If a spell does damage, which value(s) are deducted from the damage total? Is that stated anywhere in the rules? Does armour count? Is toughness deducted or (the IMO often more appropriate) WP?

If the spell action card does not state differently the general rule is:
If the spell inflicts damage , normal soak is applied (i.e. Toughness + Armour Soak).
If the spell inflicts wounds , it ignores soak alltogether.

Thanks for the reply. Could you please refer me to where in the rules it says that (I have the core box, no guides)?

AlephTau said:

In the core rulebook on page 59:

"Spells or other abilities that inflict damage generally have their damage listed on the individual action card ..."

in the section about calculation of damage and damage reduction, so this indicates to me that spell damage works exactly like melee or ranged damage when it comes to soak.

The thing about spells that are causing wounds though (instead of damage), can't seem to find it but I'm quite sure that the destinction between doing wounds and damage is as I described previously.

Thank you for the reference and the rule you are using shure makes sense.

I specifically had this rules problem during tGS using Gobspite's "Da' Brainbusta" spell. The spell uses Spellcraft vs. Target Discipline (WP). The success line states the following: "The target's brain feels like it is about to burst! The target suffers 3+Fel damage and gains the 'Ed 'Urtz' condition"

Now this spell seems to affect the targets mind directly. I felt like it would be kind of silly to deduct soak and toughness here. I also thought that deducting WP would be much more appropriate here. It shure is disapointing, that the rules don't clearly state what to do here (unless I'm missing something).

Yeah, from the flavour of the card I'm surprised that it doesn't ignore soak (unless it does on a comet? haven't seen the card recently). 3+Fel is pretty weak unless the damage ramps up with boons. Maybe it's all about giving a player the 'Ed Urtz condition!

Damage is done the same way for everything. Toughness and Soak and Armor Soak all get deducted from any damage, unless the attack in question states otherwise. Spells, Ranged Attacks, and Melee attacks, etc, all work the same. So, unless the spell states that it ignores Toughness, ignores Soak, or ignores Armor Soak, all three of those defenses will be subtracted from the damage.

Yeah, I'm gonna houserule the heck out of that. No soak against spells that are clearly mental manipulation attacks.

Keep in mind a couple things:

- Toughness is a generic Fortitude value. I wouldn't chuck it out completely. I suppose you could swap WP for it, but where do you draw the line and which spells?

- The descriptions are meant to be evocative and are only one descriptive example of how the spells works. It is fluff, essentially, and I would be wary of changing rules just to fit certain fluff.

- Changing the rules for how spell damage work might unbalance the game. Wizards are not supposed to be powerful damage dealers at low ranks. If you make their spells ignore armor and/or toughness, you are skewing combat heavily in favor of spells.

Well, there are moments in roleplaying where fluff becomes more important than rules. At least if what you essentially want to achieve is immersion in a story. I think the above mentioned spell is such a case. If I would have just deducted soak and toughness after describing the spells effect there would have been a hollow situation in storytelling where people go "huh?" and immersion ends. To me that's good enough a reason to houserule. Especially since a) the system wants me to houserule all the time anyway and b) the rule that you use is not very clearly mentioned (it's not even in the magic book!).

There are plenty of good RPG systems which make a difference between spells that affect you physically or mentally. I think it's important to make that distinction. I don't think that it is needed for WFRP very often, because there are not that many damage dealing spells anyway. Also, most of them seem to be clearly physical (bright order).

To sum up: yeah, houseruling that soak doesn't always count against magic makes it more powerful in very few situations - in the name of good fluff, so be it!

AlephTau said:

Do remember that those spells that are "vs. Discipline (WP)" for example get "bad" dice depending on the targets WP and if discipline is trained. A character with high Willpower, trained discipline and such who is targeted with such a spell would be a lot better off than one with low Willpower and no discipline, so in a sense the mental resistance is part of the actuall spell roll.

Example:

A wizard casts a vs. Discipline (WP) spell. The Wizard has INT 3.

If the target has an WP of 4 and discipline trained that will add 3 purple dice and one black, hence 3 purple and 1 black dice as "bad dice".
The same wizard casts the spell on someone with WP 2 and no discipline checks and that adds 1 purple die, hence the bad dice will be 1 purple die.

Obviously the spell has greater risk of faliure and if it succeeds it is likely that it gets less net successes/boons and thus has lower effect in the first case. Miscast are also more likely to happend when casting at the WP4-character.

To me this represents the difference distinction between spells that affect you physically or mentally.
But sure, it might fit to also soak with willpower, but that would make them almost pointless against mentally strong characters (which might be a good thing if you like to play that distinction up).

Yes, it becomes a little difficult because chance to hit and damage are interwoven in WFRP. Substituting T and WP in spell damage calculation while disregarding armour soak doesn't change the outcome very much however, unless you are talking about a very heavily armoured target, which would imo just serve to illustrate my point. Just browsing through the spells we have so far, it seems to be a very rare occasion anyway.