Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: You Got Board Game In My RPG!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: You Got Board Game In My RPG!

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homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Talkie Toaster posted:

This is pretty interesting but I wish they'd gone with a 4e-style encounter/save system for timers. When my group played this we spent a lot of time faffing with tokens for power cooldowns, and I guess that gets easier when you play more but it's a pretty big inconvenience for beginners when the system already has quite a lot of bookkeeping.

I think the only inconvenience is being familiar with one system and not being familiar with the other. I would argue that looking at a stack of recharge tokens is easier for beginners than flipping to the spot on your character sheet, looking it up in the book, or squinting at the text on your power card every time you can't remember when something ends or recharges. Also everyone else at the table can more easily see when your zone of ice or whatever ends -- they too can glance at your stack of recharge tokens.

quote:

Also, someone please tell us about the "party tension" mechanic, seems like an interesting concept.

Party tension is another resource, like healing surges in 4e, except it is even more explicitly tied to pacing. If the players or PCs are doing a lot of arguing, the GM can start adding tension; at a couple points on the meter (different for different party types) mildly bad things happen to everyone in the party. The GM can also move the tension down again when they are cooperating. It could also be used for escalating environmental effects -- oppressive air, whispering voices -- as opposed to the more draconian adding of challenge or misfortune dice to actions.

Also, initiative is really great -- party members get their individual rolls based on their Agility (for stabbing encounters) or Fellowship (for social encounters), but the players decide who goes on which initiative count each round (though each PC only goes once per round). This means that if on this round it's more advantageous for the Barber-Surgeon to run over and heal the Agitator at the top of the round, that's what happens, even though the Barber-Surgeon had the lowest initiative roll . . . somebody else will take that last slot this round. The GM can do likewise with his monsters and NPCs. I'm considering trying this in 4e.

For those who like that sort of thing, there are MapTool resources. We fooled around with these last night and the main things missing are the actions and talents, understandably; you'd want to make macros for those if people don't have the cards in front of them. The files are huge (50MB RAR); he has insanities and wounds and miscasts scanned in as tables, I think.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 14:12

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:48

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

ocrumsprug posted:

However, I have heard anecdotally that the rules as written in the box set, require forum searches and Rosetta stone translations to be made sense of. Is there any truth to that, and can you recommend some sites that have managed to clarify what the rules are actually trying to say.

They're not THAT bad, but a few rules were not where I wanted them to be, and I found them only later when I was looking for another rule.

One thing that helped me is the FAQ/Errata.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 18:08

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Since there is now a thread with people who have played for real in it, I have a question about range.

It's supposed to take three maneuvers (or Manoeuoevers) to go from Extreme to Long, two maneuvers from Long to Medium, and one from Medium to Close. A maneuver is free, extra maneuvers are fatigue . . . but monsters can't spend fatigue, and actions that cause fatigue cause wounds on monsters. Are there rules I missed for monsters closing distances aside from "people can still decide to do whatever's narratively appropriate"?

# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 19:21

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Yeah, I saw that about characters. I was wondering whether there was a "if they're just closing distance, monsters and NPCs can use two movement maneuvers" or something.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 19:42

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Splicer, those are both great ideas (one damage for the whole initiative count, or fortune dice on attacks against them/misfortune dice on their own attacks) and I am going to try those out.

nauggins posted:

Thank you for making this thread. I'm never going to be able to get my group to play this, so I will be glad to sperg vicariously through you guys.

Regarding just buying the books: if I do this (just for my own reading pleasure), am I going to have to buy fancy dice and poo poo if I ever try to run it? I'm assuming yes, in which case I should just shut the gently caress up and spring for the box?

I think you're getting a better deal by getting the box. The fancy dice are pretty key to the interesting choices players make in character creation/advancement and round by round, and you get all the other bits too. Probably also easier to resell if you never do play it -- you're selling a complete game.

quote:

Lately, I've been musing over the idea of a classic style dungeon crawl, of the inexplicable monster rooms, lethal traps, and mandatory 10' pole, one of the players hunched over the graph paper hoping the map he's drawing is accurate variety. D&D4's focus has moved away from that kind of game in favor of broad setpieces, but with a little tweaking WFRP3 would be perfect for this. It's already got the assumption that the players are broke-as-poo poo dudes getting into danger way above their heads in hopes of a payout.

The biggest thing would be statting up traps and hazards, and making sure the party is aware that pretty much everything will be close or medium range. I would probably not want to mess with the OSR inventory game and just make one of those track things for their "equipment" -- they can, say, pull a 10' pole, or door spikes, or a rope, or whatever out of their collective gear for one step on the track. When they're at the end of the track, they have to use what they have from then on.

I was thinking about adapting it for Eberron, with the Chaos Gods reskinned as The Dreaming Dark, Xoriat, The Lords of Dust, and maybe the Blood of Vol. Eberron is best at a low to mid power level, so Lady Vol gets a bit of a boost to be on par with the others.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2012 06:24

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Story time: I went to FFG's Event Center last week and met a FFG guy. He said they were this close to giving the Fop a Small But Precious Dog, which had the same picture but with a pink bow. Budget is why we don't have one. :argh:

# ¿ Mar 26, 2012 19:28

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Lotish posted:

Ha ha ha! There's a fop career? I was just wondering what you would need to reskin to make a eunuch spymaster a la Varys. Unless they already have those too.

Keep in mind that careers define what you do next more than what you are.

So, as a for-example, the Dockhand:

.

All character advancement is done via advances. You get one advance per session, and maybe one more if the GM decides to do so (and this one also goes to everyone). You save these up and spend them on upgrading any aspect of your character, but it is easier to upgrade things tied to your current career.

Across the top we get four career Traits. These define what you do next; the more the traits across the top match the career you're moving to, the fewer advances you need to spend to switch. These don't advance; they just are. The Dockhand is Basic, Menial, Rural, and Urban, which means that he will have an easier time becoming a Servant (Basic, Menial, Rural, Urban) than an Acolyte (Academic, Arcane, Intermediate, Wizard).

The Primary Characteristics are the attributes that are easier for this career to increase. Here, the Dockhand has Strength and Toughness. It will cost him a number of advances equal to his new attribute to raise that Characteristic one (so getting from 3 to 4 costs 4 advances); it will cost one more than that if he raises something other than Strength or Toughness (3 to 4 would cost 5 advances).

The Career Skills work the same way -- it costs him less to train and acquire those than it does to get ones outside. He can always get ones outside his career-- perhaps he is looking ahead at his next one -- but they cost more.

The green and red symbols are his starting stance track. These are described in the OP. Adding additional Conservative or Reckless slots is one of the ways he can advance his character.

The Advances section is a partial list of the things the player can do to complete the career. You do not need to complete a career in order to move to a new one, but if you do complete it, you retain the career benefit. The Dockhand's career benefit is "you may add 5 to your encumbrance limit", which would not be that valuable in most campaigns, but is not nothing. You need to complete ten career advances to complete a career; things you increase or add that are not career advances (characteristics other than the Dockhand's strength and toughness, skills other than the ones listed, advances in one area in excess of the limits listed in the Advances section) do not count toward the ten. Every career can always increase Skills, Wounds, Actions, and Talents once to have it count; the numbers in the Advances section are in addition to those.

Finally, on the right are the sockets for Talents, which come in the broad categories of Focus (mental), Reputation (social), and Tactic (combat). Characters can only use socketed talents, though they can swap them freely until initiative is rolled. With three types of talents and two sockets (aside from the party sheet, which can also hold talents that then apply to the whole party) that can even be the same type of talent, players should plan ahead a little bit so they don't acquire talents their goal careers won't ever be able to use. Talents do not have prerequisites, at least not that I've seen.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2012 21:28

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Lotish posted:

Okay, so you can make your characteristics anything you want, but you pick your career based on the skills you want to start with and the stats you want to improve, probably with a nod towards the career special ability if it's really worthwhile.

How many careers are there in the core box?

30 careers in the Core box. All the stuff in the box, and all the stuff in a lot of other boxes, here.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2012 23:38

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Splicer posted:

No, skills are the same as the others. The list of skills are just the ones that count as career skills for level ups. So a dockhand might not start with any of those skills, but if he wanted to buy athletics it would only cost him 1xp, it would count towards completing his career, and on career completion he'd get a free specialisation. If he bought, say, fellowship, it would cost him 2xp, it wouldn't count as a career advance and on career completion, no free specialisation.

The only thing your career gives you up-front is the career ability and your stance track.

I believe the skills on the Career Sheet are the only ones you can train at character generation (p.30 Skill Training, end of first paragraph).

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 00:22

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Xiahou Dun posted:

So, the Reckless vs. Conservative sockety things have got me thinking. How much of this poo poo is color-coded?

Because I've been lusting after this for years, but I'm really worried that I won't be able to use it because I'm colorblind.

Like, I have no loving clue what you mean by the red and green sockets. Are they the things underneath career skills?

Are there just a few fiddly bits that I could memorize, or would I have to do what I did for Arkham Horror and get my girlfriend to write what color things are on every card? Because that kind of nullifies the point of pretty cards.

The colors on these two may not look different to you, but the border on "you must be within close range of and able to make eye contact with the target" seems to be consistently different on the action cards. The one on the right, with the straight line border, is the red reckless.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 00:33

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Captain_Indigo posted:

I love the look of everything posted so far - is anyone able to put up some adventure stuff. Feel free to spoiler everything, but I'm just looking for an idea of how the adventures uphold the ideas and attitudes that seem to be inherent in the mechanics.

Have two demo adventures.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 17:22

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

I found the Game Master's Toolkit on Amazon for $5 new, so I picked it up. The GM screen is extremely solid, and it comes with some more items and locations. The thing that blew my mind: it never occurred to me that I could use the puzzle-piece-style progress tracks to make forked tracks for separate events, and how a GM can use ones visible to the players to build tension. They know that fork #1 is the track for their thief breaking in the vault while they stall the guard on fork #2, but the GM can keep the group in the dark about what the other marker -- the one that's not the thief -- on fork #1 represents.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 05:05

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

CPA Hell posted:

The errata and rules FAQ is really needed to play the game. There are several places in the core books that are mechanically vague. The FAQ assigns very clear mechanics to these situations. The ones we ran into in the first session were: number of maneuvers needed to close distances, what disengaging does, and what happens when you curry favor in excess of your equilibrium.

I don't mean to sound overly critical, but just wanted to mention this for new players. This is still the most fun my group has had with a game in years.

We missed the "normal attacks with Skill vs. Defence are not opposed checks, they are 1d checks."

# ¿ Apr 3, 2012 19:22

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

I ran a demo of it on MapTool last night, also my first attempt to play it with other live people. A lot of things didn't go very well, but I am thinking about how to improve the MapTool experience of WFRP.

I started with this stuff. I made macros that spit out action cards, which was a big help, if labor-intensive initially. I want to get party sheets and some progress tracks scanned in as images and such, and be able to move tokens along them. The big problem is movement -- has anyone dealt with this on MapTool, or on a grid (because that's what the table had)?

In other news, I am also interested in getting people together to try it all again on MapTool. My regular group is up for 4e, but weren't really into learning a new system and the game suffered. This thread is a good place to (re)start, since you all like the game in theory or in practice. I have not mastered Portforwardmancy and can't host, unfortunately, but am willing to fumble through the GMing part if you will bear with me; even better if people are also interested in trying GMing.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2012 19:09

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Turing sex machine posted:

Do you happen to have a screenshot of how WHFRP looks like on MapTool?

My copy just arrived, I like everything I've seen so far. What is the "prepare manoeuvre", as mentioned on Sniper Shot? The rulebook is not clear.

Messy screenshot. You don't have to have all those things open at once; the character thing, for example, is only visible on mouseover.

My understanding of "Prepare" is that if the card says you need to prepare, you have to spend an extra maneuver to do that or suffer a penalty stated on the card. I don't have a "Prepare" card handy for reference, though.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2012 19:35

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Mikan posted:

There's no specific Prepare card. It's just a maneuver you can take during combat as a requirement to use some powers. It's basically "don't move this turn to use this card". It's on page 52 of the rulebook that comes with the box.

Ah, sorry, I meant a card that mentions "prepare", not an actual Prepare action. I was imagining it was one of the keywords, like an Active Defence card.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2012 19:50

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

I like it more than I did at first, now that I have read some more of the background material and see how the major forces work in the world. I think that greenskins talking like football hooligans is A) really, really stupid, B) comic relief at odds with a supposedly grim and perilous setting, and C) one of many signs that the Old World was accreted rather than designed (yes I know I can just not have them do that). The Ruinous Powers are all borderline ridiculous (Nurgle is a buffoon who just loves to let his beloved diseases loose upon the world? really? maybe I am misunderstanding). The peasant's-eye-view of the setting is great, though, with evil and mutation and chaos behind any friendly smile.

I really just want to learn the system well enough so that I can run it in other settings I like more (Eberron!).

# ¿ Apr 6, 2012 03:07

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

The way I can handle/accept the ruinous powers is to imagine that they basically all want the worst of what uncivilized human life is -- disease-ridden, violent, pleasure-driven, and ambitious. They are not all emotions, but conditions that civilization tempers. The ruinous powers (to me) do not want humanity to be destroyed, only its civilization, putting them at odds with both each other and with the other forces that (as I understand it) actually seek the death of humans (like orcs).

I don't worry about the ruinous powers a lot because if I wanted a game where PCs regularly took on world-shaking powers, I'd play D&D 4e.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2012 04:48

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

I don't need help coming up with really loving dumb settings, though -- I need help coming up with compelling ones. I don't think most of WFRP is dumb; it's just that the really dumb parts stick out for me, in a bad way.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2012 06:19

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Turing sex machine posted:

What's the greatest amount of dice you've rolled? Or the highest number of triggered effects or something. I'm wondering how crazy it can get.

Barring a really lengthy card with a lot of boon or bane lines, you'll likely only see a max of seven effects triggered.

* (1 Success) You can only trigger one "success" line on the card (whichever one you want, of the ones you have enough successes for)
* (2 or 3 Boons) Boons and banes cancel out (so you'd never have both), but you can trigger each boon line on the card once, so if you roll enough boons, you could trigger all the ones on the card and the "always on" one.
* (1 Chaos star/Sigmar's Comet) Chaos stars and comets are rare, but you can always trigger those.
* (1 Delay) If you're rolling conservative dice, you can get delay.
* (1 Exertion) If you're rolling reckless dice, you can get exertion. I am sure I've seen things that could cause you to roll both conservative and reckless dice, but it's rare.

Since comets can be downgraded to boons, though, a lot of the time you'll be happy to have it total up to one success and no other effects.

Edited so I'm not telling filthy lies about the rules.

homullus fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Apr 6, 2012

# ¿ Apr 6, 2012 17:53

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Turing sex machine posted:

Unless you're a human, changing careers always cost at least 1 XP (Advance), often more, and even if you go back to a past career. But a single XP is incredibly valuable, since you trade it 1-for-1 for anything from powers to skill trainings to HP (as well as career progress). That cost looks prohibitive. Non-humans seems to be extremely heavily encouraged to stick to their career for the whole 10 levels.

Same for taking non-career advances, really. I get that there should be a penalty for it, but one whole XP of penalty (on top of no career progress) is a really big deal.

You get 1 XP just for showing up to a session with a pulse, though.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 16:32

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

I have The Gathering Storm and The Witch's Song. Both feature recurring themes of muck, poverty, and good/evil not being apparent visually. Both have factions and sides and a variety of outcomes depending on the players' choices. The Gathering Storm also has a, well, gathering storm, and the weather gets really, really bad over the course of the adventure, to the extent that the party will probably change its tactics.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2012 13:30

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

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.

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?

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

# ¿ Apr 18, 2012 18:33

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

AlphaDog posted:

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?

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.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2012 16:35

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

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?

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.

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.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2012 00:52

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

AlphaDog posted:

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: Does each type of monster get a single pool of aggression/cunning/expertise dice per group, or is it individual? That is, do 6 ungor beastmen get the listed dice each, or the listed dice between them? Does the gor then get separate dice all its own? I'm an idiot, it's right there in the rulebook. 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?

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.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2012 22:12

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

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.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2012 17:51

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

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).

# ¿ May 1, 2012 02:26

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

MonsterUnderYourBed posted:

Here is what I'm thinking for the mid-range ruinous power favours, probably coming into play just before or after the pc manifests a mark.

Khorne: Once per session you can use a maneuver to make an attack action.
Nurgle: Once per session, by touching a target you may give them a condition you are currently affected by. The duration is equal to the duration of the condition when you first received it.
Tzeentch: Once per session, after rolling a dice pool for an action, you may choose instead to use a different action this turn(The original action is not exhausted, and you roll a new dice pool)
Slaanesh: Once per session you may exhaust any condition you are affected by for the remainder of the current act.

The starting level favours would be like a once per session damage bonus for Khorne etc. You get access to the starting favour by doing something to gain that gods attention. For Khorne, a particularly bloodthirsty act of slaughter, for Slaanesh taking great excess in something.

Once you have come to the powers attention, whether you continue in that path or not depends on wjether you use the gift you have been given, so if you use your damage bonus every session for a few consecutive sessions, you advance down the path further. The only way to reduce how far along you are is to renounce using the gift, although that is not without risk either, as the gods don't look kindly on those who shun them.

In terms of risk/reward, you could also let them look through the mutation cards (or a subset thereof) and just let them pick after that initial boon (above), even if they are not human. It would give them an edge and also bring them that much closer to being an NPC.

# ¿ May 2, 2012 06:20

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Turing sex machine posted:

Okay, one more round of complaining about a game I haven't played yet. Two things this time.

The first was triggered by recent discussion on the D&D 5e thread about the three pillars and how games should make you allocate equal amounts of resources to each. WHFRP doesn't seem to do that at all. Take a pair of newbie players. One builds a dwarf Slayer and the game practically begs him to max out Strength & Toughness and pick up a bunch of combat actions & talents. The other makes a human Dilettante and focuses on social skills, with maybe the one ranged attack action. When combat rolls around, the slayer is juggling with half-a-dozen options, trading stress for bonus damage, rolling piles of dices, carefully managing active defenses... Meanwhile the dilettante is spamming basic attacks all day, rarely hitting and never critting. Worse case scenario, he might not even have a single active defense. Reverse the situation for social encounters.

And there doesn't seem to be any guardrail or guidelines during character creation to keep players from doing this. It's encouraged even, what with some careers pushing the players to go combat-heavy and others appearing social-heavy.

The second thing I noticed when listening to the Reckless Dice live sessions. Two banes always do at least one stress/fatigue, regardless of the action attempted. Specific locations, critical wounds etc. can add other nasty effects. So take a character who's heavy on stress. Maybe he already has enough to get misfortune dices on mental checks. Or maybe he has a critical wound that makes him woozy. Or maybe he just wasn't all that strong in mental stats to begin with. This character is disincentivized from even attempting a mental action. Any mental action that involves dices, whether it's talking to NPCs or examining a crime scene, has a greater than even chance of worsening his condition or even bringing him over the edge, in addition to having low chances of success.

No, you shouldn't search the witch's hut. Go wait in the corner until combat rolls around.
What do you mean, you aren't built for combat?

1) My understanding is that the stress/fatigue effect for two banes is always available to be triggered -- but that uses up those banes. You don't get that effect PLUS more, unless you have more banes. EDIT: plus I believe it's the GM who chooses what effects get triggered.

2) Yes, if you're heavy on stress, you are in a position of risk. Why is that a problem? Stress is generally the result of player actions -- more maneuvers than the allotment in one turn, or a consequence of the Reckless stance.

# ¿ May 4, 2012 22:52

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Splicer posted:

e:
Come to think of it... does stress/fatigue damage ignore soak?

Good catch. It must, or there would be no point to monsters suffering such small amounts of damage.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2012 01:06

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Sorry Mikan. I liked Lure of Power a lot, and I also liked Witch's Song quite a bit because it gives people another route for magic.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2012 03:53

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Unzip and Attack posted:

Given the amount of praise this system has gotten in other threads I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on this but I have a question.

My gaming group likes to really talk things through and plan before we do anything. We spend most of each gaming session debating the merits of various actions and really try to get into character. We do combat but it's almost an afterthought these days as the meat of the story is usually in our character interactions and dealing with the moral dilemmas our GM throws at us.

Will this system be a good fit for a group like ours? It seems fairly balanced and I like the social combat descriptions offered up - mainly I'm just wondering if the game is too crunchy for a group of players that likes to interact socially as much as we do shanking bad guys.

I'd argue it's actually better for a group like yours because it has better mechanics for the non-combat things. I'll point in particular to the party sheet, where the GM or even other players can add tension to whole party (with consequences for all) when a moral debate is going on too long for (or contrary to) their tastes. Not everybody loves the party sheet; it is what finally convinced me to buy the game.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2012 19:02

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

There is also a framework for MapTool that has a die roller in it, but you'd have to have a computer there.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2012 19:16

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

I can't give you an exact citation, but I know I've read that the traits are just as you've described: meaningless unless a rule invokes them. I've also read somewhere (maybe on the FFG site?) that it's up to the GM whether players can get those other actions. To me it seems easy to just say "no" to the whole card if any of its traits ("Dragon" or "Demonic" or "Fuzzy Bunny") don't seem to apply to the PCs, unless there's a good campaign reason to give one of them the option. For example, I'd consider giving a Slaanesh one if the PCs had joined a Slaanesh cult.

Also, in terms of what's balanced for the PCs, my impression overall is that the refresh on a given card is one of its automatic internal balances. This isn't true of all of them, but it's a thing to keep in mind.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2012 15:51

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

SuperKlaus posted:

I saw earlier in this thread a discussion on casters and was assured they're not DnD-style, accomplish-anything overpowered. Are they any sort of overpowered? I can't tell if they stink (Fire damage spell seems to do damage comparable to normal weapons but requires limited energy supply and chance of bizarre error?) or are a bit much (don't see anything nutty in Core but I get nervous about seeing so many expansion products that brag about giving casters new toys).

That about explains it -- limited energy supply and a constant threat of things going badly.

quote:

What's the word on Reckless v Conservative? Are the two fairly balanced? I see all that bad crap on the Reckless dice and would like experienced player input on whether the double birds and double hammers compare to Conservative's loads of hammers.

Conservative dice have a greater chance for success and delay, compared to Characteristic dice. Reckless dice have a greater chances of landing significant successes and critical hits than Conservative or Characteristic dice, at the cost of fatigue/stress.

To take this one step further: the downsides of red and green dice are costs to limited resources. In the former case it's those types of exertion, which have clear total counts for the PC, and in the latter it's more time for bad guys to whack at you, which you can't count unless you're taking damage automatically and therefore know exactly how much time you have left. So Reckless Dice are definitely better in fights where you need to take guys out quickly because of the threat they pose (combat's going to be short anyway, so may as well hit more and harder) or when their armor is such that you need to hit them harder (since you hit harder with Reckless). Also a lot of the time your current career defines your stance options so you may not have much choice anyway.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2012 20:49

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

SuperKlaus posted:

Oh cool I had the same question. So the magic smite cards can compensate for no in-career training and thus no dice with comets on them huh? I have a player who loves paladins in DnD and clearly needs to be a Sigmar priest in this and rear end-kicking is important.

Questions abound in the run-up to my first game probably happening this weekend. How do people who can't or won't wear full plate armor - mages, archers, duelist concepts, etc. - match that defense and soak? In the alternative or in addition, how do the heavy warriors draw punishment away from the squishies? My paladin player likes to watch swords roll off his defenses like water on a duck but I don't want the bad old days of the gentlemen's targeting agreement to return.

One thing I've noticed is that anyone can put some soft control on somebody by engaging them. Since disengaging is a maneuver and most monsters can't maneuver the way PCs do, it's an effective way for a heavy warrior to restrict the flow of bad guys to the squishies.

Armor and defensive actions contribute to a warrior's defense, but I'm afraid watching swords roll off armor like water on a duck are now in your paladin player's past.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2012 21:16

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

SuperKlaus posted:

OK I look forward to seeing the new powers. They're in Adventurer's Toolkit maybe? Cuz my point is the engagement rules won't protect a light melee combatant who needs to enter the engagement, and unless I missed a rule about penalty dice for firing at range while in an engagement, ranged monsters have unrestricted firing options.

If you choose a light melee combatant, you will have other strengths, but in this game one of them is not "agility works the same or better than full body armor". If you intend your game to simply be a sequence of pitched battles, any non-heavy-melee career will suffer greatly; the main way for a light melee combatant to contribute would be to engage weaker enemies or lone targets, and by using a player's ability to disengage more freely than the monsters -- light melee is supposed to be more maneuverable anyway.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2012 17:35

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Sanzuo posted:

Am I missing some important mechanic or is this actually how it works?

You can always purchase non-career advances, if that helps, and are never obligated to move to a new one (but with the exception of being out of careers that have a certain slot you need, why wouldn't you?). You are not stopped from buying anything ever, it just costs a bit more.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 19:20

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:48

homullus: Mar 27, 2009

Sanzuo posted:

So if I'm understanding correctly the thief can buy, at most; 2 action cards, 1 talent, 3 skills, 2 fortune dice, 1 conservative and 1 reckless stance piece towards his career advances?

Yes. He can buy those and count them as career advances. He can buy other things, or even more of those things, but they are then non-career advances.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 19:59

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