The two Class Characteristics for Swordmasters of Hoeth are Toughness and Agility. Though I can see a benefit for the Toughness, I'm really confused as to what advantage Agility brings to a Strength based Tanking Class. Dodge isn't opposed, and if I wanted to throw my Greatsword it's Strength based anyway.

Am I missing something major, or is it simply that they would have been too strong as Strength/Toughness?

Agility fits well with the swordsmaster fluff as they are said to be able to cut a lit candle in two without distrubing the flame and any military based highelf career should have agility as a stat as it seems to be highly trained by their armies (giving Always strike first in the tabletop game and such). Toughness probobly represents the hard training he has to endure and such but I will houserule them to have Strenght and Agility as base stats instead as I find it more fitting.

Agility is however very appropriate backgroundwise and even more so than strenght given that they rely on skill with the sword and swift attacks and not brute force.

Yeah, I'd say agility and strength would best suit them. Even intelligence would be more appropriate than toughness IMHO. Does he have Weapon Skill at least?

I think he's asking is there anything his career can use his Agility 4 for, given that he will be typically carrying a 7ft long greatsword in his hands? Does high Ag have any passive benefit, like Toughness increasing wounds, or Strength calculating Encumbrance? I can't see anything in the rules.

He will certainly use the Nimble Strike card and I guess some Swordmaster cards must also be based on Agility...

Going from Warhammer, rather than Warhammer Online, Swordsmasters should NOT be tanks. They should be damage dealers. So Strength and Agility would have made the most sense to me, but meh

Hidaowin said:

Agiliti passive benefit would be better initiative roll.

One of my players is running a SwordMaster and he is a DamageDealer (capital letters intentional!). The way it plays feels pretty good... he is tough to hit since he uses Advanced Parry against every single attack (his attacks recharging it constantly) and can also dodge an especially mean looking attack. He doesn't get hit very often but when he does he feels it. His damage output is crazy... his first attack usually doing 13, his second 16 and his third something over 20.

He doesn't need to be that strong... ours is a 4. He gets to add his 3 levels of conservative stance to his damage, and has a brutal attack that adds damage for each recharge marker on one of his swordmaster moves. Everytime he is missed with advanced parry he can add a recharge marker back to one of his attacks to make it add more damage. Every time he takes a recharge token off of his second attack it also takes one off of a defense (so Advanced Parry is usable every turn guaranteed).

In contrast an ironbreaker is almost unhittable and when he gets hit he barely feels it. His damage is a pretty standard 9 though compared to the swordmasters minimum of 12 and average of 15 or so. He usually tries to engage the biggest bad guy and tie it down while the Swordmaster carves up everything else and then comes to help out with the biggun. (in the first encounter together the Swordmaster killed a gor, 6 ungor henchman, and the other gor ran off when that broke their morale... it had spent the whole fight engaged with the stunty).

Is the Swordmaster unbalanced ? Is there a way to counter him ?

Jericho said:

For sure, put him in a social situation

Actually Swordmaster has to be a Advanced Career!

I'm pretty sure SwordMaster and Iron breaker are both starting careers... and they do both seem really strong. They were in the players expansion box. I think the Swordmaster does TrollSlayer damage with none of the trollslayers fatigue problems or vulnerability to getting stomped.

Despite the fact that our Sword Master only has S3, he's still mean in combat (averaging 11). However, even though the player has put advances into non-combat stuff (Int, WP, Fel all 3+, Education) he still suffers in social situations because he never leaves his blade behind and I figure that a seven foot sword is worth a penalty to most Charm checks, and he can forget disguises. The player, to his credit, simply wonders why humans are so twitchy around him, after all, the blade isn't in his hand...

I think agility is an appropriate career stat for Sword Masters simply on the grounds that they are SO dangerous. A high Strength Sword Master is potentially too fearsome - and not having Strength as a career stat makes you have to pay for that level of mincing (as in 'mincing machine' as opposed to 'mincing elf').

imanfasil said:

I know, I also have the Adventurers Kit but as a GM I houseruled that Swordmaster and Iron Breaker have to be advanced careers because the have their "own" fighting styles. Ok in the "vanilla" rules is no restriction, but i restricted those styles for these careers...
but that is yet discussed in another thread.

My question (which is in a similar vein as the OP's question) is why are the Way of the Sword action cards strength based but the primary characteristics of the swordmaster are agility and toughness. I just picked up the game a couple of weeks ago, so the mechanics are still new to me, but wouldn't it make more sense rules wise for the Way of the Sword action cards to be agility based since that is one of the swordmaster primary characteristics?

I also view Swordmaster as best treated advanced, though that doesn't really fix the balance issues. The one in my party is essentially a bazooka with glass jaw (deals it out and takes it) as there are no other real front line fighters and I don't hesitate to throw creatures with "2 successes = critical" at him.

Swordmasters are, as written, very powerful. You're asking for improvements to one of the strongest starting careers. If you were to change their stats to Str/Tou or even just Str/Agi, they would be a min-maxing munchkin's dream (and some would say it currently is even without that change). If the Way of the Sword cards were Agi based, there would be similar balance issues. (And again, some feel those balance issues already exist, so these changes would just compound existing problems.)

Swordmasters start with one of the best weapons in the game, which they get for free. It is somewhat better than a Superior-quality Great Weapon (it does one less damage, but will produce significantly better quality critical hits). A Superior-quality Great Weapon would, per the rules, cost 10 gold, and the max a PC can start with is 2 gold EDIT: 5 gold, at a cost of 3 creation points. The monetary rewards for the entire The Enemy Within campaign work out to less than 10 gold per PC. (Now, I'm not saying that the Superior Great Weapon is actually _worth_ the 10 gold pricetag, but I am saying that the designers clearly intended it to be really difficult for a PC to get their hands on anything as powerful as a Superior Great Weapon.) That weapon is darned good, and it makes short work of your named villains. The only way a PC could end up with a better weapon is via a very heavy investment in Runesmithing (and that investment would take more XP, more gold, and a big chunk of in-character time crafting the better weapon instead of adventuring).

You can start with 5 gold by spending 3 CP's on it.........

You can start with 5 gold by spending 3 CP's on it.........

Oops! You are right, I was wrong. Don't know why, but I thought Affluent started with only 2 Gold.

I'll go edit my post to reflect reality. Done.

Overall though, my mistake doesn't really undermine the general point. No other Starting Career can afford a comparable weapon. The swordmaster gets something comparable to a Superior Greatsword, and still has money left over for armor or other gear (or alternately gets to spend those 3 CP on higher stats). It's pretty buff.

Very true.

Same as Ironbreaker Armour does something similar to "buff up" the character in question.

I wonder if both items would be better held off until the character is in their second career. Allow people to take Ironbreaker and Swordmaster as basic careers, just have a different career card for them instead?