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Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
On the tabletop wargame, Frenzy is actually a good thing (most of the time), especially if you can choose when to apply it so that its single disadvantage (being forced to charge) doesn't bite you. -10% WS, -10% Int, +10% S, +10% WP is a pretty weird translation of it.

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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy: Tome of Corruption

Why do we raid you? It is the will of the Gods.

The Kurgan live in the great eastern steppes, east of Norsca and north of Kislev. These vast grasslands border the Chaos Wastes themselves, and the Kurgan are some of the principle people of the Dark Gods. They're humans, like Norscans or Imperials, though they get an actual stat adjustment (+5 S, +5 T, -5 Int, -5 Fel) for some reason. They're wandering steppe nomads, herding their cattle and animals across the endless plains and hunting antelope and chaos spawn for food (this does not sound wise). Above all other things, they worship the Dark Gods wholeheartedly and completely, unlike the Norse. They're simply too close to the realms of Chaos to resist them, with mutation being both common and encouraged among their people. Much like the Beastmen, their attitude towards war and conflict is a reflection of Chaos's plan for the entire world. The book can claim they have a complex and rich culture, but all it ever describes them doing is raiding, fighting each other to see who should be leading the raiding, and doing precisely what their Gods demand in every situation. They are a people completely subservient to Chaos.

This is the main difference between Kurgan and Norse: They are not simply influenced by the darkness spilling down from the north, they're close enough to be completely overtaken by it. Their entire culture revolves around the idea of the Gods being forces of dynamic, every-changing alteration to the land and the people. The flesh is a reflection of the divine, and so a person whose flesh begins to change has been marked by the divine and should be afforded special favor and status. Men fight under their Zar, the tribal chieftan, and the Zar determines everything that the Shaman doesn't. Women are judged solely by how strong of men they choose to sleep with and how well their sons do in war. The Kurgan do not marry, and a man has nothing to do with the raising of his sons; he is expected to be off and fighting, with no care for any sort of domestic life. The Kurgan love to take slaves in battle, but do not use them for labor. They pit them against other tribes' captives in proxy battles and ceremonies of the Gods, forcing comrade to kill comrade and marking their slaves with warpstone-ink tattoos to begin changing their flesh. Once a slave kills enough enemies and begins to praise the Gods, he's adopted into the tribe.

To the Kurgan, they are to make war at all times to bring change to the world. They use the excuse that changing something from living to dead, from existing to not existing, is the greatest change they could cause and the surest monument to Chaos. At most times the Kurgan simply raid, but if an enemy has defeated them in the past, or if their population has grown too large to support, they launch all out assaults using multiple tribes to try to remove their enemy. If they win, they defeat a foe and take his things to sustain themselves. If they lose, it solves the overpopulation problem.

Unlike the Norse, the Kurgan see the entire physical world as a great manifestation of the Gods' will. They don't believe there's a transcendent realm beyond it. The World is Chaos and Chaos is the World, and the more they can make this true the more they will. They tell themselves the same thing the Norse do, that all peoples of Chaos do: That this is a sign of their strength and their willingness to accept the world as it really is. The Gods are all there is, and their will must be obeyed in all things. It would be weakness to pretend things could ever be different, or better. Unlike the Norse, who seem to regard the worse parts of the Gods as something to be mitigated and accepted and kept at bay, the Kurgan simply embrace it whole-heartedly. They have no more resistance to give. All they live for is becoming more and more favored by the Gods and spreading their influence further at the point of a sword from the back of their ponies.

The Hung are...well, here comes some turbo-racism. They're another Asiatic steppe people like the Kurgan who are known for being filthy monsters who lie all the time. They love to steal things of beauty from cities they destroy but don't understand them, dressing up in fine but filthy silks and pretending to be 'civilized'. They're cruel to all their animals and never keep their word in anything as they plunder across the steppes and murder at random. They've also fallen under the control of Morathi of Naggaroth, the mother of Malekith and dark sorceress of the Dark Elves. She wishes to reinvigorate the worship of Slaanesh among her people by taking control of a horde of steppe archers and then sending them into Lustria as expendable footsoldiers, which will surely not go badly for her or them. The Hung are just uncomfortable and I don't know why they're even here; they're statistically identical to the Kurgan but aren't portrayed with any of the sort of tragedy that the other peoples enthralled to the Dark Gods have. I'm sure they're some old GW supplement that merited a couple paragraphs here, but I wish they'd been cleaned up or left out of it. The little line of 'PCs being Kurgan would be fine, but Hung are too treacherous and evil to ever be okay as PCs' just seals this weird little diversion into weird orientalist racist poo poo.

Look, I like this game line, a lot. It doesn't usually do this, outside the occasional moment like some of the overtones Ulric can take on sometimes. This whole mess is more jarring just because I have no idea where the hell it comes from.

Next Time: The Chaos Dwarfs, so things get good again.

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

Night10194 posted:

This whole mess is more jarring just because I have no idea where the hell it comes from.

That One Guy in the office, I guess. Especially if he's a line editor sent by GW with the power to demand edits.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Night10194 posted:

I actually consider the 100 EXP Per Advance thing a really good part of the system considering what happened when they tried to drop it in Dark Heresy. Ironically, all the diminishing returns and 'your class determines how much X costs' just led to PCs generally being super, hyper specialized at what was cheaper for them rather than allowing more freedom in building. Also, 'You get one tangible improvement a session at least' just ends up feeling good in practice for giving a sense of progression.
The 40k version of WFRP2e just makes character creation and advancement an aggravating chore.

Usually, when people say "I know that the new edition is better-balanced and more straightforward, but it doesn't feel right," I scoff. But when it comes to WFRP...welp, I'm inclined to run it in something like Shadow of the Demon Lord, but I find the old Careers system really does have a unique charm.

Tendales
Mar 9, 2012

Mors Rattus posted:

RIP Chaos Dwarves, squatted for being too cool

Yet another sin of Age of Sigmar is that Chaos Dwarves were slowly returning to the game, and then welp.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The core of why the Hung come off so extremely uncomfortably and the Kurgan don't, despite both being steppe nomads who serves the Dark Gods (the Kurgan are like Chaos Scythians) is because with the Kurgan, it isn't portrayed as being their 'nature'. There's no emphasis on how filthy and cheating and evil they are. They're a people who happen to live too close to a cosmic source of evil that flows into the world from a literal wound on reality. It has taken them and made them into an entire society of raiders, slavers, and killers, because that's what it would do to everyone if it could influence them so. They're not vulnerable because of some flaw or moral failing, they're vulnerable because they just happen to live in the wrong place and the wrong time.

With the Hung, it's like 'Yeah, filthy poo poo-covered evil savages who lie, who are sly with all peoples and can't understand beauty or culture, oh and also demon gods.' and that's just...wow.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Night10194 posted:

Look, I like this game line, a lot. It doesn't usually do this, outside the occasional moment like some of the overtones Ulric can take on sometimes. This whole mess is more jarring just because I have no idea where the hell it comes from.

Next Time: The Chaos Dwarfs, so things get good again.
The Hung a mess that I honestly cannot figure out even for GW. They are specifically plopped down in the North America equivalent area, but for some reason are based exclusively on racist Asian stereotypes. They are also only mentioned in any detail twice. Here in the Tome of Corruption and earlier in the Warhammer fluff book Liber Chaotica. If I'm remembering correctly the WFRPG book basically copy and pastes most of the Hung content directly from the Liber Chaotica.

edit: Actually did the Tome of Corruption leave out the bit from Libre Chaotica where they worship their own poo poo as an incarnation of Nurgle? Cause that sounds like something you'd mention.

Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Aug 15, 2017

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Terrible Opinions posted:

edit: Actually did the Tome of Corruption leave out the bit from Libre Chaotica where they worship their own poo poo as an incarnation of Nurgle? Cause that sounds like something you'd mention.

Nope, that's in there, I just didn't want to bother with many of the details of the couple paragraphs they get.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

I was going to say the real question is why WHF needs two Always Evil not-Mongols, until I realized the Hung were in Naggorath. Also


Terrible Opinions posted:

edit: Actually did the Tome of Corruption leave out the bit from Libre Chaotica where they worship their own poo poo as an incarnation of Nurgle? Cause that sounds like something you'd mention.

:stonklol:

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

All this said, I love the idea that Morathi has decided the best possible plan is to send some idiots with lovely gear and shittier leadership to Lustria, where they will not at all be cut down by lizardmen Amazons the local wildlife really big mosquitos.

Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Aug 15, 2017

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



The Kurgan aren't supposed to be "not mongols". They're supposed to be "not Turks"/"not Slavs". Hence being named Kurgan after the cultural object of Slavic/central Asian steppe people Eastern European Highlander bad guy.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy: Tome of Corruption

If you had not abandoned us, our great family would never have been sundered.

The dwarfs do not speak of the chaos dwarfs. If they do, it is only to call them traitors and say they'll be dead as soon as their kin have time to attend to them. When magic flowed into the world in great rivers from the collapse of the northern Gate, the elves learned from the Slaan how to channel the magic and use their spells. The dwarfs, on the other hand, experimented with creating runes of power to contain the spells rather than working them themselves. These images and symbols could produce great power, channeling the Winds of Magic even though the dwarfs couldn't easily wield or sense them, themselves. Those who wanted to continue to study this power quarreled with those who thought it too dangerous (or too elven), and they agreed to part company in peace, as they were all kin. Those who sought the power of runes headed north and east, journeying to find new lands to build their holds. Some settled in what's known as the Dark Lands, east of what would become Kislev. It was a harsh country, split by volcanoes and full of magma, but they struck the earth and found overflowing gold and gems. Soon, the fortress at Karak Vlag was known as one of the richest and most innovative of all dwarf holds.

But then, during another of the many Chaos Incursions, the Dwarfs of Karak Vlag lost. Marauders overran their lands and drove them back to their forts, and they called to the southern brethren for aid. No rescue came for Karak Vlag, and as they prepared to face their end, the Runesmiths called out to the void for help with their powers and magic inventions. Something not of the Four Gods answered, and as the doors were collapsing and the darkness was about to exterminate their people, the Smiths of Karak Vlag said yes. Thus, Hashut, the Father in Darkness, whisked away the entire hold of Karak Valg and its people, and the Hold was never found again.

But the people survived. They moved down to the plains, the Runesmiths now priests of their savior, and he asked only that they build. First a great city, Zharr-Naggarund, the City of Fire. Then a great altar to their new God. But he demanded that they build more, in his name. When they pleaded that their hands were too few, he told them to get more. They tried to capture orcs as slaves, but the orcs rebelled constantly. They managed to make pacts with the hobgoblins of the steppe and plains, a deal that would benefit both, and sent their new mercenaries south to raid the silk roads between the Old World and Cathay. But their hands were too few, and their God demanded that they build. So they case their gaze to the tribes of the Kurgan and the Norse, the murderous people enslaved by the Dark Four, and they told them they could give them weapons if only they would sell them slaves. Now, the hordes of Chaos get their Chaos Armor and their mighty weapons from the dwarfs of Zharr-Naggarund, and they build as their God commands. They have no idea what Hashut wants with all the great structures and enormous machines, only that they must make them, and that there is a schedule to keep, no matter how many it kills or what it costs.

So yes, the Chaos Dwarfs are where all these other jerks get their weapons from. Also, they've had the secrets of Arcane Magic revealed to their once-Runesmiths, now Sorcerers, as well as terrible magitek engineering talents. Their magic is powerful, combining the Lore of Fire and Lore of Chaos, but as a Dwarf Sorcerer advances in power they slowly turn to stone. Every time they buy +1 Mag in the Sorcerer careers they get, they lose 1 point of Movement. If Mv hits 0, they turn to stone forever. They have to rely on mutation, magic, or very specific careers prior to Sorcerer to survive their advancement. They also get a unique, powerful Chaos Engineer basic career that lets a starting character understand the most complex of weapons and dark sciences. Otherwise they mostly use normal careers.

The Chaos Dwarfs are a neat thing that explains why these jerks all have finely made weapons and heavy armor and real siege engines to raid south with. They produce everything high-tech that the forces of Chaos use, and they do it while impatiently trying to get on with meeting their schedule. They're not screamingly insane, they're middle-managers and engineers trying to keep up with the plans passed down by management on high, even if the plan says 'lower some slaves into molten iron to see if that fixes the magical flow issue we've been having on sprocket 9c'.

Next: Dark Elves: We're totally using Chaos, not the other way around!

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Their Chaos God is also interesting in a way that is rivaled only by Nurgle. He has only one command: Create.

And never stop.

You aren't creating enough.

Create more.

Faster.

Build.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

All this said, I love the idea that Morathi has decided the best possible plan is to send some idiots with lovely gear and shittier leadership to Lustria, where they will not at all be cut down by lizardmen Amazons the local wildlife really big mosquitos.

Look, all she's gotta do is get a couple relics of the Old Ones and then she can finally blow up Ulthuan and claim rulership of all the elves for her son. Maybe that'll get him out of this 5000 year 'black spikes and talk of endless strength and racial purity' phase he's been in.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Let's be fair, he's wanted to have sex with his mom for all that time, too, the reason he's still in the black spikes phase is he can't take his armor off.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Mors Rattus posted:

Their Chaos God is also interesting in a way that is rivaled only by Nurgle. He has only one command: Create.

And never stop.

You aren't creating enough.

Create more.

Faster.

Build.
Well, this works out just fine for the Chaos Fraggles.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy: Tome of Corruption

It's not a phase, mom. This is who I AM

The Dark Elves are assholes. That's really enough to describe them in whole. They're arrogant jackasses who think they can use and manipulate all of the various forces of Chaos, despite the fact that all their attempts to do so have done very little to win them their endless succession war with their kin on Ulthuan and have measurably damaged the world. Morathi has probably done more damage than any individual Everchosen and Malekith isn't far behind. But their relationship with the dark forces is complicated, because they genuinely think they're in charge in everything. To be clear, Morathi is the high priestess of the Cult of Pleasure and probably has been since her husband 'rescued' her from them millennia ago. She is absolutely a straight up Slaanesh worshiper, as are most of her direct followers. At the same time, Malekith hates Slaanesh and instead venerates only Khaine, the Elven god of doing wrong in the name of doing right. Khaine is the Lord of Murder and blood, the god of *killing other elves*, which is a specific and enormous sin for elves.

As you might imagine, plenty of people have pointed out that a God of Blood and slaughter whose name starts with Kh sounds an awful lot like somebody else. The Druchii would say they don't worship Khorne and that Khaine is obviously a totally different, legitimate God. It's entirely up to you whether Malekith just picked the edgiest God in the pantheon to elevate to chief God of his murderous torture slave-taker elf society or whether he's one of the only people in history who has managed to get tricked by *Khorne*. Whatever the case, Khaine worship has gotten crazy over in Naggaroth, to the point where the elves have a literal 'murder is legal tonight' festival every year where the priestesses of Khaine run about murdering people at random and picking children to take off to train as priests and/or Assassins. Don't ask me how the notoriously slow-breeding elven population survives ritualistic crime murder nights.

It should also be noted that Dark Elves aren't physically any different than other elves, save a tendency towards having black hair. They're the same species as the Asur from Ulthuan and *probably* the same species as the Fae/Asrai living in Athel Loren (a little hard to say with that place) and to an Imperial, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They aren't marked by Chaos or mutated or easily distinguishable in any way except maybe the way they're arrogant even by elf standards.

The main Chaos presence with the Dark Elves comes in two places. The first is the Cult of Pleasure. Slaanesh worship is all over the place, no matter how much the Khainates try to stomp it out. No reason is given for this anywhere in anything that I've read, though I know later Elf stuff imports the whole 'All elves are bound to Slaanesh at her creation and are trying to avoid getting eaten by her' thing from 40k over to Fantasy. The fact that there's absolutely nothing on that here makes me more confident in my belief that that didn't used to be a thing in Fantasy. I suspect elves are just vulnerable to Slaanesh because they get bored out of their skulls spending forty years learning to do some basic task and want to unwind, and because they're arrogant enough to think they can get away with it clean. Morathi has actively spread the Cult as far as she can, and is always seeking to let it take over more of her people so that she can have more personal power to use to keep her beloved idiot son safe. Meanwhile, he does everything he can to undermine and stop it because Slaanesh isn't edgy enough for him.

The other place is that Naggaroth still connects up to the north pole. The Druchii are very 'I'm strong because I'll use any means necessary!' type villains, and so they recognize there's enormous power up there closer to the Realm of Chaos. They build great sorcerous watchtowers and try to use them to keep an eye on the northern tribes, and to channel the power of darkness into more magic for them. They also regularly try to manipulate or point the hordes of Chaos at other foes, because they always assume they can clean them up or control them afterwards.

Like I said, Dark Elves are assholes.

Next Time: How To Actually Play A Giant Power Metal Murder Machine.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal

Mors Rattus posted:

This is actually quite promising and I want your thoughts on the doc as a whole, Night.

after having a look at it, it's actually really good at avoiding or subverting racist narratives. That's probably because there's not that much from Games Workshop in there and the doc writer is adding a lot of his own stuff from a campaign he did, including an ancient civilisation of higher-tech snake people shapeshifters. It's a strange read.

Wapole Languray
Jul 4, 2012

Weapons of the Stone Age

Weapons in Würm may seem primitive, but they were good enough to let us survive for longer than most civilizations. Most weapons are made of wood, stone, or bone. Wood is the simplest and easiest to make, stone is used to make harder heavier strikers and sharp cutting edges, while bone weapons made of bone, antler, horn, or ivory is harp and sturdy, and can even be resharpened after use.

Stone or bone weapons are fit into a handle, which is often finely shaped to be straight and sturdy. The bone or stone is attached using glue and strong. The glue is made of birch bark tar, pine tar, beeswax, coal, bones, and fish. This glue is made and stored for later use. The string wraps over the glue fixing the weapon to the handle and is made of tendon, leather, or dried gut.

Weapon Resistance and Breaking Weapons

At the end of every round, if your weapon has caused damage you have to roll 1d6 and check to see what happened to your weapon:

Damaged weapons are usable, but do one less damage until they are repaired by the appropriate Craft. Broken weapons are destroyed and unusable.

Some weapons have special interactions: If you are using a club or axe, and the opponent is using a spear or javelin, you can break their weapon. Get a Critical Success on an attack, and instead of damage you can choose to test its resistance. Normal characters roll 1d3, ones with the Strength of the Bear or Might of the Bison Strengths roll two d3 and keep the highest, Weak characters roll two d3 and keep the lowest. Wait that’s not right… Okay this rule has a minor translation error. Namely, it should be inverted: Strengths should let you keep the lowest not the highest, and Weak should be the opposite. This is because the result of the roll is found on the Weapons Resistance table, where lower results are better. Which honestly is pretty minor. For a game translated by a fairly small company this sort of thing isn’t really unexpected. Otherwise, with that minor correction the rule works fine.

Weapons



Now, as this section is short on art, I’ll be pulling images of the various weapons from around the internet for illustrative purposes. That said, let’s get to it!



  • Stone Knife A stone blade with a wooden handle. More a tool than a weapon, everyone carries at least one as everyday wear. They were used like… knives. Cut plants, hide, meat, carve wood, trim hair, sharpen sticks, and sometimes to stab something. Stone knives are Normal resistance weapons, and do 1d6 Damage.


  • Bone Dagger A single sharpened piece of bone or ivory, without a separate handle. Bone daggers are sturdier than stone, and have Greater resistance and do 1d6+1 Damage.


  • Fire-Hardened Spear A spear made of polished and fire hardened wood. Not just sharpened sticks, wooden spears are finely balanced and shaped with wicked points. They have Greater resistance, and do 2d6-1 damage.


  • Stone-Tipped Spear Yep, wooden shaft with a stone tip. Generally the tip is small, to make it harder to break and prevent it getting stuck in bones. It has Normal resistance, stone is more liable to break and chip and is harder to replace than wood, but does a full 2d6 damage.


  • Bone-Tipped Spear Most often actually tipped with sharpened antler, bone spears are sharper, tougher, and jus better than other types. They are Greater resistance and do 1d6+1 damage.


  • Ivory Lance A weapon exclusive to the Gravettian culture. It is a long lance made of a single solid piece of shaped mammoth ivory. It is incredibly sturdy, with Magical resistance, and does as much damage as a Bone-Tipped Spear. It’s only weaknesses are it is very heavy, only able to be thrown 5 meters, half the distance of a normal spear.


  • Cudgel and Heavy Club Essentially the same weapon, but in one and two-handed varieties. These are blunt weapons made of solid hardwood. Once again, these weapons are finely shaped and polished, not just random hunks of lumber picked up off the ground. Both are Greater resistance weapons, doing 1d6 and 2d6 weapons respectively. They cannot be used for ranged attacks.


  • Stone Axe A weapon-tool made of a large stone flake attached to a short handle. The shaft is often maintained, while the stone head replaced as it chips and wears down. The Stone Axe does 1d6+2 damage, cannot be thrown as an attack, and has Normal resistance. Some stone axes have massive bifaces for heads instead of the normal stone flake. Such a weapon does 1d10 Damage, but has Lesser resistance and cannot be used by Weak characters.


  • War Club A blunt weapon made of a wooden shaft with a heavy head of stone, bone, or particularly hard wood. War Clubs are usually one meter long, with a fist-sized head. War clubs are designed to be used in combat with other people, and are semi-sacred. War clubs cannot be touched by non-combatants and never be used against animals, lest you anger the Spirits. War Clubs do 1d6+3 damage and have Normal resistance. They cannot be used as ranged weapons.


  • Javelins Thin wooden lances made for throwing. Spear-throwers and atlatls aren’t in existence yet, but some tribes do fletch their javelins for better accuracy. Some are tipped with bone for extra damage and toughness. Wooden Javelins do 1d6 damage, have a range of 40m and are the only weapon with Lesser resistance. Bone-Tipped Javelins do +1 damage, and have Normal resistance to breaking.


  • Throwing Stick A club designed for throwing at enemies, sometimes made of bone but mostly wood. When thrown it rotates through the air parallel to the ground. It is not a boomerang and does not return to the user. Some have holes drilled through them to make a terrifying noise to frighten animals and enemies. Throwing sticks do 1d6 damage, have a range of 50m and Greater resistance.


  • Bolas Several stone balls, covered in leather and tied together. You throw them at animals to tangle up their legs. Bolas do 1d6 damage on a hit, and have a range of 20m with Normal Resistance. How tangling things work is pretty simple: Get a Brilliant or Critical success. Then you roll 1d6 to determine if they’ve been immobilized. Humans and equivalently sized creatures like horses, deer, and antelopes are immobilized on a result 3 through 6, while larger animals like Aurochs, bison, etc are 4 through 6. Smaller animals aren’t big enough to get tangled up by bolas, and larger animals like mammoths and rhinoceroses are too big. If you hit but miss they just do damage. When the target is incapacitated they take a -3 to Attack rolls, anyone attacking them gets a +3 to Attack, and the incapacitated target does half-damage if they are able to attack at all.


  • Fish Spear Only technically a weapon in dire circumstances. A fishing spear is made of wood, with several, sometimes barbed, tips used to spear fish. It does 1d6+2 damage and has Normal resistance. If you go fishing with one, you get a +1 to your Fishing!


  • Sling Made of leather, slings are the dominant ranged weapon in the Paleolithic. They do 1d6 damage, and reach a range of 60m. If you use random rocks off the ground instead of specially chosen or crafted sling stones your Damage takes a -1 Penalty.

  • Rocks When all else fails, throw a rock at it. Rocks come in four sizes, small, medium, large, and huge. They do 1d3, 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 damage respectively. Small and medium rocks have a range of 10m to throw, large and huge 5m. Small rocks can be thrown or wielded one handed by both peoples, but only Bear Men can one-hand use medium rocks, and both people need two hands for large ones! Long Men can’t use huge rocks at all, as only Bear Men with their greater physical strength can use them effectively as weapons.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Sharp thing on a long stick is nothing to mess with.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Night10194 posted:

Sharp thing on a long stick is nothing to mess with.

Any plan that worked for 400,000 or more years can't be all wrong!

Actually, some theories are that it's more like 'multiple million', though anything beyond about a half million would just be rough sharp sticks like chimpanzees use. Stone-tipped spears are at least 300,000 years old though, and carved wood spears 400,000. (Fire-hardening came later, as did flaked stone heads - around 250,000-ish, I think.)

Edit: Does Wurm have rules for atlatl or other spear-throwing tools, or have they not been invented yet? We're pretty sure they're at least 30,000 years old; 30,000 BCE is a little later than Wurm is set, as I recall, but it's close.

Prism fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Aug 16, 2017

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

So the way I understand it, outside of lucking into a mutation that increases movement, the best way to make sure you don't turn completely to stone as a Chaos Sorcerer is to start as a Runebearer and then pay the experience to go into another non-exit class so you have a movement of 5 to work with (thanks to the class advance and Fleet Footed). If you get to more than 2 Mag and have a career with one more, as a player I guess you really have to put that last point of magic off for last and spend the XP to ditch your class before its technically finished? Otherwise you're boned. Which narratively fits with an NPC embracing more magic than their bodies can handle and turning solid.

Does their stone skin stack with armor? I love the idea of a plated out chaos sorcerer being carted around like a living mortar or just stomping through a battle like a very short, explosive Jason Vorhees.

marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Aug 16, 2017

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

marshmallow creep posted:

So the way I understand it, outside of lucking into a mutation that increases movement, the best way to make sure you don't turn completely to stone as a Chaos Sorcerer is to start as a Runebearer and then pay the experience to go into another non-exit class so you have a movement of 5 to work with.

Does their stone skin stack with armor? I love the idea of a plated out chaos sorcerer being carted around like a living mortar or just stomping through a battle like a very short, explosive Jason Vorhees.

Nothing saying it doesn't, and yes, dwarven distance runner is the best lead-in career for dark wizard.

Though remember, Armor gives -1, -3, or -5 Casting if you have light, medium, or heavy on.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

If you had Sturdy, would that cancel that penalty too?

edit: Oh wait, there's an Armoured Casting talent for that. So you can reduce the penalty to -2 in plate. No wait, that's for priests only.

marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Aug 16, 2017

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Is there a Career to become a centaur?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

Is there a Career to become a centaur?

Unfortunately no. There's a sidebar promising there'll be more on Chaos Dwarfs in a future product that sadly never got published.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

It'd be funny if starting as a Beastman (perhaps a Truegor) and rolling an extra Animal Legs mutation turned you into a centaur.

The section on Dark Elves also feels really brief, too. Chaos Dwarfs get twice the page count and that's not saying much. More stuff about Naggaroth and Ulthuan would have been nice. Perhaps Cubicle 7 will have more time to write more stuff than these guys did.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

marshmallow creep posted:

If you had Sturdy, would that cancel that penalty too?

edit: Oh wait, there's an Armoured Casting talent for that. So you can reduce the penalty to -2 in plate. No wait, that's for priests only.

Do Runesmiths not count as priests? The flavour text provided suggests they are priests of Hashut, but I wouldn't know how to read a Warhammer Fantasy statblock if I saw one.

Edit: Or do they have a different priest class?

Prism fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Aug 16, 2017

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Prism posted:

Do Runesmiths not count as priests? The flavour text provided suggests they are priests of Hashut, but I wouldn't know how to read a Warhammer Fantasy statblock if I saw one.

Edit: Or do they have a different priest class?

Their magic might be priestly but none of their Careers get Armored Casting.

They later say Chaos Magic actually counts as Divine or Arcane, whichever is more favorable to the caster.

Wapole Languray
Jul 4, 2012

Prism posted:

Any plan that worked for 400,000 or more years can't be all wrong!

Actually, some theories are that it's more like 'multiple million', though anything beyond about a half million would just be rough sharp sticks like chimpanzees use. Stone-tipped spears are at least 300,000 years old though, and carved wood spears 400,000. (Fire-hardening came later, as did flaked stone heads - around 250,000-ish, I think.)

Edit: Does Wurm have rules for atlatl or other spear-throwing tools, or have they not been invented yet? We're pretty sure they're at least 30,000 years old; 30,000 BCE is a little later than Wurm is set, as I recall, but it's close.

Yes, but not in Europe at the time. Archaeologists have no evidence of spear-throwers existing until around 10,000 BCE. Same for Bow and Arrow. As primitive as it seems, Wurm is set about 30,000 years before the first evidence they existed.

Knowing about paleolithic tools and weapons is a crapshoot though, as a lot of it would have been broken or rotted away. There's a lot of speculation and inference in it.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

I'm surprised bone spears do more damage than stone spears, given how incredibly sharp you can make flaked stone. I guess you're limited by how large you can make the blade before it becomes excessively fragile?

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Wapole Languray posted:

Yes, but not in Europe at the time. Archaeologists have no evidence of spear-throwers existing until around 10,000 BCE. Same for Bow and Arrow. As primitive as it seems, Wurm is set about 30,000 years before the first evidence they existed.

Knowing about paleolithic tools and weapons is a crapshoot though, as a lot of it would have been broken or rotted away. There's a lot of speculation and inference in it.

There's actually a reindeer antler spear-thrower from France that's ~17500 years old and that's the oldest one that's survived that I know of, but yeah, earlier than that is inference. I studied the era briefly and the general consensus seems to be that they were probably used for many years before the Dordogne spear-thrower, but it's hard to prove. It doesn't surprise me if they're not in Wurm, but it also wouldn't have surprised me if they were, hence the question.

Night10194 posted:

Their magic might be priestly but none of their Careers get Armored Casting.

They later say Chaos Magic actually counts as Divine or Arcane, whichever is more favorable to the caster.

Ah, didn't know it had to be specifically granted. It was a good plan while it lasted.

Edit: vvvv we're probably talking about the same artifact, ha ha

Prism fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Aug 16, 2017

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Wapole Languray posted:

Yes, but not in Europe at the time. Archaeologists have no evidence of spear-throwers existing until around 10,000 BCE. Same for Bow and Arrow. As primitive as it seems, Wurm is set about 30,000 years before the first evidence they existed.
That's off by at least 7000 years. There's an antler atlatl that's pretty securely dated to circa 17,500 years ago, and is definitely part of the Solutrean tool industry, so they absolutely existed by then in Europe. If you accept the theory that bātons de commandement are spear throwers (I personally think this is the most likely explanation for them), then the dates for physical examples gets pushed back to about 23,000 years ago.

Wurm is set far enough back that it likely predates spear throwers, but its close to the probably horizon of their development.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

I know they explicitly say if you go from divine to arcane lore (or vice versa) you are giving up your old abilities, but if you want to make a kind of mage tank in this game would you be able to take a priest line up to Armoured Casting and then ditch for wizardry and still apply its benefit? The text of the talent mentions prayer as part of its flavor but isn't explicit about what spells it works on. It would be an excessive investment but someone really committed might go that distance.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

marshmallow creep posted:

I know they explicitly say if you go from divine to arcane lore (or vice versa) you are giving up your old abilities, but if you want to make a kind of mage tank in this game would you be able to take a priest line up to Armoured Casting and then ditch for wizardry and still apply its benefit? The text of the talent mentions prayer as part of its flavor but isn't explicit about what spells it works on. It would be an excessive investment but someone really committed might go that distance.

The weirdest part is Vampire Lords get Armored Cast, and they *only* have Arcane Lore. I think I'd just have it work on anything if you managed to put in that kind of insane investment to get it.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Mors Rattus posted:

Their Chaos God is also interesting in a way that is rivaled only by Nurgle. He has only one command: Create.

And never stop.

You aren't creating enough.

Create more.

Faster.

Build.
Is it the Yudkowsky God?

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.


Oh a scotsman clad all goff wrote a book one evenin' fair,
And one could tell from how it read that he'd dyed black all his hair,
He fumbled round with rules a while until he lost that thread,
Then he filled the book with grim bullshit and misery instead

System Mastery reviews A|State

Ryuujin
Sep 26, 2007
Dragon God
Hmm all this talk of Warhammer Fantasy 2e makes me wonder if anyone ever did a writeup of Warhammer Fantasy 3e.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I sort of hope someone familiar with it does. I'd like to know more about it.

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Vox Valentine
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

theironjef posted:


Oh a scotsman clad all goff wrote a book one evenin' fair,
And one could tell from how it read that he'd dyed black all his hair,
He fumbled round with rules a while until he lost that thread,
Then he filled the book with grim bullshit and misery instead

System Mastery reviews A|State
Well this kinda answers the question of "should I circle the wagons around the other Contested Ground games and review A|State". I found the book a while back and started reading it and was very interested in its world and then I got bored and stopped. Thanks for covering this one.

e: I have made a mistake listening to the song "Dur Dur D'Etre Baby" and watching the music video. It is only proof that we had no idea what to do with the world after we didn't kill ourselves during the Cold War.

Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Aug 16, 2017

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