Looking at gathering storms and wind of magic: it looks to me as if some of the fights seem very tough for a beginner party.

In gathering storms, the goblin final fight in particular looks delicate to say the least . With about 2 regular gobo per player plus the shaman, I don't see how the PC can survive unless you play the shaman as an idiot (or your whole group is composed of waywatchers/two weapon fighting/great weapon killing machines).

In Wind of magic the "introduction" scenario is a bit over the top: the big demon seems ridiculous in power for beginner (and has 8 smaller demons and half a dozen cultists/mutants with him).

doctor-boom said:

I think the best idea will probably be to stop the ritual rather than kill the big daemon.

-=* MORE SPOILERS *=-

I had the exact opposite problem with the final boss in the graveyard. My group has 2 combat specific players, one support player, and one social specialist. So, even if they are a bit high level, the scenario encounters usually balance out, though I usually increase the challenge a little because they are balanced for 3 players and I have 4.

For the crypt portion of the Gathering Storm, I gave both final encounter NPCs about 25% more HP and a slight armor bump. I figured that would be enough. The beat both NPCs down like they were vuvuzela players. Seriously, it took 3 round. It took them 2 to kill the skeleton, and 1 to kill the necro. They hit large, but man... they went down way faster than I expected. It was a bit anti-climactic after I nearly killed them in the cemetery and roughed them up a bit in the ossuary.

The fight in the swamp was just about right, so now I'm not sure what to do with the Goblin fight. I've been pretty good up till now about making sure the fights are very close, but the last one really took me by surprise.

My group of 3 characters are all early in their 2nd careers after completing their initial careers and spending some points on non-career advances or dabbling in another career briefly, so they aren't starting characters by any definition. That being said, they got to the Beastmen encounter last night and it was very nearly a TPK (and might yet be since we didn't finish). 2 Gors and 3 Ungor Henchmen per PC is a lot of opponents to have to fight through only to reach the Wargor, who is capable of putting any one of these characters down with a single blow with a good enough roll. None of them are real combat monsters, so that might have something to do with it; and they waded into the herd spreading their attacks around in such as way that not a single opponent was taken down during the two hours we spent on the combat, making the whole encounter appear like a no-win situation. My players figured out a little too late that they could not defeat the herd in combat and (after a rather overt reminder from me) that they needed to focus on retrieving the stone, but by then it was almost too late.

We had to end the session at the Rally Step, so now it remains to be seen if they can survive the progress tracker driven escape sequence in the next Act or not. The priest of Sigmar has enough crits that he will die if knocked unconscious again (as it is I had to intentionally avoid attacking him again until he had had a chance to heal himself of some of his wounds or he would already be dead). The Bounty Hunter is currently unconscious after having made a run for the stone only to get the smack down from the Wargor, and the wizard, who reached the stone and freed it while invisible, has just had the spell run out. The priest needs to get the Bounty Hunter up so he can at least make a run for it on his own, but has most of the Beastmen between them at the moment. The cart is where they left it at the edge of the clearing and none of them can manage the encumbrance to single handedly carry the stone back to it, so they will either have to double up on carrying the stone to the cart (which will make it nearly impossible to fight off the Beastmen) or go retrieve the cart and bring it through the herd to the stone. Neither is exactly an exciting prospect when they're all so banged up.

We talked about it some more after wrapping up and the player of the sneaky character resented the fact that the stone is in the middle of a large open clearing, making it impossible for him to use his skills to get any closer. They are all deathly afraid of accumulating too much stress or fatigue, so burning fatigue to make a run for the stone from long range then using Assess the Situation to try to recover before being swamped by Beastmen didn't occur to them either. They further felt the encounter is written in such a way that the direct approach (fighting their way through) is presented as the only approach, but in hindsight realized that they would have been better off creating a diversion to lure a bunch of the opposition off into the woods, then double back for the stone, and that they wasted too much time trying to actually fight the Beastmen. I have to agree that while this is presented as a combat encounter, the best course of action for the PCs is to avoid combat and just head straight for the Lightning Stone as fast as possible. Furthermore, unless one of them can make a Hard (3d) Athletics check to bust the Lightning Stone free, it takes 3 rounds to cut or untie the ropes. The Wargor alone could probably deal with them in 3 rounds and when you throw several more Gors and Ungor Henchmen into the mix, I don't see how 2 PCs could be expected to hold off the Beastmen while the remaining one frees the stone. Fair warning, don't present this as a combat encounter unless you drastically reduce the number of opponents. Instead, encourage the PCs to use alternate tactics to lure the Beastmen away from the Lightning Stone or at the very least allow them to use Stealth to get closer to it than long range so making a desperate dash doesn't tax them quite as much.

At this point, if they persist in making an attempt to escape with the stone, I'm afraid I'll have to have Franz Bieber suddenly show up (drawn by the sounds of combat) leading a hunting party of NPCs, Foaldeath intervene on their behalf (not as realistic, but perhaps he can divert some of their pursuers from the shadows without given himself away), and/or have the Beastmen start tripping over one another in Keystone Cop fashion, just to give them a chance. Players generally hate it when NPCs have to bail them out or it's obvious the GM is contriving to "let them win", but I honestly can't see them making it out of the Oberslecht alive and with the LIghtning Stone in the next Act otherwise. Actually, they'd be better off abandoning the stone and running away, hoping their attack gives Izka pause long enough for them to get back to town, get medical assistance, and then return with reinforcements. Of course, this too is a cheat since Foaldeath was so adamant that they had one shot at stopping Izka from leading a massive attack on Stromdorf and if anything their attack only got the Beastmen more riled up. It might be better to have them pursued all the way to town where they might be able to provide enough warning and then assist with stopping Izka's plan to burn it down, but that also diminishes their overall role to just a few rounds of combat (which could still result in character death), while the NPCs handle the majority of the herd.

People complaining that PCs succeed too much in this edition or that it doesn't seem deadly enough need to create some rank 2 PCs and have a go at this encounter, then remember that it was written for starting PCs with just an advance or two under their belts.

Sounds like a lot of fun, mac40k!

Honestly, a lot depends on whether your party has a maxed-out fighter or not. A Trollslayer/Soldier/Mercenary with 5's in St and To and trained in WS with a few good melee actions can hack through NPCs pretty well (although generally only 1 at a time). Some combats can become easier with such a PC leading the way.

A group of more rounded PCs, with none particularly focused only on melee, will find combats a fun and interesting challenge, even at higher ranks (as mac40k has shown).

Hi,

we fought this fight this weekend, and it was pretty hard for my group of three players. The group consists of 1 celestial apprentice, 1 woodelf pitfighter and 1 dockhand. This are the first characters the players have made, and we are all pretty new to the game. I read the fight, and i decided that it would be far to heavy for them to fight 2 gor per pc, so i had 2 gor in total plus 9 ungor henchmen and Izka. They decided to go for the lightning stone, take it away and run for their lives. Somehow, the came into some bloodlust and startet to fight against the beastmen and the plan was secondary. They were lucky to kill 1 gor very fast, but then had some hard times against the second gor, a bunch of henchmen and then Ikza nearly knocked out the dockhand with 1 blow. The then fought a hard fight, hardly injuring Ikza, ignoring the rest of the beastmen. Because of Ikzas soak value of 9, the only managed to do 1-4 damage a round, sometimes bit more, sometimes less. The pitfighter fell unconsious after a few rounds, nearly dead. Then the mage remembered the initial plan, and with a lucky try took the lightning stone away. I assumed that he could manage to bear the stone, cause he only wore his robe and a staff, so i didnt consider him as encumbered. The Dockhand also landed a lucky blow, killing Ikza at least. He used his movement to disengage from the brawl. Then i assumed that the other beastmen would fight with each other, so the Dockhand took the unconsious pitfighter ( heavy lifting is is job ;-) ) and then they got out off the Oberslecht. I didnt even play out the chase, just mentioned some beastmen showing up at distance, cause the dockhand just had 3 wounds left, the pitfighter was already unconsious and the mage has just magic dart as a fighting option at the moment.

The mood grew desperate over the fight, and there was some arguing about the fight later. My players on hand hate to get rescued by NPCs, but if i killed them all they would not have played the adventure again, cause that would feel strange to them. We discussed that perhaps some heavier armour would help, but we came to the conclusion that this would not have made the fight significantly easier.

So, at the end my group did it, but only because i didnt set up all the gors, and because of some good decisions and pretty lucky rolls. I never give the enemies special weapons or armour, unless its in the adventure, eg Izkas axe. Perhaps a woodelf is not a really good pitfighter, and a dockhand not having direct access to weapon skill isnt a perfect fighter either. But even with a soldier, a sigmar priest and a bright wizard i would consider this a tough fight.

I do not complain, cause at least the players get very cautious and they have an impression of how dangerous the old world can be. But i find it pretty hard to have challenging combat encounters on hand and not to kill the PCs on the other hand. Perhaps a gamemaster has to adjust the fights for his very group of PCs in WHFRP, i will try this in the next encounter.

Greetings,

Sky

Probably the best suggestion that I can give is to make each combat into a series of "acts".

Send in one wave, once that wave is nearly done, lets the players get a brief rally then send in teh second wave, brief rally, then send in the third. This allows a couple of things:

1) it gives players a chance to do a quick first aid or recover a point of fatigue, should they be having problems.

2) It allows the GM to stop and gauge the difficulty of the combat so far, how the PCs are faring, and allow him to adjust the next wave of enemies should it be necessary.

This is in effect what I did with the beastmen fight in TGS as I didn't think the party could deal with the encounter as written.

There are two PC in the party- a scout (excellent with a bow), and a grey order apprentice.

I had tagged on a Merc as a npc, thinking they might need some extra hth help, and they convinced the Lector to accompany them.

They dealt with the first wave fairly easily (of gor and ungor), with a mixture of bow and magic, and a little hth. Seeing that, I threw a second wave including izka at them. The scout got off a god shot at Izka, causing a bit of damage which proved vital in the end as another round of his hard hitting could have meant curtains for the party.

The fight finished with the Merc unconscious and near death, and the scout close to unconsciousness, the priest hurt a little, and the mage untouched.

Then we had a a bit of a chase to finish things off... all in all, it worked well, and allowed me to control the danger to the party.

I am playing TGS with six characters at the moment - 5 humans (a thief, a gambler, a barber-surgeon, a Burgher and a pit fighter) and 1 dwarf (a rat catcher) and the fights are proving pretty tough. None of the characters are particularly focused on combat (even the Pit Fighter only has a Strength and Toughness of 4) so even with the large group size I have found that it has been necessary to reduce enemy numbers.

Against the beastmen the dwarf was knocked out by Izka pretty quickly, the thief was critically injured trying to sneak up and backstab another Gor and it was only the gambler's skill with a longbow that allowed them victory.

Against the undead it was a dfferent matter. Tackling the large numbers of Arisen dead was difficult. The party ended up dragging the unconscious Burgher into the Ossuary with both the Barber Surgeon and the thief on the edge of collapse as well. However when it came to fighting Lazarus Mourn and the big skeleton they managed to defeat the big bad guys in about three rounds. With the right rolls and the right cards I think the Pit Fighter did over 30 points of damage in the first two attacks. Even with a shield and plate armour the skeleton did not really stand a chance (especially as the gambler had managed to cut the shield free after the first attack). Also Mourn's magical attacks were not powerful enough once the protection offered by the skeleton had been removed.

We haven't got to the Goblins yet but I will be interested to see what happens. I will probably adopt a "wave of goblins, rally step, next wave" approach but knwoing my players they will probably take one look at the numbers of goblins and walk back to Stormdorf looking for backup.

I'm doing the Beastman fight in the near future so it's very interesting to read these entries. I've been playtesting the encounter on my own and I was shocked how deadly it is if you just run it as a straight combat encounter. I've already read some excellent suggestions here. This is how I would run it:

• encourage the players to find a sneaky way to get to the stone by emphasizing how outnumbered they are and how dangerous these guys look
• failing that, if it comes to a fight, just have it be as deadly a fight as it is written
• in case of a TPK, they all wake up tied to a stake or imprisoned in a wooden cage in the beastman camp the next morning, leading to a whole new escape sequence

Some of you may feel I'm too soft, but I don't like killing off players, nor do I like "letting them win"; so I just treat death as not really dying, but getting heavily wounded and experiencing a major setback. Think of the movie Solomon Kane (Warhammer fans should definitely see it). There is a scene where he gets crucified and still doesn't die, but rather witnesses the girl he was supposed to rescue being carted off to some evil fate. Using character death in a campaign like that is grim and doesn't force the player to abandon his character, which is something I simply don't like as I feel it creates an emotional distance from the game's story when you have to come up with a whole new character to step into the plot.

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

I like the way you think, but unfortunately, if a PC has crits = T when they go down, such that after flipping one of their wounds over to a crit they have more crits than T, then they are dead per the rules. Some groups may be fine with you house ruling this to "mostly dead, but not really", while others may feel that such a change means that they don't ever have to worry about character death because the GM will always find a way to save them. I don't like killing off PCs either and retroactively altered the sequence of events to have a PC act before an opponent (to heal himself) that otherwise would have struck him dead, just to avoid the character death. For us at the time, this was an acceptable alteration that didn't go quite as far as bending or ignoring the rules on number of crits needed to trigger death. To each his own however, and you know your group better than the rest of us. If what you have proposed works for you, more power to you.

In video games, when you die, you reload and return to your last save point, which is a good mechanic for a video game, but it doesn't work in a tabletop game so you need something else... And replacing a dead character with a completely different one just doesn't feel right to me.

I have at least one player who will enjoy the game more in the knowledge that final, complete, "throw away your character sheet and roll up a new one" death will never befall her character. But of course, being defeated in combat still needs to be "punished" so there remains an element of tension. There are a variety of ways to deal with this, for example being robbed, imprisoned, falsely accused, etc. ...

The Tome of Adventure actually mentions this briefly in the section about character death in longer campaigns. That's where I got the idea, actually.

The GM's only job is to make sure his players enjoy the game. If that involves going against the rules or the "spirit" of the setting theen thats what you should do. ONly you know your players. The only thing to worry about is the possible impact of having a "PC's don't die" rule on either long term enjoyment or thee enjoyment of other players. But as I said only you know your players.

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

Great idea! That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about :-)