I was playing 2nd edition since its release and just have a couple of questions before i jump over to third, i have been reading review after review and tons of forums as 'myself' like many people was initally put of by its board game style appearence, but from what i have read and taking a neutral stance on many areas (and also what i learnt from 4e dnd) that it should play very, and is more than worth ago.

My questions are one; roughtly (no need for rulebook write ups) how does changing careers work now? someone mentioned a designer diary could someone post a link to any of this material on this subject and any as i cant find it!

two;How easy is it to make custom monsters, npcs, and talent, skills and SPELLs to back them up? Being a long term dm (in fact in four years of whrp 2 ed i did not once play a character but ran five or six long campagins)

three; aside from the campaign is there any news on any other GM source books, specifically undead and chaos along with a beastry as these will be vital to planning campaigns and until then i will proberly have to wait for the campaign box before getting things up and running properly (along with the A.T, as i have four to five players in my group most of the time with the occasional guest as friends come back to visit)

Thank you for your replies and i look forward to trying the game for myself, should hopefully be ordering it this weekend along with the A.T (just savage on timing, right on top of xmas!!)

crimsonsun said:

Designer diary on advancement is here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=783

making custom monsters and NPCs is easy and the book gives some suggestions on changing the difficulty of a particular encounter, although the conversion process is pretty free form. It doesn't provide something like the brute or sneak career to apply to the NPC in the way 2nd ed does.

Talents, skills and spells again can easily be added to the game; the official ones (spells and talents) come on cards, and the talents can be socketed to a sheet, so for home brew ones you'd need some physical representation of this; I'm sure it won't be long before someone is creating a design your own action/talent/spell card program, or whatever.

so far only the new campaign (plus toolkit) have been announced as the next things to be delivered. Jay has made a comment (i think on one of the video's) that halflings will/may appear in a later expansion, and that there are "lots of great things planned" for the product line.

The basic bestiary has your stock enemies in it though and IMO, is better than the one that came with the 2nd ed rule book.

Thanks very much for that, also i found the diary to of particular use in solving most of my concerns, another quick question in all the diaries/reviews/forum posts i have read i have heard nothing on mutations... now the asumption i have taken on this as mutation is in, and there are plently of ways of characters gaining this horriable yet sometimes benifical setback that is a imo very important part of the world.

can someone please comfirm this for me? Thanks

crimsonsun said:

It's discussed in the core rules as fluff, but currently rules for obtaining mutations are NOT in the core book.

Neither, as I have just noticed when answering your question, is disease.

Should be very easy to pull some diseases/mutations from the 2nd ed books though and convert until that stuff becomes officially available.

I reckon a GM set with these kinds of "advanced" rules must be hot in a list of expansions FFG will be working on...

Thanks again for the response, im very shocked by the lack of mutations in the core system, and even more so i have not seen it complained about, yes would be very easy to bring them over,especially for npcs. Mutation is always based on toughness tests so that will carry over dice being rolled would depend on strength of the source (with extra misfortune die or the purple ones name escapes me) and obviously the stance of the character. i assume they will bring out a mutation deck of some kind (hoping so anyways)

Disease is also interesting that its missing, im guessing a simular system will be used for gaining them as i said above, thou im not sure you will need a deck for that one, i can also see the tracker thing being well useful for working out how long the party need to be exposed/incubation/serverity of diseases.

Hoping for news on GM supplement shorty then!!

Checked the GMs book now i am home, and cult mutants do appear as an NPC. They are described as having various mutations, but the only game effect of that at the moment is a generic fear effect when you come across them.

Would think this will be expanded upon at some point..

If not i surely seem fan based rules coming to play.. when i get a copy maybe i should get writing! (after for course i have played some games to get a feel for the system)