I get your point Charlest and it is very valid. My figure was based on an artificial average of games being once a week, with one xp a week, with no additional bonuses given. Your rate though, makes our debate over the higher level issue more dire, because advancement can blow by and the higher levels are just not prepared to handle your group, statistically speaking.

Gallows, on the adjusted characteristic scale, I think you are way underselling the opposed resolution mechanic. It is great and works great at these sorts of level restrictions. The fact that most rolls come in at two purple, +1 Purple for advanced parry, block, or whatever, means three purple base for two maxed out fighters. Then add in one black for the opponents skill, +1 black for their defense, + any difficulty from the action card and I think you'll find it's a pretty nasty pool to succeed with.

3 blue dice, 3 green dice and 3 yellow dice versus 3 purple dice + 2 black is a pool that isn't very character friendly.

If you wanted more grade of difficulty, add one black per rank of skill expertise the opponent has (so if he has a 3 melee add 3 black as well). In that case it would look like:

3 blue dice, 3 green dice and 3 yellow dice versus 3 purple dice + 5 black dice. That is one hell of a pool to cut through.

Just a final thought, before you run off to play. Hope you enjoy.

My initial idea was the opposed roll system for parry, but two players with a strenght of 2 will get a nasty hit, because of the extra purple. That's why I wanted a simple scalable system. The reason I decided against it was actually because I found it too harsh against new players. For new players it would be 2d base + 1d for parry + 2 black. But for experienced players they would still not parry effectively. Also I like for a weak character to be able to hit someone stronger. Lets say that troll. I want a scribe with a strenght of 2 and no melee skill to be able to hit the troll and with opposed tests, that's too hard.

But I think I have come so far now, that only testing will reveal how it actually plays. The math is satisfying now, but lets see how it plays.

commoner said:

Yes indeed. I am now a little perplexe about my buy. 95 euros...
When you create/design a game it should work smoothly at every level this is not the case!
The concept is good but not working fine.
The system does not turn well or at the moment suit the setting.
I suppose they beta tested this game before... But how?
I also feel the game lacks flavor, not talking about the setting that we know but all those actions, talents cards...
They are like just too technical: you add this, substract this, you suffer this... This struk me really when reading all the priest/magic "powers".
No flavor in it. They could have added one or two lines of description. Those cards are a little dull. You also dont have a great variety in the
magic and priest actions... They do all about the same in different ways: deal damage, heal, blessing. I just mean that the powers seems like a little reductive in scale/variety.

bon, so mhm a little disappointed with all this...

I will have to do tremendous work to adapt all of this to something I like but I am not the only one it seems.

geekoo said:

There is an awful lot of talk about the game not working at higher levels and that may well be true BUT is anyone actually playing at those higher levels yet?

It's already been mentioned how many session are actually required to get a character to some of the lofty dice pool limits that are being discussed and we have no idea what FFG have planned going forward for this system.

I have said it before and I will say it again, the core set has been designed for beginning characters, with relatively low (5-6) stats, and probably supporting truly nothing more than ranks 1-3

I would expect/hope FFG have some plans in hand for adding to the game which allows it to continue working at higher levels, but unless the game is actually not working for you in its current format right now, with the starting characters you have right now, I would not worry too much about fixing something that isn't even broken yet

But to each their own, i guess.

geekoo said:

Text flavor is over-rated. Guys always talk about this with the WotC power cards. I, for one, am glad it's not there. Let the players describe it, instead of using the same two line flavor text over and over. One thing I want to point out about the cards. Not very many "conditions" have be touched upon by the cards. In my 6 sessions I think we have used condition cards twice. I think we'll see more action cards using conditions in future cards.

Sinister said:

Hmmm yes conditions. How does it work exactly? Some of the stuff seems a bit vague.

Conditions are all in the condition deck. A few of the cards mention your exposed or weakened for 2 rounds, etc...

I use the hell out of condition cards! A player gives a rallying speech or rolls three or four boons and performs an awesome feat, I the inspired condition. They suffer a major set back, I the demoralized or whatever. I create whole scenarios to add atmosphere and tone through putting certain negative or positive side effects of condition cards into play. Sometimes a roll is allowed to shrug them off, others not. Once in a hell-pit of doom, you bet your butt there will be something to reflect the atmospheric tension (other then the gaining of a stress) that may add to the encounter. What I typically do is roll a Discipline check. Succeed, just one fatigue. Fail, one fatigue and suffer the condition effect. If you arent using them then youre just not doing it right! (Lol, just kidding).

Yes you can find use for them as a GM, but I've seen little use in the action cards we've been using. I suspect future action cards will take more advantage of them.

OK I have a little idea for combat rules:
Tell me what do you think about them. I am not sure this will work...
Its just like a brainstorming for me just throwing ideas on the table.
This idea of combat system is perhaps less abstract and goes in a different way from what is proposed in the rule book.

so yesterday again, I went thru rules and I had a problem with the competitive checks. Why not using competitive checks for combats?
In a way a combat is an opposition of several people except they are not trying to accomplish the same goal.
So one is attacking and the other one defending. So you when its your turn you would be active and when not u would be "passive".
You could still of course during a turn attack and also defend yourself using actions cards etc.

How it works:

the attacker
the attacker uses the characteristic needed for the attack Str or AG + Stance
+ yellow dices for trained skills
+ any white fortune dices (specialisation etc...)
- any malus from defending action cards, shields for the defender (purple or black dices)...

- Add any misfortune dice for complications, tactical disadvantages
- Add any purple dices (actions cards etc)

the defender
characteristic AG (no defense system used for armor. perhaps would only use 1 dice for shields).
If defense is mentioned on an action card replace it by the AG.
Would of course still keep the soaking values.
or the base defensive characteristic could be the rank of the creature/opponent.

+ stance
+ action cards
+ any fortune dices

- Add any misfortune dice for complications, tactical disadvantages
- Add any purple dices (actions cards)

when dices thrown compare results as usual.

remark:
for the stance. you cannot use more than 1/2 your basic characteristic in a stance.
Exemple:
3 blue dices = would give 2 blue dices + 1 red/green
4 blue dices = 2 blue + 2 red/green
5 dices = 3 blue + max 2 red/green
etc...

I know this changes a little the spirit/system of the game.
But it could also work in various situations. not only combat.
Of course we would still use the challenges levels for other kind of checks when you have no opposition.
Perhaps it will slow down a little the combat but I am not really sure about that.
So here really the expertise/trained skills, party tactics will take another importance and will help you defeat stronger opponents.
The stances will take more importance really.


Hope this is more or less clear as mentioned before I am french speaking. So sorry for spelling mistakes and mhm grammar .

mh m not sure this will wok really but as mentioned its just a test

The downside of that kind of approach puts extra emphasis on the AG characteristic; this in turn benefits the ranged attacker over the melee attacker as the ranged attacker need concentrate only in agility to be an effective fighter, whereas the melee fighter must concentrate in both str and Ag to be equally as effective.

Given that ranged combat in many cases already has advantages over melee, giving such specialists further advantages could skew the system even further.

Gallows said:

Usually the 1 or 2 hits is on the players. My players in both games usually fell a henchmen everytime they hit and the boss is hit for 3 or 4 wounds. The combats that matter are a little slower, but most combats that I have run end in 3-4 rounds. Maybe you need to reduce the number of enemies as healing is not quick so doing 1 or 2 hits over a series of encounters will eventually bring a player down. If you use the act structure and the enemies attack in waves, then each combat will be quick and players will be down about 5-6 wounds. My players really enjoy the games and that is what matters to me. They feel a sense of danger, but also feel like heroes and is that the point.

Rich Gain

Jester's Playhouse

gunnergain said:

That's true in my games too.

We had a rather insane session yesterday. We started at noon and finished up at 3 in the morning. We had a few loose ends in "Eye for an eye" that we tied up, but then we began the "Thousand thrones campaign". It was a great session where we got to test the house rules a lot and we made some alterations and scrapped a few rules. We really like this edition more and more every time we play.

Characteristic dice limiting rule:

• Max starting value for a characteristic is 4. Humans start with 14 creation points and dwarves/elves start with 9 points. You can never raise your characteristic more than 3 over your racial starting value. Humans can however select one characteristic as their main one, to allow for one extra point potential. This worked pretty well. With the stats a bit lower than what the core rulebook suggests we felt that the game was spot on for new characters. New characters are still a lot stronger than in the old rules, but it was good.
• The default difficulty to attack a target is it's rank or its threat level minus 1 (min 1 max 4). You can never get assigned a greater default difficulty than your own rank or characteristic dice in the pool, whichever is lower. Other circumstances may increase the difficulty further however. Since everyone was rank 1 this rule hasn't been used. I hope FFG will release new material, so higher ranks are balanced better before we need to use this rule to be honest.
• Reactive defense cards add 1d as per normal rules, but when you attack someone using reactive defense a chaos star signifies a miss, no matter how many successes in the roll (ie. the attack misses no matter how many successes there are). This worked really well. It made sure that no matter how many dice someone used, the active defence cards were worth using.
• Each character gets one stance piece in both directions. The stance pieces shown on a career card are the maximum number of stances the character can get in those professions. To buy additional stance pieces costs the character an advancement. This way, characters are not stacked in their conservative and reckless dice and have to actually spend points to get more dice, rather than getting them for free. In addition, when you switch careers you do not lose stance pieces. You retain the ones you have. However, you can only advance stance pieces if the new career has additional stance pieces you do not have (i.e. if you had 2 reckless pieces and the new career gives you 3 reckless you may now purchase an additional reckless). This was another great addition to our house rules. First it gave the players another area where they could progress without unbalancing the game. Limiting the dice pool to max 3 stance dice, was great as well. We found that this rule played well.

Stat limits:

• The limit for any characteristic is 6. This is just a temporary rule until we see what FFG release. Perhaps it becomes irrelevant when expansions come into play.
• You can only get one fortune die for each stat. We all agreed that this one was good. While it's just a fortune die, we recognized that 6 fortune dice was better than raising your stat from 5 to six, so we felt this should just be a little extra tweak for your stat and nothing more. It also helps to even out the difference between new and experienced players, because to the new player this die can be quite nice and yet cheap.

Critical damage:

• Critical hits deal a number of hits equal to their severity, so if you draw a 3-critical you would draw three additional normal wounds. If the total damage is below 0 after soak and a critical wound was rolled, then the target will suffer this critical wounds and the extra severity wounds can't be soaked. If two or more criticals were inflicted then just one gets through. Originally we had a bonus of one extra damage for every success over 3, but that proved to be too random and didn't really add anything to the game, because it made boons less valuable. That rule was scrapped. But our critical rule was a success, because it made criticals more serious, plus it added some more variety to damage without unbalancing things.

Assisting in combat:

• You can only assist someone in combat, who has a lower skill level, to get a fortune die - both must be engaged with the same target. If two players are engaged with the same NPC one of them can assist the other allowing him to perform a parry or block for an attack against that player. This could lead to two blocks against one attack or even two blocks and two parries. The assisting player uses his free maneuver for this assist and he uses his reactive defense card(s) as well. Everyone liked this rules, because we found the combat assisting to be silly. We allow assisting of players with less skill however, to give some support to non combat careers. This saved a particularly unlucky wizards apprentice twice durring our long session yesterday. Worked great.
  

I am a newcomer to the game. I haven't even had players roll up characters yet. I am thinking we will be advancing very slowly (perhaps playing at most 2 times a month). Can I use the rules "as is"? Do they work well for starting characters? I am a little concerned since many people are seeming to feel the need to fix the system already. Does the system work with characters ranked 1 or 2?

oshfarms said:

The rules work well for starting characters and my opinion that it doesn't may be coloured by my experience with the previous editons. I think it's a good idea to limit the creation points and not allow stats to be over 4 at creation. Also my rule with chaos stars cancelling all successes when active defence is used, gives a better defensive balance. But I'd just play for a few sessions if I were you and then see how it goes. So perhaps the only thing you have to make your mind up about is if you want to limit creation points and have a lower characteristic limit at character creation.