP on the defenses. (On a similar note, the best armor and shield combo tops out at +3 defense.)
2. High success rates keeps fights short, and makes them challenging. I fully expect my party to drop 2-3 NPCs (or 6-12 henchmen) per round, but at great danger to themselves. The fight generally ends in the 3rd turn, usually with at least 1 PC on the verge of being KO'd. Sufficiently dark and bloody, without tying up the table too long.
3. I like chaos stars to be rare but potent. Too many purples change the tone from "grimdark" to "slapstick". Think about all the location cards along the lines of "Chaos Star: Fall off the dock. End your turn." With 1 purple on the attack, something goes disastrously wrong 12.5% of the time, so about once per round somebody gets a chaos star. But if you bump that up to 4 purples via various modifiers, you're looking at a 41% chance per attack of getting a star.

 

A tangent about firing into melee: I've done a little bit of sword-fighting, and it seems to me that "friendly fire" is not entirely limited to ranged weapons. It's possible to get in the way of friendly blades. RPG rules love to apply penalties when you shoot an arrow at the same target your buddy is swinging a sword at. I don't think I've ever seen one penalize you for swinging a sword at the same target your buddy is trying to swing a sword at. That always strikes me as strange.

[Insanity: Trepidation]

You can suppress an insanity for 1 encounter by spending Fortune points equal to it's Severity Rating. (Player's Guide, page 93). Unless you're running more than 3 fights per session, the player can guarantee they'll be able to ignore Trepidation any time it matters.

 

Taking an extra maneuver costs a Fatigue, not a Stress. All physical actions have "2 Boons: Recover 1 Fatigue", so with a decent diepool, the PC can take 1 maneuver per turn without a lot of risk, and rarely have to resort to Assess The Situation.

 

There are a variety of actions that give bonus maneuvers with a good roll (usually 2 boons). There are talents that eliminate fatigue. So if the PC has an XP or two to spend, they may be able to improve their condition. For that matter, buying off the insanity can technically be done for 1 XP (since the Severity rating is 1) if the GM is willing, per pg 93 of the Player's Guide.

 

The Willpower checks for recovering from the insanity are actually 0d Simple rolls. This is specifically mentioned on page 51 of the Player's Guide. After mentioning on that page that it's the difficulty for these rolls in particular, it mentions that in general any roll that doesn't list a difficulty should be assumed to Simple (0d).

[Performer Career Skills]

as a tangental question (and that i have not seen it posted elsewhere) The career ability for performer is different on the career ability card and in the player's guide.  any insight on this posted anywhere?

 

I'd go with the card, not the entry in the book. The Performer's career ability in the book is actually word-for-word the career ability for the Investigator career (as printed both on the Investigator's card and in the Investigator's entry in the book). It being on the Performer page is almost certainly a layout error.

[Some other effect besides hourglass for green die?]

There's a weird logic-hole if you put the hourglass recharge penalty on an Active Defense.  The green dice represent being cautious and conservative, but they can end up leaving you open for a counter-attack that way. The red dice represent being reckless, and while they do increase the chance of negative side-effects, they never drop your defenses. It's kinda strange. This came up in conversation at our table once, and ever since I've never put the hourglass penalty on an active defense. I put it on attacks or on initiative.

 

Getting the green and red dice to balance out is definitely part of the GM's learning curve in this game.  The green dice have consistent successes and more boons than the red, so to balance that a Delay should be a little worse than an Exertion in most circumstances. However, green dice also represent being careful and red dice represent taking big risks, so the worst possible delay effect shouldn't be as bad as the KO that can (rarely) come about from Exertion. Lets say you can rate Exertion on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is your first point of fatigue and you can laugh it off, but 10 is the point of fatigue that KO's you in the middle of a major battle. If that's the scale, the effects of the Delay icon should probably be a consistent 6 or 7 - painful and annoying, but never fatal.

[Should a rapier be able to block a heavier weapon?]

So you're suggesting that to be able to use a spear or rapier's fast ability, you would need to sacrifice 2 boons?

 

Yep, that's what I meant. 2 boons instead of 1. 

 

I think that would reign it in pretty well. Fast would trigger about half as often as it does by the rules, and even on better-than-average roll you'd have to make a difficult decision between reducing recharge or triggering whatever boon lines the action provides.

[Does the Small but Vicious Dog Start with Two Free Trick Cards?]

If a new player starts the game as a Ratcatcher, does their SbVD also get two free Trick cards? Much like Wizards and Priests get free spells and such? Or must the Ratcatcher player spend their purchased talents to manually buy those Tricks?

Thanks!

 

 

I'm quite certain the Ratcatcher doesn't get any free tricks. Page 156 of the Player's Guide repeatedly states they start with "two Trick talent slots" (emphasis mine, but the original text says slots not cards) and goes on to say that "You acquire Tricks just like any other Talent cards." It also says Pet Actions must be purchased with Advances.

 

On a related note, page 39 of the Player's Guide clarifies that Initiates (Rank 1 Priests) do not necessarily start with free spells and actions. They only get them if they spend character creation points on specific advanced skills. They included an updated sidebar in the Player's Guide to clarify what free cards Wizards and Priests get, but that sidebar makes no mention of Ratcatchers getting anything free. I take that absence as further confirmation that Ratcatcher's get nothing free (except the Dog itself, which is clearly stated on the Ratcatcher's Career Ability card and on pg 156 of the PG).

 

 

However, the card says you pay for both talents and actions the same as regular.

Your Small But Vicious Dog may learn Tricks talents that socket into this Follower sheet. You acquire Tricks just like any other Talent cards. Your Small But Vicious Dog also gives you access to Pet action cards, which you purchase with advances.

 

So the argument in question is whether to treat the basic pet action cards the same as the basic spell or basic blessing actions. 

 

What "basic pet actions" are you talking about? I just looked at the cards that came in my Player's Kit, and their corresponding entries in the Player's Guide, and none of them have the "basic" keyword.

[Should a rapier be able to block a heavier weapon?]

The Parry action does not automatically cancel an attack. It merely makes it a little more difficult, and the most likely result against a skilled foe is that you've reduced the damage on a hit that still connects. That seems like something that three to four feet of fast-moving steel should be able to accomplish.

"...for we admit that he who tries to parry the blows of a two-handed sword with a plain sword will find himself deceived and instead of a sword will find himself holding a dagger instead, But as the manner of resisting such force consists, not in opposing it, but in diverting and evading it..."

- Academy of the Sword by Girard Thibault, 1630, modern translation by Michael Greer

Old manuals on sword fighting tend to suggest rapiers not exactly parry against heavier weapons, but instead to counter with a thrust as the attacker opens up for the cutting swing, so as to divert them and keep them from completing the swing. Warhammer 3rd doesn't really have an equivalent to that maneuver, unless you interpret Parry to be a generic catch-all to any weapon-based defensive move.

That said, I will agree that Rapiers and Spears are a little too good as-is in WFRP 3E. It always puzzles me that people want to fix them in some way other than changing the "Fast" ability. Fast is the thing those weapons have in common, and it's what gives them all their power. Fast clearly didn't get play-tested at all. The original version in the core book didn't work. The version in the FAQ was first delivered as a quick response to an email, IIRC. If Fast cost 2 boons instead of 1, it would be a lot less broken. That would be a very simple and elegant change to make. Just sayin'.

[Priests and Wizards]

My current campaign features a PC Priest of Ranald, and a PC Knight who has taken a vow to Myrmidia.  I'd happily purchase PODs for either of those cults, and my Ranald player offered to pay for hers.

 

We're running TEW, so I'm also a little interested in seeing a Light Wizard POD to expand the options for a major NPC.

 

Honestly, if they put out the whole cycle, I'd eventually buy them all.

[Suggestions on doing NPC Spells without Spell Points?]

There are a couple of NPCs in various adventures that say they "have enough power to cast one spell per turn". Krasskulk from TEW, for certain, but I don't think he was the only one.

 

Since there's rarely anything the PCs can do to disrupt the NPCs ability to channel or curry, it shouldn't be very problematic to skip the dice and just assume the NPC automatically returns to Equilibrium every turn. For fairness, you should probably a purple die (as if quick casting) any time they cast on consecutive turns or use a spell that takes power beyond their Equilibrium.

[Bonus damage for leftover hammers - only if outnumbering your opponent 2:1]

A bonus for outnumbering 2:1 is likely to boost badguys much more often than PCs. The extra damage is certainly going to make combat more dangerous, and that will increase the PC mortality rate.

 

In the GM's toolkit they propose a similar rule, but reigned in by skill training instead of outnumbering. Each extra success is +1 damage, up to a limit equal to your ranks in the relevant skill (Weapon or Ballistic) or Expertise budget.  I proposed using that rule to my group, but they told me that (non-Ironbreaker) PCs are too squishy as-is, and upping monster damage would be unfun.

 

YMMV.

[Using Star Wars dice with WFRP]

Am I reading that right that you're giving all characters a free heal every round?

[The Gong Farmer]

I love the idea of having a Gong Farmer as a career.  Here's some feedback specific to your 3rd Ed version:

 

Unless I'm missing it, your write-up doesn't seem to have a Career Special Ability.  You wrote "No Sense Of Smell" in the Career Skills area, perhaps you intended that to be the Career Special Ability? It reads as only a penalty currently, but it's possible you intended it to be beneficial.

 

Brainstorming alternative things that could work as a Career Special Ability instead of or in addition to having no sense of smell: 

• Add Fortune Die on disease checks, disease recovery checks, and rolls to resist gas attacks.
• Add 2 Fortune Dice to all your checks and actions while you have are affected by the Filthy Condition. You may spend a Fortune Point or a manoeuvre to gain the Filthy condition at any time.
• Add Expertise Die to checks to navigate the sewers or sneak into a building via its basement, gong, or cesspool.
• Reduced darkness penalties since you always work at night. Probably 1 less misfortune.
• Actions targeting you gain "bane bane: suffer 1 shame" due to the scent and general unpleasantness of being near you.

Any one of those could work depending on the direction you want to take it.

 

You also might consider give them Athletics as a Career Skill. Four skills is below the average amount for a career. I think Athletics would be a good fit because Gong Farmers carry a lot of **** around, and sometimes have to clear blockages, hold their breath, and/or swim through the muck.

[Is it worth it to get the players handbook, dungeon masters guide and monster manual, if you have the core set?]

Player's Guide: Yes. It has critical updates and changes that fix all sorts of problems with the game. Highly recommended, and I wouldn't start a campaign without it.  Review and details at: http://www.transitivegaming.blogspot.com/2013/07/whats-actually-new-in-wfrp-players-guide.html

 

 

Creature Guide: Yes. It's not perfect, but it has several small but important rules changes. There are over 30 new monsters, plus minor revisions to a number of monsters from the Tome of Adventure (mostly giving them new powers to better model their abilities from previous editions or the minis game). I got the Creature Guide and the Creature Vault, and I'm very pleased with both. You probably won't need them for the first several sessions, but for a long campaign the GM will eventually want one or both of them to expand your options. Either can stand on their own if need be, but the Creature Guide and Vault really do enhance and compliment each other nicely. Review and details at: http://www.transitivegaming.blogspot.com/2013/08/whats-new-in-wfrp3-creature-guide.html

 

 

Game Master's Guide: I don't know yet, I just bought it recently myself and haven't actually read through it yet. Once I have, I'll probably blog a detailed break down of it like I did for the two books.

[Flaming attacks and burning damage]

 

Let's say that we have three sizes of fire:

 

- Small fire: your clothes, hair etc. are one fire. You suffer 1 wound/stress/fatigue (what seems to be the most appropriate here?) each round. Pass a 1d check to put out the fire.

- Medium fire: a part of you is burning. Suffer 2 W/S/F, 2d check

- Large fire: the flames completely envelop the target. Suffer 3 W/S/F, 3d check.

 

Then, weapons that might cause fire damage fall into two categories:

- Burning item: a lit torch or lantern (improvised), a burning arrow or bolt, or unarmed damage if you are on fire yourself. If you roll a number of boons (1 or 2) on an attack, the target catches fire.

- Incendiary explosives; a fancy dwarven fire bomb, or a primitive Ribbentropp longdrink (ten points if you get the reference). Thrown blast weapons that do low damage to all members of an engagement, and has a chance of setting them on fire.

 

Does that make any sense?

 

 

I suspect the numbers been discussed above are a little higher than is safe and could quickly lead to a TPK.

 

Fatigue tends to be very swingy and extreme. You can laugh off a point or two per encounter without effect, but once you get consistent or large numbers at once it becomes a land-slide. Anything that consistently does more than 1 Fatigue per round will very quickly overwhelm most characters.  Just 2 Fatigue per turn will KO an uninjured Toughness 3 PC in 3 rounds or less.  The numbers are small and pretty tight, and there's not a lot of room for variation. 

 

Wounds are much less swingy than Fatigue, but you should probably keep in mind that the most common methods of wound-reduction (armour and toughness-based damage-reduction) won't apply. Unless you make it very easy to put out the fire, even just a few wounds per turn can add up quickly.

 

 

 

If you're looking for "official" fire rules, you might thumb through the Location and Condition cards, several of which set relevant precedents:

 

The "Burning Building" and "Burning Barge" location cards do just 1 Fatigue per turn for your first few turns of exposure, and if you stay inside for long, it turns to 1 wound per turn. Their damaging effects are very slow, and an uninjured low-toughness character has more than a dozen turns to escape before death is likely. 

 

The "Burning City" location card simply adds a line to all actions: "Chaos Star: Suffer 1 Stress and 1 Fatigue".  So that's a bit harsher when it triggers, and could KO you faster if the dice are unkind, but overall the risk is low unless you're taking a lot of high-difficulty actions.

 

On a related note, the "Scorched" Condition is very similar to the Burning Barge, but not actually the same thing.  The noteworthy difference between the Burning Barge and Scorched is that jumping into the water to escape the Barge's fire is a single maneouvre, but there is generally no way to end the Scorched Condition before the next Rally Step. Scorched was introduced in Winds of Magic, as a boon-result for a Rank 5 "Fireball Barrage" spell. So the designer's intent seems to be that this would represent a pretty significant level of conflagration.

 

One last precedent can be found in the Creature Guide. Treemen and Treekin are literally made of wood. They have the "Flammable" negative trait, but it's effects are relatively tame. If you score a crit against them with a flaming weapon or fire spell, they take bonus damage equal to the severity rating.

 

For a torch, I'd personally follow that lead, and simply use the stats for an improvised weapon, with a bonus parallel to the poison or flammable effects. That is to say: DR3, CR3, and if you score a Critical you inflict some bonus fatigue or wounds. That would probably model the fire well enough without introducing too much complexity or making it overpowered compared to other attacks.

[Question on Career/Open advancements in 2nd Career]

You can only TRAIN any skill once per Rank.

 

The rules clearly state that Specializing a skill doesn't have that restriction (per page 43 of the Player's Guide), and can be done even if you've already trained that skill this rank. That page doesn't specifically mention whether or not the restriction extends to Acquiring an advanced skill, so I'll admit it's a little unclear. However, page 21 of the Player's Guide makes it clear that Acquiring and Training are not the same thing, which then implies to me that the restriction on Training doesn't also restrict Acquiring. 

 

It seems to me that the point of the rule (the "spirit of the law") is to limit the number of yellow dice a character can roll. Yellow dice are the best dice in the game. Since Acquiring and Specializing don't give you yellow dice, they probably don't need to be restricted by rank. I would absolutely let a player at my table Acquire and Train in the same rank, provided they had two Skill Advances available.

 

That said, if I was playing at the game and the GM ruled the other way, I wouldn't give him or her any grief over it at all. While I feel there's a logical conclusion to be drawn from the text, it's not as clear as it should have been, and that leaves it open to GM interpretation.  Your GM is the person you should be asking.

[Shouldn't Skaven have Night Vision?]

Related note: The bonus yellow on Observation checks comes from the Creature Guide. If you're only using the stats from the Tome of Adventure, they don't even have that.

[Opposed Check Difficulty]

Still ... I find it somewhat odd taht a S4 T4 guy can easily outrun ...or catch ...a S3 A5 thief ...despite the fighter guy wearing HEAVY armour ....and the thief just wearing robes .... (all due to no mention of athletics penalty or fatigue penalty when wearing armour

This is actually covered in the Player's Guide. Page 96, in the "The Wrong Tool For The Job" sidebar. It directly tells the GM to apply misfortune dice to the armored character's pool in situations like this. It's pretty loose and off-the-cuff, relying on GM instinct and fiat instead of a solid formula. Personally I find that preferable to something fiddly like the carrying capacity rules that I can't be bothered to look up and enforce even when the non-Dwarf PCs are going on a long march. YMMV.

Chase scenes work better with Opposed or Competitive Athletics checks instead of just spending Fatigue. Fatigue-based movement works well as an abstraction to simplify movement calculation in combat, but it doesn't make for compelling chase scenes.

It's likely that one of those characters (the thief or his victim) is an NPC, and thus has an A/C/E budget. How capable he is of getting away thus becomes a function of the needs of the plot, and how much A/C/E you want to dump into the roll. The extra A/C/E options in the GM's Toolkit and Creature Guide make this dynamic work even if you're using the Fatigue-based movement.