Balance rules:

• Max starting 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.
• Reading the Challenge die (purple):
  ? One challenge = one challenge
  ? Two challenges = two challenges
  ? One bane = one bane + one challenge
  ? Two banes = two banes + two challenges
  ? Chaos star = chaos star + one challenge.
• 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).
• Mages may buy spells from all orders. (but only gain the order bonus to their own order spells).
• Ranged attacks get +1 challenge die if engaged by an enemy. Each range increment adds +1 misfortune die to the dice pool.
• Breaking items. When a chaos star is rolled in a failed roll, the player must roll three misfortune dice. If two turn up as banes, the item breaks.
• Outside of combat players can only add blue characteristic dice to their pool. If it makes sense and they explaing themselves as to why a rekcless or conservative approach may benefit them, they can be allowed to add ONE die of either type to a die roll.

Stat limits:

• The limit for any characteristic is 6 (for now).
• You can only get one fortune die for each stat.

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 critical wounds were inflicted then just one gets through.

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.

These rules balance the game like I want it to be. Rather than adding more challenge dice to scale at higher level I'll keep the one die for combat. With the increased potency of the challenge die, things will balance out perfectly at higher ranks, because if need be and FFG doesn't release them first I'll simply create some Expert Defence reactions, adding two challenge dice instead of the one added on Improved Defences.

Interesting.

We used the stance dice during the story segment in shilling when the Envoy searched the coach (he's a different kind of envoy I'm told by the player). He rationaled that if he took his time he could go conservative dice, while if he simply tore apart the coach looking for the package he'd go reckless. I liked it as it engaged the player and wasn't too over the top. We said that delays on the conservative would represent him taking extra time to search thoroughly while any fatigues on the reckless die would be strain or him damaging something else in the coach on a bane.

I like the stance meter ideas, and the stat restrictions, but the casting permissions are a little too out of fluff for me. I think we'll be seeing more spells for the orders sooner than later (hopefully) or I'll start converting my own from the minis game/old WHRP rules.

Always interesting to see what you've dropped in for house rules, Gallows, very much in line with how I'm thinking of tweaking mine up.

•Mages may buy spells from all orders.

I just realized that this is actually the RAW. The school names are only traits and not restrictions (same with priest) like for instance troll-feller strike is not restricted to slayers or rituals are not restricted to wardancers. Hmm...thats certainly not fluff correct but one does wonder if this will someone make more sense of the Channelling - by College Order Specialization. Not for me. Not yet. But if I ponder this conundrum some more......mmm....m........mno..mm....

Wonder if this was intended.

Possibly based on the limited number of spells per order available in the core rules. I'd have to think on that.

Lucas Adorn said:

IMO you're wrong. ToM p. 11: "(...), according to the Laws of Magic, he will never be able to affect another Wind."

I'm pretty sure that wizards in 3 ed. can only use spells from theirs orders and traits in this case are restrictions. Of course, the GM is still a final arbiter.

The Fluff clearly states it so but the rules do not. But of course I would expect everyone to play the wizards according to fluff. I'd do that myself.

I can't find it right now as the guests just left our house and I'm fairly drunk.,.. but I am certain that somewhere in the rules it says that you can only learn spells from your own order. But because of the limited selection and because we always have just one wizard I just found it more interresting to allow it.

I've found it. ToM p. 47: "During character creation, an apprentice wizard must choose which one of the eight Orders within the Colleges of Magic he belongs to. Over the course of his wizardly careers, the character can only acquire and cast spells from his chosen school."

I like these.

This is somethign that if you get your players off on the right foot you're good. It would be difficult to add now that many campaigns have started (especially) starting as a much weaker character. (I agree though that characters start off much more powerful than they need to be..which shortens the length of the non-epic playability of the game).

I'm instituting the chaos star and bane duality right away next game.

jh

Just made a minor change to the way the chaos star is interpreted.

Instead of the chaos star being a chaos star + a challenge it is now:

• Chaos star = Chaos star + reroll one additional challenge die.

This fits better with the yellow die, to balance things out, plus it gives the chaos star a more even chaotic feel.

Well, here are my thoughts. I'll admit, I don't think the success rate needs to be changed too much, but I'll try to look somewhat objectively as if it did.

Max starting characteristic is 4.

I see absolutely no reason for this. Stat purchases are expensive anyway. If you want to control starting stat bloat, I think giving fewer creation points is better. That then penalizes someone who wants to 'max' out a stat at 5.

Reading the Challenge die (purple):

Interesting. I would probably say try the "two banes" to be two banes and one challanege (instead of two challenges).
Edit: I see you adopted the Chaos Star House rule I had proposed here, treating it like a "Righetous Failure". Coolio.

Each character gets one stance piece in both directions .

Interesting. I'm not sure that I like it, but I can see where it comes from and where it's going. I don't think it will have a huge impact on the game, though, so it should be ok.

Mages may buy spells from all orders. (but only gain the order bonus to their own order spells).

I assume you also mean they can cast those spells? This just seems totally *wrong* for me. A Grey Wizard should not be throwing around fireballs and casting Flaming Sword of Rhuin. If you want more spells, make a few.

Ranged attacks get +1 challenge die if engaged by an enemy. Each range increment adds +1 misfortune die to the dice pool.

Personally, I would say that ranged attacks can't be used if you're engaged unless it's a 1-handed ranged weapon (like a pistol). In that case +1 <P> makes sense (similar to spells being cast while engaged). I also like the increased misfortune die. However, I would only add +1 for each range increment above Close range. Although, there is something to be said for using <P>, since the shot itself is more challenging the farther away the target is. I might consider, beyond short range, adding a <P> for each range increment.

Breaking items. When a chaos star is rolled in a failed roll, the player must roll three misfortune dice. If two turn up as banes, the item breaks.

Neat. I might consider even more of a random, like adding a Fortune die (kinda like how Intoxicated works). Maybe even, roll [bB][W] and if an uncanceled bane or failure shows up.

Outside of combat players can only add blue characteristic dice to their pool. If it makes sense and they explaing themselves as to why a rekcless or conservative approach may benefit them, they can be allowed to add ONE die of either type to a die roll

Actually, I already use this House rule. It works well.

The limit for any characteristic is 6 (for now).

IMO reasonable.

You can only get one fortune die for each stat.

IMO reasonable.

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.

Way too OP, IMO. Criticals are tough enough, since they are hard to get rid of and already count as a wound too, not to mention their effects. Now, if you wanted to talk about, if total wounds are 0 or less, leaving the criticals as criticals rather than converting to regular wounds ... that I could see.

Assisting in combat

lower skill portion isn't necessary. A medicore skill person assisting a higher-skilled person could and would still make it easier for the higher-skilled person to hit. Anyone should be able to assist. I would agree, both must be engaged with the same target. I do kind of like the 'use their Active Defense cards' for another person. You might want to double-check the existing action cards, though. I have a vague suspicion that I saw a card somewhere that allowed something similar (although I could very well be wrong, I don't have the cards memorized).

Some of the rules are very specific to our group and not really useable by others or adressing any flaws in the system. Like mages getting spells from all schools... and I am still a bit on a fence about that because of the lore. The max 4 starting characteristic is also a very personal rule and is not needed with the lower points I already have in the rules. It's just that I want players to have more space for progress through their careers and with 5 they can only raise their characteristic one more point. But generally it's because I generally feel that starting characters in v3 is 20-25% too strong. I don't want them to be as weak as previous editions, but this was just over the top for the feel of our game.

The reason for the stance system is that by limiting stance dice to maximum three a lot of the high success rates for experienced characters is fixed by that.

As for my purple die rules. With my purple die the dwarf in our group with 4 strenght, reckless 2, 1 weapon skill, +1 fortune in weapon skill, against an opponent with 2 defence will have a chance to hit around 69%. I find that reasonable for a new character. My reason for making the purple die better what that it doesn't make defence cards relatively weaker, like if you were to run combat as opposed rolls and add more staring challenge dice.

Critical Wounds. In terms of killing it will always be better to use a comet as a success if you need just one for max damage instead of inflicking lower damage and a critical for instance. We don't see that many criticals honestly, but we did feel they were too weak in terms of the damage they do at the moment of impact. AFTER the combat they are annoying... but for players inflicting critical damage wasn't really a priority.

As for assisting. If two are engaging the same target they can both get a fortune die for outnumbering if that is the case. The reason I made this rule was that I felt it incredibly silly that the players would simply always assist each other all around the table and get fortune dice. This way it benefits the players with poor weapon skill, which is nice.

But thanks for your input... some good comments, that will make me go deeper into my rules and see if there is things I need to tweak. Your chaos star rule was brilliant... fits perfectly with the expertise die.

We have now played two sessions with those rules and here's our experience with the rules and the changes we decided to make afterwards.

Critical wounds dealing a number of wounds equal to their severity was over the top. Instead the simple ruling has become that critical wounds can never be soaked.

The challenge die was too mean because of the bane/challenge combination just as dvang pointed out. This was changed to one simple rule: On a chaos star it counts as two challenges and you roll another challenge die . All banes on the challenge die are just banes now

Stance pieces and stance dice are no longer so over powered with the new interpretation of the challenge die. We decided to still have characters only start at one piece in each direction at creation. They may however buy up to 6 pieces in each direction now, There is a purchase rule however. All pieces up to the stance meter indication on their current career cost normal price and anything beyond that cost double price. Besides going to the 6th piece surring a combat round either gives you stress or takes 6 combat rounds. With a max of 6 in any characteristic the impact of these dice is also reasonable.

Quick casting now only adds a misfortune die to the spell crafting pool to compensate for the low damage output (in our opinion) of wizards.

Bright wizards now add +1 damage for each extra power they add to the spell for the same reasons as above.

They also ran into a group of trained mercenaries where the leader had improved guarded position. That proved to be very balancing for the combat since he would use it and add an extra purple to all attacks against his friends in the engagement. It allowed them to be more agressive with their reactive defence cards. My other ruling is that the expertise dice of a monster may be added to every attack roll (or wherever their expertise lie) because it's the skill they have trained. It is no longer part of the pool.