On second thoughts and since you described him better I definitely wouldn't want said player joining my group I agree with the comments about DnD & Pathfinder. Sounds like Warhammer isn't the game for him and it doesn't sound like your group will mourn the DnD wannabe player much either.

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.

Yep. I mostly ignore those people as they obviously haven't bothered actually taking a proper look at the system. Those people are usually WFRP1 or WFRP2 fans who are upset that WFRP3 is different. They see cards and cardboard bits and instantly assume the worst. There is really no talking to many of them.

Most fantasy RPG's, and frankly sci-fi too, are mostly combat simulators.

Yeah, D&D is terrible at this. But most other RPGs also tends to have a large chunk of rules for combat and then a couple of pages about social stuff.

The WFRP dice are actually great for making the combat even less important. I recently ran "Crimson Rain" (I think that's the name) which is the adventure in the Khorne/Combat box. Not surprisingly it has a lot of combat, which easily eats up the gametime. But most are minor skirmishes. So I just had the players make a WeaponSkill or BallisticSkill test to see how well they did during the combat without bothering with turns, action cards and stuff. The dice gives enough nuance that you can give results where the character is wildly successfull, but still suffers wounds and criticals or fails but manages to avoid serious injury.

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!"

Oh, and as Close Quarter Shot adds 1 black per enemy the character is engaged with I deal out more black dice when you use ranged actions that are not supposed to be used in close combat. So at least number of enemies + 1 black die. And as I said, many ranged actions cannot be used at all in close combat.

I also tend to use Chaos Stars (or a high number of banes) in a more nasty way if you're engaged wielding a ranged weapon. For example bowstrings might get snapped, the weapon might be torn from your hands in the. So I tend to hand out the "Damaged" condition card, or disarm the character, or have the arrows spill out of the quiver onto the ground. The same goes if an enemy gets a comet or multiple boons when attacking a character with a ranged weapon.

Lastly, the character cannot parry or block as they do not have any melee weapon or shield. So a character with a ranged weapon is a lot more vounerable in close combat.

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.

Yep. I mostly ignore those people as they obviously haven't bothered actually taking a proper look at the system. Those people are usually WFRP1 or WFRP2 fans who are upset that WFRP3 is different. They see cards and cardboard bits and instantly assume the worst. There is really no talking to many of them.

Most fantasy RPG's, and frankly sci-fi too, are mostly combat simulators.

Yeah, D&D is terrible at this. But most other RPGs also tends to have a large chunk of rules for combat and then a couple of pages about social stuff.

The WFRP dice are actually great for making the combat even less important. I recently ran "Crimson Rain" (I think that's the name) which is the adventure in the Khorne/Combat box. Not surprisingly it has a lot of combat, which easily eats up the gametime. But most are minor skirmishes. So I just had the players make a WeaponSkill or BallisticSkill test to see how well they did during the combat without bothering with turns, action cards and stuff. The dice gives enough nuance that you can give results where the character is wildly successfull, but still suffers wounds and criticals or fails but manages to avoid serious injury.

It would seem a shame to me to boil down combat to a single dice roll, as that's the same issue that social encounters had in many games. The action cards are fun! That said, I think the system in hero's call for setting up a big dice pool could work nicely for abstracting out an entire combat or other encounter, if desired.

Yeah, I basically used something aproximating the Heros Call system. The thing is, that adventure has a whole heap of optional encounters where the combat isn't nearly as important as the characters choices. The more of these encounters you use, the better the adventure is, but it takes forever to fight all these slightly uninteresting fights. And it was a one-off sessions where I was working with a time limit. So I only used the proper combat rules for "boss fights".

I use those kind of "quick combat" rules quite often in my game where there are minor fights that are mostly for a bit of flavour, and not really meant to be life or death struggles.

That said, one player managed to kill his rank 3 character recently by a roll like that. They had won a major battle and he had 1 wound left and 5 Crits. He still decided to prowl around the battlefield for "pockets of resistance". The resistance was a bit much for him; he got lots of successes but a bunch of banes as well, which gave him a couple of Wounds and down he went

kind of feel i need to defend my ex-player/friend here xD

He's a great guy, a bit socially awkward exept among good friends and when roleplaying. He LOVES playing wizards, he wants to experience the fantasy and be something he couldn't possibly be in real life. And I get that, heck, I kind of repsect him for sticking to one class as that seems almost boring to me. The characters he makes are different, but they're pretty much all mages. It's also part of a powerfantasy, he wants to feel powerful, a sentiment I can fully agree with in alot of the video games I play and even some of the roleplaying games, but for some reason my roleplaying taste has veered more towards feeling powerless, hapless babes thrown to the wolves and hoping to simply survive, let alone succeed.

So, a clash of desires between the player and system.

The zealot, the previous wizard apprentice's irl twin brother, has however turned his religous hatred in for a grey wizard apprentice. I approveed, and the other players as well. Now, I know this is a potential can of worms, then again after him reading 3 warhammer fantasy books this last week about witch hunters I don't see it as a bad trade. They be crazy!

I think this will be the last post in this thread, as it's gotten long and I feel the initial questions I had with the system have been answered. I'll probably ask for more indepth suggestions for adventure hooks, and supplements later on but those are better served in independent threads.

Thank you all from a small group of roleplayers in Norway now enjoying their time in the old world.

Norway? Nice, I'm also norwegian and have been running a WFRP3 group in Oslo for about 3-4 years now

Feel free to ask more questions. The forums are a bit dead these days, so it's nice that someone asks some questions for us old fans to discuss

Molde here, we have small thriving community and are almost 3 gaming groups large at the club. Pluss we have our own "private" sessions at home.

Well, I'm mostly curious if any of the other supplements are worthwhile and if I should wait. Are any of the premade ones worth a ****? I've currently decided to take the gold apprentice and run with it, he's been corrupted and they'll meet him further down the road. Driven mad by the beastmen, daemon, the things he's seen and experienced and blame the players for it. After that...we'll see.

Also, how do you handle death? I tend to say "you start with half the average group exp", dying shouldn't be a reroll. It's not supposed to be "I'm bored with this class so I'll make a new one!". It's a punishment, from the world, not me. something to avoid and be careful about. It also keeps the power level fluctuating and pushing people down if things get out of control.

I have actually had two of my three players loose a character recently. The way I handle it, is that they get to start with 5XP(to round the character out a bit) and they receive double XP until they are the same rank as the highest ranked character.

For the supplements, I would say you need the Core box, Adventurers Toolkit, all four god-boxes and Heroes Call to have a complete game. I haven't run any of the pre-made boxed adventures myself, so I can't speak for them, but they also contain some additional cards and stuff (for example, one of them have career cards for playing a witch).

Norway huh, I'm from Sweden, Gothenburg to be exact, so not that far away.

I'll just agree with Ralzar. Core Box, Adventurers Toolkit, Chaos boxes and Hero's Call does make the game a complete experience. I can also recommend Black Fire Pass if any of your players are into Dwarves.

In our group we handle death in a similar way as Ralzar, we start with 5 extra XP and doubble XP per session until you catch up to the others.

Molde here, we have small thriving community and are almost 3 gaming groups large at the club. Pluss we have our own "private" sessions at home.

Well, I'm mostly curious if any of the other supplements are worthwhile and if I should wait. Are any of the premade ones worth a ****? I've currently decided to take the gold apprentice and run with it, he's been corrupted and they'll meet him further down the road. Driven mad by the beastmen, daemon, the things he's seen and experienced and blame the players for it. After that...we'll see.

Also, how do you handle death? I tend to say "you start with half the average group exp", dying shouldn't be a reroll. It's not supposed to be "I'm bored with this class so I'll make a new one!". It's a punishment, from the world, not me. something to avoid and be careful about. It also keeps the power level fluctuating and pushing people down if things get out of control.

This is my opinion, but I don't think you should be punishing the players with death. A lot of times, death happens because a player is engaged enough in a story to risk his or her character to find out what happens, or it could just be bad luck. A player has lost his or her character. Feel free to allow them to just bring in "Steve The Wizard II" if they want, or to make a new character. In general, if a player is trying to kill his character or doesn't worry about his character dying, they have the choice of quitting the game or making a new character. If they're trying to do the latter, it's because they don't enjoy themselves. If they're trying to do the later, it's because thy enjoy the game/story more than the character. Take this as a compliment! It's not your job to make playersbe investe in their characters; that is the players' job. If they're not invested in one character, don't make tier job harder by forcing them to play it. You're not a taskmaster here. It's not a GM's job to be some weird parental figure "teaching" their friends how to act. Just chill out and have fun with the story. If a player is disrupting it by not engaging with his character, then it's fine for you to talk about it. Just don't punish PLAYER behavior with GAME mechanics. If a character acts a certain way, the game will say what happens. If a player acts a certain way, work on it outside the game.

tldr; just let your player make a new character with equal xp, even the same guy with a different name if he wants

Our group doesn't see it as a punishment that you die and then start with less XP. The reason we start off with 5 XP and doubble XP until you catch up to the rest is to evolve the character during play.

An example, say that your character dies and you sit down to get a new one. Say that your old character had 30 XP when it dies, now you've got 30 XP for your new character. You'll probably end up with a ton of cards, but have no overview as you got them all at once. This slows down the game and you could end up having less fun. Also, we feel that another risk is that you end up with quite a narrow character skill wise.

When you get the XP during play, you gradually improve and you'll be able to use and learn your new cards while playing. Furthermore skills and careers are more likely to be taken in response to the story which feels more natural.

Obviously there are pros and cons to any approach, so every group should come to their own conclusion on how they want to handle character death.

I start running my first game on Friday and I've found this thread incredibly helpful.

Glad I could...ask pertinent questions that wiser souls could answer