I am continuing to dry-test the combat mechanics and as always come up with a few questions:

My char (armed with a bow) sprinted from being engaged to long range in one round. That costed him three fatigue which is a lot but I still wanted to make sure if it is correctly played?

After performing the action he got a free manoeuvre which I used to move 1/3 of the distance towards extreme range. Is he for all intents and purpouses still at long range even though he is technically at long range and one third? Would he still be able to shot his longbow at long range and more importantly, would the enemy need to use three or four manoeuvres to reach him?

Another more general question about chaos stars. So far I've found it that there's seldom a written effect and converting it into a bane rarely does something. Because I feel that a chaos star should always signify that something really bad has happened I am contemplating wether to add something nasty everytime this happens, or just stick to the written effects?

Thanks in advance.

There seems to be no edit button and I felt I needed to clarify my first question:

He started engaged with the enemy, used one free manoeuvre and then paid three fatigue for three additional manoeuvers, going from engaged to long range.

Well, that's one additional point the game designer did not mention in the core rules. You have to come with your own house rules again.
I have about 15 house rules just to fix "bugs" in the game rules

Lautrer said:

Excuse me?

I can answer one of your questions. Page 52 of WFRP (first column of page, last sentence of second-to-last paragraph) says that a character "is not considered to be in the new range increment until all required manoeuvers have been performed." In your example, the character is still at long range for ALL purposes.

With regards to the Chaos Star, I see your point. I'm considering ruling that the Chaos Star either triggers a specific nasty effect (from a card etc.) OR counts as a single Bane that automatically by itself cancels all other boons out. It still COUNTS as a single bane, but its canceling power is unlimited.

Example: a pool result with 1 bane and 2 boon usually means a net 1 boon. However, if the Chaos Star appears it could be applied as a specific nasty effect (leaving alone the net 1 boon) OR cancel the 2 boon out, add itself to the existing 1 bane, and result in a final net 2 bane (which could, of course, trigger something).

Using the rules-as-written, the above Chaos Star (lacking any special trigger) would count as a bane and merely bring the pool to neutral (neither bane nor boon).

I haven't started my campaign yet, so I don't know if the above houserule is too harsh. In any event, I agree with you that the Chaos Star doesn't initially seem powerful enough.

OK ... 11 house rules now!

Thanks a lot McBard.

I think a lot of people are mistakenly trying to rationalize using maneuvers between two points rather than ranges, so your example would have placed the two opponents 4 maneuvers apart, but this isn't how relative ranges work. By RAW, a character is not at the new range increment until all maneuvers required to change range increment have been spent. So, in your example, he can still fire his bow and can be chased down by an unengaged opponent for 3 Fatigue (free maneuver to halfway from Long to Medium, another to get to Medium, one to go from Medium to Close, and a final maneuver to engage. Since NPCs don't suffer Fatigue, these would be converted to wounds. This would be true even if the PC had spent an extra maneuver to get 2/3rds of the way from Long to Extreme during his turn. It's abstract ranges, so you take the good with the bad. It's no more difficult for him to fire his bow, but no more difficult for him to be chased down. Note however, that an unengaged foe that only used his free maneuver to go halfway from long to medium wouldn't be relatively any closer to the PC either and the PC would then be able to use two maneuvers the following turn to get to extreme range. The NPCs maneuver would have gained him nothing in this case. If the PC only used his free maneuver to get 2/3rds of the way to Extreme range however, the NPCs could on his next turn spend the remaining maneuver necessary to close the distance from Long to Medium, forcing the PC to start over again if he wanted to continue to move away from the foe. At some point, the PC is going to have to pour on the exertion once again and take additional Fatigue to increase the distance or else the foe will catch up to him. Since there is no range increment farther than extreme range, there is no number of maneuvers a PC can spend to get "out of range" of a pursuer. Eventually, either the PC will drop from exhaustion or the NPC will give up the chase (taken too many wounds), If the entire party is fleeing, it's better to go to a chase scene using a progress tracker rather than continue to use relative ranges.

The Chaos Star only counts as a Bane if there is no card effect specified. Remember that in addition to card effects, two Banes can be used to give the PC a point of Fatigue or Stress depending on whether the task was physical or mental. Since Chaos Stars are on the Challenge dice and Sigmar's Comets are only on Expertise dice, the players (and you for that matter) are going to roll a lot more Chaos Stars than Sigmar's Comets. Without a lot more play experience, I'm going to assume the designers got the balance right.

mac40k said:

I tend to agree with you, mac40k. I'll reserve using even my own Chaos Star house rule, above, until I see something like a repeating disappointment in Chaos Star affect.

In any event (and I suppose these thoughts belong on the House Rule forum), another variant to the above "Chaos Star cancels all boons" is instead to rule that a Chaos Star doubles the count of any actually rolled banes (with itself counting as 1 bane only if none were naturally rolled). <shrug> We'll see...

Note that the relative movement example in the errata may contradict the RAW reading (as described by mac40k). According to this example, if two characters at long range each spend their turn moving towards each other, they end up at medium range. One could suggest that this also applies to characters in a chase, so if they started at medium range and one character moved away and the other towards, they'd still be at medium range.

Even in this version where the midpoint between medium and long range is "real", there's still the weird result that that midpoint counts as a different range depending on which side it was approached from.

Mechanically, the chaos star is the method used to provide a random element to checks that isn't dependent on the character's skill. The results don't necessarily have to be worse than the bane effects. They're just things that you want to happen to the combat monster as often as the scribe.

By the way, the edit button is in the bar just above your post.

After reviewing the FAQ I agree that the number of maneuvers required to change range increments assumes that one is moving in relation to a stationary object or individual. If both sides are moving either away or towards one another and are not using multiple maneuvers in a single turn, then you have to track maneuvers spent as well as relative range. This seems to add a layer of complexity that I'm not sure I want to deal with.

If an elf and a goblin start at medium range and one is is chasing the other, the net effect is that their range to one another would not change. Only if the fleeing party spent the extra maneuver to use two in a single turn would the range between them become long. This implies that whether or not you can successfully flee from an opponent depends on who gets tired first.

Also agree that it is rather odd that the relative range between your character and another individual when spreading maneuvers out over multiple turns depends on whether you are moving towards or away from them.