argh, statistics. jk, they have context now that I have seen rapid fire in action. poor terry never had a chance. his only hope would be to win initiative and engage talos, even if it meant taking wounds for extra manuevers. this card is for badasses only. you can work around it, but it is a game changer. i would give all my favorite monsters damage reduction of at least ten or eleven and at least twenty wounds. after five attacks, mordok the unclean laughs, elf-boy craps himself and runs back to his treehouse. i think there is so much other cool stuff in the game if you pulled out rapid fire nobody would really miss it.

You are right, this card is overpowered. I see that this action should be really good at close range (where it somewhat balances itself out) and vs. pack of low soak enemies. But at longer ranges, some other actions like Sniper Shot, should be better. Moreso vs high soak enemies. So, based on these ideas i've made some house rules.

1. Extra shots require maneuver for bow. (not for repeater weapons) This rule balances repeater crossbows vs. bows.
2. Cannot use Rapid Fire action with long bow (kind a makes sense to me). Balances short bows vs. long bows.
3. Extra ranges after close range add one level of difficulty.

These seem to work and make the game (in my opinion) more tactically interesting. After these rulings RF is no longer best in all situations. It is most lethal at close range but then its risky.

Bindlespin said:

At Ag 5, you're talking about an Olympic-class archer in his native environment at range with a ranged weapon against a melee fighter who has to close the distance. Of course the archer should win. In hunter vs. deer, the hunter usually wins, especially if the hunter is an Olympic god.

Now, what happens when there are two Gors? The archer has Rapid Fire recharging, and the other Gor charges the entire distance and whaps him upside the head?

I agree completely. I intended to do a series of experiments with different variables. Like two enemies from two different directions, starting combat at different ranges, but I think all of that is unneccesary. At a decent range, against one enemy, if Talos goes first, and if he rolls average results he wins. Which he should, because that is what he does. He is a total last-of-the-mohicans badass. If a second monster comes in from a second direction he is probably in trouble. if he starts firing in close combat he is definitely in trouble. You just don't want this guy to mow down the arch villain of your scenario in one action while all your other players sit and wait for him to roll dice until it dies. That is just not fun. basically, every combat you prepare you would have to ask yourself, "now what should i do about that !#@holes rapid fire?"

GravitysAngel said:

yep. Beastmen are ambush experts... they probably won't reveal themselves in one rush... The second flow of beastmen will arrive when Rapid Fire recharge... of course

GravitysAngel said:

True, but that doesn't mean the card isn't overpowered. To determine whether it is broken you need to compare it to other archery actions. If Rapid Shot is pretty much always the best option, then it is overpowered.

macd21 said:

I run my first session today, so we'll see how it goes!

One thing no one has mentioned yet is that doing Rapid Shot four times in a row, where you hit with five arrows each time, means you just burned a whole quiver of arrows. Now what? Rapid Shot with thrown daggers?

GravitysAngel said:

Actually, the Ammunition table shows a cost and encumbrance for arrows by the dozen. I've been assuming the encumbrance value includes the quiver as there is not a separate entry for one, so that's 8 fewer shots than the 20 you propose. If a PC wants to carry more than a dozen, they have to have a double quiver which is I ruled as being Rare and more than twice the price of common quivers. Making PCs keep track of ammo expenditure and the 33% chance of recovery rule for arrows/bolts is one way to keep ranged weapons in check. Sure they can get more in between adventures, but if they unload their quiver in one encounter and only recover the statistical average of 4 arrows at the end of the encounter, the next encounter is going to leave them out of ammo pretty quick.

From a rules perspective I think the thing that might be the most broken with this card is that the extra shots are based on successes, when they should be based on boons, or possibly even on comets, that is supposed to be the standard for action results. Successes = hit/no hit, how well you hit, Boons = extra goodies that the card can accomplish, banes= extra bad stuff that can happen, comets = really good extras that can happen, stars= really nasty side effects.

To me it seems that the ability to fire extra shots at a target, or group of targets should have little, or nothing to do with actually hitting the target(s), rapid fire is all an exercise of precision movements and speed, with tons of practice an archer can learn to fire 4 shots before the first hits the ground...but that doesn't mean he can hit the broad side of a barn with the 1st let alone the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. Machine Guns (I know bad analogy) fire several round per second at a target, but that is because the gun is made so that it cycles faster, and can precisely load many bullets and fire them quickly. Its does not fire several rounds per second because it, or the person using it is accurate or good at hitting their target, and like the RAPID FIRE card says the more rounds fire successively the harder it becomes to hit a target.

Along with that logic, if banes are now responsible for extra shots, then boons should be responsible for failing to get those extra shots, but since boons/banes cancel, a result of extra banes should be something additional, i.e. a broken bow string, resulting in extra recharge token(s) for the card or take a dmg as the backlash from the weapon smacks you, whatever.

Now in regards to balance, I think the only issue here is cost, since all actions cost the same (with allowances for rank) it’s hard to adjust balance on this scale. And perhaps making RAPID FIRE a rank 2 or possibly even rank 3 card may help alleviate this problem, as a rank 2 card it would cost double any ability, unless the person is rank 2, but that at least keeps newbie characters from picking up this card at creation without having to spend double the resources on it. In other game systems, this ability is usually kept in check by the fact that it either costs more, or is only available at higher levels of advancement. I'm not sure what a solution to this issue is.

Having similar problem with the already mentioned Dual strike card. Player currently using it basically uses only that action card for all combat, since it's what always provides the most damage. For someone who isn't dual wielding sure it's not useful, but for a dual wielding character, there is no reason to use any other card like someone using rapid fire... why use anything else?

Our current problem is thee same: one player steals the show..which onlyh encourages the other players to min-max.

jh

I think the issue is that neither Rapid Fire nor Dual Strike have any drawbacks. They provide great rewards with the right rolls, but have no appreciable drawbacks.

For Rapid Fire, I've started adding an additional purple die for each shot beyond the first. Also, I keep track of how many arrows a player is carrying, so a Rapid-Fire-Happy archer is going to run out of arrows pretty quickly.

I haven't tried this out yet, but it's what I have planned for the next time it's used. For Double Strike, I plan to disable active defenses if you use it. You're concentrating heavily on attack, so you leave little time for defending. Depending on how that pans out, I'm also thinking about adding a white die to any incoming attacks to represent an overextended player.

I'm still hoping for some supplement or a FAQ release that will modify these cards. Putting out some reprinted versions with some drawbacks would help out a lot.

The cards should have a recharge rate on them. Besides being probably the best melee and ranged attack cards, why the heck did they not get at least a recharge penalty? Even cards that aren't as good got recharge rates on them!

Right now my players are kinda upset at some of the games balance issues and our troll slayer has no action cards he wishes to buy because the dual strike is the only card he needs and has run out of any action options to buy..

PanzerKraken said:

Once he's fatigued from being so reckless all the time, and starts earning misfortune dice to his physical actions, those reckless dice should start to be a real liability. He'll have to do something else.

Remember that fatigue isn't compared to your highest physical stat but your lowest.

When using Rapid Fire and hitting the target the archer gets an additional Challange dice.

So when you Rapid Fire at an enemy you get 1 Challenge dice, if you hit the 2nd shot you get a total of 3 challenge dice, if your first shot is a miss, you get "only" 2 challange dice on your 2nd shot.

Say you hit 2 times with Rapid Fire then your 3rd shot would be with 5 challange dice, so I don't think it's overpowered with this, in fact it it really dangerous !

GravitysAngel said:

Thanks to min maxing of cards, fatigue can easily be gotten rid or lessened. Also building up fatigue through reckless dice is over exagerated. Our troll slayer with 4 reckless will often generate none or only 1 fatigue per roll.

Also according to the rules, you only build up misfortune dice on checks made with the stat that is fatigued, not on all physical stats. Troll slayer has str/toughness of 4, then he needs 5 fatigue before it starts affecting him, which is a minor penalty and it takes quite a while to build up that much fatigue. And with use of talents and such, one can easily keep his fatigue/stress in check.

PanzerKraken said:

Thanks for the clarification!

Lautrer said:

I am not sure I understand you. I am assuming English isn't your first language from your tag. If you miss you don't get a second shot. My understanding of Rapid Fire is that it is 1 challenge dice for the first attack, 2 for the second, etc. If you are talking about Darret's house rules it would be 3 on the second, 4 on the third, etc.

Bindlespin said:

You are right. It's not my first language, I'm german. And yes indeed, after rereading the card; as we used it was not correct. I think Darrets rules are pretty good.

@Lautrer: Well, your english is way better than my german, which is non-existent. So two thumbs up for everyone who knows at least two languages. In any case, I agree. Darrett's rule is a simple fix that doesn't punish the player. They can and will keep trying, but they will fail a lot sooner. The conservative side can stay the same, making a second shot an almost certain hit. Rapid Shot stays super-powerful, but not game ruining.

Bindlespin said:

Thank You. But to learn English is a lot easier than German.

Back to the topic of this thread:

Yesterday, creating some Spell Action Cards, I had the idea to allow the archer using Rapid Fire only as often as his Initiative Ranking for this encounter is.
e.g. if your Initiative is 2, you can only shoot 2 arrows that round.

But wouldn't this be too much backdraws in addition to Darret's house rule?

Your "initiative rank" houserule is a nice idea. I'll try that in my game tonight. I think it's enough by itself to regulate Reckless Rapid Fire (I think Conservative Rapid Fire is fine as it is)

Lautrer said:

I'm not sure that would really limit it at all. Initiative in WFRP3 is by party, with each player rolling and then the PCs changing who gets what initiative slot round-by-round. Which means Rapid Fire would essentially get better the more PCs you had in the party, as the odds of someone getting a really good roll would increase. More often than not, you'd still end up with the Rapid Fire character getting about 4 shots, and now you've also created an extra advantage to them where the party always lets them go first (or else knows they're cutting down the character's effectiveness). Rather than balancing it, I think this might actually compound the problems. Adding insult to injury, so to speak.

We don't use the Change Initiative rule as written in the rulebook. You only can change one increment up or down.

r_b_bergstrom said:

I tried it yesterday and yes it was like adding oil on a burning fire... more shots as you're first to act