My earlier posting on variable damage had the attack do Strength + successes. After thinking about it, it was backwards. The weapon damage should be fixed and the variable comes into play based on how hard you hit and how good you are with the weapon.

So with that in mind:

Variable Damage

Normal Damage = Weapon Damage Rating + total number of successes rolled (including canceled successes)

Someone trained in weapon use, or specialising, will be more deadly than Joe Q. Elf the Envoy. Additional damage from Action Cards still applies.

Exploding Damage

In the eldest incarnation of my beloved Warhammer, there was a 1 in 6 chance of having a base WS's chance at producing "Additional Damage." In 2nd edition, this was known as Ulric's Fury and became a 1 in 10 chance of having a modified WS's chance. I like 1 in 6 and for that chance to improve the better you are.

A Sigmar's Comet result + 1 Boon can trigger Additional Damage. I had a couple of thoughts on this. Either:

• Double damage before subtracting TO and Soak
• Double damage after subtracting TO and then subtract Soak
• Double damage after all reduction
• Reroll Characteristic and Expertise dice (all? blank ones? blank and successes?) looking for additional successes to add to damage

Other

I will also be raising standard attack difficulty to Average (2d) so starting characters do not have an 85% success rate on attacks that have no [W] or .

I may need to reign in soak values or reduce starting wounds when using variable damage and, as a result of that, remove the 1 damage minimum.

Mordenthral said:

After many test rolls, I'm leaning towards this option as the best one with the addendum that the Comet and Boon are not "spent" and can be used to trigger other effects.

Forgot to mention that it also includes stance dice. Only extra successes are counted; other symbols on the rerolled dice are ignored.

From a narrative perspective it helps show where the extra damage came from: brute strength, raw agility, cautious calculation, aggressive recklessness, skill, combat training, etc.

I'm also looking for a new UF implementation.

It's really too bad that V3 got rid of exploding damage and Fate points. Those two rules combined were one of the best elements of V1 and V2.

So I'm also toying with ways to make explodiong damage available again.

Here are some ideas:

First something to make extremes of luck and badluck count for more. Every left over successes (after having triggered a success line) counts as a boon. Every left over Challenge counts for a Bane. So getting more challenges than successes on a roll is REALLY bad. And getting more successes than needed to trigger a success line is REALLY good. I'm hoping these extra Boons and Banes will augment damage or bad effects and make a winner quicker during battle.

Hammer+ on the expertise die: Reroll your skill pool to generate more successes (all results count, successes, boons, a new Hammer+ counts as a simple success)

Comet: if used to generate a crit, the target must make a Resilience check against the Crits rating to remain standing. If no successes show, the pain is too much, the traget is knocked out, or winded or otherwise rendered incapacitated. A successful use of First Aid can bring the target back to its senses.

Jericho said:

It will be better to use the Righteous Success for exploding damage, rather than a (Comet + Boon) and then worry about spending or not spending them. I'm going to ninja your idea for my new combat system.

Just a side note: Monsters can get exploding damage this way by using Expertise. And the Chaos Warrior is trained in Combat Skill, so it makes them especially deadly.

I ran the demo tonight for some friends, encounter one, and used the new combat rules I've been formulating. Ulric's Fury occurred one time for 2 additional damage. The slayer was regularly dual striking for 13 - 16 damage; that card is vicious. There were zero crits, so that couldn't be tested, unfortunately.

With all the chits flying around and dice pools being created and resolved, the single 3 act encounter required 2.5 hours to resolve.

I'm afraid that there was just too much going on all at once. I greatly enjoyed doling out stress and fatigue, adn the slayer gained an insanity, but I'm going to have to hang up my 3rd edition hat and go back to running 1st edition, as it is both quaint and satisfyingly bloody.

I'll keep my eyes on 3rd and see where FFG takes it.

Still looking for a simple and elegant way to include some kind of UF in V3. If anyone has some ideas, please contribute !

The problem I have at using either the comet or the hammer+ is that only "experts" will benefit from UF.

I'm looking for a houserule that gives anyone a chance to drive in that lucky shot. Of course, experts should have a better chance, but even peasants and goblins should have a glimmer of hope...

Here are some ideas:

- 4 boons (pretty rare indeed, but still possible): reroll good dice and add 1 point of damage per success; 4 boons can again cause another reroll.

OR

- Successes can also buy multiple lines, like boons, but only if you score 4 boons.

OR

- Successes can also buy multiple lines, like boons, but only if you also roll a Comet and trigger this effect. (This would make UF an expert priviledge)

OR

- If no bad symbols appear, then reroll unused successes and new successes and boons can buy lines a second time.

I like this last one, I'd be curious how it plays out in the numbers. A bad combatant could get lucky and make a lot of damage, but this would most likely happen against opponents with a poor defense. I like that ! Take a weak burgher with no defense, no armour... The only bad die would be the easy (1d) purple die. Which means that UF would occur 1 in 8 times (the blank face). And if the enemy is a Goblin, then most likely it will not have many extra successes to reroll... But if it does, then ouch ! (To makes things balanced, maybe apply soak and toughness once on every line ?)

I'm inclined to think that the quickest and best method to add Ulric's Fury back into the game is to roll a D6, D8 or D10 for damage. This probably sounds heretical, but there you go. I'd remove Strength from the damage because the double-scaling annoys me, which leaves something like weapon damage + 1 + bonuses + D6.

jaj22 said:

What's the +1 ?

Just another idea. You could mark the corner of a few wound cards to be exploding damage/dice.

jh

Jericho said:

A mistake. I was aiming to keep the average damage roughly the same as if you were using the original system with a STR 4 character, but the D6 does that already, so weapon damage + D6 + modifiers is fine. You'd need a -1 if you chose to use a D8 and you didn't want to speed up combat.

Emirikol said:

And what would happen then ?

jaj22 said:

Your idea is nice and simple. And could even use Str if you change weapon damage values. (Hand weapon does Str damage, all other weapons are compared to the Hand Weapon for bonuses or minuses to Str, just like V2).

But if the damage rolled is a 6, how do you determine if UF happens ? Reroll die pool and look for a success ?

I was listening to a recorded gaming session of A Day Late, A Shilling Short on the Reckless Dice Podcast and they didn't/forgot to apply Toughness in soaks. It was brutal. So it got me thinking:

In running my first game of WFRP I also missed the soak, but liked the dangerous play. Once I reintroduced the toughness, per the rules, it felt much less deadly, more stagnant (commonly hitting for the same damage) and much slower. Which causes me to think, how might I add the spice of danger back to the game? Which led to this line of thinking:

1. stop cutting the damage by toughness -> much more dangerous, still stagnant, extra success lines and critical hits are not as important, devalues toughness as characteristic. No.
2. roll toughness dice pool for soak using fortune dice, but maintain flat armor (Shadowrun does this) -> adds variety and possibility of danger, slows game by adding an extra die roll, devalues the toughness characteristic versus strength. Better, but no.
3. roll strength and toughness in damage roll with fortune/(black) dice -> adds variety and danger potential, balances str/tough, slows game. Still a little better. Maybe.

Option 3 could be worth play testing, but I’d still like to get a better tie in to the relative success of the initial attack roll. Any ideas?

If you want to deal out more damage then just have each extra success on the attack beyond what's needed to power a card effect cause an extra point of damage. The GM toolkit says to limit this damage to their talent rating in WS/BS but you could change that to no limit or their strength perhaps.

Background: I had seen the rule for adding damage for each extra success. It adds a small amount of variation to damage, but doesn't address the deadly nature of Ulric's fury. This got me to thinking about another methodology. Dream pod nine makes a system called silhouette which has one of my favorite damage rules. Rather than using an additive damage calculation, it uses multiplication and compares the damage result to a threshold. WFRP has damage ratings and the die rolls result in a variable number of successes. If they were multiplied, what threshold might they be compared against? Looking through my creature guide I thought about the number of wounds creatures have. If the total damage were to exceed the wound level, a creature might be knocked out of combat or killed outright. If the damage doesn't exceed the wound level, the target receives one hit (which can be converted to critical per the rules). If a target gains a number of hit cards plus critical severity equal to or greater than their toughness, they are knocked unconscious.

And though I initially liked this idea, it fails practically. This type of multiplication would knockout characters far more quickly than it would knock out many creatures. That's no fun for the players. Additionally, as I read through all the different types of actions, be they melee, ranged, or spells, there is a great variety in how damage is calculated. There would be too much difficulty figuring out multiples for all of the different changes.

But there's still something to the damage compared to threshold which I like. That is,using wound cards compared to toughness drastically reduces administration. For example, if your players are facing off against a Black Orc and the narrator has to keep tokens for up to 18 wounds, the bookkeeping gets a little messy. However, if you are only concerned about up to six wound cards, it becomes much easier for the narrator.

So here is my new proposal for the damage process:

1.Calculate the attacks damage potential as per the action card. (Taking Gurni Thorgrimson from the examples in the Player's Guide p.82, STR 5 equipped with great weapon, he has a damage potential of 12 and is attacking an orc.)

2. If the damage potential is greater than the wound level of the target, the target is Knocked Out. (Henchmen are done here. Otherwise continue.) Subtract soak. If the damage is equal to or greater an the wound level, the target is dead. If not, the unconscious target must draw a critical wound. (Player Characters/notable NPC's may spend a fortune point to remain conscious, but suffer the Straggered condition with tracking tokens equal to the damage potential greater than the wound level.) (If Gurni scored four successes on his Basic Melee attack his damage potential raises +2 for three hammers and +1 for forth hammer for a total of 15. Compared to an orc's wound level of 14, the orc would be KO'd, but not dead.)

3. If the damage potential is less than the wound level, apply soak. If the result is greater than or equal to one, draw one wound card or a number of criticals earned by the attack. (On a 1 hammer success, with damage potential of 12 , the orc applies soak of 7 for a result of 5. A positive result and the orc pulls a single wound card. Any critical results would cause the orc to draw critical wounds.)

4.if the damage result after soak his less than one, draw a number of wound cards equal to the criticals earned. (Against Johann from the Player's Guide p.82, with STR 3 and dagger DR 4, the orc would soak all the damage. No wound card drawn, unless Johann managed critical hits. In that case the card(s) would be drawn as normal wounds.)

5. If the total of severity from criticals plus number of wound cards is equal to or greater than a creatures toughness, it's knocked out. (The orc adds the severity from his critical wounds, say 2 for 2 each, plus one wound card for a total of 5. Compared to his toughness of 5, the orc falls from the last hit.)

Thoughts?

I abandoned the idea of having exploding WOUND damage. There is already enough wound depletion (if you use the extra successes for extra damage rule)IMO. With UF, what we want, basically, is added risk and danger, less predictability.

To achieve this I concentrated on Criticals instead. I have playtested this houserule a lot and it works wonders for me. I would really encourage you guys to try it out !

EXPLODING CRITS AND CRIT EFFECTS

Comets = reroll and add if the result of the extra roll is also a Comet. Otherwise, ignore the extra result. (Comets have a 1 in 6 chance of "aggravating")

Multiple Comets can cause multiple Criticals. (This is an exception to the "One Crit per type of effect" rule.)

When you are hit by a Critical causing blow, compare the TOTAL SUM of Crit SEVERITY ratings with your TOUGHNESS. (Only the Crits you received in this one blow count here, not previously suffered Crits)

IF Total Severity < or = to To : nothing happens

IF Total Severity > to To : You are Overwhelmed for (Severity Sum - To) rounds.

IF Total Severity > to twice your To : You are KO and bleeding (lose 1 Wound per round until First Aid is received).

IF Total Severity > to triple your To : You are DEAD.

Since 75% of Crits are rated 2 or 3, that means that the average Severity per Crit is around 2.5 or something.

So for a regular bloke with To 3, 2 Crits will Overwhelm him 2 rounds and 3 Crits will KO him with blood loss.

Most of the time, multiple Crits in one blow will result in an Overwhelmed condition (pretty satisfying and a major advantage) making those multiple Crit hits really stand out. That brings the excitement back into combat. So actual lethality doesn't really go up that much with this rule, but excitement does. And once in while, you'll roll quite a few Comets in one roll and kill a guy outright, regardless of his current Wounds tally. Nice.

Just a question for master statisticians out there, what is the chance a Warrior with 3 Expertise dice will roll 2 Comets total on any given roll ? Using this houserule. Is it too high ?

As I see the action cards UF is already in the system. On many cards getting a sigmars comet means you can add extra damage.

On a d6 you only get extra damage 1 out of 6 times and on average it's a bit more than 3.5 extra damage. In 3rd ed. however on some cards you can get much more than that on a good roll.

I have several systems to make combat more deadly. Criticals can never be soaked for instance. I have what I call a perfect check (6 successes, 2 boons and a comet I think it is). That roll allows a player to do major damage. Instantly kill any normal NPC or critical wound, disarm, maim or put a negative condition on a more powerful NPC.

I have also thought about fate points and simply letting players invest exp into buying a fate point. Perhaps a cost of 5 exp.

So you did add a "perfect strike" for major damage.

Because the problem with action cards is that they add some good damage and/or crits, but they can't "explode". In V1, one character killed a daemon (lesser, but still) with one punch, he had rolled 36 points of damage in all... maybe 4 sixes in a row or something ! We couldn't believe it, but that has become one memorable game play moment.

Exploding dice are fun because when they explode, you roll again, and they can explode again, and you roll some more... That is very exciting. It gives a very tangible feel to the statistics behind the mechanics. You positively know how lucky you were...

In V3, you can also be extremely lucky and roll 5 successes and 4 boons, for example, but you will gain a +3 damage and a Crit out of that... not a very powerful effect, compared to the amount of luck involved. The bell curve statistics mean that you have very little chance of getting very exceptional rolls. So when these happen, the rules should work to make them stand out, IMO.

For example, if all cards contained 4 boons and 2 or even 3 Comet lines with tremendous effects, then you could say that UF exists in the game already.

I'm not saying that present Action Cards can't kill off with one blow, some of them can, but barely... Which isn't what UF is about...

BTW I don't use mooks.

Another solution is to open the higher lethality optional rule up, so it allows more than +3 damage.

But I don't really think this game needs higher damage. Getting the perfect check I am referring too also comes mostly when you get some rerolls from hammer+.

Just a thought (I wouldn't use it my self as I'm fine with the way they work in RAW). But here we go.

Use the higher lethality rules and extend the damage to ignore the cap of not greater then your expertise. Next to get that explosion effect. If you generate no challenges on the roll then you double your success. Boons, banes, comets and chaos results are applied normally.

Jericho said:

Can't deny the fun of the opened ended critical. The reason I don't want to use it in my current game, is the tie to the expertise die. The main character in the campaign I'm running is a wood elf thief with no weapon or ballistic skill. So the only characters which get to use such a rule are the floating players (coming in and out of the game) and the NPC's. Having NPC's beat up on the PC(s) with vicious lucky rolls, when the PC(s) can't return the favor takes fun out of the rule.

You're also right about the lack of effect on fantastic rolls in the RAW. Even getting +3 damage and a Crit won't bring a lot of creatures down in one shot and adds more tracking for the GM. Hence my attempt to add an element of danger (comparing damage versus wound level) which I has an effect in my game, modifies the rules as little as possible, and simplifies the overall tracking process.

You might be interest in my houserules if your quest is about making WFRP3 rules more effective :

Harder Critical Wounds : Critical wounds are extra unsoakable damage. You draw 1 extra card when you hit a critical. This critical is unsoakable.

(UPDATE) Willmanx's houserules, created during more than 40 sessions played.

PLAY LIGHTER, BUT WITH EVERY RULES

• Only 1 kind of token for everything in the game.
• Talent card exhausted : turn the card face down until the end of the encounter. Recharge it with a fortune point or assess the situation action.
• Less white dices and better talents : retire all the Talent which add passive white dice.
• Less black dices and more effectives afflictions : retire all the wounds and insanities cards which add passive black dices (minor, flesh, even fatigue/stress stuff... keep the violent ones and the roleplay based ones !)

PLAY WITH EVERY RULES, BUT MAKE THEM REALLY EFFECTIVE

• More effective Fatigued/Distressed conditions : When distressed or fatigued, retire one blue characteristic dice per fatigue/stress over the tested characteristic instead of adding 1 black dice (really effective, smaller pool).
• Harder Critical Wounds : Critical wounds are extra unsoakable damage. You draw 1 extra card when you hit a critical. This critical is unsoakable.
• More effective Fortune Points add a BLUE dice to a roll (instead of a 50% failing white one)
• A/C/E pool managment : fatigue as extra manoeuvers retires aggression dice. you may use Cunning dices to defense.

OPPOSED CHECK

I searched for a simpler and a more balanced formula to make opposed check to keep near of 50% of success when two equal adversaries are opposed. I finally got this, and I've yet used it for many sessions. HOUSE RULE : add a number of challenge dices equal the opponent's active characteristic -2 + misfortune dices as usual. For the record, I don't use opposed check in standard combat but the 1d+defense... with a defense card houserule really simple...

DEFENSE CARDS

1) Dodge, block and parry offers you 1 regular black dice to defend yourself plus 1 more black dice when you are trained in a skill (dodge = coordination, block = resilience, parry = weapon skill) , no matter how much you are trained. HOUSE RULE : defense cards add 1 regular black dice + 1 more black dice per training in the relevant skill (so it is up to a max of 3).

2) The improved dodge, block and parry action card normaly replaces these one or two black dices from defence for one purple challenge dice. HOUSE RULE : Improved dodge, block and parry replace the first black dice for a purple dice, but you still add the black dice for being trained (one per training in the relevant skill in my games).

willmanx said:

Willmax, I plan on using several of your house rules.

Regarding your Critical Wound rule as it applies to this discussion, it presents a similar problem to the exploding crit. That is, most crits come from the expertise die which my main player does have in combat skills. The only crit possible for him is to roll 3 boons to achieve the weapon's CR. Given the die mechanic in WFRP, this is a limited prospect. To generate three boons generally means fewer success were rolled on his positive dice (only the reckless die can give both vice the normal either/or). Fewer successes rolled mean less of overall chance to succeed in the action after the negative dice are considered and there for the crit means nothing.

This leads back to my development of an Ulric Fury rule, which is tied more to damage generated from the number of successes rolled and not to earning a crit per RAW.

@ToPeace

I'm considering the following houserule :

Misfortune dice and Fortune dice can be converted to Challenge and Expertise dice respectively.

The GM may convert 3 misfortune dice into 1 Challenge die, at his discretion, to better reflect the difficulty of a given situation.

The Player may convert 3 fortune dice into 1 Expertise die, at his discretion, to better reflect the advantages of a given situation.

Statistically speaking, regarding successes/challenges and boons/banes, 3 Misfortune or Fortune dice are better than the Challenge/Expertise die.

But since Expertise and Challenge introduce the possibility of a Sigmar's Comet or a Chaos Star, I thought that 3 for 1 was a fair trade off.

So the choice is this, if a situation should be a bit less hard to succeed but more chaotic, trade 3 Misfortune for a Challenge.

If the situation should be a bit harder to succeed, but should involve the slim possibility of spectacular success, trade 3 Fortune for 1 Expertise.

ADDED BENEFIT : smaller dice pools !

Switching out the dice is a neat idea. It gives a chance for exceptionally good/bad results in the sigmar's comet/chaos star. It definitely applies in my games as we frequently see multiple fortune and misfortune dice. Coupled with the exploding dice rule, even "untrained" characters have a chance of amazing hits.