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Don't let them scare you away from magic, it's really actually pretty simple. The rules only take up about a single page once you factor out fluff and illustrations.
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Apr 17, 2012 15:54
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A handy tip: you can reduce new player choice overload by putting the magic cards away before character creation. Odds are nobody will be playing a magic character so all they're doing is making the stack look bigger. If someone wants to play a magic character you can hand them the stack separately.
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Apr 17, 2012 23:36
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OK, read the magic stuff, it's not too bad. In fact, there's not much overly confusing stuff in the rulebooks. I'm sure I'll find more on the cards though. I do have two stupid questions. 1: When advancing your character, there are 4 standard advances on the character sheet. One of them is Wound Threshold. some character cards have a 0 next to "wound" in the advances box. Does that mean that character can't spend any advances on Wound, despite that being a standard advance? Or did I misread it? If I misread it and you can always spend an advance on "wound" once per career (as a standard advance), then what's the purpose of having "Wound: 0" in the advances section of the character card? (I don't think it's just wounds, I'm pretty sure the same might apply to actions as well, but it's 3am here and I can't be hosed checking every card). If you can't buy that standard advance, how do you get 10 career advances? 2: Recovering from damage... you make a check to remove critical wounds when you rest for a long time. It's a 1d check if you are lightly wounded, and 2d if you are critically wounded. I understand that "lightly wounded" means that you have no critical wounds and "critically wounded" means you have at least 1 critical wound. Is the "1d if you are lightly wounded" just a superfluous rule? There's no reason to make that particular check if you are lightly wounded, unless I've misunderstood something. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Apr 18, 2012 |
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Apr 18, 2012 18:08
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AlphaDog posted:OK, read the magic stuff, it's not too bad. In fact, there's not much overly confusing stuff in the rulebooks. I'm sure I'll find more on the cards though. The four "standard" ones are required for the career, as I understand it. The character then needs six more from the (coincidentally) ten on the front of the career card. Edit: Which, to clarify, means that every career can (and must) always advance Wound once, and Wound 0 on the front of the card means no additional wound advances are career advances. homullus fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 18, 2012 |
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Apr 18, 2012 18:33
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AlphaDog posted:2: Recovering from damage... you make a check to remove critical wounds when you rest for a long time. It's a 1d check if you are lightly wounded, and 2d if you are critically wounded. I understand that "lightly wounded" means that you have no critical wounds and "critically wounded" means you have at least 1 critical wound. Is the "1d if you are lightly wounded" just a superfluous rule? There's no reason to make that particular check if you are lightly wounded, unless I've misunderstood something.
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Apr 19, 2012 00:10
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homullus posted:The four "standard" ones are required for the career, as I understand it. The character then needs six more from the (coincidentally) ten on the front of the career card. Thanks, that's how I was going to do it. It's just not very clear. Splicer posted:I don't have the rules in front of me but if I recall correctly it also allows you to heal some bonus normal wounds. Number of boons rolled I think? So if you only have normal wounds you are more likely to heal more of them than if you had normal wounds and also a critical wound. Thanks! That's in there as a sentence after the discussion of critical wounds, whereas the discussion of "lightly wounded" is before the discussion of critical wounds. I can see how I missed it, but I still feel dumb.
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Apr 19, 2012 02:19
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Finally, Hero's Call is on sale (in the US.) Going through Amazon will be cheaper by nearly 20 dollars, so if you want to get Hero's Call (you do) then go through Amazon. And, a new print-on-demand pack is released, Bright Order Magic.
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Apr 19, 2012 04:08
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I think I've understood the whole thing now, but one more question... The skulls next to the monsters... there must be more than 5 "difficulty levels" of bad guy in this game, right? I also haven't seen anything anywhere about building balanced encounters. The way I've read it so far is "one creature or NPC or group of minions per party member" is about right, but the creatures obviously have different levels of power which I'm not understanding. I mean, even AD&D's Hit Dice seemed like better indicators than "1-5 skulls". Also, and this isn't a rules question, but how far is a character expected to advance in this game? 2 careers? 3? 6? How much more powerful is a character at the end of their first career compared to the start? Again, this has to do with encounter building, so it kind of ties into the previous question. Edit: 6, not 5, miscounted. Also, is it that I'm looking at the first question wrong? I was thinking in terms of D&D "encounters", but with the rally step and the act/episode structure, it's not really like that, is it? So I'll rephrase my question: How do I avoid making a single combat scene too easy? How do I avoid making it too deadly? Obviously "don't throw a giant at a brand new party", but where can I find info about how many orcs to throw at them, or how many cultists, or snotlings, or giant spiders? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Apr 19, 2012 |
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Apr 19, 2012 07:38
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AlphaDog posted:I think I've understood the whole thing now, but one more question... There are opponents with more than 5 skulls, just not in the Core set. In terms of balancing, it's definitely the old school "start with easy things and see what your party can handle" and the idea that your advancement is not tied in any way to fighting. Some encounters they will need to run away from, either because you estimated poorly or they rolled/judged threat poorly. It's a shame in a way that a game as forward-facing as WFRP doesn't have a better way to handle that, but it's basically bound to happen in any game that lets one party member be a combat monster and another be a social monster to the exclusion of the other thing.
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Apr 19, 2012 16:35
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Ok, I got my core set and have been reading the core book. So far everything makes sense except for one thing. Career advancements. I see there's the Open Career Advancements on the back of the sheet. On the Career cards, there's that block of numbers under the Advancements heading. Is that how many of each you're allowed before you hit the advancement cap? Like the Student has 2 Conservative and 0 Reckless, so I'd be able to add two more Conservative blocks to my Stance meter over the course of the Career and never add Reckless at all? Do you just get 6 advancements out of that set and the specifically marked advancements? Also, regarding colorblind-chat from a while back, the reds and greens are alright for me, but drat if I can tell the blue and purple markers apart. The dice are fine, it's just the diamonds they use to represent them. It does seem like you'll never be adding the blue Characteristic dice as the result of a card though, so it's probably not a big deal.
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Apr 20, 2012 00:10
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Echophonic posted:Ok, I got my core set and have been reading the core book. So far everything makes sense except for one thing. Career advancements. I see there's the Open Career Advancements on the back of the sheet. On the Career cards, there's that block of numbers under the Advancements heading. Is that how many of each you're allowed before you hit the advancement cap? Like the Student has 2 Conservative and 0 Reckless, so I'd be able to add two more Conservative blocks to my Stance meter over the course of the Career and never add Reckless at all? Do you just get 6 advancements out of that set and the specifically marked advancements? Yes, you get 6/10 from the front of the card. You can add whatever advances you want (even if they're not on the front of the card), but only career advances count in the ten required to complete it. You can stay in a career after you've completed it . . . but the times you'd want to do that are pretty limited. The only times I can see doing that are if you REALLY need a certain action before you'd have enough advances for the career switch, or really need a talent slot right now that your future career would be missing.
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Apr 20, 2012 00:52
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I finally ran my first game of WHFRP on Wednesday night, and the results were...less than spectacular. Not the systems fault, but mostly due to only 2 of the players having roleplayed before, and the other 2 constantly acting in the most bizarre manner possible. One player declared he was going to carve up a dead beastman and eat it's heart. Later on he found some bandages covered in a mysterious black ooze and decided to lick it until he "grew tentacles". When introduced to the first NPC, he tried to kill him. I had told them it was a more investigative and social game, but things rapidly didn't end up that way. Going to try running it again with a few other players next week or the week after. Aside from the clash of tone, the system itself is great to run. I don't think I've ever had as simple of a time GMing a game. The downside though is having a table full of tokens and cards and just feeling overwhelmed with the sorting at the end.
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Apr 20, 2012 02:18
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Gravy Train Robber posted:One player declared he was going to carve up a dead beastman and eat it's heart. Oh, I don't know, sounds like WHF to me
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Apr 20, 2012 04:24
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I have another question, if someone would be so kind. When you use an action, you take the refresh on the top left and put that many refresh tokens on it. During the end of turn phase, all refreshing actions get a token removed. Does this include the one you just used? I feel like I missed something, since the combat example doesn't do this, but it also doesn't specify that actions used this turn are exempt, from what I can tell.
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Apr 21, 2012 04:39
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Echophonic posted:I have another question, if someone would be so kind. When you use an action, you take the refresh on the top left and put that many refresh tokens on it. During the end of turn phase, all refreshing actions get a token removed. Does this include the one you just used? I feel like I missed something, since the combat example doesn't do this, but it also doesn't specify that actions used this turn are exempt, from what I can tell. No, you read it right. You take off a token the same turn you put it on. I remember showing the rule to my friend because he thought I was being crazy. I don't remember where, but it's in there.
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Apr 21, 2012 04:52
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It does seem odd that you would be removing a token the same turn you apply it, but it leaves room for actions/reactions that affect you based on the number of tokens you currently have. It might therefore be meaningful to have two tokens on your card during your turn, even though you are just going to remove one at the end of the turn. Since no card requiring tokens places less than two, it guarantees you can only use a more powerful action every other turn without some extra factor removing your tokens.
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Apr 21, 2012 06:18
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Gravy Train Robber posted:One player declared he was going to carve up a dead beastman and eat it's heart. Later on he found some bandages covered in a mysterious black ooze and decided to lick it until he "grew tentacles". http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/wfrp/news/gm-guide/gm-guide-corruption-rules.pdf That may be handy for you.
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Apr 21, 2012 07:49
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Splicer posted:http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/wfrp/news/gm-guide/gm-guide-corruption-rules.pdf Yep, already have those rules. I'm thinking with that player perhaps it would be best to put him in a Black Crusade game instead.
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Apr 21, 2012 10:18
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Ok, I've tried running a bit of combat and chargen with some friends, and I have a quite a few more questions. Some are dumb, some are just clarifications.
I'm sure I'll have more, but that's from my third or so read through the rulebook. This GM screen is also really great. I only really like them for Paranoia, but there's nothing but useful info in here. It's all the sidebars and that's the stuff you really need during play.
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Apr 22, 2012 20:14
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Echophonic posted:Ok, I've tried running a bit of combat and chargen with some friends, and I have a quite a few more questions. Some are dumb, some are just clarifications. I don't have my book handy, but I'll see if I can help. Others can correct me if I miss something. 1. You can't start with a check in an Advanced skill but you can gain one during Rank 1 advancement. I don't believe skills gained during character creation count toward your career advancement scheme. 2. I believe it comes from your Open advances. 3. You mark off the Dedication bonus if you complete the career and then spend one additional advance to keep the bonus into future careers. If you move from the career to a new one without completing it and paying for the bonus, you lose it once you start the new career. 4. Correct. If a roll is required, it is an action. Note that a common house rule (even listed in the FAQ as an optional rule) is that you can use your action to make a maneuver. 5. Correct. One maneuver for free, then you burn fatigue for the rest. No double actions. 6. I think it is listed in the stance section. I really wish they had included a simple list of "things you can spend fatigue/stress on" in the book somewhere. You get one shift of stance for free at the beginning of your turn, but must pay for the rest like you do for additional maneuvers. 7. You gain it in wounds healed, up to your Toughness. Note that you roll a different number of challenge dice depending on if you are lightly or critically wounded.
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Apr 23, 2012 05:20
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On iPad so nuts to quote tags:
quote:I'm sure I'll have more, but that's from my third or so read through the rulebook. Splicer fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Apr 23, 2012 |
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Apr 23, 2012 05:26
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Awesome, thanks for the help. I'm still a little unclear on healing with Resilience checks, but that's not a big deal. I think boons make more sense, since you already get your toughness back in wounds at the end of an encounter. I did find the Stance track thing after it was pointed out, too. The errata/FAQ is pretty helpful, as well. Is there a list of the contents of the newer expansions anywhere? The Core Component List is from September.
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Apr 23, 2012 21:58
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Wait, are standard attacks not considered maneuvers because they involve rolls? I know changing distance is considered one and it doesn't have a roll. I didn't realize there was a difference between actions and maneuvers. My whole gameplay demo with my wife is now invalid. Go me! Actually came by the thread to post that I've started playing the Witcher games again and this system seems to be perfect for it. Civilization is brutish and unpleasant, monsters are everywhere, the setting is dark, magic is relatively rare and terribly untrusted, and there's mutations (though these primarily spring from alchemy successes rather than magical gently caress-ups). It even has the right races and in relatively similar proportions (though the elves I've seen in the setting are mostly of the wood variety). Since the alchemy system only works for witchers explicitly you only need to add it if you make your game about playing witchers, then you can essentially use it as a system for activating talents flavored as mutagens and potions. If you just want the setting it's pretty much all there already. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Apr 24, 2012 |
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Apr 24, 2012 05:33
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Actions are anything that uses a card. That's the rule as far as I can tell. Skill checks in combat are Maneuvers, even though they have a roll involved.
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Apr 24, 2012 05:54
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And because there's a block card and an evade card and a melee strike card, those are all actions. Other games I played would have categorized things like evade as maneuvers. Just wanted to be clear.
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Apr 24, 2012 05:59
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Block, dodge, and parry are reactions, they don't take an action. Or a maneuver. e: and by reaction I mean effect. Splicer fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Apr 24, 2012 |
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Apr 24, 2012 06:05
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Picked up the core set today in preparation of dming a group and just on first glance I think this may become my favourite roleplaying system. Everything seems really nicely designed and fluid for gameplay, can't wait to run it.
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Apr 26, 2012 11:17
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Something else I just realized is that banes/boons and hammers/swords are perfect for teaching the addition positive and negative integers. Well, maybe not perfect, but especially with a fortune and misfortune dice you have a way of generating random problems on the fly with tactile and visual element.
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Apr 26, 2012 17:14
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In an effort to drag my players away from 4e, I've converted their Dark Sun characters into WFR ones. For the most part, it's pretty easy, but I'm stuck on how to handle a Shaman. Shamans are pretty unique mechanically, since they rely on using a conjured spirit to do pretty much everything, and the little spirit runs around and makes attacks and heals and does buffs. I'm thinking of mashing a Ratcatcher and an Initiate (Shallya) together to give her spells as well as a Small But Mysterious Spirit. I've never actually seen the Ratcatcher in action, so I'm unsure if this will work. Does anyone have a better idea?
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Apr 29, 2012 05:14
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I'm finally ready to run a game! I'm doing A Day Late And A Shilling Short, and I have two final questions. 1: How long will that adventure take? The combat doesn't seem like it will be lengthy. Is it about 2-3 hours long, or longer? 2: Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Apr 29, 2012 |
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Apr 29, 2012 13:21
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Assumethisisreal posted:In an effort to drag my players away from 4e, I've converted their Dark Sun characters into WFR ones. For the most part, it's pretty easy, but I'm stuck on how to handle a Shaman. Shamans are pretty unique mechanically, since they rely on using a conjured spirit to do pretty much everything, and the little spirit runs around and makes attacks and heals and does buffs. I'm thinking of mashing a Ratcatcher and an Initiate (Shallya) together to give her spells as well as a Small But Mysterious Spirit. I've never actually seen the Ratcatcher in action, so I'm unsure if this will work. Does anyone have a better idea? Using the SBVD is a good idea. I think the combo might be a little strong for a rank 1 character, but I'd have to check my stuff to compare. If the focus of the character is the useful spirit, maybe use the ratcatcher as written but give him access to a healing trick that counts as a different source of first aid for the day (perhaps letting the target roll 5 fortune dice like a superior healing draught, regaining one wound per hammer). Remember that the character power levels are different between WFRP and 4e, especially at lower ranks, so translating everything the Shaman can do will result in a character that overshadows the rest of the group. Find the best match, tweak it a little for flavor, and call it good.
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Apr 29, 2012 15:13
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AlphaDog posted:I'm finally ready to run a game! I tried running it with my group and it took much longer than I'd expected. Three of them were totally new to WFRP and so there was a great deal of explaining. I think my group was not as up for a new game as I'd thought because they spent more time making jokes than playing; one player decided he'd rather read Reddit and was so distracted by it that he missed his turn (this was Skype + MapTool, so I didn't find this out until later). It took two hours to get up through the beastmen reinforcements, at which point I stopped because I was frustrated with them.
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Apr 29, 2012 22:12
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AlphaDog posted:Similar monsters use the same pool. Henchmen use the same pool and also pool toughness values as total wound threshold. So in a group of 3 henchmen with 5 toughness, they have 15 total wounds, and one is removed when they take a total of 5 wounds. Right? Also I made an error in the OP (now partially corrected). Only Henchmen take bonus damage instead of fatigue/stress/criticals, "real" monsters are treated same as Characters. e: Oh, and if you have 6 Ungor they only get one Ungor'sworth of speciality dice between them. Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Apr 29, 2012 |
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Apr 29, 2012 23:50
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Thanks guys. Honestly, if we get through the first scene in 2 hours it will be OK. We're just a little bit time constrained tonight. 2-3 hours is what we have, but since everyone is likely to be focussed it sounds like it will be fine.
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Apr 30, 2012 02:45
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Got through the combat in 2.5 hours, with a break for cake and beer halfway. Awesome system. Really awesome. Everyone got right into it. Characters were the Roadwarden, Envoy, and Troll Slayer pregens. Trip report, with spoilers: On the very first round, the Troll Slayer spent 5 fatigue to sprint up the road, leap onto the coach, and leap off onto the Gor. He hit, but not too hard, and then ate a crit on the beastman's turn. Envoy and Roadwarden skirmished with the ungors in the woods, defeating them in 2 rounds. Then they dogpiled the Gor and saved the other roadwarden in plenty of time, but the Trollslayer ate another crit. Then rally step, then the envoy wheedled the fat annoying merchant out of the carriage with Winning Smile, and took the package. They defeated the Wargor with no real problems and talked about killing the merchant as the other ungor fled and were mowed down with arrows from the Envoy. I'm not sure how to run the second half now, since they stole the package already. So, a few hurdles: You can't parry and dodge the same attack, right? It seems almost as if you can, but I ruled no, because wtf? Fortune points, when do I add them? Party went through them real quick, so I added one for the stunt I mentioned at the start of the spoiler, one for saving Rutger and one for recovering the package. Banes/boons: they don't seem to do a whole heap. What gives? They do nothing if there's not enough of them to power a card's effect, right? Banes don't translate into failures? Damage: 4 wounds and +1 crit = 3 wounds and a critical wound, right? Healing: First aid cures EITHER one wound per success on a 1d check OR lets you ignore up to number of successes in critical wound severity (ie, 3 sucesses = level 3 crit ignored) for one day? Fatigue and stress: Someone needs to explain these to me beyond "a black die for every point of fatigue/stress above an ability". Beyond those questions, this system is unbelievably fun. One thing was that there didn't seem to be any huge successes or failures, just one instance of Troll Feller Strike generating no successes and two banes and one instance of the same ability doing mega damage (possibly because the target had taken crits reducing its soak). Edit: The Troll Slayer in full reckless mode seems to gently caress things right up. I think I've got the stance meter right, in that a player can move it one step at the start of their round. Seems like you can go major reckless early and then dial it back if you start getting hosed up and that works pretty drat effectively. Correct? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Apr 30, 2012 |
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Apr 30, 2012 15:36
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You can Parry and Dodge in the same turn if you want, you just won't be able to do either next round (since they are recharge 2). Banes and Boons each have an "always available" option (Core Set rulebook, p. 45 box in upper right). 4 wounds +1 crit means 4 wounds, one of which gets a card that causes additional problems for the woundee.
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Apr 30, 2012 17:51
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So, I finally got a chance to run a game over the weekend, too. We were using An Eye for an Eye, and I'm planning to transition from that into The Edge of Night and hopefully by then I'll feel comfortable writing up further adventures myself. None of us had played before, so a lot of time was spent on character creation and on getting a handle on how the game was played, but it didn't take long to get into the flow, and at the end of the first session (of about 3 hours), the group had just beaten back the beastmen and gained admittance to the Lodge. Now that we had a better concept of how the game was played, we spent some time looking over the rules again and corrected a lot of things we were handling incorrectly, and the game was popular enough that we went back for another 4-hour session the following day, during which time the players began the investigation into the goings-on in the Lodge and spoke with a number of the staff. They made some pretty awesome progress, were good about picking up on some of the more subtle things - someone even brought up their suspicion that there might be something hidden under the rug in the library (which I didn't hint at at all other than describing the garish nature of the rug), though they didn't get a chance to actually investigate. Overall, a really good time, and everyone seemed pretty enthusiastic about continuing later. Regarding social encounters, though - I feel like I wasn't handling the investigation phase too well. My roleplaying background is mostly rooted in D&D with a smattering of White Wolf's earlier offerings, so actually having actions that can be taken in social situations (other than just 'I use diplomacy to convince the guard to let us through' type stuff) is hard to get used to. Most of our social interactions were roleplayed out via conversation, and while I asked for some skill checks throughout for various things, I felt like I wasn't really taking it far enough. One of the characters (an Envoy) is almost entirely rooted in social interaction, and I really want to give him a chance to shine during social encounters. I'd be interested to hear how other people have handled social encounters (with this adventure or any other), with any specifics you can give me. Are there any social actions we might have overlooked that I could recommend that might be more useful than others? As the DM, when should the transition from a casual conversation to an actual social encounter take place?
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Apr 30, 2012 18:02
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I grabbed a copy of The Winds of Magic and am a little confused (surprise, surprise). An Amber Order mage can still Channel Power while in a beast form, right? That seems pretty brutal if you have to be magically juiced to hell and back BEFORE you turn into a bear. I also got a copy of the Creature Vault and those cards are boss as all hell. Working out the book is for suckers. What's the next item in list of pro-buyness? I have the core set (with a second one coming), Adventurer's Toolkit, DM's Toolkit, Creature Vault, Edge of Night, and The Winds of Magic. Even got a Player's Guide as part of the EoN/Winds of Magic buy. My heart is telling me Black Fire Pass, because  The Book of Grudges. Otherwise The Gathering Storm would probably be good since I'm not especially all that creative.
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May 1, 2012 01:47
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I like The Gathering Storm. Black Fire Pass is also cool. I've been enjoying the GM book, which does a better job of explaining most things than the core, and has some great GMing advice (like, 4e DMG2 good).
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May 1, 2012 02:26
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Does anyone have the newest supplement? If so, can you post the rules for Ogres?
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May 2, 2012 01:14
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