First let me say I am a big supporter of this new edition, been having lots of fun with it since its release so please no accusations of trolling.

Me and my group have been playing the 3rd edition now since it first came out. Been noticing the last couple sessions seem to be losing some steam. The same fixed damage rates over and over, the limited careers to jump to and it seems the same action cards over and over.

Players fall in love with certain cards, that can't be helped i guess. Damage rates are always around the same (couple points different here and there), makes me miss random damage with possibilties of mass damage. The career cards was an exciting part of the game when we 1st started but now I'm getting the sense from my players that the career transition from card to card doesn't mesh well. I asked them about how they felt about the careers and the enthusiasm for it really seems to be diminishing. Why? I asked. Some reasons here... very limited amount of careers (obvious), no sense or feel of career progression (i.e. 1 player is a witchhunter now...excited to become a witchhunter but now he's close to changing again...and it does feel "downhill" from there..he don't wanna become a watchman or something like that). I have to admit it is a big difference in character story and advancement/progression compared to earlier editions (NOT STARTING AN EDITION WAR HERE!). Maybe they are too used to designing character paths from older editions going from nothing (i.e beggar) to something (i.e champion) and the story, time, effort and the sense of accomplishment of doing it. From missing all the time in combat to becoming a great warrior or whatever. They hit all the time right from the get go in 3rd ed. If you succeed most of the time right out of the gate, adding dice from advancement isn't quite as fulfilling. I have to admit you have to have a certain mindset going into character design. In older WFRP you designed your path to work your way up to certain careers while now you start (excluding witchhunter) as whatever you want and when you advance you are kinda "dumbing down" your career path (i.e. going from swordmaster to burgher or tollkeeper doesn't quite inspire the players as much).

I have noticed combat does feel repetitive lately as I mentioned earlier with the fixed damage and multiple usage of the same cards. I'm getting the sense of maybe this isn't the game to run a long term campaign. It's pretty much brand new and it does feel like its getting old too quickly. The options in this game is very limiting (I know more stuff is coming out soon but still...) and I am getting a bit concerned here (this isn't exactly the cheapest game in the world to play and you will need to drop some serious cash to make it feel more complete whenever FFG puts out more stuff). Anybody else who's been running it for a while getting any similiar feelings about anything I've stated here in this post?

Yes...we also have been playing the game since it came out. Most of the players have either switched or are approaching their 2nd career. (We have had a few PC deaths along the way.)

So the biggest complaints are...

• I like being a pit fighter, I don't want to switch careers
• What do you mean my mage can't advance any further?
• Set up and tear down take too long (compared to PnP RPGS)
• Balance

The last issue balance has become an increasingly growing concern as characters progress rather quickly in WH3ed. And when a player dies, or misses a few sessions, we are beginning to get a group of widely varying abilities. We do also have a huge WH fan in our group that is very unhappy about some of the design choices made by FFG during this edition, but we have been able to work around his issues with very slight tweaks to the rules as written.

There is also some concern regarding advanced careers and such. But I think that is because most of us are used to "leveling up" rather than "leveling sideways".

That being said, we are all still in agreence that for small groups (less than 6, including GM) this is one of the best systems we've played.

For larger groups (6 or more) I think its fair to state that most of us would prefer a much simplier system, like D6 from West End Games.

Yep I fully understand your concerns. My players are also rank 2 now and working on their second career.

The major issues have been.

1. Success rate is too great when you rank up. This is an issue with both players and monsters rendering defence cards incresingly pointless. My players felt they got relatively worse at parrying as they progressed.

Fix: We have tried several different ways to decrease success rate. Our latest and most balanced fix is to have the shaos star count as two challenges as well as a chaos star and then force a reroll of another challenge die (just like the expertise die). We may increase the chaos star to three challenges, but we need to test further. This changed our game to become less predictable and more fun.

2. Finishing advanced careers.

Fix: While the iron breaker in the group isn't finished with that career yet (2nd career) we have still decided that you can go back and do the same career as many times as you like. You pay 3 advancements to do this (2 for humans). This lets mages and priests progress beyond the advances they can get from two career and stops the silly idea about a troll slayer becomming a scout and still playing like a troll slayer.

3. Damage is not varied enough.

Fix: This worried us a bit and we decided to do something about it. We made a house rule where critical wounds would deal a number of normal wounds equal to their severity. This didn't work out well however because the average damage became too high and it didn't give us the varied damage we desired. Our final ruling for critical wounds became that they simply can't be soaked. If you deal two critical wounds, those two critical wounds will always go through despite soak. We are toying with another idea that is somewhat inspired by the old system. When you use all possible maximum effects on a card you have a chance of doing extra damage. You then roll a fortune die and if it turns up as a success then you deal extra damage and roll another fortune die and so on until you no longer roll a success. We haven't settled on what the damage is yet, but we kinda like the idea, because it's dependant on a good attack roll and is random enough.

With everything i said in the OP...do any of you believe that this edition gets too old too quick and fails as something you can play for the long haul?

Magnus the Pious said:

No we don't. We see some mechanics issues that we want to fix, but the system itself will remain interresting for just as long if not longer for these reasons.

1. Players may use the same action cards a lot, but because of recharge they have to use a few different ones. On top of that the adventurers kit have some interresting ones that support using different cards. On top of that some cards are situational. The iron breaker in our group has his favorite strike (Reckless cleave). Often he will make it a recharge of 4 to do more damage, so on the next three actions he needs to do something else. Often he ends up having to use basic melee strike. I think combat is very varied when you're looking at the cards, because how many attacks did players have in previous editions? One... basic melee attack. The same is true with the wizard. He always try to get as many BW spells recharging as possible to power up combustion. That works really well. The card add more variety to combat than I could ever have imagined, so it's all positive for us... also in the long run.

2. The dice. They are simply adding so much to the mechanics side of the game but also to the story, because of the great tool they are to interpret rolls and tie them into the story and come up with interresting developments.

3. The world is still the same and it's the best fantasy world ever created.

4. A lot of other systems and ideas like player plots, trackers, social action cards etc. also add to the system and can help both GM and players to come up with interresting ideas for the story. Ways to like mechanics to the story to mage the GAME in Role Playing Game a meaningful and fun part of the story rather than a seperate entity. I think all the systems make mechanics and story blend much better than previous editions.

Right off the bat I want to say that I have not played the new edition yet. I have, however, read it over and over and feel I have a pretty firm grasp on it. It sounds like the novelty of the system being new has worn out for your group. Perhaps your group doesn't hold the same opinion as I do, but for me story always trumps mechanics. What I mean is that if a great story is being told, the mechanics should fade to the background anyways, so I couldn't see myself ever getting bored with a game purely because of the system. I'll second what others have said in that in the last edition the most mechanical variety you had in combat was pretty much WS and BS rolls. Narrative description is the way to spice it up!

I've always seen the careers as being "storytelling optional." What I mean by this is that a player character can call himself whatever he wants to, regardless of his career. The Witch Hunter, for example, can still be a witch hunter while pursuing another career mechanically. In that way, I guess I've always seen the careers as little more than packages of advances that may represent a certain career, but are in no way limited in that manner. In my Star Wars game, for example, I told my players that just because they don't have the Bounty Hunter prestige class doesn't mean their character isn't a bounty hunter. Call yourself what you will, the mechanics are secondary to this in my games.

Advancement does seem like it would go quickly in the game, but I don't see that as a negative. I think the power creep inherent in other systems may not be as pronounced in WFRP3, and maybe that can be a bit jarring as well. If the players begin to feel like they have taken their characters as far as they wanted to, maybe it is time to roll up new characters? I can definitely see their being an issue with character's essentially maxing themselves out, so I would say that the game is perhaps not intended to be played steadily with the same characters over a long period of time.

I too have noticed some growing concerns with long-term play.

It really comes down to one thing:

Lack of advanced careers (Admiral, Captain, Verenean investigator, wizards!, priests!)

Lack of expanded basic careers (for example: "Expert Pit Fighter")

Players need something to look forwards to. Right now, there isnt' any hope in sight.

jh

Hey Gallow I see your point. I appreciate your response, love chattin with fellow rpers. I'm just saying (I don't know if you are a player or GM), myself as a GM, after a couple months of playing this game straight I sometimes say to myself..."If he plays double strike one more goddamn time I'm gonna strangle him ".

I love the dice mechanic, especially after we 1st started. I do have to admit though after a while with those fixed damage rates and extremely high success rates, the coolness factor of it does diminish after time. I kinda miss rolling seperately for damage. Have to admit nothing brings out more smiles than rolling an exploding 10 on a d10 when you hit a greenskin. It does have a more dramatic effect at a table then... 4 hammers, +2 damage. One player even mentioned at our last session that we have always been very descriptive when we played and rolled dice in the old system. The new dynamic dice system is losing a little luster and is starting to be not so dynamic now. I'm gonna have to blindfold their characters on a tightrope while its raining lava so i can add enough challenge and misfortune dice for them to feel like they might miss a roll..hehe.

The extra components can add to the game i agree. At times though when you are playing deep into the night and it's over...you just want to go home and start dreading the packing up part and you begin to wonder...."hmmm we never had issues before with creating new ideas or roleplaying elements in a game..I wonder if all this x-tra stuff is really worth it?"

I do feel character advancement is seriously flawed. No advanced type careers and too much "sideways" advancing....I think my players are starting to miss the whole advanced career system process. Helps them create interesting stories about how their characters advance. Lot of pregame talk at character generation with im gonna go from this to this to this because at some point this is gonna happen to me and I'm gonna want to do this..blah blah blah. Now it's like..." I'm already an Ironbreaker uhhh what do i do now? I guess I'll become a soldier...ugh! I really dont want to be a soldier but I guess it'll have to do." Kinda stifles creativity at our table. I do hate how just about every career is available from the get go. Careers seem like they do get stagnant after time. It seems like it's going to be a very long time before we ever get anymore career options and when they do come they will most likely be mostly basic careers with a couple "advanced" careers (if there is such a thing anymore).

These are serious issues when you are trying to build a long running campaign. I do enjoy the game but I'm begining to fear that this edition might turn into a lets play once in a while in between our real campaign type of game. Its only been a few months now and I'm getting that "GM sense" that the players are starting to feel a little roadblocked with their character options and dice results. That's a bad sign for a new game and I'm just wondering if anybody else out there is feeling this and what they are doing about it. It is sad because when we 1st started and everything was new we thought this game was spectacular! (still is... just seems more flawed than we anticipated)

BTW...you are 100% correct ...warhammer is the best fantasy world ever created

For what ever it is worth, I was concerned about the longevity of a campaign upon my first "read through'. The game is just not built for the long haul.

Parzival said:

My group is wrestling with many of these issues too. In fact we're on hiatus for a while because of it...

One remedy for the boring damage issue that I've been toying with is reducing the fixed values a bit (1 or 2 points at most) across the board, then allowing extra successes to be cashed in to inflict more. That adds some fun to those rolls where a player gets 7 successes, or an amazing run of righteous successes (which otherwise don't mean much).

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Magnus the Pious said:

I hear ya, brother.

I am pretyy disapointed. I like the game. It is to bad that they are determined it seems, to sell it by bit's and pieces while giving us no clue as to what to expect. Sure a campaign here, GMs guide there is nice and all, but.....finsh the game. Give us something to do past rank 2.

I don't know about your gang. But mine is not to pleased about making new characters every couple of months,

Maybe this is just me, but with my friends its pretty lucky to get to play a game once every other week. We only just started playing yesterday since I got the box around Christmas, so I can't forsee running out of options anytime soon. They appear to be getting ready to release new material at what I would consider a reasonable rate, but your mileage may vary on that front.

But I do see everyone's point about sideways advancing, and I would still consider a troll slayer that moved into a scout to be a slayer, theres no reason he wouldn't be. Rolling separately for damage would be interesting, perhaps someone can write up some houserules to and test it out. I don't really feel the need but I haven't played it as much as everyone else obviously has.

Hehe I'm a GM. The most combat centric player in my group doesn't use double strike, because he has a shield, but his reckless strike is nasty too. What I do is save the NPCs defence cards and A/C/E for his most powerful attacks.

We will test this damage rule the next couple of sessions:

• Critical wounds can't be soaked. If someone with 11 soak receive 7 wounds and two of those are critical, the resulting damage will be two critical wounds. If you get at least three successes, three boons, one Sigmars comet and deal at least one critical wound on an attack, then you roll a fortune die for extra damage. If you roll a boon, extra damage is dealt and you reroll another fortune die. Each boon you get inflicts another +3 wounds to the target.

Parzival said:

Are you saying that you think FFG will the line right away, or are you saying that future expansions with advanced careers will be incompatible with the current rules?

First of all, I'm french so I'm apologize for my poor English.

I will add my opinion to that interesting discussion.

I bought the game in december (at the incredible cost of 92€ !) and we have done around 15 game's sessions now, and this RPG is one of the best i've ever played. Yea there is a problem with long term play , but sincerely i found 2 solutions:

1) to consider certains carreers like simply a social role (example the carreer "soldier" mean a simple soldier as a great captain...skills are the same like leadership or discipline.

2) to consider advanced carreers like upgrade of status, nothing more ( an acolyte is a wizard and simply with that carreer you can be lord wizard or more...the career means only you have finished your class).

And all of my team is happy with that.

And the third solution is to wait for new careers, and i think FFG will do new carreer, now they catched us, they must increase the addict !

What do you think about my solutions fellows mates ?

i Just forgot a precision: i've canceled the limit of maximum advances in a career. Complete a career is useful to keep it special ability while changing for another and for specialisations.

There is a fourth solution create your owns carrees: I will do that for Bretonnian knights ! (Bretonnia is very popular for french players).

Been reading all the posts around here and i'm getting a bit upset here. You all this money on the game, seems like too many people have to houserule EVERYTHING about it. Houserule the monsters, houserule the dice mechanic, houserule damage, houserule the action cards and recharge rates etc. etc... I know certain GMs and groups like to houserule stuff to make things fit their group, I understand that. But the consensus on these forums is that all these houserules are to fix actual flaws in the game that seem "broken" not to enhance their rp experience to fit their individual table.

So for my $130 (of course i got the toolkit with it) i get a ruleset that I have to practically rewrite myself (I for one am getting real tired of houseruling everything...my time is important, i'm at the point in my life where I just wanna play) and i get an incomplete game that after 2-3 months is pretty much exhausted. My enthusiasm for this game is dwindling as I feel like a chump that got ripped off. I have never bought a core set/book/rules/whatever in any rpg that I felt my options expire so fast after 2-3 months of play. FFG's response is pretty much "hey wait a few years and buy lotsa box sets during that time and you may get enough stuff that will last you awhile and give you some options so you can play your core set."

Sorry about the rant guys, I'm just frustrated.

Is that actually the concensus? I'm not so sure.

the game is 100% playable as written. Some players come from different RP backgrounds and like to tinker with their systems. I can't think of a GM out there who doesn't change something in a game to suit their playstyle or that of their players.

FFG has also created a very open system. It lends itself nicely to customizing, but folks can have a perfectly good time playing with just what they have and never apply a house rule to the batch. Could the rulebook be better organized? Sure.

Everyone has some beef with the games they buy, even their favorites.

I don't think the damage system or the dice system are bad. In fact I like them more then 2nd edition. Sure damage numbers are almost always the same but if you think about it they are just numbers. I know they affect the outcome of a fight and all but I think the game simply feels more lethal then 2nd edition did. The damage numbers are higher and defense and armor are weaker and can be negated easier.

I also think the dice pool system is awesome. It works better in social rolls then in combat because if the character succeeds the roll to convince a noble to help them but rolls banes I can say "Alright the noble agrees to to help you but he demands you aid him later. and pay him" or I could have the noble betray them later if they roll a chaos star... there are just so many possibilities.

Sure there are few careers in the game and I admit it would be a while before more come out but you could just let them stay in thier current career and give them some sort of extra bonus for staying in it longer. That way when more careers come out the characters can transition into those and not feel cheated. I am sure it wouldn't take that much time to come up with a solution and you don't have to re-write the whole game just house rule a few things.

keltheos said:

keltheos said:

Yes I know you can play the game as written. I never disputed that. I never said the game wasn't fun either (I know ppl r real sensitive around here so i just want to make sure ppl don't mistake what i'm trying to get at). My problem is the game doesn't seem to have much longevity to it. If this was a $10-20 game i could live with that. A $100 core set that already is showing so much limitations is upsetting (to me anyways, some of you have more money and time to burn than I do).

Agree,

The game is lacking in career advancments. I have yet started a group untill i see FFG campain set. If they have not added some true line on path for career then i will be done with 3rd ed. I just not going to wait around for a year to buy little sets here and there to get a complete game. I total think it a mistake to try to sell a rpg game like there boardgames or LCG. Pathfinder started to lock nicer everyday now hmmmmmm

WFRPers are mostly very experienced roleplayers and like to houserule. I've been on the forums for 4 years now and that is what I noticed.

Maybe D&Ders are more rules lawyers than tinkerers, I don't know. But the avid houseruling going on here is just, well, for fun !

Have to agree with you guys.

My crew really loves the game and we've been playing almost every week this year. The guys are well into their 2nd careers and while we love the game while playing it but the advancement is not really that inspiring.

I think that next time as a GM I need to give out only 1 exp per session to slow things down and follow the rule which limits the amount of out of career advances you can get (think it's to 10 points).

I'm currently running that Snow-White fan adventure (which is awsome by the way), and will be finnishing the game after we're done with that. At this stage I'm hoping to bring it back once there are some more expansions out there - mainly looking forward to the Campaign box (hope it's nice and big like the 2nd ed campaigns - but I have my doubts that it will be), will also look into the GMs toolkit, but what we really need here are magic and priestly boxed sets as those classes are very very very limited right now.

I'm going to wait and hope that things will pick up in 6 months to a year, if it's much longer than that then I'm afraid we'll have to make do with another system - which is a shame as we really enjoyed the last edition.