Ok, generally i dont really care for game's mechanics, favoring narrative play before dice rolling, but the fact that players are nearly immortals.... in the end spoils this system from any drama!!

i was gmastering this game from the very beginning, and i think i've reached at least one hundred sessions, playing differents groups through published scenarios like:

4X one eye for an eye

1X gathering storm

2X withch's song

1X winds of change

2x journey to black fire pass

1X harrower of thane

+ various fan made scenarios or older advenures

in the end, save from 2 party wipe out, no character ever died once from a mechanical point of view.

The last session though was epic, and IMHO a big let down for this game. I've found that basically, a mighty shaggot (wich should be a totally-mountain sized-murderous beast!) is not even able to KILL whatever character whit toughness 3+.

The maths are simple: the shaggot can dish out a baseline of 14 points of damage.

even giving him a nasty combat action card like "mauling blow", which guarantee him a critical per turn, it goes like this:

the shaggot swing a pc, halving his wound pool, +1 critical

the shaggot swing again, Knocking out the pc, +1 critical, +1 critical from ko

the PC is now uncounscios, whit 3 critical, but failed to kill him (who play a T2 PC after all?). The only chance to outright kill him sit on 1/6 sigmar comet from expertise dice!!

the even more crazyness of this gaming system is that:

A: giving the shaggot a card that deal even more damage, maybe KO a PC in a single swing, is safer for the PC: in this case receive only 2 criticals, so not even "near death"!!

B: having a thougher PC, maye whit a better soak or a larger wound pool, that let him resist the first two swings and receive a third, have more chance to die from the shaggot instead of a squishy pc!

what do you fellow GM think about this? IMHO this system is something like "total party wipe out" or nothing....and if a monster doesn't not posses a critical generating action, is outright impossible to really kill any PC!

To each his own.

In my view, t he idea is that despite there being no resurrection and healing magic being limited, you are more likely to end up diseased, mad, mutated and maimed than dead.

Those are the threats more than "not being able to play the character any more", which is a conscious design choice and one I like. I like long term play of characters and seeing their stories unfold but don't like them to be telfon "bounce back from everything" sorts and that is this game. Currently I have 3 permanent wounds in my group of PC's.

I much prefer that over "you can die but come back" which is "fake death" and prefer other threats than simple death to feature more prominently.

That said, I've had several deaths and many near deaths (one PC last session had crits = TO and was 1 Wound from falling - it was almost end of encounter but he was one minimum damage hit away from dying) in several years of playing near weekly.

Comets always can deal crits on any action, and plenty of monsters from beastmen to zombies have "easy to generate crit" staple actions.

In the shaggoth situation, as with many systems, a sole lone creature is often easily swamped by a bunch of PC's unless you give it blocking henchmen or similar aids (e.g., some environmental effect PC's must overcome each round in order to act etc) to "keep it on stage". A climax creature should also be a "3rd Act" feature meaning at least 1, perhaps 2 acts already went by with some wounds, crits, fatigue and stress and though some of that recovered much still being self.

Also, if the shaggoth was not menaced immediately by another PC, the unconscious PC can be struck for an an auto-critical (once you're down if something wants to finish you it's pretty easy).

I've had several deaths as well as near deaths and the PCs have had many "if I fall unconcious now I die"-moments. So I do not feel that it's a problem. Even the high toughness characters are at risk from time to time.

Certainly if a group of PCs, that are fully healed, go into a battle with a single creature, they will probably not risk dying from a rule perspective. But I have seldom experienced that the characters get to go into fights with those perfect conditions very often.

I've found that often characters are not at full health. High severity criticals tend to stick around for quite a while, making combat dangerous. Furthermore I feel that a monster is seldom alone in the adventures, and mostly there are several encounters during a relatively short period of in game time, making it likely that characters are not fully healed before the next combat begins.

And as valvorik pointed out, many creatures have easy access to actions that generate criticals often.

Lastly, I did have the problem of "no one dying" in one group. But I think that was due to the fact that the group had a Shallya priest who focused everything (actions, talents, skills) on healing wounds and criticals. That meant that a lot of the combat encounters were entered by the group at full health. Sometimes they even got healed during combat if things were looking bad.

As has been said already: The game mechanics are designed so that you usually don't die in one encounter. Instead, the world wears you down over time until the character dies, is driven insane or becomes unplayable in some way.

The thing is, for this to work you have to limit that amount of recovery players get to make. You have to keep the pressure up. They shouldn't always be able to remove all wounds, fatigue and stress before the next encounter (I'm a big fan of one-the-road effects that stick around for the next encounter). They shouldn't always have access to a healer, or even a dry place to sleep, to get rid of the criticals.

My players almost always have at least one critical from an earlier encounter. The most recent character to die was a rank 3 super-archer who got torn apart by two wolves in two rounds of combat. As soon as he wasn't able to keep out of reach, the wolves just piled on criticals. And they were attacking at night so the character hadn't gotten to heal up all his wounds yet and already had a critical or two. So down he went. He had faced off against an chaos ogre, a dragon, Lokhir Fellheart and many other larger dangers. But in the end, all it took was a couple of wolves catching him when he was exposed.

Sure custom-made rules/encounters could solve anything (i mean, stearing the game where u like it!) but playing as RAW:

1. PC heals pretty fast: even a T3 could recover full health in 4 days of gaming time (anyway T4 or T5 are just broken in this sense)
2. Criticals get healed/ignored pretty fast too (and i never had an healer on my groups).
3. Stress/fatigue are useless: they are recovered at any rally step and every night of rest. Personally, never got a permanent insanity, so is just waste of time managing them
4. Severe criticals (apart requiring an expansion) are so few that my PC NEVER DRAW one!

So in the end, even if the shaggot come after many acts, PC have plenty of time to recover. Moreover:

Arriving at an encounter already wounded, is a benefit for the players: his PC will go KO faster, thus preventing critical generating monsters to deal enough criticals! Isn't this a paradox?! XD

The only real threaths are disease, wich are really a pain to remove.

If i'll switch from GM to player i will know that the supposed "low fantasy" mood of crippled/insane characters is so remotely likely, that is simple not there in this game...

1. Yes, you heal fast, but I believe that's a feature rather than a bug. You heal quick enough to get back into the action without prolonged rest periods. But you still heal slow enough to often have some wounds/criticals left over from the last combat encounter. Unless combat is far between, but that depends on the adventure I guess.

2. I have not had this problem in my groups. Rolling 3-5 hammers on a recovery roll with 2 purple (and often some black due to poor conditions) is not that easy.

According to this dice roller: http://www.theforbiddentome.com/rollers/wfrp3e/ (press calculate probabilities) there's about 3% chance of rolling three successes if you have T3 and no training, and a quite low 11% chance of rolling 3 hammers if you have T4 and 1 check in resilience.

3. Have had several players get permanent insanities. Sure stress/fatigue goes away fast, but they build up fast as well. I'd use stress/fatigue.

4. You have luckey players, most of my players have (at least) one permanent injury.

Lastly, there's nothing stopping a monster from attacking a KOd character, that way you automatically cause (at least) one critical hit. So I'd not call getting KOd a benifit.

In an encounter with several enemies it's not unlikly that someone will deliver a coup the grace to the PC.

My character just became immortal in EP's game: I got turned into a Plaguebearer..so actually I didn't die. I have the gift that keeps on giving throughout the whole season!

In my games, I typically kill off about 1:5 characters. The enemy within had a lower death rate for us (we didn't play the final game chapter though..which would certainly have required a lot of bookkeeping). In The Dying of the Light campaign, I killed off 4-5 characters (if I recall correctly). In the Gathering Storm (ran 3 times), I killed off only 1:5 characters..but then again, I kill off characters because I want to and have the power, not because a scenario is difficult.

I don't believe in fairly killing off characters and I don't pull the dice like some sissy, yellow coward GM either. Sometimes, they get mugged off the street and are killed or maimed just because I need a plot device bigger than "yer' ol' NPC friend getting mugged/killed."

My players understand this and they know how to create new characters. I've heard of people (and recently) where the player throws a big crybaby attack b/c their character got killed/captured (or captured and killed). Grow up folks. Your character died b/c the GM willed it. Make a new one and get on with your life.

What death rate do you see as keeping PCs from being considered "immortal?"

50% should die in 10 sessions?

25% should die in 10 sessions?

I'm inclined to using the latter. Warhammer should be dangerous by nature and if characters don't die, it simply becomes a joke comic book like Scooby Doo where they always win.

I like killing off PCs. There's something also satisfying about using disease, shame (critical=shunning) or insanity/madness to take out a character as well.

Therein lies the beauty of the system. You can be a pansy GM or you can kill of characters like a big jerk like me..or be somewhere in between if you like. Beware though, if you decide there needs to be a quota, you might get some rebellion from the players.

jh

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..method for killing characters "fairly" btw:

* Never a single big bad evil guy

* Always weaken the characters in prior encounters

* Add stress and fatigue so they can't do extra stuff

* Multiple bad guys with 2nd wave arriving from the back so they cannot get away

* Bad guys get REACTION action cards (and lots of them)

* Max out your attacks on the first two swings with expertise dice, yellow, and multiple assists (remember assists are maneuvers) from lesser creatures

* At least one lesser creature uses Improved Guarded Position for he and his allies

* EPIC TEMPLATES

* All nemeses get the "use eagles as successes for initiative Talent.

* Star Wars' "Nemesis get's extra attacks" rule

* Measure your encounters based on difficulty of the PARTY to adjust from an Official Adventure: An average party is three characters: Roadwarden, Grey Wizard, Envoy.

** Add much more difficulty if this is the case: 4 characters, 5 characters, Ironbreaker present, heavy armored character present, character in party can do at least 17 points of damage, swordmaster present.

IMO, if your party isn't running away from 1 per 4 encounters, you are not making things difficult enough for them.

jh

My character just became immortal in EP's game: I got turned into a Plaguebearer..so actually I didn't die. I have the gift that keeps on giving throughout the whole season!

In my games, I typically kill off about 1:5 characters. The enemy within had a lower death rate for us (we didn't play the final game chapter though..which would certainly have required a lot of bookkeeping). In The Dying of the Light campaign, I killed off 4-5 characters (if I recall correctly). In the Gathering Storm (ran 3 times), I killed off only 1:5 characters..but then again, I kill off characters because I want to and have the power, not because a scenario is difficult.

I don't believe in fairly killing off characters and I don't pull the dice like some sissy, yellow coward GM either. Sometimes, they get mugged off the street and are killed or maimed just because I need a plot device bigger than "yer' ol' NPC friend getting mugged/killed."

My players understand this and they know how to create new characters. I've heard of people (and recently) where the player throws a big crybaby attack b/c their character got killed/captured (or captured and killed). Grow up folks. Your character died b/c the GM willed it. Make a new one and get on with your life.

What death rate do you see as keeping PCs from being considered "immortal?"

50% should die in 10 sessions?

25% should die in 10 sessions?

I'm inclined to using the latter. Warhammer should be dangerous by nature and if characters don't die, it simply becomes a joke comic book like Scooby Doo where they always win.

I like killing off PCs. There's something also satisfying about using disease, shame (critical=shunning) or insanity/madness to take out a character as well.

Therein lies the beauty of the system. You can be a pansy GM or you can kill of characters like a big jerk like me..or be somewhere in between if you like. Beware though, if you decide there needs to be a quota, you might get some rebellion from the players.

jh

.

I mean, if your players are having fun with this, fine, but this doesn't sound like a great experience to me. The story belongs to the players as much as the GM, and killing off characters on a whim is infringing on that. You may think people are being pansies or crybabies if they're not into that, but I'd throw out that a GM doing that could be seen as selfish/a jerk and the players as being weirdly masochistic.

That said, the system is about wearing characters down at every turn. Stress, Fatigue, Conditions, Party Tension, Disease, Corruption, Insanity, Critical Wounds, and finally regular wounds should all be encroaching on the characters. The point of having all the little bits is so these can be tracked more easily. As a note, the RAW in the players guide don't allow stress/fatigue to be recovered outside of encounter mode, you should give out conditions an disease checks for rolling banes/chaos stars, party tension should go up any time the entire party gets seriously stressed by something, stress and fatigue should be given out liberally and often nt even require rolling dice, and insanity should start coming up mch more as you start piling on stress.

Yup to above. I don't let PC's easily recover Stress/Fatigue between "Episodes", suffer some stress searching to buy a new healing draught, you likely have it start of Act 1 of next Episode. I even use Travel/Long Term Fatigue and Stress (red and blue poker chips) to reflect not easily recovered effects (you were riding hard for a whole week, failed choice of Ride or Resilience check - you get a Travel Fatigue marker that you will not recover until a few nights in a comfortable place reflecting aches and pains that a simple rest doesn't recover). Similarly you are on a long voyage on a ship with someone who annoys you and who bicker constantly, fail check to get them to shut up/endure it, some "Long Term Stress" for you (though in the case in point the PC has avoided that risk by offering to be the ship's lookout and spend as much time as he can up in the crow's nest [location card from POD] to stay away from it all).

Now WFRP is not the only system to model this sort of effect in addition to wounds and criticals etc. but I think properly handled it does it well and you can have a proper ghost story, "Call of Cthulhu in fantasy disguise" story where insanity and madness are the real threats.

As GM, why kill when you can torment? Insanity is great, little quirks that even the best rolls are not going to cure for at least a month in the weakest case. I also find disease scares Players witless - not since in D&D having a rust monster show up have I seen them treat something as being so dangerous! I also had a Player who "hated" insanity rules in other systems (being forced how he played PC) but instantly accepted the WFRP approach (essentially mandatory quirk) to the point he kept roleplaying one insanity even after "recovering" (keeping the behaviour just not the misfortune dice).

Im having a similar discussion on this topic on gms an dms facebook from a player perspective. That is: i consider pc life to be cheap. As a player i feel trapped wben im stuck with the same character for long. Of course i weigh the player. If the just cant live without their character, then there are other plot options..

Yup to above. I don't let PC's easily recover Stress/Fatigue between "Episodes", suffer some stress searching to buy a new healing draught, you likely have it start of Act 1 of next Episode. I even use Travel/Long Term Fatigue and Stress (red and blue poker chips) to reflect not easily recovered effects (you were riding hard for a whole week, failed choice of Ride or Resilience check - you get a Travel Fatigue marker that you will not recover until a few nights in a comfortable place reflecting aches and pains that a simple rest doesn't recover). Similarly you are on a long voyage on a ship with someone who annoys you and who bicker constantly, fail check to get them to shut up/endure it, some "Long Term Stress" for you (though in the case in point the PC has avoided that risk by offering to be the ship's lookout and spend as much time as he can up in the crow's nest [location card from POD] to stay away from it all).

Now WFRP is not the only system to model this sort of effect in addition to wounds and criticals etc. but I think properly handled it does it well and you can have a proper ghost story, "Call of Cthulhu in fantasy disguise" story where insanity and madness are the real threats.

As GM, why kill when you can torment? Insanity is great, little quirks that even the best rolls are not going to cure for at least a month in the weakest case. I also find disease scares Players witless - not since in D&D having a rust monster show up have I seen them treat something as being so dangerous! I also had a Player who "hated" insanity rules in other systems (being forced how he played PC) but instantly accepted the WFRP approach (essentially mandatory quirk) to the point he kept roleplaying one insanity even after "recovering" (keeping the behaviour just not the misfortune dice).

Honestly, I think you should just automatically inflict the stress/fatigue without doing a ride/check. Basically, reinforce that the world is grim and perilous, and reinforce the danger the player has of going into an encounter with a bunch of accumulated stress/fatigue. I don't think you should be rolling the dice in this system unless you're in encounter mode or if you're looking to find a story outcome. Basically, rolls should mostly be made to DO things, not to avoid things happening (resilience mostly excepted). Even if a player wants to roll for that travel check, give him or her the fatigue unless they counter it with boons (they found a hunter offering free food on the road!) or a sigmars comet (they met a priest on the road offering fine wine and a blessing of faith giving them the invigorates condition for the next encounter). This is really the best way IMO to reinforce the setting using te system. Make bad but non-lethal things happen to your players without a chance to avoid them, and let the players power through te adversity. The reason why characters in this system are so capable and likely to succeed is that you're supposed to be constantly throwing the weight of te world at them. Make the characters suffer in a way that te players hav to get around it with strategy rather than just rolling high numbers.