Hi all.

My groups Arbitrator rolled the Frenzy talent on his Divintion roll and now on rank 4 he asked me whether he can get the Battle Rage talent. I allowed it as an Elite Advance for 200 XP. In frenzy you are not allowed to Parry, but with the Battle Rage talent you are allowed to parry. So far so good. But then the Frenzy descriptions says you have to use an All Out Attack manoeuver whenever possible. The All Out Attack manoeuver does not allow to Parry and Dodge though. So, what is the Battle Rage talent good for anyway then? Ok, you could parry in the turn you charge, but thats not much honestly. Besides, if you have Swift Attack and/or Lightning Attack you are still restricted to the All Out Attack manoeuver? Does ot make sense either as you could strike more often (befitting a frenzy) in the Multiple Attack manoeuver...

Any ideas. experiences, solutions? Thanks in advance.

Luthor Harkon said:

What I've done, is simply add, you have to use Swift Attack, Lightning Attack OR All Out Attack for frenzy.

Thought it was a nice easy fix. But, without Battle Rage, even still using Swift or Lightning Attack you cannot parry. So, it gives it use.

Fideru said:

Yeah nice fix. We've noticed this as well and I think it was an oversight in the rules.

Simple: you can parry before your turn during any given round. Frenzy is meant to be used in conjunction with Furious Assault (which allows another attack after a successful All-Out Attack), and is generally an option for low agility (and therefore low initiative and dodge) characters.

Between Frenzy and All-Out Attack, it also makes for a much more accurate melee character than is otherwise viable (with 90 effective WS quite possible by the mid to late game)

You do not want to know how badly I could break a game by being able to use Lightning Attack with Frenzy...

You cannot parry before your turn in round x if you used All Out Attack on your previous turn, as the Action description clearly states: "may not Parry or Dodge until your next turn". Otherwise it would have no effects for whoever goes last in the round.

So, I agree that frenzy shouldn't be combineable with lightning/swift attack. Battle rage ought to mean something, and D.S's post demonstrates that it can't just be that it allows you to parry before your action. Therefore it means that you can parry and make an all-out attack in the same round. However, I guess you'd need to stipulate that you can't use your reaction to do a "furious assault" and parry in the same round.

Hrm. I guess Battle Rage is intended for turns in which you cannot use All-Out Attack, then. (Which also includes turns in which you are for some reason obliged to use a Standard Attack).

Furious Assault also uses up your Reaction anyhow, unless you have Wall of Steel as well.

Then how would you all handle it? I personally find that frenzy is a double edged sword with no running away, and for that reason alone my players don't use it. Granted, I do combats sometimes where it's not a good idea to stay around (as you can imagine the situations they get theirselves in).

I'd either stick to the RAW, or allow Battle Rage to also override the prohibition of using Parry after an All-Out-Attack (assuming they don't spend their reaction on something else, such as Furious Assault, of course).

I was about to get Battle Rage for my guardsman, untill I realised with RAW it's useless. Can parry when frenzied, but not when making an all out attack. Like people have said before. I can see no playtesting was done with this.

Catachan said:

Hindsight's great, isn't it? Lets you see everything perfectly...

It's a 400 page rulebook, and the number of different ways to construct characters is vast. Given the number of playtesters, and the fact we had a month per draft of the rulebook to test (and the fact that we were all volunteers, fitting playtest sessions in around any other gaming and real-life commitments, dealing with hundreds of unformatted, un-proof read pages of text and nothing to highlight changes between drafts), it's unsurprising that things got through. 33 groups, an approximate average of 7 players per group including a GM, and three months of testing (not counting the stuff on the really old drafts that don't at all resemble the current game, or anything done with supplements), assuming an average of a four-hour session per week of testing, that's about twelve thousand man-hours involved in the external playtest. In the first week after the game's release, the amount of use the game had received would have easily doubled from that figure having been seen and played by thousands of gamers, and that's a low estimate. It is entirely unsurprising that elements could be missed by playtesters like myself and picked up upon after release... afterall, the number of people looking at the game after release is orders of magnitude greater than the number of playtesters.

As noted by a friend of mine who used to work as a beta-tester for Electronic Arts, when you're testing a game, you focus on the big things first and foremost, the stuff that'll stop play dead in its tracks (amongst other things, the rules for semi- and full-auto fire, and those relating to them, were changed in each draft). Anything else you have time to catch after that is a bonus.

The talent doesn't break the game. More importantly, it does still have a measure of utility (if you can't All-Out Attack for whatever reason, Battle Rage allows you to parry - that's still more than nothing).

So before you make snarky comments about the playtesting, think about what you're saying and consider the nature of playtesting a game like this. Especially with RPGs, where context is subjective and thus so is the feedback, it's not as simple a matter as it initially might seem.

I'm just saying that they had the best intentions when coming up with the Battle Rage talent, but didn't follow though on it by seeing if it actually did some thing. It's a shame to see hard work like that fall though the cracks, and the support nets that should catch it failed.

I understand that house rules should take care of oversights like this. I'm going to go see if it's mentioned in the Errata, since that came out long after the rulebook was finalized. If it's not in there I guess it's working as intended.

said:

Catachan said:

Nothing in regard to Battle Rage is mentioned in the Errata. I already checked it before starting the topic.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

'No one cares about your problems.' That is what my Ph.D. adviser always said. Nowadays, working as a project manager for a CRA, I can tell you our clients do not care about the reason why we might have overseen something in a study or how many editors checked the study. 'We pay you to do a job properly and do not care how you get it done properly. Period.'

Anyway, the editorial process for DH was obviously done very lousy objectively spoken. Whatever the resons. (Still, it is nothing compared to Tome of Corruption from WFRP 2nd ed. by BI). Catachan as a customer does not have to 'consider the nature (or process) of playtesting a game' as you say. He simply expects a certain amount of quality for his money. And this is rather resonable if you ask me.

Anyway, the editorial process for DH was obviously done very lousy objectively spoken. Whatever the resons. (Still, it is nothing compared to Tome of Corruption from WFRP 2nd ed. by BI). Catachan as a customer does not have to 'consider the nature (or process) of playtesting a game' as you say. He simply expects a certain amount of quality for his money. And this is rather resonable if you ask me.

He gets precisely what he and others paid for. RPGs are a niche market that doesn't exactly make their developers rich over night. You want better quality? Simply make more people play the game. Two times the players means two times the financial gains for FFG means X times the budget for playtesting. That's the way information goods work.

The question isn't whether RPGs contain faults, the question is whether they get decent support and errata - which has happened here to a far greater degree than with most other games I know of.

As for the actual Topic, I allow All-Out-Attack to be followed by a Parry for frenzied people with Battle Rage.

Is there a venue for "Request for Errata" or some other method of getting FFG to look at an issue, and hopefully deliver a ruling?

Luthor Harkon said:

There is a huge difference between having your career be about detailed error checking and being a volunteer play tester for a game company. Play testers in the RPG world do the testing in their spare time and if they are lucky they might get a free copy of the book they were testing as payment. Like N0-1_H3r3 said their job is to do they best they can with what they are given within the time frame they have. Stuff gets missed. Since this is the first time, that I can recall, this question has cropped up since the game was released it is something most players haven’t had issue with and could be easily overlooked by play testers and developers. In other words, to complain about play testing is a waste of time.

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The problem I see with the OP is that they are trying to think too much.

My interpretation is that the Battle Rage talent modifies/overrides the All Out Attack prohibition on Parrying. So if you are frenzied you must make an All Out Attack whenever you can. That means no dodge, no parry. If you have Battle Rage then you CAN parry while taking the All Out Attack.

The talent seems pretty straight foreword to me. Hence I have never had any reason to question the talent.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Actually, I do not question the process of play-testing. I merely question some sort of apologetic behaviour in this regard, especially when combined with some smart ass comments. Anyway, in my view, play-testing is before all needed to check certain balancing issues (e.g. whether auto-fire needs an extra hit for every or every second degree) and not so much for finding contraries, faults or typos. This is what editors and proof-readers are good for.

Regarding the issue. Would you then think that Battle Rage also allow to Parry while making an All Out Attack when not frenzied? Or only when frenzied?

Luthor Harkon said:

I believe Battle Rage is a sub talent of Frenzy so it would apply only while frenzied.

Frenzy has a lot more penalties than just a normal All Out Attack (AOA) action. If you aren’t in a frenzy then you are not forced to use the AOA and the no dodge, no parry shouldn’t be countered. When you are using Frenzy you don’t have a choice about what attack action to take and the Battle Rage talent is meant as your ability to exert a little control over your actions while in your blind rage.

It seems like a fairly simple fix. Battle Rage states that you remain in control while frenzied. To me it would seem a simple progression to rule that if you have Battle Rage you do not have to use All-Out Attack when frenzied because you remain in control.

Emprah_Horus said:

Nice. I think this is the correct fix.

I would also agree with Horus on this, and it is how I always interpreted the rule. Allowing a parry with an all out attack is a good fix, but this seems more in keeping with the nature of the talent.

Hodgepodge said:

This is why Battle Rage is good. Any round where you cannot use an All-Out-Attack you can parry. Any rounds where the PC has to move to reach a target, or get up from being knocked down, or move closer after being maneuvered away, etc ... while still retaining the +10S and +10WS of frenzy and being able to parry. It does not seem to be broken to me. Frenzy+All-out-assault is a +10S, +30WS attack. You are trading number of attacks (assuming Swift attack available) for increased damage and increased chance to hit. Plus, with swift attack you have the option to NOT frenzy and still be dangerous, etc.

They don't seem particularly broken to me.