is it just me or is this action card incredibly broken?

let me first make sure i am doing it correctly, it works as thus in my understanding:

red side: make attacks as normal and, as long as you hit, you can make an additional attack by adding one purple die

greed side: doesnt really matter for my issue as my player is never on that side, and it is limited to one extra attack anyway.

in our game right no we have a high elf that uses a longbow with four agility and agility favored with ballistics training.

all in all he rolls his four stat dice (usually about two or three red) a white die and a yellow die. with this setup he hits at least twice about 95% of the time and three times around 50% of the time and 4 times rarely. now if we say that he hits two and a half times on average this means, with converting the longbows pierce 1 into a dmg for simplicities sake, he is either hitting for 20 - 24 minus 2*soak or 30-36 minus 3*soak a turn. give a baddie 5 soak its 10-14 or 15-21 dmg in one go... pretty high in my estimations. we are still rank one, but soon to be rank two, and i can only see his two or three hits changing to three or four when he trains ballistics again, pushing it even higher (20-28 dmg in a turn after soak on a target with 5 soak).

in our party of four, the elf has single handedly killed more than twice the number of baddies than the other three players combined, maybe close to three times the number. this is making balancing fights very hard as the only way it is possible to even challenge them is to put out more and more "cannon fodder" to take shots. this is a risky situation though, if the elf were to go down then the rest of the group would most likely follow in short suit due to the number of baddies needed to be fielded to make sure that the fights last more than one or two rounds.

my largest concern with rapid fire is its seemingly aberrant nature compared to the rest of the attack cards. every other attack that i can recall has a maximum amount of damage that can be done in one go. no matter how many dice you roll with the basic melee strike card, you wont be able to do more than your str + dr of the wep + 2 if you roll three hammers. this seems to be the norm with all the other cards as well, while the potential damage goes up, it is still limited by some cap. rapid fire, on the other hand, has no cap. theoretically you could shoot 50 times and hit every single shot doing about 500 damage (far out there, i know, and extremely unlikely, but you get what im saying). as players grow stronger, for most of the game, the only way to increase damage is to elevate the appropriate stat, this becomes increasingly expensive (5xp for +1 dmg, then 6xp for +1 dmg, 7xp, 8xp, etc.) but with rapid shot, it seems that a specialization in longbows, training in ballistics skill, and favor for agility all add a much cheaper way to increase the damage by a lot more (1xp for ballistics training, should about negate one purple die thus adding an additional hit which is about +10dmg)

does anyone else have similar thoughts or a differing opinion on this card? i find myself at a loss on what to do about it. part of me wants to remove it from the game or place some restriction on how many times one can shoot when in aggressive stance, but the player that has it is extremely defensive and will cause a commotion if he perceives an attempted "nurf" of his character.

I believe it depends much on the situation. If the elf's oppnent becomes a character with toughness of four, in a full-plate with a shield i suppose he'd rather use an armour-soak ignoring action. If not, even with four successful shots he won't deal any damage.

In general it seems range actions are better at hitting multiple foes (rapid fire, covering fire, arrowstorm) while melee actions serve better dishing out greater damage.

Your concern about imbalanced impact of the rapid-fireing elf on the team may also mean that you let them start too many encounters on their conditions (at further range). Maybe get them ambushed or let the fight break out at close range.

Also make sure you are adding in misfortune dice where ever possible. I think a lot of the cards are balanced in the assumption that misfortune dice are being added in, if the GM isn't doing this other than for defence, then actions do tend to be a little easy, generally, I think.

Consider wind, visibility etc to look for ways to add misfortune dice to the roll.

Also make sure the arrows used are being kept track of, as he is only going to have a limited amount

the problem with having an opponent with too much soak is that melee attacks dont do a whole lot more than ranged attacks, at least in my group. the other three chars are a witch hunter with a rapier/pistol a dwarf with a hand weapon/shield and a priest with a great weapon. only the great weapon seems like it can actually do a whole lot more in a single hit than the bow, and only if the special action cards are used, which have recharge.

i am adding misfortune dice, a lot of them, but it doesnt seem to really matter much. maybe he is just a lucky roller or something but even when rolling with 6 he still manages to hit. we are keeping track of arrows, but no one in our gaming group really likes romote wilderness stuff (we lean towards at least some political intrigue and thats hard to do out there) so between rolls to recover arrows and usually having at least some town nearby he hasnt run low yet.

well the problem seems to have solved itself, the elf player decided rapid fire was OP on his own and is swapping it out for another attack card. said combat wasnt fun because he slaughtered everything....

still id love to see more thoughts on the issue if anyone else wants to weigh in

I'm in EvilBen's group, but to me it seems as simple as if you made a ranged character with a bow, would you ever NOT take Rapid Shot as your first action card?

The answer to me is clearly no. If that's the case, how could you possibly argue it was balanced?

The GM can't throw Heavily Armored opponents at the group every single fight, and he can't keep making up conditions to add tons of Black Dice without it being rather cheesy. I also disagree that the cards assume you're going to get a lot of Black Dice thrown on, they may assume sometimes you will but I think it's rather poor design to assume a mechanic which relies on GM Fiat will always produce a certain result. At least, if this was the case the Tome of Adventure should have made it clear that Black Dice should be used on nearly every roll for certain cards.

Anybody got any solutions to make it similar to other cards of its type?

Should it have another purple?

Thanks in advance for suggestions for my house rulebook.

jh

Emirikol said:

We talked about making it more difficult to accomplish (such as adding another purple challenge die). We realized, however, that this would simply delay the card's awesomeness a little longer. The problem is that the card continually scales allowing for unlimited damage output. I can't recall a single other card in the game which allows you to keep adding damage unconditionally as you get stronger.

Perhaps the best approach would be to limit the number of shots? I imagine an action card which allowed you to shoot even just one more time (as opposed to unlimited) would still be very valuable. Kind of like a ranged double strike.

So would one extra shot max be good?

jh

Since I've just today found Sunatet's online die roller (which is very cool, thanks Sunatet!) and took interest in this discussion a few moments ago I decided to throw the two together! After all, it pays to know about potentially broken rules and such. Here's what I found...

Taking an average target of Defense 1 (1 black die) and no other misfortune dice tacked on, and assuming the character is using the dice mentioned by evilben (1 blue, 3 red, 1 white, 1 yellow), out of 100:
First shots=87% hit
Second shots=64%
Third shots=59%
Fourth=35%

Not bad. That means that about 55% of the time the elf will hit with two arrows and a little less than a third of the time he hits with 3.

Now if you add another black die to the mix (two total), all else staying the same, here's what we have:
First shots=74%
Second shots=57%
Third shots =48%
Fourth shots=38%

The odds of landing two arrows have now become less than half, at 42%. And that was with just adding one extra misfortune die (which I'd add anytime the target was engaged with an ally, or charging and aware of the archer, etc.)

Also keep in mind that this isn't an every round action either, its a recharge 3 action. Beyond that if you recrunch the numbers while considering a typical opening round stance of only one reckless die at most (barring burning through stress to go reckless) the stats change to:

First shots=66%
Second shots=48%
Third shots =39%
Fourth shots=32%

So with only 1 red die, and two black die the odds of landing two arrows in the opening round to 31%. I've not actually used the card in play yet so I can't speak for its effectiveness over all but just a glance at the numbers I came up with have me leaning towards it not being too terribly overpowered. Definitely not bad though either. Obviously these numbers don't mean anything for evilben's actual games where it appears that the elven Gatling is indeed mowing down his opposition. Maybe you've just got a really lucky elf on your hands? Good to hear that it was resolved in a peaceful manner though in an effort to restore fun to everyone at the table.

well, the conservative side allows for only one extra shot, so i guess with the aggressive side you could make it two extra shots max. that does reign in its power a little bit. and against high soak targets it does not do nearly as well as some of the other cards which are one hit, so factor soak once, instead of the two or three times that rapid fire has to. against low soak targets, nothing will every be able to stand against it though.

donbaloo said:

Can't argue with the math but that is definitely not what we're seeing in our game (I'm in evilben's game). He's been rolling up to 5 misfortune die sometimes and still easily succeeding. Why? Because the group slotted the non-exhaust Focus card where you can gain a White Die if you lose 1 stress. He also will use fortune to cancel out black dice, and the group will occassionally assist each other to gain more white dice. The Elf is also a gambler so he can re-roll once per session which he saves for Rapid Shot typically.

We do throw lots of black dice his way though, the enemy always saves its dodge for his rapid shot but that doesn't tend to help. The A/C/E budget is always spent to hinder the Elf's rolls (sometimes 3 or 4 black dice at once) which don't seem to turn the tide very often.

It's also worth mentioning that the Elf player nearly bought the Focus card which allows you to remove two recharge tokens from an action card which would allow the Elf to rapid fire two turns in a row and deal over 30 damage between those two rounds.

I apologize for forgetting the talent card names I'm referring to.

@donbaloo:

i dont know how accurate the die roller is, but that is indeed nor respresentative of our game.

my over all point about the card is its odd nature in comparison to the rest of the cards though. yes, with those calculations it may not seem as good at that point in the game. but the dice can be upped and that sevearly increases the damage output of the card. there is no ceiling to the damage, while every other card will top out somewhere. with every other card, there is a roll that will achieve the maximum output for that card, and the only way to increase damage beyond that point is to up the stat. rapid fire depends on eventually missing to stop the damage. while upping a stat for any other car will up the damage by 1, with rapid fire, upping agility not only makes each hit do one more damage, but it also significantly increases the chance for another hit, doing another "agi + wp (+2) piece 1" damage. not only that, but for all other cards, if you train a yellow die, it may increase you chance for activating one of the abilities of the card, doing +X damage, but with rapid shot, it increases the chance for you to hit, not only once to do an extra arrows damage, but multiple times, making one trained die for rapid shot much more potent than a trained die anywhere else in the game.

hypothetically, think of a rank 3 elf in this situation. he could easily have a 5 or 6 agility, have 3 or 4 favor dice in agility have a specialization in long bow and three trained dice in ballistics. thats 5 stat dice, 4 fortune dice and three yellow dice. how many times could he easily hit with that? i know he would be fighting harder adversaries, but defence only goes so high.

Just a question, you are using the rules for fatigue I hope? Any roll using 3 reckless dice have a risk of causing fatigue through the exertion symbol. Using 3 reckless dice means that he he's getting an average of around 0.6 fatigue per roll (can be calculated using the binomial distribution or by using the dice simulator). Firing 3 arrows in one round would net him around 1 (1.05 to third order) fatigue per round on average.

He will not be able to pull this off for longer than 2-3 rounds. The reckless side of the card is limited by this. There's also the added risk of getting banes on the reckless dice (causing even more fatigue).

Maybe it's still too good (we haven't tried that card in my group yet, perhaps I should switch my trusty crossbow for a bow ), one solution is to house rule that firing extra arrows with this card requires that you spend maneouvres for each extra arrow (making the fatigue loss even harder).

just add an extra purple die for each extra shot or limit the card to one extra shot. It's still a great card no matter what you do.

charlest said:

So wait, just so we're clear on this... The character can re-roll once per session, which he specifically uses for Rapid Shot. The Party talent allows for extra [W] if stress is spent, the character spends Fortune points to cancel black dies, and the group is assisting the character (and what are they assisting with exactly? Reloading arrows into the bow while the elf gloats between shots?). Oh and the character is assuming a reckless stance so he can maximize the chance of a great number of successes.

Now that we have the whole picture it's quite clear that the character and the group don't want the Rapid Shot to fail. And the system is supporting that decision based on all the choices and investment the players have made. I think it would be broken if after all that investment Rapid Shot wasn't effective.

It seems to me that the players are quite adept at the tactical aspect of the game, and relying on dice rolls to foil their plans will be foolish. They'll just find a different combination of cards and powers to exploit. You'll have to tackle this with strategy and with just as much vigor as the players have thrown into the fray.

Have NPC's use cover and never engage the party in open fields.

Work in line of sight, some targets just can't be hit. Like someone hiding completely behind a wall, it's not just a <P> modifier.

Ambush. Ambush Ambush.

The Elf can't rapid shot what he cannot see: smoke, fog and blindness inducing spells are your friends.

Use ranged weapons against the PC's as other GM's have reported great success with this tactic.

Use the A/C/E budget aggressively against the Rapid Shot ability, much like the players are doing.

And if all else fails, destroy the elf's bow by targeting it directly with fire spells.

All that being said, ranged weapons are deadly and will whittle down the enemy if allowed to fire indiscriminately.

@evilben, I definitely see your point in that the card seems to have a much wider range of potential than most other action cards. And yeah, it would stink to see that action ruining all the "action". I'll be keeping my eyes peeled on the forums for more anecdotes of the card being over the top. Thanks for bringing it up.

On the other hand Lexicanum makes a good point. In your case, you've got a player that is very heavily invested in being Legolas. He's focused his creation points and advances at being "that guy". And yeah, it could get worse if a player wanted to continue to grow his character into that niche role through the advances you mentioned. This is all hypothetical since you guys have already dropped the card of course, but for the sake of discussion its worth considering. I'll just have to see more about it or wait till it comes up in play. Though the idea of massive damage, multiple arrow, death machine is a huge turn off to me personally (I generally don't like anything very heroic in my games), the system does seem to be supporting it if you want to invest in that concept. I still keep thinking about those numbers I ran though it just doesn't seem like it would be that bad. It obviously has been for you guys though.

Well, I'll definitely keep my eyes open for any other complaints about the card...

@gruntl: yes he does gain fatigue using this card, but he also makes ample use of the two boons recovers one fatigue rule to counter this.

@lexicanum: the players dont help him shoot, so its more just him (im a player charlest is the gm actually...) but he seems to be able to do enough on his own that we dont need to help. i have a problem with constantly engineering situations to bogard someone. every player should be able to feel useful and contribute to the advancement of the story, even if it is just by helping to win a fight. we arnt stupid and we will realize when we are thrown into a fight that is set up to negate what we can do. our game is not a GM v. Players grudge match, we try to focus more on working together to create a good story. also, ambushes dont really do a whole lot in WHFR. the ambushing party rolls an extra white die in their initiative, so a high agility player still has a good chance of winning first go. its a free, uncontested maneuver to move from engaged to close, then an archer can fire at will.

@donbaloo: the scary point is, our player isnt heavily invested into being legolas, it just kind oh happened. truth be told he is a much better diplomat/talker than he ever intended to be a fighter. he didnt put any points into upping his agility (he got 4 because hes an elf and a gambler, he could easily have 5) and has spent many more advancements on his social aspect than he has his archery. so the real scary part is what happens when you find someone who really wants to play the badass archer full tilt and completely destroys with this card?

evilben said:

That's only on a GM's Call. I certainly would not agree with that as a GM. A boon is primary a narrative advantage... I.E. : he is sure to recover that arrow after the encounter... or something about the location good happens for the party !

on my card it says:

"If you hit with this attack, you may immediatly perform this action again, choosing either the same target or a new target in the same engagement as the first and adding (d1) to your dice pool. YOU MAY DO THIS ONLY ONCE and only if you still meet the requirements for the attack".

I don't know what the issue is. The card very clearly states that you can only make ONE extra attack!

well, everything is open to gm discretion, but in the rules in WHFR main book on page 45 is clearly says "Regardless of the action or check being performed, these bane and boon effects are always available. to be triggered .... 2 boons recover 1 fatigue if the check was based on a physical characteristic..." so unless specifically house ruled, i was argue that two boons always recover one stress/fatigue if the person rolling them desires to spend them in this manner.

@ gallows: flip it over and read the red side

@evilben: I believe that the Rapid Shot card isn't broken per se, but that it can appear to be broken if you've heavily invested in making it work. I mean, it should work , right?

Overall, what I'm getting from this is that you're not being challenged enough. The rules are very open ended, and as such it's not up to the system to provide a challenge, it's up to the GM. I'm not promoting a grudge match or an overtly antagonistic form of play. But the truth of the matter is that you all appear to be very competent and creative players that can work the system to your advantage. The nature of WFRP3e's system is that the GM has to step up to the challenge and provide you with tougher opponents and strategies. Otherwise, you'll keep running into these sorts of issues.

Let me illustrate what I mean with some additional comments.

Part of what was said is that players assisted the elf. That's fine, but I personally request an RP explanation for assist maneuvers and don't hand them out otherwise. I'd personally be hard pressed to give out an assist [W] for something like Rapid Shot as it's a one-person action that benefits very little from assistance. I bring this up because it makes me think your GM is being too permissive in allowing assist maneuvers, which if not tightly controlled can very easily gimp the system.

Look, I don't expect players to purposely gimp themselves or not use the game's mechanics to their full potential. But I do believe it is the GM's job to provide a challenge and keep things varied, especially if certain actions are trivializing encounters. So it's not about unleashing the wrath of god on one player, it's about showing that the world reacts and adapts to the party's strengths and attempts to counter them.

Take this real life event as an example: SAM site operators in Serbia adopted interesting strategies to counter NATO's superior technology and weapon systems: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20051121.aspx I bring this example up, because ranged combat is over powered by its very nature. It's literally death from the sky or from a distance. It's what makes it such an effective and deadly option in warfare. Ranged combat is the equivalent of an Ironbreaker with a teleportation rune. Teleport in, hack at the enemy, teleport out so they enemy can't retaliate. It's going to be overpowered by its very nature.

Take for example your reaction to ambush. You're telling me that it's "only one [W]". If the GM is only providing one [W] then he's really gimping the whole concept of an ambush, and that's my main point.

The effect of an ambush extends past initiative, and there's no hard and fast rule the GM is forced to follow. First, an ambush allows the attacker to position himself in an advantageous position relative to the ambushed victim. An ambush also let's the attacker decide when to attack. A well placed ambush will provide <P> to initiative. Any players acting before the ambush has been sprung will not be able to see the enemy or react to the enemy (because they don't know the enemy is there, because that is the whole point of an ambush).

So an ambush means that the attacker chooses ranges of engagement (close, medium, long, extreme range), the location of its units and benefits from the terrain features if the ambush location merits it. Any ambushed token can only act against tokens that have already done an action. An ambushed token that goes before an ambusher tokens loses his turn. They'll get to act on the next round of battle as per the usual rules.

Do you see where I'm coming from? When the rules are left this open, it's the GM that fills in the blanks. And how the GM fills those blanks up can have a huge effect on how the game plays.

I'd have to agree that it sounds like the elf player is rolling well, as the odds get pretty low once you have 2 or more <P>, and it also sounds like they set up (intentional or not) a good system for the elf to use it.

I would suggest having more close combats, thus not allowing room for a bow or ranged combat. Additionally, have opponents specifically engage the elf in melee, where his bow becomes very difficult to use. He becomes not just a threat, but also a 'weak' target because he is wielding a bow and cannot parry.

You could always penalize the elf an additional Fatigue for each extra attack made with the Rapid Shot action, in addition to whatever is rolled. That makes sense that the action is tiring and causes additional fatigue. That makes it more dangerous to fire multiple arrows.

Or, add an additional recharge token for each additional arrow fired, which will slow down the use but not diminish the effect.

I'd have to look at the card, but I might also add either a <P> or a for changing targets, representing the difficulty of doing so while firing rapidly. (of course, this only 'helps' if multiple targets are attacked).

I don't think the card is actually broken, but these might help if you are finding it is being used effectively and luckily.

i cant find why i thought ambushes only gave +1 [W] in the rulebook thats my bad, ambushes are a much more viable option because of that. but it still remains that as soon as its any ranged characters turn, it is very easy to disengage and take full advantage of your ranged skills.

charlest said we helped him with rapid shot, i said we dont, but the tactic "jack of all trades" allows him to use stress for white die and his gambler ability allows him to reroll a bad attack.

also, the player has not invested even a majority of his character points into being a ranged fighter, of nine advancement points we have gotten, he has spent three towards it. an out of career ballistics training(2), and an agility favor(1), which also helps him with a lot more than just shooting his bow. he spent zero creation points towards being good with a bow. the elf/gambler combo gave him a starting 4 agility and he didnt touch it. the majority of his points have been spent on social abilities, so just imagine how powerful a character that actually focused on using ranged combat.

sorry for the double posts:

i think if you need to change a card to make it usable, it qualifies as broken. also my main point for the card being broken is that it scales to infinity as the characters get stronger, all other attack cards that i can think of have a ceiling for max damage as max stat(10) + dr of weapon + max bonuses from the attack card.