So I am running a game later today, and after playing around with the game last wednesday I have a much better idea of how things work. However something confuses me about stance meters. You can change your stance to be anything at the start of your turn, is that correct? If so then why does your stance slip towards neutral during a rally step? This seems an utterly pointless bit of book keeping. Anyone got an explanation? Also can you choose your stance outside of encounter mode? I assume you can do so before any action.

Cheers

Iain

You can change your stance several steps at the beginning of the turn. However each change except the first costs the character one stress (p.57 WFRP).

You can also find more details about Stance in the errata, particularly on page 4.

As for your other questions I am also interested to hear other persons ideas regarding the stance mechanic. At first I assumed that it was pretty much up to the player to adjust his or hers stance meter ever which way but clearly that is not the case.

The FAQ says that unless a PC has adopted a stance narratively, or triggered an encounter by escalating the action and requiring an Initiative Check, that most PCs will perform their initiative check in a neutral stance. If the GM agrees, a player may choose to convert one of their characteristic dice into a stance die for initiative checks, based on the PC's dominant stance.

This strongly implies that PCs operate in Story mode in a neutral stance. If a PC is attempting an action in story mode, they would not normally roll any stance dice and would only roll Characteristic dice, referencing the side of the action card associated with their dominant stance.

Allowing a PC to choose any stance during story mode would allow players to adopt a maxed out stance for all their actions with little negative consequences. If the player wants to go deep in a stance to perform an action, the GM probably needs to zoom in to encounter mode.