http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=483406

About 2/3 the way through the initial post there is the following:

"--HOUSE RULES-- (that really changed how we feel about the game when we implemented them halfway through the session)

Instead of the horrible horrible card recharge mechanic that you need a large table to play, we modified it (with least messing about with the rules) into a laid back in your comfy chair SotC-like experience.

Just have 10 Combat points which recharge 2 per turn and you can convert extra successes from an action into a point at 2:1 ratio. What is normally the Recharge value on the cards becomes its cost to play with Combat points.
Elegant, streamlined and not making you feel like a dealer at the roulette table.

Seriously this simple change completely eliminated any semblance of boardgamerism and made the game into a mix of oWoD and SotC on steroids. We also added aspects, but we add aspects to everything

Is this easier or more complicated than the RAW? I'm playing in a demo this weekend so I haven't seen enough to know yet.

Interesting. Well, I'm not running until tomorrow, so I don't have experience yet. This can only be taken with a grain of salt, then...

It seems like it is fewer tokens to manage, if that is what they are going for. However, I don't see a lot of the demo characters needing to recharge very many actions, since they've only got 2 or 3 cards with recharges at the most (not counting the 3 active defenses). It seems to me their talk of excessive space taken up is a bit dramatic. I've layed out the action cards, and placing a small stack of tokens next to the card didn't take up much space for me. In fact, it's less space than I normally take up playing an RPG, with my character sheet, note sheet, and rulebooks.

Anyway, back to the suggested house rule. I guess if you want to be able to spam your "fun" attack actions over and over each round, this suggested way would be a good alternative. It does change the dynamic of combat, however. For example:

A powerful action card with a 5 recharge. That means in WFRP 3e you can only use it once every 4 rounds (without spending fortune points to remove recharge tokens, etc). This new system lets you use it two rounds in a row, wait just a single round, then use it again. (10->5, 5+2=7->2, 2+2=4, 4+2=6, use again). That's using it 3 times in 4 rounds! That's a big difference in the number of times you can use an action in a combat. Hardly makes a PC need to think about when to use which action, and nearly no need for a PC to rotate using actions, at least until later rounds of combat when they've exhausted their points.

So, it seems to really change the game itself, not just how the recharge works, IMO. Personally, while I think it's an interesting idea, I think it changes the premise of the recharge system to much. The recharge is meant as a way to limit the frequency of use of certain actions, which in turn causes players to rotate and use different actions.

Hi folks,

I've been meaning to join the forums and post the link myself, but was somewhat wary, as the forums here are quite hostile, and im really not into that sort of a thing.

Seeing that its been linked here makes me blush a bit

Now you guys are probably gonna play this rpg a lot more than I will, and I wouldnt want to sound to presumptious but i would really love to hear your thoughts on improving this jury-rigged alternative to more traditional card/counter boardgame-type of play.

A few extra notes concerning it (I wasnt expecting the idea to reach such widespread general approval):

-Any cards that have "while this card is recharging..." are played normally (these are mostly spells and social things) That is their duration.

-Any effects that add/remove a recharge counter instead add/remove a Combat point.

-At first we tried it with 1extra success being able to be swaped for 1Combat point but perhaps the players were rolling to well or something, so we changed it to 2successes for 1 Combat point. But it could be perhaps for any boons...? This was primarly becaus it would often be that there would be "loose change" in successes that didnt do anything.

-Dont forget that defenses cost as well. Actually there was a proposition to make them cost less or something, seeing as if a PC blocks every turn it costs him the same amount of points he would gain.

-If youre afraid of someone spamming the same attack, simply rule that the opponent is wary of the same trick being done twice in a row and add the heavy challenge die to the pool. (maybe even 2 but that would be a very heavy penalty, basically a auto-miss in some cases).

Anyway if properly refined and balanced this house rule would be of a great boon [silly pun, lol] in facilitating certain players who wouldnt really touch the game cause it looks like ... as one of my players put it "playing a MtG Sliver deck redux but with naked dwarves. And Blackjack. And Hookers. Aw screw the whole thing""

I haven't got the game yet - and can't make any of the demos (which sucks, since there's one about 3 miles away), but I think Cyclone's house-rule sounds like a pretty awesome idea, especially if it made his group go from thinking the game was okay, but overloaded with crap - to really liking the game. It works for them, so in some regards it's already a success. Depending upon one's game group, there are going to be situations (or players) where laying out cards and putting tokens on them isn't the most ideal situation, and might prove to be a big distraction to the game. I'd love to see this house-rule expanded upon, myself...

That being said, what Dvang brought up about the costs of the abilities and being able to spam a favored power also makes sense. Maybe the idea, as first presented, throws off the play-balance a bit.

I'm guessing with a bit of fine-tuning, Cyclone's houserule might streamline the game for folks that don't want the fiction part of the game to be interrupted by the resource management portion of the game. That may not be a problem for everyone - but to those for whom the thought of removing themselves from roleplaying even for a moment to add/subtract tokens sounds painful, it sounds like a great solution. I know that I hate playing with minis because I find that they have a tendency to take players out of the game. I'm guessing Cyclone feels the same about the tokens on cards.

Warhammer is certainly big enough to accommodate differing play-styles. I'm encouraged that folks are already finding ways to customize it to fit the needs of their gaming groups.

Kudos Cyclone... and Dvang. Great ideas and concerns. I bet the house-rule is a tweak or two from being a great alternative...

...and welcome to the boards Cyclone.

I started working on some rules for that myself.

Since I didn't play it yet those rules can be totally wrong and inaccurate.

I share them in the raw form here, maybe they give you some ideas.

Action Points (AP) – number of action points to use during one round on physical tasks. Based on Agility and Inteligence (because some tasks are physical, and some mental). AP are low to prevent the players from starting encounter with their best actions.

Action Points value are as follows:
Agility+Inteligence Action Points (to spend every turn)
2-4 2 AP
5-8 3 AP
9-12 4 AP
13-16 5 AP
17-20 6 AP

Player may spend AP to perform actions, maneuvers, cast spells etc. during his round.
Player can only perform action when he has enough AP.
Player do not have to use all of his AP.

How to gather more AP for required action?
1. Player can move all unused AP from 1 round to the next one (just add all remaining AP to players AP at the beginning of the next round). Player can only do this ONCE every 2 turns (that means if player with 3 AP, use 1 AP on first turn, he will be able to use 5 AP on the second turn, but on the third turn he can only use 3 AP again, no matter how much he used on turn 2).

2. Player can spend Fortune Points to gain AP. Every FP spend gives 1 AP to the player.

3. Player can fatigue/stress his PC to gain AP. Depending on the action type he wants to resolve (physical or mental) 1 AP for every fatigue or stress.

4. Player can move down in initiative order for the given turn to gain 1 AP. Player can do this only if there is an enemy that can act after player would acted
normally (that means if the player is last in the initiative order, or there are only other players below, he can't use this possibility). Player acts right after the enemy he waited for ends his turn. This can be done ONCE per every turn.

5. Every time that some effect with description “add/remove counters to/from any Action Cards” it actually adds/removes AP. If the player lacks AP to remove he need to spend Fortune Points, move down the initiative order, or get fatigued/stressed.

6. Players may convert spare success symbols from their pool outcome to gain 1 AP per 2 spare success symbols (I added this after reading of this thread ).

Again, the above may be totally inacurate, and requires some stress testing.

Here's another idea on the same subject, but maybe a little less complicated than before.

Again it is not tested yet, but I like to have more test subjects than one.

Action Range (AR) – number to compare with recharge of chosen action card. Based on characteristics that chosen task refers to (ie: agility for shooting, strength for melee, fellowship for talking, whatever action card says).

Action Range value are as follows:
Characteristic Action Range
1-4 2 AR
5-8 3 AR
9-10 4 AR

Now:
1. If card recharge equals, or is less than AR, then player can use it without any modifiers

2. If card recharge is more than AR, but not more than 2*AR, then player character suffers additional fatigue/stress (depending on a task type - physical/mental) every time he uses this card

3.If card recharge is more than 2*AR, then this action adds additional <P> dice to the pool, additionally to the pt 2 fatigue/stress gain (so it is 1 fatigue/stress and 1 <P> in sum)

4. Every card of recharge 2 or more is tapped after use. At the end of player turn any card that is upside down, is put in its normal position, any tapped cards are put upside down. Player cannot use cards that are tapped, or upside down.

The option is to change places for the points 2 and 3, like if AR < recharge <= 2*AR then add <P> instead of fatigue/stress, and add fatigue stress only if 2*AR < recharge (keeping the <P> of course).
Until I get my box, I have no idea which effect is stronger (<P> or fatigue/stress gain).

interesting ideas here. I am definitely up for a simpler approach to this, and one that doesnt feel like you are playing a board game. I guess another solution is that you get 1 Action point each round, which may be saved or spent. Once you have used a particular Action, you need to pay its cost to use it again during a particular encounter. So Accurate Shot would cost 6 APs to recharge etc Fortune points could be used instead, and anything that increases or decreases an actions recharge pile, could just give you or take away the action points you have accrued. then you just need to record on a sheet how many Action points you have, just like Wounds or any other resource