Let's just go with beastmen as they're featured in the heavy combat parts of Eye for an Eye.

Say a Gor. 6 Strenght, so 6 characteristic dice, 1 converted into reckless dice due to stance. He also has 1 expertice, so 1 of those too? Not sure what the white square here and there does.

So, on savage strike it's 5 characteristic dice, 1 reckless dice and 1 expertise dice, pluss whatever defences the player has.

Same on fearsome charge, exept i add 1 misfortune dice as part of the special attack.

Riiiight? O.o

Don't have the cards in front of me, so I can't comment on the exact numbers you ask about, but it reads like you may be doing one part of it wrong.

Expertise (and all A/C/E) are not a constant upgrade, they're a spendable resource. A creature with Expertise 1 gets to add 1 yellow die to one roll once per encounter. If they have Expertise 4, they get to roll 1 yellow die on each of 4 different rolls. A/C can be spent multiple per roll (and only add white dice), but are otherwise similar. The idea is to kind of put the monsters on a clock, so that if the fight drags on too long it actually gets easier. This also lets the GM control exactly how threatening the monsters are (by spending A/C/E on just the rolls you want to boost). More often than not your goal as GM is to "lose the fight" to the players, but make them feel like they earned their victory, and A/C/E really shines in that way.

The white squares "here and there" are generally next to listed Characteristics, and add Fortune Dice to that stat. If there's one written next to Strength, for example, then you'd add 1 white die to all Strength rolls for that NPC. These are a constant bonus to all rolls of that type, unlike the burnable A/C/E budgets.

Ah, okay, thank you so much On monday we're playing a second time, and considering alot of them wanted 2 sessions a week I think it's safe to say we're enjoying ourselves.

I'll elaborate on that a bit.

Here's the basic rundown of how to make a dice pool:

Positive Dice

*Add a number of (blue) characteristic dice to equal to the characteristic listed on the card.

*Exchange characteristic dice with a number of (red) reckless /(green) conservative dice equal to the current stance in reckless/conservative (e.g. a character with conservative stance 2 and 3 characteristic dice exchanges 2 of the characteristic dice for conservative dice; a character with reckless stance 4 and 2 characteristic dice exchanges 2 of the characteristic dice for reckless dice and ignores the remainder of his reckless stance).

*Add a number of (yellow) expertise dice equal to the skill level of the skill being used (NPCs will have a note for how many ranks they have in a skill; many of them have no skill ranks)

*Add any (white)fortune dice associated with the characteristic being used. These will be shown as white boxes beside the characteristics of the NPC. Each box is a fortune die, so 2 boxes beside a characteristic mean 2 fortune dice for all checks with that characteristic.

*Add 1 fortune dice for each skill specialization that applies to the skill being used. Typically, only PCs will have skill specializations.

Negative Dice

*Add a number of (purple) challenge dice according to the action card. If the attack is "against target defense" you add a default of 1 challenge die. If the attack is "characteristic against characteristic," difficulty depends on both characteristics.

If the Opposing Characteristic ...

...is less than half of the acting characteristic , add 0 challenge dice

... is less than the acting characteristic , add +1 challenge die

...is equal to the acting characteristic, add +2 challenge die

...is greater than the acting characteristic, add +3 challenge die

...is twice as great as the acting characteristic, add +4 challenge die

*In opposed checks, you also add a (black) misfortune die if 1) the opposition is trained in the relevant opposed skill, or 2) if the opposition has a relevant specialization

*In attacks against target defense, add a number of misfortune dice equal to the target's defense rating.

*Note that if the action card just lists a skill check to be made and it is not opposed or against target defense, the starting difficulty of the check is 0.

*Add any other challenge or misfortune dice listed on the action card

*Add any other challenge or misfortune dice listed by Action Cards played as reactions by the target

*Add any other dice due to conditions, recharging action cards, or other effects

Example

So, here's the example of the Gor using Savage Strike against a PC with 1 Defense.

*The characteristic being used is Strength, and the Gor has 5 strength, so it adds 5 characteristic dice

*The Gor has a Reckless 1 stance, and so exchanges one of his characteristic dice for a reckless die.

*The Gor is not trained in Weapon Skill, nor does it have any fortune dice for strength

*Savage Strike is against Target Defense, so that adds 1 challenge die.

*The PC has a defense of 1, so that adds a misfortune die.

*The PC uses the Dodge action, so that adds 2 more misfortune dice.

*The Final dice pool is 4 characteristic dice, 1 reckless die, 1 challenge die, and 3 misfortune dice.

Using Aggression/Cunning/Expertise (A/C/E)

*Aggression: Spend 1 of these to 1)Add a fortune die to a physical check, including initiative in a combat encounter or 2)add a misfortune die to a physical check targeting the NPC. You can spend as many of these on one check as you'd like.

*Cunning: Spend 1 of these to 1)Add a fortune die to a mental check, including initiative in a social encounter or 2)add a misfortune die to a mental check targeting the NPC. You can spend as many of these on one check as you'd like.

*Expertise: Spend 1 of these to add an expertise die to a check by the NPC. You can only add 1 of these to a single check.

*Optional: Allow Aggression dice to be spent to gain an extra maneuver or Cunning dice to adjust stance by 1.

*Make sure you're spending these pretty liberally, as they should be pacing your encounter. Once you've run out, consider having a Rally Step at the end of the round.

Using Fortune/Misfortune

*Add these in whenever you want to add a little difficulty or a bonus. Maybe it's raining out or dark. Maybe the player has come up with a cool stunt. Generally, this can be a good time to ask your players if there's anything in the environment helping out or making things tougher.

I hope this all helps!

Excellent summary.

A few other things once you're comfortable:

- for more notable NPCs/boss monsters (or all if you're up to it) remember all NPC's have all relevant "basic actions", so a Agile enough NPC has dodge, Strong enough has parry etc. - that Wargor can parry with its weapon, later in game really nasty foes may have the advanced and improved versions of these adding a challenge die - that helps make combats with them still interesting;

- location cards may add modifiers;

- a GM can add modifiers for environmental and other conditions, usually fortune and misfortune dice - essentially think if there was a location card for this situation or place what would it say - just be sure to be even-handed with those modifiers.

- reward good roleplaying and description by PC's, though I tend to do this more in social encounters, when the PC's description of what they are doing is just really apt and fits situation, "raises the quality of the imagery" at table, give a fortune die.

Great, thanks alot guys!

After recieving the adventurers toolkit and Winds of Magic another question has arisen: Any tips for storage?

Also, the wizard apprentice seems RIPE with fluff hooks and other stuff I can use to design adventrues of varying kinds. What about a burgher, zealot and gambler? Burgher could be trade, negotiations etc, zealot hunting rumours of rogue wizards and witches but what about the gambler? Any more to the other people? i'd love to hear suggestions.

For storage, on table I use business card holders (clear multi level ones) to keep insanity, wound, miscast etc cards handy but not taking up lots of space.

For cards, I use organizing boxes (office stores, staples, foo-foo home stores) and trays to keep cards sorted by type for PC's and in different box by creature group with favoured action cards (e.g., all greenskins in one section, skaven in another etc.)

And yes, pretty much every character career has, when reading its obverse side, a variety of plot hooks and suggestions as well as information on the world at large.

For storage I can recommend this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14855200/raaco.JPG

Those are Racco boxes, usually found in the hardware store. They fit really well for the different sizes of cards and as the trays in the boxes are removable it's easy to pick out the ones needed at the moment. The racco boxes also makes the game a lot more transportable.

For action cards I use ultra pro binders. One binder for magic and blessing actions and one for all the other actions.

I'm copying what I put in another thread.

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/122073-new-gm-needs-help-badly/?p=1264189

Nice, thank you I'll defineatly look into it and see if I can't make something similar. Had to do the same with my Arkham Horror collection.

Yesterday we played the last part of Eye for an Eye, and, well....the wizard apprentice died. Which is somewhat sad because he loves playing wizards and I kinda bought winds of magic for him. Oh well, at least the players will have learned not to mess with Gor's and Wargor's. The last beastman attack is rather insane though. And i think most of them got it, even the zealot was sitting there and thinking "what are you doing?! RUN!". He didn't say so though, as they were seperated and wanted to keep the pace and not interrupt the other players.

FFG seems to keep making really tough adventures, then again even the cultists can be rather dangerous when push comes to shove.

Party tension meter and progress tracker once again helps give players a sense of focus and urgency, so loving that.

The players, apart from the wizards apprentice who was a bit bummed, loved the adventure. Quote at the end: All we were supposed to do was carry luggage and now a demon is being summoned on the roof and beastmen are slaughtering everyone.

A bit sad about the wizard, but maybe they'll get a new one later. Thankfully they saved the hammer so i have a mission to give them.

We also got a bit confused by the corruption and a few other minor stuff, but with a bit more reading hopefully we'll figure ito ut

Nice, thank you I'll defineatly look into it and see if I can't make something similar. Had to do the same with my Arkham Horror collection.

Yesterday we played the last part of Eye for an Eye, and, well....the wizard apprentice died. Which is somewhat sad because he loves playing wizards and I kinda bought winds of magic for him. Oh well, at least the players will have learned not to mess with Gor's and Wargor's. The last beastman attack is rather insane though. And i think most of them got it, even the zealot was sitting there and thinking "what are you doing?! RUN!". He didn't say so though, as they were seperated and wanted to keep the pace and not interrupt the other players.

FFG seems to keep making really tough adventures, then again even the cultists can be rather dangerous when push comes to shove.

Party tension meter and progress tracker once again helps give players a sense of focus and urgency, so loving that.

The players, apart from the wizards apprentice who was a bit bummed, loved the adventure. Quote at the end: All we were supposed to do was carry luggage and now a demon is being summoned on the roof and beastmen are slaughtering everyone.

A bit sad about the wizard, but maybe they'll get a new one later. Thankfully they saved the hammer so i have a mission to give them.

We also got a bit confused by the corruption and a few other minor stuff, but with a bit more reading hopefully we'll figure ito ut

If I may ask, how'd the wizard get killed? If someone exceeds their wound threshold, they receive ALL of the wounds inflicted, turn one of them into a critical wound (regardless of how many wounds they exceeded their threshhold by), and then fall unconscious. A character does not actually die until the severity value of all their critical wounds exceeds their Toughness * 2 (so a dwarf with 4 toughness can take up to 8 severity of critical wounds but will die if he has critical wounds totalling 9 or more severity).

Did your wizard get too many critical wounds, or did he just exceed his wound threshold? Your wizard may be able to make a retroactive comeback!

Also, what about corruption confused you/what was the minor stuff? At it's most basic, players make a resilience check with a number of difficulty equal to the strength of the corruption (usually from 1-4). Any This value with either be listed by the adventure or item you are using, or can be made up by you. Any chaos stars rolled on that check automatically cause 1 extra corruption, even if the check succeeds. If the check fails, the character gains corruption equal to the difficulty. Every race has a corruption threshold Human: 5 + Toughness

Dwarf:10 + Toughness

High/Wood Elf:10 + Toughness

Hafling:15 + Toughness

Ogre:10 + Toughness

If this threshold is exceeded, humans, ogres, and halflings will draw a mutation and reduce their corruption total by the severity of the mutation (meaning they may need to draw more mutations if their corruption still exceeds their threshold. Elves and dwarves instead draw insanities (draw until an insanity with the Supernatural, Chaos, or Enigma trait is drawn) and reduce corruption by its severity. If the number of mutations exceeds toughness, the character turns into a chaos spawn. Elves and dwarves can go insane as normal if the number of insanities exceeds their willpower.

Does that make sense? And any other questions?

A character does not actually die until the severity value of all their critical wounds exceeds their Toughness * 2 (so a dwarf with 4 toughness can take up to 8 severity of critical wounds but will die if he has critical wounds totalling 9 or more severity).

Sorry, this is incorrect.

According to the Player's Guide p 87 a character dies when it exeededs it's wound threshold and the number of critical wounds exceed your toughness. So characters with thoughness 3 would die when they have more wounds than their wound threshold while also having 4 (or more) critical wounds, regardless of the critical wounds severety.

He and the gambler ran up, from the temple through the winecellar and up the stairs, opened the door and saw two ungors. They shot both easily enough, but the gambler rolled a chaos star so I had two gors (the last batch in this adventure had alot of beastmen....) burst into the hallway on the opposite side. Then he got rammed by a gor and was knocked unconcious. The gambler hightailed it back into the darkness to stealth and find another exit.

That wizard got squished. We discussed it and for one guy to run and hide, hoping the soon to be corpse of the apprentice will distract them long enough or him simply being fast enough to loose them in the darkness (hidden passageway also helps. However, him lifting him (strenght 2) and running away with him and stealthing isn't really all that likely. Or heck, even getting away.

The last battle doesn't really seem winnable unless the players have saved quite a few npc's to help them out, otherwise they end up drugged/dead and of no use. Still, the players liked it.

"all we were supposed to do was carry luggage and now cultists are summoning demons and beastmen are killing everyone! What happened?! D:"

The wizard had a...what's the term? Miscast? Chaos star on his roll and he drew a card with minor corruption 2d? What happens if he fails? What does he do, where does he note it etc? Just give me the page numbers and I'll look into it, I'll be reading up on libre mutatis as my girlfriend is working late on thursday so then it's nerd evening.

A character does not actually die until the severity value of all their critical wounds exceeds their Toughness * 2 (so a dwarf with 4 toughness can take up to 8 severity of critical wounds but will die if he has critical wounds totalling 9 or more severity).

Sorry, this is incorrect.

According to the Player's Guide p 87 a character dies when it exeededs it's wound threshold and the number of critical wounds exceed your toughness. So characters with thoughness 3 would die when they have more wounds than their wound threshold while also having 4 (or more) critical wounds, regardless of the critical wounds severety.

Ah, right you are! That's what I get for not double-checking the rules before posting. The wound severity only affects certain other wound cards, such as the severe wounds from Omens of War.

The wizard had a...what's the term? Miscast? Chaos star on his roll and he drew a card with minor corruption 2d? What happens if he fails? What does he do, where does he note it etc? Just give me the page numbers and I'll look into it, I'll be reading up on libre mutatis as my girlfriend is working late on thursday so then it's nerd evening.

Miscast is correct, and yes, you draw a Miscast card when he does so. Note that this chaos star can still be used for the card results/other things and doesn't count as "used up" by the miscast card. Minor Corruption 2d would mean the wizard makes a 2 difficulty resilience check and if he fails he gains 2 corruption. Corruption tokens are the little purple diamond punchout pieces that came in the Winds of Magic box. They normally don't do anything until the player's corruption total exceeds his corruption threshold, but as the GM you can also remove one of them to add a purple challenge die to one of the player's rolls.

@Ghaundam

"all we were supposed to do was carry luggage and now cultists are summoning demons and beastmen are killing everyone! What happened?!

Ha ha. Warhammer is what happened. They're new to the world but they'll soon learn. It's NEVER about carrying luggage and almost always about fighting demons and beastmen

He and the gambler ran up, from the temple through the winecellar and up the stairs, opened the door and saw two ungors. They shot both easily enough, but the gambler rolled a chaos star so I had two gors (the last batch in this adventure had alot of beastmen....) burst into the hallway on the opposite side. Then he got rammed by a gor and was knocked unconcious. The gambler hightailed it back into the darkness to stealth and find another exit.

That wizard got squished. We discussed it and for one guy to run and hide, hoping the soon to be corpse of the apprentice will distract them long enough or him simply being fast enough to loose them in the darkness (hidden passageway also helps. However, him lifting him (strenght 2) and running away with him and stealthing isn't really all that likely. Or heck, even getting away.

There are options for a GM when this happens, if you want to give the character a chance to survive. Instead of instantly squishing the Wizard, the Gors could have drag the wizard away as a prisoner, to be sacrificed by their shaman later. Maybe the beastmen sensed that the wizard had power, and that would please their gods as an offering.

You still could if they haven't looked for the Wizards corpse.

Obvioulsly the wizard should run the risk of insanities, disease and corruption. But the other players could save him.

Good point k7e9, I'll defineatly have that in mind for later "deaths". I did give the gambler a shot at saving him, but he "wisely" said "nope, I'm bailing!"

We'll see how it goes, I'm sure he'll be back in high spirits come monday

And thank you for all the great tips! There's alot of new rules and the devil is in the details, we got the basics pretty much in after only 2 sessions, but the minor stuff we haven't encountered yet still pops and we become unsure and we look up. The book is a bit unituitively put together at times but we tend to find it easily enough.

And thank you for all the great tips! There's alot of new rules and the devil is in the details, we got the basics pretty much in after only 2 sessions, but the minor stuff we haven't encountered yet still pops and we become unsure and we look up. The book is a bit unituitively put together at times but we tend to find it easily enough.

In the beginning, when our group had the basics down, I started to introduce a "rule of the day" every session. I read through a rule section in depth before the gaming session, for example the rules on corruption, disease, shame or even healing (which has a lot of rules). At the beginning of the session explained the "new" rule to my players. Then I'd use the rule frequently during that session to learn the rule during play. I would also remind the players of the rule during the session, for example how healing worked. Some sessions I put the spotlight on actions such as Perform a Stunt, to make the players see what they could use it for.

That way the details of the rules were introduced gradually, making it easier to learn for both me and my players. Obviously the players knew that they would be subjected to whatever rule we had covered in the beginning of the session, but that wasn't a big drawback. Knowing that you'd be put in situations where you could get a disease, get corruption or similar points isn't that much of a spoiler.

All in all it introduced the rules gradually to the players. The game is quite modular, it's easy to ignore rules initially and introduce them later on and as such adding more details as the group grew more familiar with the basics.

Well, the wizard now coachman quit the group. Unfortunate, but it was a bad fit. he wanted to play a bit snowflakey, wizard and seems to enjoy powerfantasies. And as he mentioned "most of these are just commoners with different jobs!" in a negative tone, and that was basically the deathnote.

So I'm down to three players, I'm happy with that and I have decided to never use beastmen for quite some time as it was a bore to use them with no direct combat classes and the high soak made combat slow and kind of ridiculous.

One thing came up and we tried looking over to make sure. Ranged attacks while engaged, unless the talent specifically prohibts it. Is that allowed? I just find it improbably at best that someone could reload and fire a crossbow while in melee. Any page where I can find a clarification about this?

You know your players best I suppose Ghaundan but I can't help but think that the way in which you killed off his wizard was perhaps a bit harsh and probably at the root of why he left.

I know Warhammer is brutal and death awaits round every corner but I prefer to save it for the foolhardly PCs who don't heed the warnings. Losing your character isn't nice and in a new game with new players perhaps you could have been a bit more forgiving. Sigmar knows it's hard enough to find WFRP3 players as it is with everyone man and his dog wanting to play endless DnD and Pathfinder for god only knows what reason. Tell your wizard to download Fantasy Grounds and he can join our online group I quite like the idea of a pompous wizard who thinks he's superior to the other 'commoners' in the group

As for Beastmen. You better get used to them if you plan to game a lot in the Warhmmer world although you might wanna switch the beastmen for other creatures because I do admit they're used a bit too extensively for my liking.

Shooting while engaged is often not possible as many ranged action cards have the the text "not engaged..." or "disengaged...". Some action cards allow it, like Close-Quarters Shot, which is supposed to be used in close range or when engaged. But even that action comes with penalties in form of extra black dice if you're engaged. If an action card does not prohibit shooting while you are in melee, I'd allow it but add several black dice to the roll as a negative modifier. While it is possible to shoot in melee, it's not likely to go very well.

You know your players best I suppose Ghaundan but I can't help but think that the way in which you killed off his wizard was perhaps a bit harsh and probably at the root of why he left.

I know Warhammer is brutal and death awaits round every corner but I prefer to save it for the foolhardly PCs who don't heed the warnings. Losing your character isn't nice and in a new game with new players perhaps you could have been a bit more forgiving. Sigmar knows it's hard enough to find WFRP3 players as it is with everyone man and his dog wanting to play endless DnD and Pathfinder for god only knows what reason. Tell your wizard to download Fantasy Grounds and he can join our online group I quite like the idea of a pompous wizard who thinks he's superior to the other 'commoners' in the group

As for Beastmen. You better get used to them if you plan to game a lot in the Warhmmer world although you might wanna switch the beastmen for other creatures because I do admit they're used a bit too extensively for my liking.

I'll gladly admit I didn't help and could have done better as a GM, however it's a complex situation and alot of it was his fault, my fault, the gambler's fault (appearantly the wizard player REALLY didn't like that he got left to die) and yeah. So I learned alot on the game balance and how premade adventures REALLY need to be doublechecked to ensure combat is balanced for the group.

Gor's and Wargor's have a very high soakvalue that most starting characters who aren't combat oriented have difficulty dealig with. And they were thrown rather willynilly at the party in my opinion. Well, lesson learned at least!

I know beastmen are the "go to general combat badguy" but with a gambler, a burgher and a zealot I think I'll focus on investigation and cults for awhile and we'll see how it goes.

I did have a plan to have the wizard apprentice captured and found alive, if scarred after a battle they had outside the hunting lodge, but he wouldn't have it.

I feel this particular player wants to play D&D or Pathfinder because...well, they're power fantasy settings. A lvl 1 fighter/insert whatever class is way stronger then the average person and has obviously been partying for a long time. Magical items can be bought at market and...i don't know. I know it's high fantasy but the more i read up on D&D (i've only owned 1st edition and played 3.5 once, and listened to reviews/heard friends talk about it) it sounds like a combat simulator where people talk about their characters mostly the same way people talk about their WoW characters. It's all about making combat machines, but that might be just me and it's a disgression from the conversation.

Anyway, so far, so good. Exept the loss of a player so now we're down to three players. We're all okay with the number of players, and hopefully it will be okay

Okay k7e9, then I'll allow it and pile on some black dice when they try. The question came up when a player said "so what's the advantage of melee vs ranged if I can do the same damage, and hopefully not get into melee and killed!"

Not surprised that the wizard quit. From what you were writing he seemed like typically one of those players who have to play some specific concept (wizard, vampire or dual-wielding elf ranger are typical examples) and isn't really interesting in using his imagination to make an interesting character out of what he is given. D&D or Pathfinder would probably be a better fit for him.

Speaking of D&D; my group played it for a year or two. It is basically World Of Warcraft in boardgame form where the GM stuffs in some story between the fights. Our GM actually wanted a campaign with an interesting story, but it took forever to tell it, since each fight was an hour or two of gridmap-battle.

He is, he tends to play either a mage or a big brutish warrior. That in and of itself isn't a problem. If that's the powerfantasies he wants to play out then so be it, but warhammer fantasy isn't the BEST system. I'd say you could, being a wizard in fantasy feels alot more unique then in highfantasy settings. And being a trollslayer means most manlings couldn't hope to stand up to you in a straight on fight. But there are still big things in the world that will stomp you bloody. And you start off LOW, and I like that.

So far I'm very impressed with the system and sadly dissapointed at all the comments and pre/reviews I read when this came out. There was alot of arguing about this being a boardgame, or similar to descent in some way. When reading the rules it was rather the opposite with alot of stuff being abstract, not out of lazyness but a focus on narrative and game master discretion. Players have incentives to be inventive and make characters rather then combat machines. So, could it be better? yes, defineatly. Every RPG has pitfalls, every system weaknesses but so far I'm happy and it lined up with my expectations, although the investigation focus was surprising. In a good way. Most fantasy RPG's, and frankly sci-fi too, are mostly combat simulators.