So I picked up the Core Rules box and the Adventurers Kit to give the new edition a spin. I'd read through the rules a couple times and decided that I should try them out. (I want to be really familiar with them before trying to explain them to my gaming group.)

I generated a dwarven Ironbreaker, focused on a greatweapon and got the great gromir armor that comes with the class.

I found that I couldn't be touched by most opponents in the rules. I had a soak of 5 from the armor and a Toughness of 4. This shaved off 9 points of damage automatically from any strike. That means that anything from a snotling to an orc could cause at most 1 point of damage to me. Meanwhile, I'm causing 12 points of damage a round (minus a couple points from toughness). Literally, there were only a handful of monsters that I couldn't obliterate on my first round of combat.

And then I decided to try a river troll and a rat ogre. I felled them too, but it was a little more of a fight.

Does this at all seem normal that a new character can be this kick butt? Am I doing something wrong here?

This is exactly the opposite experience I was expecting. I was anticipating a very lethal, deadly game (based on previous editions, or even based off the challenges in D&D).

I don't know about GMing this if I am going to struggle to find things to challenge the players. Right now I'm trying to imagine the destruction that an Ironbreaker and three other characters could do ...

Let me know from your playing experiences if you found this to be true. If this isn't true, let me know if you have an idea of what I might be doing wrong.

Thanks,
Doc

Everything you describe does't seem to be out of whack with the rules, but a couple of points to note is that a successful hit always does at least 1 wound, even if Soak would reduce to zero (which i think you may already have spotted accomodated for) but also bear in mind that this means its possible (in some way shape or form, providing the dice come up right) to make that wound a critical.

Critical wounds are the real damage to the PCs, as these can be very difficult to heal.

You may only hit that dwarf a couple of times for one point each, before he obliterates your NPC, but if both those results in criticals, then he should be feeling the after effects of the fight a long time after the fight finished.

The Ironbreaker career is meant to be this tough.

If you really want to make a fight 'close' you might consider giving the opposition 'Double Strike' or 'Reckless Cleave' cards. Set him against a River Troll with a Great Weapon and Reckless Cleave. Potentially 7 + 7 + 3 + 7 + 2 (Crit) = 24 Wounds + 2 Critical Wounds.

Definitely the starting character with the most soak, for what it's worth. There are some fluff / lore arguments to making the Iron Breaker an Advanced career. Now I see a mechanical reason as well. I do believe I'll be houseruling that card. Thanks for the heads up.

As was pointed out, there is a minimum 1 post-soak damage rule. So you could swarm that character with lots of mooks, and nibble them to death. The three-act approach to encounter design is meant to encourage fights more interesting and involved than the party vs a single monster, anyway. Even if it turns out a fight with a Troll isn't a threat to that character, a fight with a Troll backed up by a bunch of Greenskins would be. Or, a fight with a Troll next to a big cliff, that the troll might hurl you off of even if you do soak most of his damage.

The monsters as statted in the book are definitely low on the wound damage. It's mostly the crits that matter, but it is still a curious design choice.

First time poster, longtime reader.

I think you may have done at least one thing wrong. You say you're dealing out 12 points of damage per attack. I assume that's 5 Strength plus 7 for a great weapon. You should then subtract the enemy's toughness plus armor. This means you should only be able to take out the weakest of opponents (Snotlings?) in 1 hit. Tougher enemies like Stone Trolls and Chaos warriors have 9 total damage resistance. This would reduce your hit to 3. Stone Trolls have 18 Wounds, so that would require 7 average hits to take one down (to exceed 18).

On the other hand, a Stone Troll deals out 12 damage on an average hit. With your 9 Damage Reduction, you would also take 3 Wounds per turn. Since you have probably 14 Wounds, that means you are most likely going down first.

Aside from that, your issue also seems to be with how Damage Reduction works - not with the Ironbreaker. The only difference in Damage Reduction between an Iron Breaker and any other character who focuses on Toughness and Armor at start is 1 point.

Ironbreakers can have 5 Toughness and get 5 Soak for free. Any other character can have 5 Toughness and afford Scale or Breastplate that grants 4 Soak.

I think your real issue may lie with the ability to make competent fighting characters at start. I wouldn't dispute this - though certainly many characters would fall on the opposite end of the spectrum. Personally, this is one of the aspects of the game I adore. I am sick of RPGs that try to make all the PCs exactly the same in combat, and I applaud the ability to make a character competent at what they do at start.

If you use multiple combat encounters in rapid sucession, then you (the GM) need the opposition to be low hitting. For instance, the PCs might need to fight a bunch of cultists to get to the leader and the daemon. Fight the leader and daemon and then they have to kill a band of beastmen. If you are taking PCs out at stage 1, then you'll have a TPK by the 3rd wave.

If your combat encounter is set up as one 'big bad', then you need to up the threat.

Based on what I have read, I think that I was handling the combats correctly ... with the exception of using Boons and Banes to modify stress and fatigue.

Ironbreaker: Armor 5 Soak + Toughness 4 = Damage Reduction 9. If hit, he suffers a minimum of 1 point of damage.

Ironbreaker: Weapon 7 Damage Rating + Strength 5 = Damage Potential 12. If he hits, he subtracts his opponent's Damage Reducation from his Damage Potentional.

Opponent: Armor + Toughness = Damage Reduction

Opponent: Weapon + Strength = Damage Potential

In my playtests, the Ironbreaker fought only single opponents in straightforward melee situations. There were no conditional modifiers. I just wanted to gauge a straightup fight between a character and several monsters to see what I could reasonably through at my players.

Granted for my next playtest I may try out a bailiff or ratcatcher against opponents and then move on to spellcasters and see how they do.

Incidentally, I am enjoying the system. I just didn't want to get off on the wrong foot while trying to learn the rules.

Doc

I don't see too many monsters that can be taken out with a single hit, even if you are doing 12 points of damage. A lowly Ungor has Toughness+Soak of 5, so with 8 wounds, he'd be pretty hurt, but not down from a single hit. A Goblin only has T+S of 4, but with 9 wounds, he too will survive a single hit that deals 12 damage. Granted, these lowly foes won't withstand 2 such hits, but such foes are usually more numerous. You don't challenge an Ironbreaker with a single Goblin, rather you throw a horde at him. If a dozen swarm him, he may be receiving up to 8 hits per round, so they'll manage to do a good bit of damage before he takes them all out.

Secondly, as Pumpkin said, PCs don't die from having their Wounds being reduced to zero, they only pass out (and have one Wound converted to a crit). In prior editions, PCs had Fate Points, so they didn't die from a single encounter either and it took several to burn through their fate points before they had to worry about actually dying. The current version has no Fate Points, but crit accumulation results in something similar. It takes crits exceeding your T to die, so it is doubtful that they would die from their first combat encounter. Even monsters that don't deal out massive damage can still cause a crit though. However, as noted, crits are more difficult to heal. Not only do you have to deal with negative side effects (which most likely reduce your effectiveness), with a couple of existing crits, the next combat encounter starts to look much more scary.

Well for one you spent a lot of your character creation points on just raising your str and toughness stats, which limits the rest of what your character can do. Stat raises are the most expensive aspect of character creation and you spent majority of it just to raise those two stats up.

Ironbreaker is a combat centric character so it's to be expected you can kick butt, same as a person who makes a Troll Slayer will generally output tons of damage.

The game is not purely about combat either if you got a good gm. How will you be at social interactions, what skills do you offer the group outside of pure physical feats?

Also once you get into the game you realise that damage is not the only threat in the game. Fatigue and stress are major components of game play, I've seen some really tough combat characters easily get taken down due to not being able to handle stresses for example. Get into a fight heavy with fear and terror causing enemies and situations, and you will be knocked out faster than you can imagine.

We got a player who did a similar thing with his character early on with min maxing it for pure combat potential, and he keeps finding himself in situations where he is useless or unable to handle stress, notice things, etc, etc.

And as has been said before, damage of 12 is likely not going to kill majority of enemies in one blow. Our troll slayer player regularly does 14-16 points of damage a hit and that is not enough to kill most enemies in one blow outside of real small weak things. 2 rounds of combat is generally needed for these high damage characters to take out majority of normal ranged baddies. Something like a troll or giant will take quite a few rounds more.

And remember, while armored up the wazoo, your not immune to critical strikes which many enemy npcs can dish out like even basic beastmen baddies with a decent roll. Your armor and toughness will not mean much when you start accumulating critical wounds and eventually succumb to negatives.

In all three editions warriors (especially those that dedicate themselves to combat) have been pretty decent and can handle themselves in a fight. Covnersely in 1E/2E a lowly goblin could kill the Elector Counts Personal champion with a lucky hit. Even in 3E that goblin could inflict a critical hit.

If you want more of a DnD feel, take a non-combat class such as a scholar and do the fight

The Ironbreaker is by far the toughest starting career in the game, so judging the combat system based on that career isn't really representative. Most careers won't be nearly as effective in combat. in addition the Ironbreaker is probably fairly limited in non-combat situations.

Fair enough that the Ironbreaker is a real killing machine. I wanted to design the toughest, strongest fighter type I could. (It looks like I succeeded.)

For my next feat, I will attempt a more representative career.

Does anyone have a suggestion of a more average career that I can use in a playtest?

Thanks,

Doc

you don't have to make a whole new dude. just change his str to 3 so you are doing about 8. and change his toughness to 3 and give him 1or 2 soak armor. walla! the rest is cosmetic.

Bah...are u sure to have playtested fairly? did u used opposed checks? did u used the ACE pool?did u gave weapons to opponents? did u used the special actions for monsters?

ahahah..i dont have the game but i hope the troll have some special vomit attack that would melt the poor dwarf inside his can!!

Your scenarios are a little flawed in that it sounds like you just had an Ironbreaker stand next to a monster and both swing at each other with Melee Strike until one of them fell down.

The monster's special abilities play a huge role in determining the outcome of a fight, as does the ACE budget, as does the fact that most of those monsters are not designed to fight one-on-one. If you take away all those advantages I sure hope you won!

In one of our early playtests the party's Ironbreaker had accumulated so much stress from chasing down cultists (and failing a particularly nasty Terror check) that he passed out with most of his wounds remaining. The rest of the party fell quickly after that so ignoring stress and fatigue is also not really a fair assessment.

What it boils down to is that you stacked the deck heavily in favor of the Ironbreaker (which is already stacking the deck for a representative 3e combat) and then said you're surprised he did so well. Why? You set him up to win.

A lot of people are pointing out that crits can be where the real damage lies in what enemies can do to a player, but I just wanted to note that this Ironbreaker character would be immune to criticals from a lot of attacks. The goblin that has been mentioned has a maximum damage potential (with it's basic attack, which would be the vast majority of attacks from a swarm of goblins) of 8 with one critical. That would be converted to 1 damage and no crits after this Ironbreakers soak of 9 was taken into account. The attack would also inflict 1 fatigue, however, and I think that that would be the bigger threat from the goblin.

The important part is that critical wounds are treated differently. You'll find all the details in p. 59 of the Rulebook. [updated to mark some erroneous information, which I've marked in italics]

The important rule in question is the Minimum Wound Result section. If a minimum wound result is triggered, from having a soak higher than the damage, then all critical wounds are converted to normal wounds (which are not soaked) using the severity rating as the conversion factor to normal wounds.

Critical wounds are not soaked and still translate into damage, hence why they are so important when fighting a high soak character. So even 1 damage with 1 critical wound has the chance of inflicting 1-5 wounds on an Toughness 6 ironbreaker with a tower shield.

And for this case the best damage the Goblin can do is 7 damage and 2-3 critical wounds (1 critical from the Chop! ability, 1 critical from sigmar's comet and 1 critical from spending 2-3 boons for the creature's CR, at GM's discretion). That would require 1 hammer, 4-5 boons and a comet. That's really improbable, but not impossible given a goblin can roll 2 characteristic, 1 conservative, 2 fortune and 1 expertise die. Those 2-3 wounds have a possible spread of 2-15 wounds, if luck is on the goblin's side 10-15 damage. Assuming the worst case of 3 severity 5 critical wounds the Ironbreaker would be KO'd and he would receive an additional critical wound!

That's quite a stretch, but it also shows why it's important to aggressively use a low level NPC's A/C/E dice pool. That goblin will most likely not see another turn of combat, so why save those points for later? Who knows, fate might smile upon him.

EDIT: I was under the impression that the minimum wound result converted critical wounds to normal wounds using the severity rating as a guideline. I could have sworn that was in the rules somewhere, but I'm afraid I just misunderstood or made up my own rule on the matter. Or perhaps it was a house rule I assimilated from reading a post. At any rate, the Goblin is not as lethal as I made him out to be, a group of Goblins will be able to cause some damage to the IronBreaker, just not the lonesome one.

As you pointed out, Lex, criticals aren't converted according to their severity. I believe that was a house rule someone suggested.

However, it does increase the amount of damage that is done, and most enemies have a potential to cause a few criticals.

I also agree that many opponents cause Fatigue/Stress, which can play an important part in combats.

Too, just about every enemy is designed to be used either in conjunction with other enemies, or as a part in a series of enemies.

For example, the Wargor in the demo adventure does not just show up by himself to face the party. Although a big tough beast on his own, he won't last long unaided. Instead, not only does he arrive with a friend or two, he also is the final wave of enemies in a series of waves.

A combat oriented PC will do very well 1v1 against most monsters in the ToA. The fact is, the PC normally shouldn't be 1v1 unless he's already fought a few waves of enemies to weaken him.

Another Character....

I drew my career card at random and rolled to determine race. I received a wood elf wardancer and the experience was quite different than the Dwarven Ironbreaker.

While I was able to defeat 2 goblins and still remain at two-thirds capacity, I found that the wardancer had *much* more difficulty in combat. His inability to wear armor was such a crippling disadvantage that I wonder why anyone would play a character in WHFRPG that isn't stoutly armoured. Simply put, there seems to be very few tactical reasons to go lightly armoured.

The wardancer rituals were lackluster and I ended up selecting other actions that made this character feel pretty bland - but made him overall a little more effective than taking the dances.

Is Combat an "Opposed Roll?"

If my character has a Weapon Skill of 3 and I'm fighting an opponent with a Weapon Skill of 7, do I still roll one purple challenge die? Or do I roll additional dice to show that he has a better Weapon Skill than my character?

Response to my playtest methods.

I'm aware that there are many more situations and elements to the game than just melee combat. I realize there are roleplaying and investigation elements and wilderness travel. These aren't immediately important to me until I can grasp the basics of the core combat mechanic.

And yes, I was using monsters' special attacks. And I was recharging them correctly. And yes, I threw in the bonus A/C/E dice (even though that is just an added complication that should have been automatically averaged into an opponent's combat statistics.)

Doc

1) More armor is better in a fight, always. That sounds right to me. The problem with armor is that:

a) it is heavy, and takes a lot of encumbrance

b) it is heavy, and the GM can assign misfortune dice for a variety of checks

c) it is expensive

d) it is conspicuous

e) it is slow to wear and remove

2) Wardancer rituals take some getting used to. Their big advantage is being able to use different sides of the cards by swapping stances. Keep in mind, they are also fun from a fluff perspective. If maxing out damage is your thing, then everyone should only be taking Double Strike / Trollfeller Strike / or Reckless Cleave. Sometimes 'fun' should trump 'best'. They aren't useless, which is an entirely different thing.

3) Combat *can* be an Opposed roll if the GM wants it to be. The GM is given free reign to decide the difficulty of any task. Basic guidelines, are that melee and ranged attacks are Easy (1d), but the GM is allowed to make it an Opposed roll instead. Many GMs have done so and felt it worked better. I, for one, haven't had any problems with the default 1d. Of course, I don't have a trollslayer/ironbreaker or maxed damage dealing fighter. My wife runs a Mercenary/Thug that uses sword n'board and is the party's only fighting character. She does pretty well with Reckless Cleave, but alternates with shield bash and some other fun "disrupt the enemy" type attacks besides trying to do max damage.

Yes encumberance is much more realistic in Warhammer than most rpgs. An average str character is not gong to be able to wear much armor and carry a lot of gear. Our thief character in our group for example has found that out the hard way and even with some basic gear, he is close to the limit of how much he can carry.

As for crits not mattering cause of weak damage output, that is only true for very low threat level enemies. Stuff like goblins are going to have a hard time scoring any crits, but when you encounter some slightly tougher enemies, the crits will come.

Combat by the rules is not an opposed roll, some have house ruled it as such, but by the rules and faq it is as the book notes, a default of 1D difficulty. Most action cards have built in modifiers and the use of defense cards will alter this. Basic enemy npc's don't have much defense but it is the GM's decision as the book notes, that a GM can give his npc's action cards so they are tougher in battle. Giving some defense cards to even the crappy npcs in the main book makes them formidable. Also if you make combat an opposed roll, it greatly increases the difficulty in hitting a target, which makes some action cards hard to pull off as they have high build in difficulty modifiers.

don`t forget that you can add additional action cards to monsters, like giving Bacstab action card to a bunch of skaven assasins and the like.

furhter the monsters in the rulebook is not a complete list of monsters. I suspect that a future suplement (Bestiary) will contain additional monsters, tougher monsters, and additional actions cards or special attacks.

But I like the idea that common monsters like goblins, go down after a succesfull attack. it saves the GM for tracking wounds, and speeds up combat. one hit and the pesky little greenskins go out of combat, seems more streamlined and cinematic to me.

even a single troll would take several rounds of combat for my party to take down (and they are pretty combat-orientated). And so it should be, the bigger and badder they are the harder they should go down. Like the epic combat in the moria mines against the cave troll.

well enough rambling from me.

DrWaites said:

Well to be heavily armored along with carrying weapons and even basic gear requires high strength. Also you will want to put in lot of points in toughness as well as unless you get full plate, the armor is not all that helpful. Heavily armored individuals are basically stuck being bad ass beat monsters in this game since you pretty much are forced into stuffing points into two stats that limit your other functions in game. If you want to be a combat butt kicker, then you will probably take one of the armored classes, while other careers offer more versatility and often flexibility.

The problem of invulnerable high-T characters has plagued all versions of WFRP. In 1st edition, armour was pretty weak, so this problem got to be called the "Naked Dwarf" syndrome a naked dwarf could be more resistant to damage than an armoured knight. With better armour, the problem becomes that some characters can be nearly invulnerable. Yes, 1 damage always gets through, but a starting character that can stand up to a troll or ogre on his own is only appropriate if you want an excessively heroic game, which seems to be the default for WFRP3. Previous editions could be pretty grim and gritty, so the unlikely heroics of this edition make a lot of people a bit uncomfortable, including me.

From a game balance standpoint, invulnerable characters can be a serious problem. Some people here suggested using bigger, more heavily armed opponents, but if the rest of the party consists of lightly armoured humans, then you're going to see the entire party incapacitated most of the time, while the lone iron breaker tries to take out the opposition on his own.

For this reason:

• Ban iron breakers as starting characters. It's not exactly a basic career anyway. (And neither are swordmaster or wardancer.)
• Limit starting Toughness. 4 can already give plenty of problems, like you discovered. I've got a dwarf with T 6 in my group.
• Limit the effect of either armour or soak. Maybe reduce the effect of soak by one or two points, or half the soak effect of Toughness, or add misfortune dice for fighting in heavy armour. Tower shield also deserves a penalty in close combat.
• Maybe reduce the number of character creation points. That reduces the amount of min-maxing, and gives characters more room to grow into invulnerable super heroes later in their adventuring career... but by that time, they've truly earned it.