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 HO THERE! A shadow falls over the Reikland and dark deeds are afoot at the behest of foul fiends and scheming heretics. Gather your protagonists, rat catchers and sell swords—there’s righteous work to be done for the brave, bold or simply opportunistic men and women of the Empire. Herein lies the formidable undertaking of seeking interested souls to partake in an adventure in Warhammer Fantasy Fourth Edition, the latest rendition of the fare from Cubicle 7 Entertainment and a grim and perilous ride. Hearkening back to the earlier editions after the peculiar hybrid that was Third Edition, it’s pretty darn neat. I’m after six brave souls to embark on this adventure, to form bonds of camaraderie in the thickest of circumstances and maybe, just maybe, survive to see the other side before the end times beckon.  Throughout all this business I'll be available on irc.synirc.net in the channel #whsor for any inquiries or chatter or camaraderie because I'm antiquated and still use IRC. Character Creation  Creating a character in Warhammer Fantasy 4E entails: * Arriving at your species (human, halfling, dwarf, high elf or wood elf) * Your class and career (such as hunter, watchman, priest, agitator or the almighty rat catcher) * Your attributes (there’s ten, ranging from weapon skill to willpower to wounds) * Your skills and talents (efficacy at tasks and special perks for various circumstances) * Your trappings (the gear and tools of the trade you’ll take with you on your journey) * Your details (name, appearance, all the good stuff) Warhammer Fantasy 4E is primarily a percentile system rolling 1d100 for resolution—fourth edition has jazzed that up a bit and there are success levels—in the positive and negative—and one can potentially fail forward and other such developments. There’s a lot here, but it’s fairly straightforward despite the broad pool of options at each stage—and you have the option of assigning and picking things as you please to chart a path through character creation or, alternatively… “Ranald, take the wheel!” If you’re a bold, brave, cool cat, you can take the option to entrust your character-to-be in the capable hands of Ranald—and you even get incentive to do so by way of some bonus experience to sweeten the pot! I’m of the personal opinion that going all-in with a random character is the premium way to approach Warhammer Fantasy, but I’m fine with folks who may err on the side of stern-miened inquisitors and going with safe chosen character elements. I won’t judge you that much. You can go a la carte when it comes to Ranald’s involvement in the mix, e.g. you can randomly determine your species but then pick your class and so forth—but for each element of character creation you leave to chance you get additional bonus experience. Experience in fourth edition is a flexible pool that you can spend on things as you like afterwards as your character develops further. For anyone who wants to brave the rolls, we’ll use Orokos and I’d like you to submit the rolls using the Campaign entry Ranald’s Reikland Rolls so that we get them all neatly together. In the description, please include your forum name and which roll you’re performing. You can also, optionally, visit me in #whsor on irc.synirc.net if you'd like to use an ill-tempered power-mad dicebot instead. Let’s get cracking! Step 1: Species You can either take your pick of Human, Halfling, Dwarf, High Elf or Wood Elf, or you can roll 1d100 and gain +20 XP if you accept the result. Your species influences which classes and careers are open to you in step 2 and affects your attributes. 01-90 is Human 91-94 is Halfling 95-98 is Dwarf 99 is High Elf 00 is Wood Elf  Step 2: Class and Career Roll 1d100 for a Random Class and Career—and if you keep the result, gain +50 XP. If you don’t like your first result, you can roll twice more and have a pool of three options to pick from—and still gain +25 XP. Otherwise, you can just pick your class and career but receive no bonus XP.   Step 3: Attributes Now you roll 2d10 for each of the ten Characteristics (and each species has a base that gets added to those results.) If you stick with the random results in order, gain +50 XP. If you’re not happy with that spread, you can rearrange them in any order you like and still gain +25 XP. If you’re still not happy, you can either re-roll and swap around at your leisure or just allocate 100 points across the ten Characteristics—with a minimum of 4 and maximum of 18 allocated to any single Characteristic; as you probably guessed, there’s no bonus XP if you go these routes.  Step 4: Skills and Talents For skills, you’re distributing ‘advances’ which are determining your total skill—so for example, Climb is associated with Strength, so if you’ve got a Strength of 32 and 6 Climb advances, your Climb Skill would be 38. At character creation, you get to pick 3 Skills to gain 5 Advances each, and 3 Skills to gain 3 Advances each; the skill pool you can pick from is a combination of options from your species + class. Keep track of how many Advances you put into each Characteristic and Skill, as this determines the scaling XP cost of additional Advances.  Now we’re getting into some nitty gritty. There’s basic and advanced skills—anyone can attempt a basic skill even if they don’t have anything in it, using the governing attribute; advanced skills can only be attempted by someone trained in them. For talents, you get some freebies based on your species; anywhere that there are two talents listed with or you pick one or the other (for example Humans can get Savvy or Suave as a talent.) You additionally get random talents—if you roll one you already got, you can re-roll it. Random talents are random only, there’s no manual option / bonus XP here. Here’s what the species get as well as the Random talents table: Humans (Reiklander) Skills: Animal Care, Charm, Cool, Evaluate, Gossip, Haggle, Language (Bretonnian), Language (Wastelander), Leadership, Lore (Reikland), Melee (Basic), Ranged (Bow) Talents: Doomed, Savvy or Suave, 3 Random Talents Dwarfs Skills: Consume Alcohol, Cool, Endurance, Entertain (Storytelling), Evaluate, Intimidate, Language (Khazalid), Lore (Dwarfs), Lore (Geology), Lore (Metallurgy), Melee (Basic), Trade (any one) Talents: Magic Resistance, Night Vision, Read/Write or Relentless, Resolute or Strong-minded, Sturdy Halflings Skills: Charm, Consume Alcohol, Dodge, Gamble, Haggle, Intuition, Language (Mootish), Lore (Reikland), Perception, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Trade (Cook) Talents: Acute Sense (Taste), Night Vision, Resistance (Chaos), Small, 2 Random Talents High Elves Skills: Cool, Entertain (Sing), Evaluate, Language (Eltharin), Leadership, Melee (Basic), Navigation, Perception, Play (any one), Ranged (Bow), Sail, Swim Talents: Acute Sense (Sight), Coolheaded or Savvy, Night Vision, Second Sight or Sixth Sense, Read/Write Wood Elves Skills: Athletics, Climb, Endurance, Entertain (Sing), Intimidate, Language (Eltharin), Melee (Basic), Outdoor Survival, Perception, Ranged (Bow), Stealth (Rural), Track Talents: Acute Sense (Sight), Hardy or Second Sight, Night Vision, Read/Write or Very Resilient, Rover  Next comes the career part—and frankly, there is way, way too much for me to include in this post—so my plan is to handle such onward as a ‘second round’ of chargen after folks determine the first three steps. That being said, the way it works is that you begin at your first Career level listed in your Career Path, which will have 8 Skills and 4 Talents listed. You can choose which you’re most proficient at and get to allocate 40 Advances among your eight starting skills—with no more than 10 Advances allocated to any single Skill. This is also enough to add 5 Advances to every Career Skill if you’d like, which is one of the required steps to complete your Career if you want to change out (you’re not locked into your Careers and can advance to others, but that’s more involved than we’re going to get into here.) Of the four Talents listed for your starting career, you get to pick which one you want. Step 5: Trappings We’re in the final stretch. You get a set of trappings based on your class and then you get additional trappings based on your career. Here are the class trappings: Academics: Clothing, Dagger, Pouch, Sling Bag containing Writing Kit and 1d10 sheets of Parchment Burghers: Cloak, Clothing, Dagger, Hat, Pouch, Sling Bag containing Lunch Courtiers: Courtly Garb, Dagger, Pouch containing Tweezers, Ear Pick, and a Comb Peasants: Cloak, Clothing, Dagger, Pouch, Sling Bag containing Rations (1 day) Rangers: Cloak, Clothing, Dagger, Pouch, Backpack containing Tinderbox, Blanket, Rations (1 day) Riverfolk: Cloak, Clothing, Dagger, Pouch, Sling Bag containing a Flask of Spirits Rogues: Clothing, Dagger, Pouch, Sling Bag containing 2 Candles, 1d10 Matches, a Hood or Mask Warriors: Clothing, Hand Weapon, Dagger, Pouch Your class trappings will be revealed once we move on to that stage with everyone. As for your cash money, that’s determined by your status tier & level, which will also be revealed with the careers—but the gist is: Brass Tier - 2d10 brass pennies per Status Level Silver Tier - 1d10 silver shillings per Status Level Gold Tier - 1 Gold crown per Status Level Step 6: Details This is where you, the intrepid role-player, figure out your name, height, weight, age, etc. There’s gobs of random tables for these and I am not going to gently caress around with this for the purposes of this recruitment—y’all can handle that yourselves. The exception is Ambitions, which are your private, personal goals in the short term and long term; completing your Ambitions (it’s a fairly freeform thing, but we’re ostensibly going to consult together) awards bonus XP. You want one Short-Term ambition (something that can be completed within days or weeks) and one Long-Term Ambition (your overarching character’s goal that could lead to their retirement as a character and the satisfaction of their character arc.) These are somewhat-secret because they can potentially be controversial. Put your ambitions in spoiler tags and let’s be grown-ups and not peek at each other or act on that out-of-game knowledge if you find it irresistible to look. Ambitions can change over time, so don’t feel too pressured by it. Step 7: Party Literally and mechanically. This will be handled once we’ve got the recruitment rounds battened down, but basically you’re going to also decide together your party’s Short-Term and Long-Term ambition. Achieving these rewards everyone in the party with fabulous XP and also provides a helpful guiding star for the direction of the party’s adventurous exploits. That’s the thrust of it. Any bonus XP you gain during character creation you can spend on Advances before play commences; XP awarded during the course of play can also be spent on additional Advances at intervals I’ll call out in the thread (typically sections of downtime.) Edit: I overlooked this myself, but it's been pointed out that you also get five free Characteristic Advances during character creation as well--these advances must be spent among the Characteristics indicated with a + on your starting career, however. Much like Skill Advances, it's important to keep track of how many Advances have been added to a given Characteristic, as it affects scaling XP cost as you progress. GaistHeidegger fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 19:34
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That was swift! Career Levels There are four levels to each career, with each level better than the last; new characters start at the first level of their career. Your character’s career helps chart how your character will grow in terms of characteristic advances, skill advances and talent advances. You can only select advances available to the level of your career and prior levels. Level one is marked with the plus, level two are the crossed axes, level three are the skull and level four are the shield. You cannot advance in things that are not covered by your current career + career level (and previous levels), which is part of the reason why someone might decide to complete or transfer out of a career if they want to grow in a different direction. Your career & levels will also indicate which social tier they inhabit + what status level they have for that level. There’s systems for advancing or falling in social graces, but we’ll worry about that later. Our first contestants:   Rat Catcher features the very important trapping small but vicious dog.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:02
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Unless you're in love with the idea of a noble, I'd probably opt for that to be a free re-roll, as nobles potentially complicate things in bizarre ways and can be pretty tricky to convince to go mucking around.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:15
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Priest it is.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:27
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New challengers:  Super Numerate is a bit of a dud—it just lets you use a calculator to represent what your character can do for math in their head. On the flip side, you got two pretty excellent talents to go with Cavalryman otherwise: Hardy Max: Toughness Bonus You gain a permanent addition to your Wounds, equal to your Toughness Bonus. If your Toughness Bonus should increase, then the number of Wounds Hardy provides also increases. Lightning Reflexes Max: 1 You gain a permanent +5 bonus to your starting Agility Characteristic (this does not count towards your Advances).
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Oct 2, 2018 21:07
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Good call, I overlooked that. For reference: when a talent has Tests listed, it provides a bonus +1 success level to successful checks of those skills. So as Mors noted, Super Numerate gives +1 SL to Evaluate and Gamble checks that are successful, for instance.
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Oct 2, 2018 21:35
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It's OK to bank XP. Combat Aware Max: Initiative Bonus Tests: Perception during melee You are used to scanning the battlefield to make snap decisions informed by the shifting tides of war.You may take a Challenging (+0) Perception Test to ignore Surprise, which is modified by circumstance as normal.
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Oct 2, 2018 21:49
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And here's the witch hunter: Edit: And spy:  Quite a theme starting to coalesce between the characters queuing up thus far, I must say! GaistHeidegger fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 3, 2018 01:17
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Duelist & Grave Robber 
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Oct 3, 2018 05:46
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This has proven to be quite the response for recruitment--given that we're at about twice the pool of characters I was aiming for. It's going to be tough to make determinations, but the process ought to begin; if any of you are still missing information you need to round out your prospective fortune-fated member of our shadowed entourage, let me know. I'll give a bit of time for folks to get character questions answered--a number of folks have already posted the Q&A from their own books, but for reference: Where are you from? What is your family like? What was your childhood like? Why did you leave home? Who are your best friends? What is your greatest desire? What are your best and worst memories? What are your religious beliefs? To whom, or what, are you loyal? Why are you adventuring? Given the number of apps, I'm going to have to sharpen my pencil a bit and will be putting an eye towards ideally a good combination of interesting characters with a combination of careers and themes that would gel together well. In the meantime, thank you everyone who has expressed interest, I'm quite keen to see where this goes.
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Oct 3, 2018 15:10
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AnAnonymousIdiot posted:Give me MANMODE Human hedge witch.  Here's Seaman: 
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Oct 3, 2018 18:25
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Here's Riverwoman: We are thoroughly deep in app territory, so I'm going to start the paring process soon.
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Oct 3, 2018 19:52
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A good catch I apparently overlooked: you also get five free Characteristic advances during character creation, though they can only be distributed across the Characteristics indicated by a + from your starting career. As with the skill advances, it's important to keep track of how many advances have been put into a given Characteristic, as this affects the XP cost scaling over time.
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Oct 3, 2018 22:11
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As a general mechanical heads up: the 'extra points' listed after Fate and Resilience are for distributing as you see fit between Fate and Resilience--it's flexibility on deciding on if you want to be more lucky or resolved or equally between both. I noticed a few sheets that hadn't distributed those points yet and realized that was another thing that is sort of tucked and wasn't mentioned. D'oh.
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Oct 4, 2018 06:46
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Nineteen individuals have checked in and/or submitted a character at this point, which is pretty nutty and far more turnout than I expected. It also means that it's going to be a very tough process figuring out who to take. At this time, I've started putting a list together and checking it thrice; I'm still going to give time for folks with characters already in progress to wrap up for the table but we've tripled the head count I was originally looking for, so barring someone being impassioned with providence to dive in at the last minute, I'm tethering up the velvet rope and citing the staging room as fully occupied. I've been going over the sheets submitted so far and making some notes; due to the considerable volume of applicants for this grim and perilous undertaking, I've got to start somewhere with a baseline to pare down the list. Please try to have a sheet together with character questions answered by the end of the day today. You don't have to write a ton but that's a pretty straightforward baseline to start narrowing things down--and I'm likely going to dismiss entries who haven't mustered that far first and focus on those who have. That said, there's a lot of promising characters in this mix. I'm liking a lot of what I've seen, which is going to make this that much harder to hone in on. I'll generally be available for any questions and inquiries in #whsor on irc.synirc.net today as well as watching the thread--so for anyone who can't access IRC for whatever reason, at least for the time being, feel free to ask questions here instead.
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Oct 4, 2018 14:54
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Alright, let's get the brass tacks down so we can get ready to roll with this thing. Thanks to everyone who expressed interest and took the time to whip up characters, Ranald at the wheel and otherwise; this has been a wild outpouring of interest that well exceeded what I anticipated and I'm flattered and humbled for it. I liked a lot of the characters here and it wasn't at all easy trying to narrow things down; apologies to anyone who didn't make the cut, hopefully no hard feelings--and everyone is still welcome to join us in the discord server that's been set up for this grim and perilous adventure whether player or peanut gallery. This being Warhammer, there's liable to be fatalities sooner or later, so we're bound to need more bodies at some point. My original intent was to set out for six and that band is not enough to contain here. With the flex of PBP over live play and things being what they are, I'm going to stretch that to nine instead--with the intent that we're going to truck along once we hit the ground and power through. I debated seven, I debated eight, I debated running two games simultaneously at six each--but ultimately, I settled on trying to make the best of what we could muster with nine. We'll make it work. So, without further adieu, here is our initial party: Dietmar Riehl, the Flagellant, played by chin up everything sucks Karl, the Rat Catcher, played by Piell Sister Thekla, the Initiate of Ulric, played by Mors Rattus Erika Laut, the Entertainer, played by Tricky Gottfried Schäfer, the Witch Hunter, played by Izzy Rosamunde Echstein, the Duelist, played by Dachshundofdoom Elise Gottfield, the Scholar, played by Sion Friedrich Stoffer, the Smuggler, played by professor_curly Harold Weiss, the Thief, played by John Dyne One of the angles I had in mind when ultimately settling on nine--given the spread of careers and character concepts here--was the notion that it would afford us the ability to form three sets of three. I am cool with however you might want to sort yourselves, I figured on e.g. Erika, Harold and Friedrich potentially knowing one another for example. Feel free to formulate impressions at least among the smaller subsets and sort out how you might know each other--you don't need to know the entire party, but I'd like there to be at least two character connections each. More importantly, we'll turn an eye towards figuring out the ambition for the group--but that can wait until after I roll out a follow-up post to give you the gist of our establishing premise. For anyone who'd like to join us for jubilant merriment and game chit-chat in general, there's a discord server here. Thank you again everyone!
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Oct 5, 2018 21:51
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 05:39 |
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We are live! Huzzah!
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Oct 7, 2018 23:44
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