Ok, first of all, it's late .. well, in fact, it's early in the morning. Second, this isn't (yet) a complete well-balanced house rule. I just want to discus something that bothers me in the actual game system and know if some people share my feeling and start to brainstorm a bit for a possible solution.

Now. Problem is : I think there's too much cards around my character : 8 basic action cards, 1-3 talents, 1 career ability, few racial abilities, 1 to 4 action cards, a list of skills (that aren't really actions, but can sometime count as one, like First aid (it should have been a card, anyway)) and that's only at character creation, add to this each time you buy a new talent or action card and when completing advancement in a career.

When I read the previews of the game, I thought the mecanics for talents were in fact the mecanics for action cards. So now I'm wondering if it's possible to do something like this to restrict the number of "possibilties of actions".

In my head, the maximum of options/cards should be around 8-12.

I see a system a bit like the talent system : you have 4 or 5 slots for action cards/talents. The type of slot depends on the career. There would be 4 types of slots : Attack (includes melee, ranged, and attack spells), defense, support and social. A career more axed toward combat could have something like 2 slots for attacks, 1 for defense and 1 "free" that you could slot anything. One more social could have : 2 socials, 1 support and 1 free. etc.

In addition to the 4 "slotted" action cards , you could also have 4 "reserve" cards that couldn't not be used until slotted (like unslotted talents). You could swap non-recharging cards with one in the reserve for 1 manoeuver, as long as it is of the same slot type.

But that would require some actions to be better than others (maybe we'll see this with higher rank action cards in future expansions?) so that you would be able to exchange action cards when buying more action/talents with advancements.

Other problem is : what happens with basic actions? Would we keep them? Would they be appart from this mecanic or count as normal action cards?

There's also the possibility of having some of those "slots" locked that could be "unlocked" with some advancements and maybe rank pre-requisites (a bit like the "locked" trick slot of the Rat Catcher's pet). Maybe rank 1 character could only have 3 or 4 action slots, and each rank gives you a "free" slot or unlock a pre-defined slot, depending of the career.

So as I'm reading this you have a character with a bunch of cards that he could use, but he basically has to pick a few that are the active ones and just cycle through them until he can change them out. The biggest problem if I understand what your proposing is you are locking advanced characters into being one trick ponies still. They basically create their power combo for a standard action and then are stuck with it. When instead they should be able to use all the talents they have access to, to react appropriately to whatever situation they are in.

I don't think limiting what actions that a player has access to is the solution you are really looking for. Instead you are trying to make it easier to keep track of what actions they have and reduce the book keeping of the entire situation. I don't have a suggestion on how to do that. But what your proposing seems artificial and limiting.

To look at it from the perspective of a UFC fighter. They'll go into a fight with a game plan - the puncher wanting to keep the fight on his feat, working the jab to set up the upper-cut. But they aren't limited to only doing that. They have all their other skills that they can draw on if the situation warrants it. The better they get the more skills they have to draw on. This is often seen at looking at new fighters versus veteran fighters. The new fighters will typically be good in one area but suffer in another a veteran fighter is a threat in whatever situation they are in. That's the same way it should work in the game. The seasoned character should never be restricted in accessing the talents he's acquired. He may go into the fight with a 1-2 punch combo in mind. But if the situation changes then he shouldn't be stuck being locked into the 1-2.

I don't care if my character lacks diversity of the RAW, I'm looking for a way to keep things much simpler. To give an example, my GF started to play with us, but she's new to RPGs. She is so overwhelmed with the number of cards in front of her that she's not even paying attention to her cards, using only Rapid fire. For my part, I'm playing RPGs for decades and I too feel overwhelmed with the number of possibilities. Maybe if I started with only basic cards, get use to them, then add some cards with advancement, it would have been more smooth.

The biggest problem with my idea, really, is that the game lacks vertical advancement. But I understand it have been designed to BE "horizontal".

Part of the problem there might be Rapid Fire itself. Have you downloaded the version with the errata? If not, I can't blame her for just relying on that one card. It's the best of the bunch. Broken enough they issued an errata for it.

Not to say that you're wrong about there being too many options at the get go. A starting character has a ton of options, and a starting player isn't likely to understand the system enough to really tell which ones are better than others. I think I'd be happier with the amount of horizontal advancement if either a) characters started a little weaker, or b) the actions were easier to parse and evaluate.

r_b_bergstrom said:

Yes, we played with errated Rapid Fire.

Agreed on both a) and b)

As for my idea, I've realized that I wouldn't care to have this system even without vertical advancement. WHFRP isn't a powergamer style of game anyway. If characters started with only basic action cards, it would still take a long time to buy 8 to 10 actions cards (considering the limit of actions that can buy buyed depending the career). Even more if we had to buy a slot "unlock" advancement.

Silverwave said:

So why didn't/don't you just do that. Instead of putting character creation points into extra action cards, don't prioritize it. Instead put it all into stats, skills, and wealth. Next just add cards as you advanced. Then if having all the cards are to much just pick a few of your favorites and cycle through them. Just because you have all of them doesn't mean you have to use all of them all the time if you don't want to. Creating another subsystem to control which cards you use is pointless. Just personally pick a few of your favorites to use regularly.

Well, the idea is to be consistent. If I make a house rule, it will be applied equally to all characters so no other is more advantaged than another one. Another thing is in order to complete a career, you have to buy actions/talents. Sure you could buy stat increase but it's WAY more satisfying (player wise) to buy a little advancement after each game than have to wait after 3 sessions to raise a stat.

I can do what you've said to patch temporarly my problem (while not hindering with other player's characters), but it's a sentiment shared with more than one players and could eventually lead to the need of making some adjustment in the long term (hence my idea... or any other, for that matter).

So your house rule is designed to limit the flexibility of everyone. Ok.

Kryyst said:

... to decrease game complexity, yes.

Honestly Silverwave, you don't need Action cards at all. A month before the game came out we started playing Warhammer...with stickered dice and a sheet printed off FFG. When we did this without action cards we added successes to weapon damage. Boons could create critical effects or do maneuvers. When we went to the demo, we added the active defense. We played for another two months without action cards when the system came out and didn't have a problem. We generated a test run with action cards and actually preferred the old way of doing things so went back to it. We now run a hybrid of a few action cards (one or two) and the loose system of adding successes to damage. What we did with action cards is limit them to when they can be used. Thunderous Blow for example can only be used when engaging an opponent. Troll Feller can only be used against large targets.

I found my player's and I actually preferred creating effects off of Boons rather than being limited by cards. The combats (and other tasks) are much more dynamic, narrative focused and a sense of communal gaming - yes, I give my players a lot of freedom to determine their own boon effects.

The vertical advancement system is addressed other places, though I believe it's not necessary...it would be nice for some career's, but not necessary. We just do repeat careers.

That's interesting (especially for making boon effects yourself, depending the situation)!

Now, understand that I do like action cards, it's just that me (and few other players in the group) feel there's too much of them, at least for starting characters. So I'm working over something that could fix this problem.

I like both Commoner's ideas of leaving out action cards and only using boon/bane effects, and Silverwave's idea for limiting the number of active actions.

I've noticed that the "delay" result on Conservative dice can become rather meaningless when a player has sufficient actions. "I can't use this action now? No problem, I have a ton others to choose from." Limiting the number of actions you can have active at the same time, would make delays a lot more serious.

Switching an action for a different one should be easy. A maneuver sounds right. An archer may be entire focused on lots of ranged actions, but when the enemies start closing in, he can, one by one, replace his ranged actions with more appropriate melee actions. You probably shouldn't be able to replace actions while they're still recharging.

This way, you can still be very diverse, and able to handle a wide variety of situations, but it does take some effort to adjust to changing situations. And you remove the issue that delays are more painful for some characters than for others.

In order to remove some cards to decrease game complexity, I had two new ideas :

1. Merge the active defenses into only one active defense card. Use the Dodge card, since it's the best of the 3 (dodge requires no equipement (weapon or shield), and can be used against all melee, ranged and spells). Make it usable once per turn (recharge 1 will do since you use it when it's not your turn, so basically, after your next turn, you'll be able to use it again). Replace the Special line with : For each skill in the following list you're trained in, add an additionnal <B> to the action's dice pool : Coordination, Weapon skill, Resilience.

2. Remove basic melee and basic ranged attack cards. You'll be using them only when no other choice of attack is available (which isn't really often considering the number of action cards and the usually fast recharge (2)). To simplify things, I make them : If at least 1 success generated, the attack hits for normal damage. Use universal effects or GM fiat for boons and banes (as usual).