Some posts ago I read someone mentioning he liked to have WS and BS not being based solely on Strength and Agility, and I also liked it in WFRP1 and WFRP2 that they were considered as separate stats, so here is a quick and simple house rule to get a similar feeling in WFRP3.

For Weapon Skill, instead of using only Strength as basic characteristic, add your Strength, your Agility and your Intelligence together, then divide by three and round the result to the closest integer: that will be your basic characteristic for Weapon Skill.

For Ballistic Skill, instead of using only Agility as basic characteristic, add your Agility, your Intelligence and your Willpower together, then divide by three and round the result to the closest integer: that will be your basic characteristic for Ballistic Skill.

An example of how it would work. Let's say Wulfric, a Reikland Human has the following characteristics:

Strength: 4

Agility: 3

Intelligence: 3

Willpower: 5

His basic characteristic for Weapon Skill would be: (4+3+3)/3= 10/3=3.33; rounded to closest integer, 3.

His basic characteristic for Ballistic Skill would be: (3+3+5)/3= 11/3=3.67; rounded to closest integer, 4.

Other variations could include changing the stats you use to calculate the basic characteristic, or giving more weight to one stat (as an example, Strength for WS and Agility for BS could be multiplied by 2, then the division would be by 4)... anyway, the end result is very simple, as you would only need to write down the final number next to your WS and BS skills and would need to recalculate it only when you change any of the stats used for the calculation.

Any comments on this idea? Also, what do you think of having WS depend solely on Strength and BS depend solely on Agility? Do you prefer it to having them as separate stats as in WFRP2?

Sorry for answering my post, but on a second thought, it occurred to me that this could be applied to almost any other skill in the game. For example, Intimidation could be calculated using Strength, Fellowship and Willpower... Intuition could be calculated using Intelligence and Willpower, Ride a mix of Agility, Strength and Willpower, etc.

Because of the way the character sheet is organized, you would only need to write the final basic value on the character sheet and recalculate it only when your basic stats change.

I like this.

I have always thought that "Skills" are governed by more that one Stat, and the examples you cited are particularly good. As you have also said this does not need to neccessarily be only applicable to WS and BS. With regard to Intimidate, this is very much about physical bearing and menace and how a character looks - there are advanteages to only having one eye and a grotesque scar running from ear to mouth, although accounting for this with Stats only seems difficult.

As mentioned in the designer diaries characters can take specialisations under the broader basic skills, and it would be interesting to see how this method works with them.

With all this in mind I believe this could lead to a greater diversity between characters - even if they are both the same race and career.

Alp

Certainly likable, this is a great idea and show the heart of RPGing making smart little helper rules to give an estimate on a skill or characteristic and to convert from one system to another!

And after all I think Jay owes us a session demo video

very interesting....i like it!! good for those who want to make V3 transfer to V2

It's a good idea in theory. The problem is that the pool of variables you are drawing from are to close since the minimum practical range is 2 and the maximum practical range is 5. You are not going to really have a statistical variance of any significance. Which means that most people will have a 3 with a few 2's and 4's in there. You aren't achieving the desired goal of really having a WS/BS statistic. This goes for any 3 stat combination. It's further diminish once you start leveling up statistics. That's not a specific problem to this game. But a general problem that comes up in any game that uses a 1-5 range of stats. Most people are the same with a couple varrying stats.