I just got all the WFRP3 stuff in the mail today, and I'm pretty excited about trying it out (hopefully sometime soon, but that depends on my friends) but I already have a few questions. I should preface these by saying I'm not familiar with the Warhammer world (never played any of the earlier games, or the miniatures games, or anything else related to it, except Chaos in the Old World) and I haven't read all the books yet, but I have made an effort to find answers to these questions by checking the index at least.

So, first question: what is the maximum characteristics can be? p.14 of the rulebook says they can go to 8 or higher, but the FAQ seems to say they can never go above 6.

Next: Just how does it work when a player exchanges a talent socketed into the party sheet? Does that talent go back to the original owner, or is it exchanged with a talent of the active character (thus allowing characters to "trade" talents)?

Third, a setting question regarding dwarfs: Are there female dwarfs? If so, how do they differ, physically and socially, from male dwarfs?

And lastly (at least for now): When I was making up a character to see how it worked, a noticed several talents that say something like "[Characteristic] checks gain [boon Symbol] to the results pool if at least [3 Success Symbols] are generated." And I'm not exactly sure how this works. I assume it means it adds an extra boon result, but when does this happen? Whenever at least 3 success symbols are showing on the dice, or only if at least 3 successes are left after challenge symbols negate them?

Thanks for any help, and I apologize if I'm asking questions that have been asked a hundred times already.

fnord3125 said:

The FAQ is also the Errata, so right now the RAW (Rules As Written you'll see that acronym a lot) say the maximum charactaristic is 6, for an explanation on why it is 6 (it used to 10) read the FAQ/Errata or check old threads there are a few that discuss this, or just post asking for a clarification, if you need it I will explain it later.

fnord3125 said:

I don't have my books with me tonight, so I don't have the rules to back it up but, no they cannot "trade" talents in this way, when a player attaches his/her talent to a socket on the party sheet, the talent being replaced is returned to its owner.

fnord3125 said:

I am not an authority on the Warhammer Universe by any means, I know a little, but just enough think I know what I'm talking about so further clarification would be good, but. I beleve that the Tolkien-verse is the only place where there is no distinction between Male/Female Dwarves, I know some worlds have adopted/copied that stance, but Warhammer isn't one of them. Best I can recall, Female Dwarves, think normal woman, dwarf sized, stocky, and musculature about equal to that of a phyisically active (but not buff) adult male human, and (I beleieve) NO BEARDS . So short stocky muscled woman, but still feminine looking.

fnord3125 said:

I don't remeber talents that say that, but I'm not over familiar with the talents, I only tackle them as they come up in our game, and I haven't seen one like this yet. As you describe it, when you make a roll, if you have a NET result (after cancelling) of 3 hammers (successes) you could add a boon to your result. With few possible exceptions (I can't think of any right now, but never say never) do all cencellations first, then determine results, even if those results change the totals, you can only "Spend" symbols that remain after being cancelled.

No apologies nessesary that is what this forum is for so if you have questions ask away, if you have questions about the game as a new player/GM then it is likley others do to, and even if it has been discussed before, its hard to sort through 30+pages of posts to find the answers you need. Though it is always appricated if you at least attempt to do a search to find an answer before posting a question. Also, always check the FAQ before asking, some of the more complex or frequent problems have been officially addressed there, of course if the FAQ is confusing, feel free to ask about that here as well.

The answer to your last question about when it counts as X Successes being generated, it is always after things have been cancelled out. So, 4 successes with 2 challenges means that 2 successes were generated.

Thanks, both of you! Those were pretty much the answers I expected. I'm still a bit confused the issue of exchanging Talent cards with the Party Sheet. It seems most reasonable that they need to go back to the original owner, but the text in the book doesn't make this clear at all, since it talks about the "active player" "exchanging" or "replacing" cards on the Party Sheet with those from his or her repertoire without making any mention at all as to who originally placed the Talents on the Party Sheet to begin with.

Just looked into the party sheet talent question and I can see where some of the confusion comes from. In fact, if you read the WotC employee review of this game that someone has posted a link to on the forums, he mentions the fact that players can essentially exchange talents by switching them from the party sheet. I'm pretty sure that this is not the intended rule and I've found where it actually states that it is not.

Look at page 52 of the main rule book. It's in the description of the 'Exchange a talent' manoeuvre. It states: "...a character can replace one of his talents from his character sheet or from the party sheet with a different talent of the same category from his supply." This clearly shows that it must be one of his talents from the party sheet and not that of someone else.

Hope that clears that up. Doesn't make much sense the other way. In fact, as a GM, I ask for a reasonable explanation as to how a talent can be shared amongst the group before I allow it to be slotted on the party sheet. Some talents just don't make sense to be used in this way. That's just my opinion though.

You're right, but even that passage isn't quite as clear as I wish it was. And I'd also read that WotC review, which is probably what got the idea in my head. But I agree that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to trade talents, and sticking them in the party sheet sockets gives plenty of flexibility anyway.

I do have a couple more questions that have come up as I've continued reading through the rules...

What determines whether a talent is inside or outside the character's current career? Just whether or not it fits the sockets on the career sheet?

I'm somewhat confused about how best to use competitive checks. I know this kind of thing is mostly up to GM discretion, but lets look at the example of arm wrestling that is brought up in the book: what would be the best way to do that? Would you just have both players roll, say, Athletics (Strength) with no challenge dice and see who gets the most successes? Or would it be both a competitive check AND an opposed check, and the opponents relative Strength rating would apply challenge dice?

What's the deal with the Zealot's Piety skill? If I happened to start as a Zealot, isn't that skill completely useless because I don't get Invocation?

You're right about talents, they have to be able to be socketed on the current career card.

The simple way to determine if it is an opposed check or competitive check is to compare what each participant is trying to do and if they are the same thing then it is a competitive check. For example, sneaking past a guard is an opposed check because the sneaker is trying to get by without being caught and the guard is trying to notice the person sneaking, not the same thing thus it is an opposed check. Your arm wrestling example has two people who both have the exact same goal of 'pin the other persons arm to the table', thus it is a competitive check. A race (or chase) would be another example of this sort of thing. Basically, any time both participants are doing the same thing it is competitive.

As far as the zealot and piety thing goes, I'd say that 1) piety could theoretically come up in play as a skill check to see how the gods feel about something (from the description of the skill), though I'm not exactly sure how that would work, 2) would be useful if you were coming from or going to the initiate career, as you could train piety twice at that point for only 2 advances, both of which would be 'in career', 3) you could just not buy it at character creation or during your time in the career if you weren't going down a path that could use it.

I think you misunderstood my confusion on competitive checks. I understand their purpose, but I'm not exactly clear on the rules for them. And it seems like something could be both opposed AND competitive, but I'm not sure if that's okay by the rules? Like arm wrestling. Both people have the same goal, but for determining how many challenge dice it would make sense to use the opposed rules, and then go on to have to have them both make a competitive check to see who wins. Does this make sense?

For example (and I'm doing this from memory so I might be getting the numbers wrong): Maybe Adam has Strength 3 but he's trained Athletics twice and has the (rather unlikely) specialty of Arm Wrestling. Brad has Strength 6 but hasn't trained Athletics at all. So Adam rolls 3 dice for Strength, 2 expertise dice, an a fortune die for his specialty (right?), and if we figure Brad is opposing him with his own Strength, he has to add in something like 3 challenge dice because he only has half Brad's strength(?) Brad rolls his 6 dice for Strength but only 1 challenge dice and 2 misfortune dice(?) and then we see who wins. Or does that make things needlessly complicated and they should both just roll all their "good" dice and compare successes?

fnord3125 said:

9 times out of 10, at least in the arm wrestling scenario, I'd just have them roll the "good dice".

Challenge dice should really only be in the mix if failure is interesting or a necessary risk. By putting them into the dice pools in this case, you increase the chance that both players will fail to generate any successes. Do you feel that's interesting?

If both failing means they have a stalemate, and neither is strong enough to win, then maybe it's an interesting outcome. But if you suspect the players will insist on rolling again (and again) until there's not a stalemate, then it's not interesting or helpful, it's just annoying.

One way that it might be rendered interesting, is if you're likely to make the banes or chaos stars be fatigue or wounds. Even then, it's all about context. Fatigue or wounds is interesting if there's some chance of a fight breaking out later in the scene or day. If there's not, then honestly, whatever side effects it has will be recovered from in short order and there's nothing to be gained by it. There may also be situations where the GM knows there won't be a fight later, but wants to imply there will be, to keep the tension level high - but if the PCs are arm wrestling in the middle of a high-tension build up, you've got a strange scenario going on.

I suppose the challenge dice might also be warranted if there's a possibility the PC intends to arm wrestle everyone in the bar in succession, as then the fatigue could easily build up and matter.

Sorry for misunderstanding the question.

So, the actual answer to your question is that in a competitive check the participants roll their 'good' dice against a difficulty determined by what is trying to be accomplished and misfortune dice added due to circumstances.

To give a clear reason why it is this way, consider a race where there are 5 participants. If it weren't the case that you simply rolled a general test and compared successes (with the highest boon getter adding one success to his score), who would each participant be rolling against?

An example of a competitive check situation would be an archery contest. Each player rolls against a difficulty set by distance to the target (and maybe size or called shots. I discuss this in another post, so I won't go into detail here) and misfortune dice added due to circumstances (like the wind). Successes would determine who had the better shot, though you could set up a system of 'X successes = a certain part of the target hit' so that ties would make more sense, but this would in essence still be a competitive check.

Generally an opposed check is only used when one person preventing someone from doing something is essentially a win for that person. For example, a guard noticing someone trying to sneak by him is a 'win' for the guard, whereas an arm wrestler stopping his opponent from pinning him is not a 'win'.

An even simpler way of determining between competitive and opposed checks is this, from p. 43 of the rulebook:

When multiple characters are attempting
the same task and trying to determine who accomplishes the task
first, or performs the task better, they are engaging in a competitive
check.

So going back to the examples given so far, an archery contest is a competitive check, the characters are all shooting arrows. An arm-wrestling contest is the same, everyone is arm-wrestling. Two characters trying to outrun each other is also competitive, they're both doing the same thing, running. Yet a thief trying to sneak past a guard is an opposed check. The thief is sneaking while the other is observing, so two different tasks.

That part of the rules helped clear it up for me without having to analyze the situation too closely.

I appreciate everyone's input!

But I'm still curious about one thing: do the RAW allow for checks that are both opposed and competitive at the same time? I recognize that 90% of the time this will be far more complicated than is worthwhile, but I'm still wondering.

It's not noted as a possibility in the RAW, but it's not excluded by any of the rules.

For example, the PC's and their nemesis are trying to get their hands on a sacred artifact, which is being guarded by the White Wolfs of Ulric. Both parties would be trying to sneak past the the guards, but since they're competing to see who gets to it first their checks would be competitive. The guard's observation would set the relative difficulty for each group.

Cool. I thought it should be an option, as I like the idea of one person's ability affecting the other's difficulty in a competitive check, at least in certain circumstances. One I thought of was something similar to the arm wrestling example, but a bit more extreme: actual wrestling, or possibly an unarmed fighting competition. I haven't read enough of the rules yet to know if it's even viable to go to full-blown combat for a boxing match, but even if it is, we might not want to go to that level of detail. But if two people are boxing or wrestling or what-have-you, it seems clear that it should be a Competitive roll, but also that the difficulty and number of challenge dice would seem to be related to the opponent.

But anyway! This is probably far more discussion than this rather minimal issue really needs. Thanks for humoring me, everyone.

fnord3125 said:

We kinda used this for a wrestling match. Our party dwarf got into a wrestling match at a fair (in SoB for the record). The idea was that if he could stay in the game for 3 minutes he'd double his money. I had a tracker for time, and a tracker for successes and ruled that if the wrestler got to 6 more successes than the dwarf then that would indicate that the dwarf was in some wrestling hold and could be counted out, but if the tracker got to 6 (ie 6 rounds) then the three minutes was up. And we used opposed Str checks.

Another question: If a success or boon line on an action card just says that the attack "does critical damage" that means that 1 of the wounds is critical, right?

Correct. Critical damage is clarified and simplified in the FAQ / Errata, you should read that if you haven't.

My input for the first part of your question:

Competitive checks and opposed checks are different things, opposed checks have fairly clear rules as far as calcuating the dice pool goes. Competitive checks however are left up to the GMs discretion. As the GM you set the difficulty, if you determine that the you want to set the difficulty using the rules for an opposed check, then by all means do so. In your example of the Arm wrestling I think your idea of using both rule sets seems perfectly fine, and is a good way of determining the difficulty of the rolls. In some cases of competetive checks the difficulty will be the same, in a foot race, the course that the competetors run will be the same, so all should roll the same dice. In you arm wrestling example however, the difficulty would not be the same, The fellow with the lower strength but all the skill, would have more challenge (purple dice) against him, and will need to use his skill to overcome it, the stronger, but less skilled fellow has less challenge due to a weaker foe, but has the misfortune (black dice) of that foe having much greater skill.

Lex answered your new question, in that the FAQ clarifies it nicely now. Crits do not add damage, crits are always flipped over from the wounds inflicted by the attack. I cannot find a reference in the rules, but if the total number of wounds inflicted is less than the number of crits scored, those extra crits are simply lost. Example, an attack is scored against Bob, this attack does 10 damage and inflicts 3 crits. Bob is wearing Scale armor (soak 4), and has a toughness of 4, so his total soak is 8. 10 Damage - 8 Soak = 2 wounds scored against Bob, Bob, then draws 2 wound cards, now there is the matter of the 3 crits, Bob flips those two wound cards and sufferes the effects of the crits in addition to having two wounds, the third crit however cannot be applied as there is no 3rd wound card to flip, so that additional crit effect is lost.

There are speical rules that apply if the the total damage inflict is less than or equal to the soak of the target, these rules are in the main rule book, pg, 59.