Hello fellow GMs.

I am staging a fight on a narrow bridge; any character/NPC knocked off the bridge is going to die. Horribly. There is enough space on the bridge for two people to stand side-by-side.

How many boons do you think a player needs to burn in order to knock a monster/NPC off the bridge to their death? I was thinking it would have to be a fairly awesome strike, so 3+? Maybe two comets? One comet?

What are your thoughts? (Yes - clearly this can be done to the PCs as well).

I am thinking that in the PCs case, they would be allowed an agility test to grab onto the ledge as they fall and from there... who knows.

I'd say 2, and I wouldn't give mooks/henchmen the Agility check, although named NPCs/wargors/etc. maybe. But just toss the henchies over the railing!

CaffeineBoy said:

I agree.

I would say half (rounded up) of the monster/player Strength or Agility, whatever fits the situation best.

CaffeineBoy said:

Absolutely! Henchies have notoriously poor balance anyway. Everybody knows that. Thanks for the feedback all.

There is a knock back action card so check that out and make it a "bit more difficult" if doing the action without the action card.

There is also a shield bash action, or something, but i think that just knocks someone prone.

I'm going to use this kind of principle if someone wants to do something "special" that is more or less on a card but they don't have it... firing into melee, firing while in melee, grappling etc are all on special action cards, but it's also bound to be the kind of thing people will want to try even though they don't have the required action....

pumpkin said:

Good call; I haven't come across that card yet. Thanks all for the suggestions!

Also the duelists Action Card can be used to push monsters of the ledge as the PC forces them too close and they slip.

pumpkin said:

I think it doesn't even need a house rule. Your player wants to use an action from a card they don't have? Let him perform a stunt and give the roll an appropriate difficulty modifier. That's it.

The more I consider potential applications of the stunt action (and, to a slightly lesser degree, the cantrip), the more impressed I am with the elegance of that mechanic and WFRP3 as a whole. No more telling the player "nuh-uh, you don't have the skill, you can't" even if he wants to do something that in theory anyone can at least try to attempt, such as dodge. Now it's "okay, you may try that, but since you aren't trained in it, the difficulty is so and so".

Ferozstein said:

The trick is, though, that if a player wants to replicate the effects of an action card that they haven't invested in, they should be allowed to do it, but at a greater difficulty. That way, characters with invested skills get some benefit from their action card investment, but you're not limiting the play of others.

Some ways of "borrowing" action cards:

• Increase difficulty by adding challenge dice
• Use the card as is, but limit successes to 1 (i.e. they can't activate lines with multiple successes or boon/comet effects). Banes apply as normal.