Combat Damage Confusion

By MegaDestroyo, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Hey all,

I'm a purchaser of this game, and, sadly, that's almost all. I've played it with a group of friends as the GM, but only three times. I'll admit it - I'm a boardgamer; the RPG realm is quite foreign to me. I know this question is quite simple, but I've decided to swallow my gamer-pride and just ask it outright, because, quite frankly, I'm confused.

So:

How is combat damage calculated? Specifically, how do 'soak' and 'armor' work?

Thanks so much,

-M. Destroyo

I'm new to the game to, so don't worry, it's better to ask, and there are things we all don't get, I'm an RPG player of about 30 years and this game has had me scrating my head some-times.

Armour makes you more difficult to hit and adds it's value in black mis-fortune dice, so the basic roll to hit someone in a Mail Shirt (Def - 1 Soak -2) is...

1 X Purple Challenge Die (the basic challenge rating for melee)

1 X Black Mis-Fortune Die (the armours rating)

Soak is the armours ability to absorb damage and is added to Toughness to give you the final damage reduction so acharacter with Toughness 2 wearing a Mail Shirt would have a damage reduction of 4, if the same character was hit with an attack that did 9 damage he would suffer 5 wounds (9-4=5).

Some weapons have the Pierce quality they will cut through the armours soak, but not the characters Toughness, so if the above character was hit with a Pierce 3 weapon, he would still have a damage reduction of 2 (his Toughness), the extra point of Pierce is lost as his innate Toughness is not affected by Pierce only the Armours Soak value is effected.

Hope that helps

Mike

Thanks CharlieBananas,

That was exactly what I needed to know. Things will run much smoother now.

-Jesse

No problem, glad to help, don't forget the minimum wound rule P.59 core box set rule book...

If damage reduction would result in a hit causing no wounds then you still inflct 1 wound. If said attack would have inflicted critical wounds, then the minimum damage is instead a number of normal wounds equal to the number of critical hits generated.

Cheers

Mike