Scenario:

A group of PC's spot a group of beastmen at Long Range. The PC's are armed with missile weapons. They presume that they can shoot at the beastmen at least a couple of times before they cover the distance between them.

The beastmen act first as they get good initiative rolls.

The beastmen decide to burn 5 wounds to get a total of 6 maneuvres, allowing them to go from Long Range to Engaged in a single turn, also attacking the PC's in melee who are only armed with crossbows and sling staffs.

Is this valid? It seems all perfectly legal in the rules, but when rationalised in terms of what actually happened in the game world, it's as if the Beastmen teleported to the PC's, allowing no chance to actually shoot them (even though they must have covered something like 150 metres or so).

Am I missing some rule that prevents this kind of situation?

Long to Medium = 2 Manoeuvers

Medium to Close = 1 Manoeuver

Close to Engaged = 1 Manoeuver

So they'd only need to burn 4 wounds to get into range then use their basic 1 free manoeuver to attack.

All perfectly legal and realistic. Beastmen are friggen fast and in a full on charge could possibly catch ranged combatants off guard as they try to get their weapons out, loaded and aiming at a pack of charging gor.

Had the characters been walking around with their weapons out and drawn and looking for danger then I would allow a free round of actions from the PC's before the beastmen can start their charge.

I would not allow it unless there was some special reason, such as magic involved.

You simply cannot physically move that far in the time of a single turn. Even charging gors could not get to archers that fast that they can't react or get a shot off. there is a difference between physically fast and superspeed.

I would only allow the spending of points/wounds to go one extra range zone, not multiple.

Kryyst said:

Taking the example to the extreme, what of an opponent at extreme range? If they are willing to burn the 'wounds' they can move from extreme range to engaged before the victim gets to act, even if they have a weapon primed and ready.

It appears that the ability to move any distance in a turn and still act with the appropriate spend of fatigue/wounds is at odds with the rather simplistic initiative system. There's only so many times you can say "Um, you were caught off guard/distracted/indecisive."

Leaving such situations up to the GM to interpret isn't always ideal - in the previous example I was actually one of the players, and the GM saw nothing unusual in letting the Beastmen run up to us and kick our asses while we stood frozen, even though we had actually spotted them first and had our weapons primed and ready. When we questioned this, the reply was "that's what the rules say".

Definitely something to be clarified in any future editions - even a simple rule like "the maximum number of manoeuvres that can be spent on movement in a single turn is equal to the characters Agility score" would help limit odd situations like this. Indeed, as the system currently stands, an Agility 1 Toughness 4 Dwarf in Platemail can disengage from an enemy, move from extreme range to engaged with an opponent, and strike, while an Agility 4 Toughness 1 Elf in a thong can't even get from extreme range to long in a single turn without passing out.

By the rules it's allowed.

Whether or not it should be allowed is situational. On a wide open plane probably not especially against aware opponents. In a forest where the gors can advance rapidly and still be under cover it's conceivable. Personally it sounds like your GM was up to something. He would have been far better off to just start the encounter at medium range probably.

Also keep in mind Long range as defined: is further then a few dozen paces but much less then a football field a part. A runner can cover a few dozen paces really quickly. In your specific case your GM erred on the overall distance. If they were at 150m I'd argue they were even beyond extreme range in which case the encounter shouldn't have even taken place yet.

A few dozen paces is still approx 180 feet though (assuming a few dozen is 36, and a pace is 5ft). It's a lot of ground to cover, even running very fast, without your opponents getting a chance to react.

I guess at the end of the day as it is an abstract system, there needs to be a fair amount of GM interpretation to ensure the spirit of the rules is upheld, rather than the letter.

wimlach said:

That's a terrible GM call.

Really.

It breaks the suspension of disbelief that is so important to enjoy the game.

The story first, the rules after.

Most good GMs out there wouldn't have called such a ridiculous and cheap shot. It seems to me the GM has an antagonistic stance vs the players, which is to be banned from RPGs. RPGs are collaborative and totally non-competitive in their essence. If the GM doesn't get that, than he shouldn't GM.

wimlach said:

Mechanically it's allowable that's all I'm saying. GM interpretation is key. You can, depending on the circumstances, justify it. In your specific example, it sounds like the GM made a poor judgment call.

Now one other point of conflict is the definition of the word 'pace' there are two standing definitions. Where I'm from most people consider a pace to be about 3' (the average length of one step however (as I just looked up) another common definition has it listed at 5' (or basically two steps a full right/left step). So there's that issue at stake also. Based on the distances at hand I think a 3' pace is probably the assumption being made in WFRP 3.

Regardless though after their charge you'd be facing off against almost half dead Beastmen anyway. So yeah they get the jump on you this round but you should be able to beat the tar out of them fairly easily because of it.

Unfortunately we were also half dead, after a couple of rough previous encounters. In addition we where outnumbered (4 PC's to 5 Beastmen), had only one martial character in the group (one soldier, along with a thief, student and burgher), and the beastmen were heavy hitters (gor's led by a wargor - not even henchmen or ungor!).

Let's just say it didn't end well.

To his credit the GM did eventually realise it was a mismatched fight, and fudged it so the surviving beastmen departed without finishing us off. Unfortunately by this point only the student was left conscious after wisely fleeing, the remainder of the group scattered in crumpled heaps along the road, the burger and soldier critically wounded and the thief half mad from stress.

Kryyst said:

It's even easier than that. 2 manoevres to go from Long to Medium. Free manoevre to close fo close. Action beastman charge thing so only 2 wounds each.

It does seem a bit too easy though & I would not do it to my players. I guess I would move from Long to Medium in one turn stressing how fast the beastment are moving while not charging them any wounds for the extra move.

I'd do it to them. But I wouldn't do it to them when they're half-dead against a nasty group like you said it was. That's just mean. But the players should know that getting rushed is a possibility.

i would not feel bad for rushing a group of archers from medium range. it is exciting. but i don't think i would let them engage from long range and attack in the same round in a game i run. there does seem like there should be an upper limit of total actions plus manuevers in one round. however, if a dude is using rapid fire or if the whole party uses range weapons i might end up rushing them every time. call it punitive, call it antagonistic, but if a player uses a munchkin power or tactic i think they are asking you to step up your tactical game. that is what they enjoy. it sounds like the gm didn't tpk them. he was just giving them notice. i think he should have just laughed and never said "that's what the rules say" cause that just pisses people off.

Bindlespin said:

Again, I'm not advocating being a **** and doing it in such a way as to abuse or TPK the players. The GM does have a lot of power and flexibility in this game, so there is definitely restraint required. I'm just don't feel that rushing, engaging, and attack in one turn from long range is necessarily a no-no in all situations.

wimlach said:

Was that 5 individual beastmen, no henchmen? In that case the GM was completely out of line, that's way too hard for a group of 4 rank one PC's (even if they are all combat focused). Beastmen are really dangerous opponents, throwing that many at a non-combat focused group is not appropriate (unless some were henchmen in which case it's a bit better).

Your problem is not that the beastmen could move so fast, but rather that they were so many that the loss of wounds due to moving fast made no difference. A more reasonable challenge for your group would have been 2 gors. If they both did the long run, one would go into battle with 2 wounds (using charge) and one with 4 (cannot use charge since it would be at cooldown for all other monsters of the same type as the first).

To be honest, if the GM is using appropriate challenges, this tactic is basically the only hope the beastmen have of even touching the PC's (ranged combat is that powerful). I guess one could use the higher number of opponents if the GM elects to play the beastmen as stupid and non-aggressive, that works just fine if you want to give the players a more drawn out experience and allow ranged combatants to shine.

As to the players not being able to fire their weapons while the beastmen are moving. That's how things work in a system with "full-round" initiative. Maybe you should have spent some fortune dice on the initiative roll? Or bought better agi scores?

I think this is a clear case of the GM making a bad call, not a problem with the system. It is a lot harder to construct the right level challenges in WHFRP3e than in games like DnD4e, you do not really get that much help (and PC's in WH can be very bad at combat, which basically never happens in DnD). I'm sure your GM learnt a lot from this encounter, but in any case you should probably talk to him about how hard the encounters he construct are. If he's using a written scenario he should probably rescale the challenges a bit to fit your group.

By the rules it's allowed.

We personally implement a house rule where you are limited to 3 manoeuvres per round, unless granted extra free manoeuvres by action/talent or something.

So normally you get 1 free manoeuvre and can buy two additional ones using fatigue or wounds as appropriate.

Its' simple and prevents the situation you have highlighed

pumpkin said:

if I was going to do something like this, i'd probably send the beastmen in waves. start out with just a couple, see how they do. If they players get lucky, or just play really smart and do really well, then send in a couple more. This would let me stop the fight early if I want to avoid TPKing, and it would let me recharge the charge attack if they're doing well enough that I want to send more

fnord3125 said:

Ok, so it doesn't prevent that situation!

In general though having a manoeuvre cap in play gets round some of the issues the game has because things in a round happen seqeuentially when in reality they would happen concurrently.

fnord3125 said:

i don't either. especially if the players are tacticians. rushing makes the game more fun for them. but i wouldn't rush players who are not tactics savvy. the point is not whether rushing people is mechanically possible. it clearly is. it is also not about being a "****." it is about providing an appropriate amount of challenge for the players you are dealing with at the moment while keeping things fair and consistent. i think pumpkin's maneuver cap is a move in the right direction. the gm's toolkit has an optional rule for sacrificing actions to get an extra manuever without spending fatigue.

i also think that the intent of a rule that lets you spend fatigue to perform extra manuevers is to let combat flow a little more organically and to make sure things are happening on both sides in every round by making sure that nobody spends their whole turn just engaging and drawing weapons. does that mean the game designers also intended gm's to burn through a large chunk of wounds to make sure their monsters could engage and attack in the first round of every combat no matter how far they start apart? beastmen or otherwise? maybe, but maybe not.

My take is simple, it's allowed. You want to sprint full out, run like hell to engage, go for it. The rules make you tired. I try not to get caught up in the 6 second per round RPG thing. Plus the rules design really wants you to say yes as much as possible to the players.

Beyond the factor that the GM seems to have attacked with a far too powerful group of monsters I see no problem at all with the tactic and in fact beastmen are almost designed for it. Missile weapons are extremely powerful in 3rd edition and it leaves the GM and players with only 3 choices: close the range as fast as possible; try to minimise the chance of being hit via misfortune dice or turn every encounter into a missile barrage.

Its a particular problem with players as you can easily ramp up how devestating missile attacks are with action cards and high attributes. In fact some action combo's like pinning the target in place and then rapid shotting them to death are just plain broken (as much as I hate the word) and become standard tactics.

Thats aggravated by the way Wood elves can mitigate cover in woodland areas and darkness penalties meaning approaching under those doesn't help at all.

That leaves turning Warhammer FRPG into "Ranged Combat RPG" and that totally ruins the enemies and makes them featureless. Plus its as irritating for players to be gunned down at range as it is for monsters.

The "cheat" method from a GM perspective is that you have to lower the encounter ranges but that effectively removes the staring moments for archers so at least with charging them they arrive with damage.

It also has to be said the wood elf archer in my party does have the action card to allow engaged shooting which means he's not a helpless as people expect. There are also other ways to counter the charge - think of traditional tactics as essentially its cavalry vs archers here - stakes, cover, tripwires, hills etc. Warhammer 3rd edition is very flexible.

The real world truth is that if cavalry caught archers in unprepared open terrain they were massacred and beastmen with charge bonuses are essentially that - that was one of their specific roles in a battle.

A couple of thoughts of mine on this situation:

First, the beastmen did win initiative. This buys them at least a few seconds of time before the PCs even realize that they are there. I also noted that Wimlach (who was one of the players in the encounter) said that the PCs "spotted [the beastmen] first". If that's the case and you were also 'ready' with weapons drawn, how the heck did you lose initiative with the multiple bonus fortune dice and the beastmen having to roll against challenge dice?

As far as the distance traveled is concerned, I'm going to assume a few paces means 36 paces and that a pace is 4' (the average of the two definitions). That gives 144 feet. That's 44 metres, because I'm Canadian. Usain Bolt can run 10 m/s. Beastmen charging may be faster than Usain Bolt, but even at his speed they cover that distance in 4.4 seconds. The beastmen won initiative, so they have a few seconds before the PCs can react in any way. By the time the PCs have even started to raise their weapons the beastmen would be on them. Perfectly reasonable for beastmen exerting themselves to the point of physical damage.

On the topic of how many manoeuvres it takes to get there, it would take 2 to go from medium to long, 1 to go from long to close and 1 more to go from close to engaged. 4 manoeuvres, so even with the free one they are taking 3 wounds. As far as using their charge ability goes, don't forget that these are not henchmen and thus cannot use an action as a group. Only 1 of the beastmen could use the charge, since by the rules multiple creatures of the same type share the action card and thus it would be recharging as soon as the first beastman used it. I don't personally use that rule, but this discussion is about what is allowed 'as per the rules'.

Not an expert, but it seem to me VERY unlikely for EVERY beastman to have surpassed PC's initiative rolls. They should have rolled for every beastman, no?how was that possible???!

Anyway, for the story sake, the GM could have arranged the initiative track differently, for example mixing pc's and monster's token evenly to allow the beastmen to reach the players one at a time, thus giving them the opportunity to shot a few times before starting the carnage.

After all, RPG are about stories, not stupid rules and game mechanics! have a bad surprise like this to happens, and then fudge the things up to save the players, is just useless. A tactic like this would had been perfect in other circumstances, for example if the story requires the PC to be beaten up and captured and then awake in chains at the beast's lair....

wimlach said:

hmm the GM should also have divided them into two groups, and rolled 2 different sets of initiative on them, one for each group, which is also suggested in the rules. (a monster group should be at the same size as the party, meaning that if 6 beastmen where to attack a party of 3, than they would be divided into 2 seperate groups) maybe than some of your PCs might have had a chance to act before ALL the beastmen did. Other than that your GM is within his right to do so according to the rules.

but as other has noted, this was not a good GM call. maybe you should put together a house rule? saying that for instance that you cannot burn more than 3 wounds per round for additional manouvers?

anyway I suggest you guys have a talk about it