Why no creature cards?

By player529870, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

I love 3rd edition. I am so excited about the game that it led me to ask this question.... Why dont we have cards for each of the creatures? We have one for each career and locations but not for the enemies we fight. The cards could easily have each of the attacks and all the stats and fluff of each creature. Im not quite sure why we have to go looking through the book everytime we use creatures.

That is my rant, I'm done!

Tim

Unicornicus said:

I love 3rd edition. I am so excited about the game that it led me to ask this question.... Why dont we have cards for each of the creatures? We have one for each career and locations but not for the enemies we fight. The cards could easily have each of the attacks and all the stats and fluff of each creature. Im not quite sure why we have to go looking through the book everytime we use creatures.

That is my rant, I'm done!

Tim

Pretty sure it was a cost measure. At least we now have nice backgrounds for each creature type and will no doubt get cards and more types in an upcoming bestiary. Hope so anyway.

yeah, that would be great, afterall, there are TONS of creatures in the WH universe, Id love to see, pink and blue horrors, squigs, etc

I would love creature cards, and not just simple copies of what's in the rulebook where you have stats for 3 models in one area. I'd like an orc card, a goblin card, and so on. I'd easily pay for a monster 'deck' that has each monster on its own card and comes with monster-specific action cards. That would be a must buy for me!

Mark

I am going to take the dissenting opinion here (though I wouldn't mind specific creature cards myself); I rather like the format presently because it combines the stat details with special actions that apply to the racial type (at least for groups of similar species like beastmen, greenskins, etc.). Everything is all right there, on one page, to manage a full encounter including henchmen if you need them (a group of orcs + goblins for example).

If you had a single orc card, you wouldn't have all the greenskin "powers" on that sincle card, which meant either still using the book, OR having additional cards for those particular actions. In this case, I would prefer to keep the card count down so I don't have to search for the particular Orc cards if there is a spontaneous encounter.

I recommend that someone do up a 4x5" card. Make a format in .jpg and we can start filling in the stats.

jh

HedgeWizard said:

I am going to take the dissenting opinion here (though I wouldn't mind specific creature cards myself); I rather like the format presently because it combines the stat details with special actions that apply to the racial type (at least for groups of similar species like beastmen, greenskins, etc.). Everything is all right there, on one page, to manage a full encounter including henchmen if you need them (a group of orcs + goblins for example).

If you had a single orc card, you wouldn't have all the greenskin "powers" on that sincle card, which meant either still using the book, OR having additional cards for those particular actions. In this case, I would prefer to keep the card count down so I don't have to search for the particular Orc cards if there is a spontaneous encounter.

I tend to agree. It much easier for me to have a single page reference material than go hunting out all the monster cards. Even if they did include the cards I'm pretty sure I'd still be using a copy of the monster page.

Im not particular to any format. Anything would be fine with me. There was no mention about these being included in the game masters toolkit but they would be a PERFECT addition.

It makes no sense to me that they werent included originally, other than to sell them seperately at another poin. Naturally I would have preferred the included choice, but at this point, I wouldnt have a problem with buying them either.

Sinister said:

HedgeWizard said:

I am going to take the dissenting opinion here (though I wouldn't mind specific creature cards myself); I rather like the format presently because it combines the stat details with special actions that apply to the racial type (at least for groups of similar species like beastmen, greenskins, etc.). Everything is all right there, on one page, to manage a full encounter including henchmen if you need them (a group of orcs + goblins for example).

If you had a single orc card, you wouldn't have all the greenskin "powers" on that sincle card, which meant either still using the book, OR having additional cards for those particular actions. In this case, I would prefer to keep the card count down so I don't have to search for the particular Orc cards if there is a spontaneous encounter.

I tend to agree. It much easier for me to have a single page reference material than go hunting out all the monster cards. Even if they did include the cards I'm pretty sure I'd still be using a copy of the monster page.

I can see the value of all the info on one page - the problem I have is if there are two different types then it is hard, also next to impossible if there are adventures in the book. Some sort of loose-leaf might work, was it 2nd edition D&D had this? We need more standups too.

More standups is a must. I contacted FFG and they said they won't just make parts. That's a decision we should try to change, AT LEAST in regard to the standup. I copy all the monster pages into a loose leaf binder with page protectors. You can write on them with wet erase markers all day long, and wipe it clean and use it again. It's fantastic.

Note that the GM set has additional standups. Of what, we don't know yet, but I would think more enemies.

Also, keep in mind that you *can* use miniatures instead of standups.

Personally, I think the page spreads are better and easier. It's easier to find the page for an enemy rather than sorting through a stack of individual cards, plus the associated enemy-specific actions are right there too. If need be, I just make a photocopy of the page for ease of use.

dvang said:

Note that the GM set has additional standups. Of what, we don't know yet, but I would think more enemies.

Also, keep in mind that you *can* use miniatures instead of standups.

Personally, I think the page spreads are better and easier. It's easier to find the page for an enemy rather than sorting through a stack of individual cards, plus the associated enemy-specific actions are right there too. If need be, I just make a photocopy of the page for ease of use.

Yep, I like the page spreads. I'd buy the cards if they became available, especially if part of swome other set but given a choice, I'd prefer more cards and careers for some of the other stuff we haven't seen yet, like advanced wizards etc etc.

ideally it would be stuff by I as a GM and thep layers can use; sure monster cards are nice to have from a GM perspective, but GM's can normally make do, with photo copies and bits and pieces and leave the shiny stuff to the players...

@Emirikol

I was wondering if the books you have used to reference are the 1st Edition, 2nd edition or perhaps the 2E books created by Green Ronin (Pramas).

I have a few of the Pramas books and 3rd Edition but am looking for a greater feel for the WHFRPG world. For instance I didnt even know if there were dragons in the world until I came across your index here.

While I don't really think that there's anything wrong with the 2-page spread in the rulebook, I think that creature cards would really make things easier from a GM's perspective.

For encounters with beasties from more than one set of pages, it would allow the GM to have all the opponents arrayed in front of him without having to flip back and forth between one (and eventually more) book pages.

The drawback to the page format is that it constrains special abilities available due to space considerations. You can always add cards from the set to a creature to give it additional abilities, but by default, the page layout has just 4 abilities per creature group and not all are applicable to every creature in the group.

Having said that, I'll go on record as saying that I prefer the page style over cards. It was simple enough to print copies of the pages, so flipping between pages in the book isn't an issue for mixed encounters. However, it's still easier to pull two sheets for a mixed encounter than to have to hunt down 2 creature cards, along with a handful of creature special ability cards and make sure you got everything.