okay, as part of something I am brain storming, their is a good chance that a PC might well end up falling from a dangerous height. It was having started to work out the mechanic for this that i came to realise, that the game seems to entirely lack a system for handling falls.

The closest there is seems to be the 'random enviromental damage & effects' sidebar on pg.21 of tome of advntures. These rules seem pretty much unsaticfactory to me.

So have I missed something, or is it yet another thing the system doesn't really do?

zombieneighbours said:

Really? I love the environmental damage rule.

For falling I just throw 1 die for every yard fallen. Works like a dream.

That's a reasonable house rule I guess, but frankly, even after a 10% discount, i paid a substantial amount of money for a game with some fairly major transport/component sharing issue, non-colour blind friendly dice and an absence of some of my faverate careers from earlier editions, only to find out that it doesn't really provide systems for half the most basic elements a story might have in it, and that the official rules seem to be, make it up.

I could have damned well bought three copies of WOD for my gaming group, and had money left over for dice and photocopying, and a WOD PDF supliment for the price i payed for WFRP, and had a system that actually had rules for the stuff i want to do with it.

What exactly is it you expect for falling rules? It's an environmental effect you have them make an athletics check at a given difficulty fail=fatigue, bane=wounds, chaos=crits. If it's an uncontrolled fall add misfortune dice into the mix as well, if it's landing on a more painful surface add more misfortune dice as well. Then after a certain height your just dead.

A section that says that, rather than leaving me to figure it out maybe, guidelines falling distance difficulties.

A set of rule which are not so ambigious that two posters give me two different approaches.

You know, the stuff that you might expect to find in the finished core book of roleplaying game with an RRP of $100

That isn't to say that I mind systems which largely leave things up to the referee, I will gladly play dogs in the vineyard, but dogs in the vineyard doesn't expect me to pay $100 for the basics and then try to sell me overly expensive and not very useful suppliments for the next few years( just bought the games master's toolkit, and it is the worst RPG product i have purchased since the forgotten realms campaign setting for 4e dnd...i mean seriously...i paid money for a four cards which said 'refe to your GM for further details', a book that has two useful pages? I would have happily thrown away 90% of this product, with only the GM screen and some of the location cards really looking like they will be useful)

Falling is an environmental effect. The RAW for environmental is to set the difficulty level for the effect and make a roll. The GM call is in how difficult the fall is. That's the simplicity of it. The addition of fortune/misfortune dice is the global rule for the game. Everything you need is there. You just need to decide on what kind of flavor you want to add to your games. Is a 10' fall potentially life threatening or is a 100' fall onto the cobblestones below survivable. That's a call you need to make for YOUR particular game.

WFRP 3 is a toolset, the rules are there use them how you will. This game is a departure from the traditional, this shouldn't be a shock to anyone even if their only exposure is the back of the box - hell lifting the box should be a hint. It's strengths are it's flexibility, it's story driving rules and it's simplicity. It's unfortunate for you that the game isn't living up to your wildest expectations. For $100 perhaps some research may have been warranted ahead of the purchase to see exactly what your getting into.

I own first edition, i own most of the enemy within and will own it all eventually.

I own every book for second edition.

I bought 3rd edition because I love WFRP. What i got for my money....well lets just say, I only purchased it because it was WFRP in name. I was well aware of many of the issues with 3rd ed ,but even knowing a bit about what I was letting myself in for, i have been left disappointed by many elements of the game.

Tool boxes are fine, as i have said, i love dogs in the vineyard. But if your going to have a system that says 'make it up as you go along' about almost all actions you might undertake, then you have to provide fairly large amounts of examples, 3ed doesn't actually bother to do that, unlike dogs.

So out of curiosity I went through the environmental effect rules and they actually specifically list various falling damage. Interesting what one can gleam from actually reading the rules.

Kryyst said:

I found this on third read through. We are talking about tiny snatchs of writing which are easily over looked.

Even once found, the section doesn't really explain the system that well. And further more, having re-read it, and thought about it, it occures to me, that frankly looked at the attributes, skills, soak, and wounds of starting characters, i don't see many character dying from what the system describes as a lethal fall.

Off the top of my head, assuming a worst case(non-criticial) scenario for the roll, against a human with a single toughness advance, such a fall leaves them with he'd still havea couple of wounds less. Under best case examples, he could get up and walk away.

The falling rules, so far as they exist, as somewhat silly.

So if it's a lethal fall why are you bothering to roll in the first place? If you are having them roll to see if they survive then you've already made the assumption that the fall isn't lethal. Now you are just arguing over how much damage a fall should cause. If you think it should cause more damage - have it cause more damage. If you want some kind of rule behind it add in misfortune dice to adjust for the situation, falling on hardground is going to hurt more then falling into a bail of hay or water.

It's all there in the system using the core mechanics. No need to make things more complicated then they are.

Because, as the system points out 'you fall and die' isn't an interesting narrative element. However, a serious fall still needs to be a threat to be a useful event in the narrative and to maintain suspencion of disbelief.

And by the rules that are written your wrong. A daunting enviromental complication is one which is meant to instant or gradually fatal. Sure, PCs should have a chance of survival, but if the system says you cannot even die under the worst conditions, then it doesn't meet the discription of instantly or gradually fatal.

I already added misfortune dice, five of the bloody things, and when every single challange dice comes up double challange and every misfortune comes up challange, you still cant kill a starting human with toughness 3 with a single lethal fall.

I am capable of house ruling, and i will do, when planning an adventure, but it's still a valid point that the system deals badly and somewhat unclearly with falls.

zombieneighbours said:

No, the system doesn't deal with falls - to your specific liking. But further to your dwindling scenario if you are rolling 4 challenge dice and 5 missfortune dice and not rolling single bane or chaos star perhaps the character is meant to live.

Or as another option if you have some idea of how much damage it should do then why not just do that much damage. There is no problem, just your perception of a problem.

Quite specifically in the rules in the daunting section for potentially fatal falls it refers to using a progress tracker as a way of giving an element of risk to a lethal fall.

If you want a fall to be lethal, use a progress tracker, as the rules suggest, as a way for the PC to avoid the fall; you don't try and kill them by rolling damage, because in all likelihood, as you have found out, they will likely survive and relatively easily, but that is because you aren't using the rules as suggested not because the rules are flawed or missing.

Stick with Dnd or Rifts/Palladium if you like tables for everything from falling to taking a piss in the woods.

Heck, I've heard that some sourcebooks in GURPS require some knowledge of physics and mathematics (as well as expertise in Microsoft Excel).

Obviously the free flow type of RPG isn't your cup of tea.

TABLES TABLES TABLES! I NEED TABLES!!!!!

Necrozius: Sorry, who said a bloody thing about tables. All i am asking for is a set of rules that is able represent the fall from say, a roof top, and have it be a relatively realistic. That doesn't actually require a table in this system. It might be possible to represent simply by saying on top of damage taken from enviromental damage dice, a character takes an automatic, unsoakable wound and a fatigue for every yard that he falls. (This is just an example, and i haven't done the maths on it to see how it would work yet. )

Pumpkin:

The tracker to insta-death approach is fine...if your being swept over angel falls, less useful if your fighting on a roof, or narrow ledge. In any case, it completely ignores the fact that there are falls which have a varying degree of lethality, rather than just falls which hurt you a little and might break your arms on the one hand, and falls where death is assured by any but the rarest of events.

Falling of a short cliff, or a second story roof is not the same thing as jumping out of an airoplane.

For falls of a possible lethality, just apply a flat wound level based on the distance fallen, and then apply environmental damage on top.

For almost certainly lethal falls, reduce wounds to 0, then apply the 4d environmental damage.... if you are lucky, you could walk away from that, but in all liklihood you will at least go unconcious and take some kind of critical damage, and relatively likely you will die, unless you have exceptional toughness.

When I first read this thread, I sympathised with the OP. I even thought 'heck, even ADnD had a rule about this. Roll xd6 depenting on meters falled or something'. Which was silly in adnd because if you had enough HP you could fall from 20 meters high, and then go on as if nothing happened.

I realise that WFRP 3rd is a more free-form rpg. It's heavier on setting than on rules, Compared to DnD or other rules heavy rpg. Thank god this isn't Rolemaster with those insanity-inducing percentage tables. The advantages of this approach is a more cinematic battle (opposed to DnD's dry and boring I-do-a-5-foot step movement' repetition). The sooner you realise this and stop seeking rules, the more you will enjoy this game.

Personally I had the same problem with healing. I couldn't find concrete ruling on how to deal with resilience checks and their frequency, first aid, and magic healing limitations. So I got fed up and stopped caring. I am the GM and I limited the healing according to my interpretation of the rules (although my players will most likely rebel when they find out).

hey! be nice to rifts! that game is a blast with tons of wacky ideas. and the skills are percentage based so you think it would get a little more love from older wfrp fans. it is rolemaster, hero system, and the likes that require calculus to play

and how does falling work? well, gravity is a measure of the force of attraction between any two bodies that can be calculated by mutiplying the mass of the two objects in question by the universal gravitation constant and dividing their product by the distance between them squared. for warhammer

we can rule that any fall over x to the 3rd feet high reaches terminal velocity and explodes on impact. damage from all other falls should be caluctaed at a rate of the square root of n-2 so long as n is an integer greater than but not equal to 0 minus soak and toughness.

plutonick said:

I have no issue with rules lite, WFRP 3E is not in anyways rules lite. Its highly abstracted, both in handling resolution of events and time flow within a round, but it is hardly light on rules.

It has specific rules on a location card, for how to determine if some one falls of a cliff edge, but doesn't have working rules for what happens if you do fall. That isn't being rules lite, that is being sloopily written.

Well written rules lite systems give you a frame work to build on and lots of examples to build upon.

It's a fairly arcane complaint. If you are going to go after the game for missing something, I'd imagine things like social interaction would be in more need of detailed rules than falling. My character is always talking to people, but has only been in 1 fall (it was a short fall, and the GM threw some fatigue and lingering misfortune dice at us).

Unless you're addressing the need of your game ... I'm trying to imagine the game in which your character keeps falling and falling, but rarely gets to talk to someone.

Anyway, I think you are mistaking "well written" with "detailed rules." I somewhat blame d20, and the need for detailed rules for every situation. Now every game is held up to that standard, and so much of it is needless. Games used to (and many still do) rely on the GM to fill in the gaps with their own judgement and common sense. This iteration of Warhammer is one of those games. If that does not appeal to you, then maybe it is not for you.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Issues relating to social conflict resolution are an issue I write about a lot, especially with regards to D20 games. It urks me that decent rules of it are few and far between, why haven't I raised the issue with regards to 3E WFRP? Well mostly because the game has atleast sort of attempted to take a step in the right direction by including social action cards. Are things perfect, no, ofcause not, but i can cut the game some slack, especially as system less social interaction is almost the norm in roleplaying games.

Why do i care about falling? Well, appart from feeling that a system I've payed a substantial amount of money for should cover the four basic physicial threats(combat, falling, fire and drowning), falling is actually a threat that is fairly iconic in my memories of WFRP. From the Oldenhaller Contract's roof top chase, through to the climactic fight of the power behind the thrown, the treat of falling to ones death is an oft repeated theme in my best memories of WFRP.

As far as well written point. A rules light system might not give a detailed set of rules, specifically for falling, but if it is well written it does give examples how you use the rule that are available to represent it.

I'm not asking for 'one hundred and one tables, and a life path on which you can die in character creation' nor am i asking for rules for 'what happens if i i sire a child after exposure to warpstone', or 'what damage does a volcanic erruption do', Instead, i am asking that the system covers the four basic physicial threats which are common to fantasy adventure. It isn't really a big ask...especially since the rules they do have cover both combat and drowning fairly well. Fire less well in fairness, not many games get that right.

A fall is always X feet and Y damage - X and Y being the values the GM feels fit the narrative. There aren't specific values because 3E isn't a simulationist game. The GM just has to tell the player roughly how tall a building is and roughly how dangerous it is - "it'll hurt a lot," "crippling," "fatal." It's as dangerous as the GM wants it to be.

Is the issue that you as a GM can't think of what would be appropriate damage for falling? Does it make it a better experience to have something written in the book rather than making a judgement call?

Falling rules isn't like combat or social interactions. It doesn't need a full "system." Usually it's just a simple rule (1 die per 10 feet or somesuch) and that's that. WFRP doesn't have that simple rule, but they definitely give you the tools to rule on it.

What about the lack of that rule takes away from your gaming experience?

macd21 said:

A falling damage system does not have to be simulationist. You don't have to have a 'fall X feet, take y damage' base, you could have a system based upon rough brackets of danger, and the narrative role of the fall. But the system doesn't have that either...atleast no so far as dealing with falls which are potentially, but not certainly deadly.

Yes, it is as dangerous as the DM wants to make it, which is exactly how it should be, but that has nothing to do with the system being ST up as it is. In a game that actually bothers to include guidelines that make sense for falling damage, i can set the danger and narrative purpose of the potential fall, by selecting either a specific hight, or a hight bracket.

The difference here is that the DM is given no guideance (atleast no any that makes sense). If you follow the rules as written, PCs will fall of roof and get up largely unhurt on every occation. That is poor design.

Doc, the Weasel said:

I am capable of it. I can house rule the system to produce effects i am comfortable with. But the fact that I, a GM with twenty odd years gaming experience can patch a flaw in the ruleset to my own satisfaction, does not stop that flaw existing.

More over, if you use the tools the system gives you as it suggests you should, you get results which are markedly out wack with what it claims it should produce. You get 'fatal falls' which can't kill a PC(well...maybe an elf) and will most of the time only slightly inconveniance them..

The enviromental Damage systems work well for threats which slowly work away you, such as drowning and smoke inholation, but they are lousy at dealing with threats that deal sudden and potentially damage, such as falls.

Does it lower my enjoyment? Not especially, but thats neither here nor their with regards to it being a flawed system for adudicating fall damage.