I've been reading about this game and I'm still on the fence about buying it.

• First, I've read that you can only have three players as part of the box set. Is there a way to allow more than three?

The rest are more opinion based:

• Do the dice really slow the game down? Do they add flavor or substance to the game in return?
• Does the game scale well? IE, do the characters become so powerful that they don't really need to roll for success in general?
• Does the game use a mat or any way of showing a character's location spatially? How do you know if you can make a ranged or a melee attack?

I'll come up with more questions later.

MasterBeastman said:

1. It is very difficult to play more than 3 players using just the Core Set. It has to do with the amount of Action Cards available for use by the players. The cards are set up to allow 3 players, and really no more than 3, to play. If you want more I recommend buys an Adventurers Toolkit for each player (better yet, make them buy it!) also I HIGHLY recommend the GM Toolkit. The addition of the extra careers is worth the price alone (esp. the "Ratcatcher" and his "Small but Vicious Dog".)

2. I find the dice to be a welcome addition and even innovative. They allow for you to succeed on a roll but still have consequences (both positive and negative...at the same time!), likewise you can fail and still have an positive effect. It makes for some great storytelling. it is easy to adjust the difficulty on the fly as well (see below.)

3. You can "scale" the game very easily as the GM. Just throw some misfortune die in the mix, increase the challenge die, and your difficulty just became increased for ANY character. It really is up to you how you adjust a challenge. Another reason to like the dice...

4. You use range increments to determine your location in relation to the contact (be it a NPC/ other characters/monsters). You have Engagement/Close/Medium/Long/Extreme ranges. You use Tracking Tokens/Standups as follows: Standups touching each other = Engaged, One token between standups = Close, Two tokens = Medium, Three tokens = Long, Four tokens = Extreme. Some players (myself included) use a custom build mat with each range noted on the mat in it's own divided off section. You could take a prebuild mat and just draw a line for each range increment and plane your standups on the range they are at, as well.

If the standups are touching (or if you use a battle mat, they are in the "engagement" area) you are in melee. If they are in the "close" or further out areas, they are at ranged. Just note how the standups are in relation to each other, like minatures....

Hope that Helps!

Dan

ValiantOne said:

I strongly recommend AGAINST buying an Adventurer's Toolkit for every player. It costs $30, and comes with a lot of stuff that you don't need more than once. A few of the careers are nice (Pitfighter, Ratcatcher), some are way overpowered or just not terribly appropriate as "basic" career (Ironbreaker, Swordmaster). It would be better if FFG released a much cheaper box with just the cards. (Note that these careers are in the Adventurer's Toolkit, not in the GM's Toolkit.)

It is technically possible to play without cards, but that's not terribly attractive. The best solution I've found, is to install Strange Aeons and the WFRP plugin for it, and create your own cards. Print them on heavy paper, cut them, and you can accommodate as many players as you like. I think there's a huge thread on the Strange Aeons plugin in the House Rules section.

(Note that I have more money than time, yet still I'd rather spend some time on figuring out Strange Aeons than buying several mostly-useless Adventurer's Toolkits.)

For the other questions:

2. Rollking dice costs time. A game without any dice at all is no doubt faster, but WFRP3 uses a single roll of a dice pool to tell a complete story. It's pretty efficient, and very cool.

3. The game uses a default difficulty of "Easy" (1 Challenge die) for hitting people in combat, resulting in even untrained fighters hitting successfully quite often. I have no experience with how well the game scales when characters get more powerful, but my intuition tells me the game would scale a bit better if the base difficulty was "Average" (2 Challenge dice) for any target that's not completely unaware that he's about to be attacked.

4. There's no battlemat with squares or hexes. Range is handled in a more abstract way which is very close to how most roleplayers handle combat anyway. It's a bit more formalised and gives more handholds than if you'd just improvise combat this way, and requires more GM arbitration than the more tactical D&D4 combat system. Personally I like it a lot.

Thanks for the clearifying that MVC.

Got my Toolkits mixed up! That's what happens when you are running on no sleep and taking Vicodin for Sciatica (yep, I am an old fart)... Glad you were here to catch that!!!

I am in TOTAL agreement with MVC, FFG needs to release a card package without all the frills...

I would also agree Strange Eons is the way to go, if you don't mind putting in the time and effort.

One can still use a mat/custom sheet to mark out the range increments. I personally do not like all the tokens all over the table (on top of all the other tokens you are messing with) and go with a custom made sheet I made to mark distances. That is just me however, tokens work just fine.

Thanks again MVC for the assist!

mcv said:

That begs another question that I hope can be answered in a public forum about rules:

• Does this mean that a Chaos Lord or a Troll are just as easy to hit as a dog or a chicken? I realize they may have many more wounds, but I would expect combat ability to have some say in the matter.
• Is there a decent variety of monsters available with the starter kit? I only know so much about the Warhammer setting, but I would hope there would be more to fight / avoid / sneak up on than humanoids of differing intellect.

It isn't so much a question as an observation: It seems somewhat careless of FFG to release a RPG that only three players can join. RPGs usually run 4-5 players (in my experience) so this seems odd.

First off, you don't need the tool kit to have more than 3 players, I had 4 with just the basic set, no worries, players can share the basic cards (Block, dodge, attack, ranged attack and so on), the extra cards from the adventurers tool kit does make it easier. One of my players is a wizard and the times she needs to use the regular actions is very limited indeed so with the toolkit you could easily have 5 players.

MasterBeastman said:

--

THREE PLAYERS PER BOXED SET..NOT 3 PER GAME SESSION: This is limited as much by the number of dice as anything. Having two game sets is ideal for a NORMAL-sized group (e.g. 5). The cards can be duplicated, but not the dice. I personally bought a bunch of dice expansions, but I think I'd rather just have bought another boxed set. Like most RPG's you need more than one rulebook. THIS GAME ASSUMES THE SAME..but can be played with 3 without having a second set.

THE DICE don't slow the game down after the first session of everyone figuring them out. I'm currently on hiatus from the game due to a lack of scenarios and advanced careers and have been playing Pathfinder instead (which is typical D&D suck-the-life-out-of-you-mindlessness). I can tell you wholeheartedly that I MISS THE DICE MECHANIC IMMENSELY. They did several things for my game: 1) They're fun 2) they allow for some ad-hoc roleplaying (it's like reading the Matrix) 3) more than one thing can happen.

SCALING FROM LEVELING: I consider this a questionable portion of the game. In other systems (e.g. D&D where the game breaks at about level 12) characters break because of magical items and character power or inequity (e.g. a fighter can't hold his own against a wizard of the same level). The dice mechanic breakdowns that I've read say that mid-rank 2 (about 10 game sessions), the characters truly need a significant change in opponents. Meaning they will need demons and orc bosses. The MINION mechanic introduced in D&D 4e and used again in WFRP3e however solves that, but I dunno if there is a usable "encounter design system" in place yet as I have not purchased the GM's toolkit.

ARMOR AND TO-HIT ROLLS: This is all worked out in the rules. Armor exists as soak. You can hit the Chaos Lord (or chicken's) armor, but you might not get through. You minimum 1 point (a rule we've always used).

VARIETY OF MONSTERS IN THE BESTIARY: The boxed set has a multiple stat sets for multiple creatures in all cases, and most classic Warhammer creatures are represented. The unfortunate part is that there are multiple monsters NAMED under IMP for example, however there are no details on those monsters. Unless you know the world and played 2E and have a 2e bestiary sitting next to you, you won't have a clue what most of the listed IMPS are. Not the end of the world, but annoying for new GM's who are just going to say "Uh...there's an IMP in the middle of the road who glares menacingly at you with his tiny pitchfork..uh..making that all up..uh..." This is just a representation of the less-than-awesome writing of the rulebooks..but again, not the end of the world by any means. The bestiary is pretty useful otherwise.

MINIATURE-GAMING & BATTLEMATS: we still play like we always have. We use a mat with miniatures, houses, fences, shrubberies!, and whatnot. GONE IS THE INSANITY OF THE 5' STEP! The only thing that matters is your proximity to an opponent, not the waltz-like dance steps of miniatures wargames like D&D or WARHAMMER BATTLES. We just a coin between each range (and several for long range, etc.). It's so simple, but our minds have been ruined after 35 years of D&D and 50 years of mini's battles and we try to make it seem more complicated than it is. This picture below is from someone elses game:

Here are the things that I consider weak in the game though:

1. lack of scenarios and lack of advanced careers. Your GM is just going to have to take a LOT more time to do scenarios and the players just don't have anywhere to go (YET). It feels like back in 1982 when we Basic-D&D players sat there waiting for TSR to put out the COMPANION set that they'd promised so we could take characters beyond level 14. Now, there are options, just not the options you had back in the 2e days with the CAREER COMPENDIUM and 5 different' "levels" of advancement: soldier ->veteran->sargent->captain ->general...etc. Now you have soldier ->peasant->pit-fighter->???!!! This is slowly changing..but not fast enough for me..I'll be rejoining as soon as there are /enough/ for me to put more effort into a long-campaign.

2. Extra unnecessary cards. My players LIKE using the cards..but as a GM, I kind of detest them. There are a LOT of redundancies with differen't names. Good thing that they're seemingly well-balanced however (except for machine-gun rapid shot...) There are a lot of online supplements and print-outs that you can use instead of the cards if that's your thing.

3. It's tough to find at conventions. WFRP doesn't have the fan-base of games that have tournaments and "LIVING" campaigns. Also true is that you wouldn't want to lose your stuff to some stranger.

4. There are little things that really aren't all that well designed, that don't amount to much, but that I considered annoying.: Monster stat block-layouts, non-standard sizes of the cards, the character sheet (!), lack of monster stand-ups, the rulebook(!!!), lack of diversity of monsters of a single type, lack of opponent NPC diversity, lack of clear examples in the rulebook, non-standardization of recharge/non-recharge talent cards, all the fricking elves but lack of diversity amongst the humans, the expertise die's-game-breaking-existence, lack of human diversity background in the empire, focus on magic and spells even though it's supposed to only be 5% of the Warhammer world, lack of character background; that the GM's guide is written for morons, but the main rulebook wasn't; and I can honestly now say that I actually do miss the little Mootlanders!

The major strengths for me that got me into WFRP after 30 years of D&D, Conan, and Call of Cthulhu were:

1. It's WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY. The world for this lunker is amazingly deep. There are books galore, decades of players, and the character choices are very well themed. For example: in D&D you have a couple sterile classes that are offset by sterile races and you min-max from there in a sterile world with sterile gods with sterile abilities with sterile spells. In WFRP you get a differen't feel and goal taking a Rat Catcher or Charlatan into a scenario.

2. It's not a miniatures battles game. Scenarios have depth (more like Call of Cthulhu..but with monsters you can occasionally beat). Since you don't get your xp by killing monsters and taking their stuff, you really have to use your noggin more to finish whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. Don't get it confused with the FREE WARHAMMER MMO, which is a good introduction to the world, but little more than mindless monster-killing and PvP.

3. It's really pretty. There are really shiny things in this game. THE PRECIOUS!!!! Also, 2nd edition has tons of background that's easily portable for the GM (Especially Sigmar's Heirs) and all of it is available online.

Don't over-think buying this game. It belongs on your shelf. Play the downloadable scenario to teach your group and then play the scenario inside the box. Your players will probably really like it..unless they were 2e players..and then they're going to gripe about a lack of careers.

jh

p.s. if you're asking yourself why I badmouth D&D so much, but still play Pathfinder it's because of 1) lots of players, 2) TONS of GM support/scenarios 3) convention gaming

.

MasterBeastman said:

No. Monsters and characters have a Defense value (usually determined by the armour you wear, or some arbitrary value for monsters), and you add one misfortune die to the dice pool for each point in Defense that your target has. Also, there are active defenses, like Parry, Block or Dodge that can add more misfortune dice to the pool.

Training in Weapon Skill has no effect, unfortunately., except when you use Parry (I think WS adds an additional misfortune die). Personally I think Weapon Skill training should always add some extra difficulty to the attack. Somebody who is trained to fight knows how to handle himself in combat, and is much harder to hit (at least without exposing yourself). So you could houserule some additional modifier there.

MasterBeastman said:

There aren't a lot of exotic monsters in the core set, but it does have a very decent variety of the common monsters, with generally 3 or 4 variations of different strength. Greenskins, for example, come with stats for Snotlings, Goblins and Orcs. Beastmen get Ungor, Gor and Wargor. Skaven, Chaos cultists, Chaos Warriors, Daemons, Undead, Giants & Trolls, and even Humans all get a similar treatment. There's also a page of beasts: Wolf, giant Spider and Boar. It's not a complete bestiary, but it should be enough for most campaigns.

MasterBeastman said:

I agree completely. 3 players is not enough. Some people buy a second Core Set, but it's an expensive game, and although the core set does contain some goodies that are useful to have more of, I really don't want to pay for a additional Tomes of Adventure, Mysteries and Blessings. Mostly I just want an extra set of action cards.

The Adventurer's Toolkit adds stuff for a 4th player, as well as some new careers and other stuff, but much of that you really don't need more than 1 of (if that). Buying an additional Core Set is definitely a better idea than buying 3 additional Adventurer's Toolkits, but it's still not a great idea, IMO. Maybe if FFG released a budget Core Set with just the basic rulebook and the career and action cards. I'd probably pay $40-$50 for that.

mcv said:

It seems most people are forgetting that there already is a mechanic available for scaling up monster power/survivability. The ACE budget.

A chicken has an ACE of 0/0/0, a Chaos Lord (assuming a scaled up Chaos Warrior) should have something like 9/4/4 (and probably also improved Parry along with 2-3 in weapon skill, and possibly some defensive talents). The A is for aggression dice and can be added to any attack or initiative but also as misfortune dice to enemy attacks (see the Errata/FAQ for this). Powerful monsters have larger ACE budget, and can therefore be harder to hit just because of that (if the GM spends the dice on defense).

I don't really see the problem with scaling up opponents in 3e, the tools are available, just give your opponents a better ACE budget, skill training, additional action cards and/or talents. Granted, the monsters in the core set are possibly a bit on the lame side, they could use some toughening up. But that also depends a lot on the player group. With randomized career group, you may have only one player with any combat training, then a single gor could be problematic. On the other hand, if you have an Ironbreaker, a bright wizard and a hunter you should probably boost the enemies a fair bit.

To Emirikol, just checking since you've been away. You are aware they released an errata for rapid shot and double strike right? It's still a great action, but nowhere near as gamebreaking as you seem to indicate

Thanks for the information.

I'm still on the fence about buying it. I feel that spending $100 should be enough to play with a group of friends but it turns out it's not (only 3 players).

I like the sound of the system. But I think I'll wait until they offer more cards at a lower price or have a better starter kit.

MasterBeastman said:

Buy it, then you could photocopy the basic actions and put the copies in deck protectors. Ther's only 8 basic action cards so it's easy, fast and cheap, then you can play with your full group. I really think FFG should release extra basic cards though, or make them avaliable online.

Or just put them all next to each other, scan them, do the same with the flip side and there you go, everyone now has a document with all of it gathered on one page. Now what I would love to see is an actual players kit including the basic actions, 2 dice kits, a character sheet pad, and maybe a handful of careers, talents and the most basic and rehashed action cards, maybe the updated cards that you find on the support site..

universalhead put together a great set of quick reference sheets and player aids including a card with all the basic actions on it already. just print it and put it on card and you can play with as many people as you can stand.

That reference sheet is harder to track down now. The new official one has removed the basic action cards, equipment lists and some very other useful information that the previous ones had.

that is unfortunate. was the change voluntary?

Bindlespin said:

Nope, FFG contacted Universal Head (the designer of the Reference Sheets) and asked him to remove some things...

they should have just contracted the guy to do even better "official" game aids and sold them instead of shutting his stuff down. i wonder if their liscencing agreement with games workshop keeps them from doing that. lame...i am sure there is a discussion of all of this somewhere i missed.

The problem was how much original content he had directly copied into his sheets, like copies of the basic action cards for example. I understand why FFG had him remove that stuff. It's just unfortunate for anyone trying to find them now, that it's gone. The previous versions are excellent.

Shame. I don't mind if FFG asks him to stop because it competes with something they sell, but as it is, FFG doesn't offer anything like that, which means it's up to the fans to fix the hole themselves. And forcing everybody to fix the hole themselves instead of allowing us to share what we did, just makes the game less accessible and therefore less attractive.

But of course the best thing would be if FFG plugged this hole themselves.

gruntl said:

To Emirikol, just checking since you've been away. You are aware they released an errata for rapid shot and double strike right? It's still a great action, but nowhere near as gamebreaking as you seem to indicate

By Tzeentch's spiraled tentacles, that's excellent! Thanks for the update.

Jay H

ValiantOne said:

That's unfortunate. All other good games have an SRD out there and his stuff was top notch. Much better explained than the original rulebook.

jh

I was one of the fortunate ones who DL'ed it before the IP hammer hit. I use that basic action card summary halfsheet every session. I'm trying to find a spot on the GM screen I can glue it over. I've also started handing copies of it out to my players instead of them using the basic eight. It reduces table clutter somewhat and is simply easier to manage.

@keltheos: exactly, that one little sheet alone is fantastic. and i don't think it had any art on it at all

The IP hammer is the sole fault of Games Workshop, IMO. FFG probably has nothing to do with it other than just having to enforce the conditions of their license agreement. GW is well-known for sending cease&desist letters left and right to people who use their intellectual property in fan works or otherwise, no matter how small. FFG, on the other hand, almost encourages the fans of their games like Arkham Horror or Talisman to create their own content. You could easily find new Arkham investigators, monsters, even whole new expansions on the AH board, all using graphics from the game, and FFG has had no problem with that for years. So, I think complaining about how FFG screws with the WFRP3 fan work is a bit unfair - it was probably that or they wouldn't get the Warhammer license altogether.

This is true, but FFG could host it and other fan material. They would have had something to go with more akin to the old Black Industries site, rather than the skimpy scraps we have in comparison nowadays. Compare: web.archive.org/web/20071031170706/www.blackindustries.com/

The community that site created is incredible and still lingers today. I know FFG would 'probably' like to do something like this..perhaps its a lack of resources. Do we have any rumors of a fan-scenario contest yet?

jh