Sorry FFG, but the more I read these rules and try to summarise them, the more I really think the company is deparately in need of a professional technical writer to give them a complete overhaul.

At the moment I'm trying to puzzle out the most basic of rules: how much damage a NPC or creature does in combat.

On p59 of the core book, it says "damage is based on the weapon's inherent damage value and the attacker's Strength (for melee attacks) or Agility (for ranged attacks)" and "The total value of the attacker's key characteristic (Strength for example), the damage value of the weapon, and any extra damage added by the action card or other special effects are comnbined to achieve the attack's damage potential." (Seriously, who wrote this ****? What a mess.) On p46 of the Tome of Adventure, it refers to the Damage, Soak and Defence values of NPCs and says "these values serve the same function as they do for weapons and armour." OK, back to the core book, p73, Weapon Characteristics: "DR/Damage Rating: a weapon's damage rating shows the weapon's default damage output." I may be missing it, but nowhere can I find definitive, properly written instructions on what damage a creature does. Do you use the Strength plus the DR, and if they have a weapon, use the weapon's DR instead of the creature's DR? That seems to be the consensus, I think. If only it had been clearly written in the rules somewhere...

Please excuse my spelling mistakes, I clicked 'publish' too quickly (as a subtle and ironic comment on the writing of the WFRP rules ? No, not really.)

Also, the stupid, overly-complicated 'paste' function in these forums did strange things to the formatting.

For melee, you add Strength with the number in brackets after Strength. So if Strength is listed as 5(4), that's a base of 9.

For ranged, you add Agility with the number in brackets after Strength. So, using the example above, if Agility is listed as 3(1), that's a ranegd damage of 7.

Yes, it may be weird for the damage rating, which is listed next to Strength, to apply to melee and ranged, but the NPC system is quite abstract.

Also, don't use Weapons for NPCs. Weapons as listed in the rulebook are PC only. NPCs just use the damage value listed in brackets after Strength. Same goes for Armour.

Skywalker said:

Thanks that wasn't really clear to me. The (bracket) choice isn't very accurate... The fanmade cards on Strange were far more explicit.

In the same way, we had troubles yesterday with DEFENCE wich is absolutely NOT related to Agility, though written in bracket near of it. If my understanding is right, Defence comes only from armor and shield, and the PC abilities are not represented in the Attack Dice Pool of a GM's character. Am I right ?

Skywalker said:

With logic sense , I just handle NPCs as PC, why can't they use weapons????? With creatures it's something different. An alligator is using his teeth not a fist or weapon.

I'm frankly amazed that such a fundamental rule should be so confusing!

Many things are confusing about the rules, but I don't really think this is one of them. You get the damage potential by adding the weapon damage rating (DR) to your strength or agility (this is referred to as "normal damage" on actions cards) + extra damage on cards (AD). This is called damage potential because the target's soak value (SV) will always be deducted from it. So, the resulting damage (D) from any attack is:

D = DR + Str/Agi + AD - SV

The damage given for NPC's is just a simplification, assuming that they wield their standard weapon.If you want to give them custom weapons their damage potential will be easy enough to calculate.

One thing that is easy to forget is that all successful attacks will cause at least 1 wound even if the soak value causes damage to be zero or below. With 0 or below damage you cannot cause any crits though. This is all covered in the rules though.

I have to agree with gruntl. I didn't find it confusing at all. St + DR or Ag + DR (plus any card bonus) is the base damage. For monsters using 'default' weapons, you use the number in the bracket next to St ... although you can replace that with a specific weapon's DR.

Same with Defense and Soak and Armor.

Giving default values for these was a means to make a GM's job easier, so they didn't necessarily need to individually equip every monster with specific weapons and armor and copy over those values.

dvang said:

Same avatar, same comprehension

About Defence, I don't see a link between Agility and Defence put just aside. This is different from STR (damage) and To (soak)... Is there any I am missing ?