It seems to me that a party of Rank 6+ characters that have been appropriately built would be nigh unstoppable. Based on the fact that reaching this point would not take too long (relative to other RPGs), does anyone feel that it would then be time to retire said party and start anew? Or would it be time to start battling daemons on their home planes, etc?

If a party of Rank 6+ characters isn't completely debilitated by insanity, disease, mutation, and crippling wounds, then the GM isn't doing his/her job.

If you were to run a mathematic combat simulator on a group of Rank 6+ characters they would mop the floor with a lot of things in a toe-to-toe brawl. But as Doc mentioned, the stats and abilities are only one factor in a high level Warhammer character. I'd stop just shy of saying that a group that lived and succeeded that long had a poncy GM though. Flukes happen and sometimes characters manage to avoid all sorts of deadly scenarios. A group with no chance of achieving lofty levels of power don't have much to "hang in there" for. By Rank 6 you are going to have Arch Lectors, Leaders of Knightly Orders, frighteningly powerful wizards, Guild Masters, Witch Hunter Generals, etc.

However, the threats they'd be facing at that power level would probably be best handled on a mass-combat scale and stat them up like a hero unit for WFB. Additionally, the Warhammer setting is such that in order to achieve those levels of power, the party is going to have a lot of responsibilities to take care of in order to keep that power through actual roleplay. You don't get to just be an Arch Lector because you can curry favour with Sigmar with a pile of dice and massively awesome divine spells. An Arch Lector would have to constantly manipulate and maneuver for position and influence with their other Arch Lector peers who don't want to see them become the next Grand Theoginist. And though you have a great deal of personal power, so do they, and you do have to sleep and eat...lemonade laced with strychnine can kill a Rank 6 character as fas as the pie vendor in the streets.

To go sideways for a second...In D&D there are so many "detect this," "impossible-to-hit armor ratings" and "immunities to that" abilities that you really can't kill a high level character in mundane ways. In Warhammer the fate of a high level character can be to starve and freeze to death in the Grey Mountains alongside their initiate level minions. High power play in Warhammer can be interesting though, because you have a shift from constant mechanics tinkering... to do more damage, get more trinkets, meet new influential sponsors... to more of a chess-game style affair where things are largely handled at a roleplay level. My groups rarely make it that far but, heck, by the end of tEW campaign for 1st edition, players were supposed to be riding pegasi (that one still makes me giggle).

Anyway, in addition to the shift in tone of the game itself, the characters really would have a laundry list of powerful movers and shakers within the Empire that either wanted to bring them to heel or have them destroyed...by cult leaders and noble lords alike. A party of four characters with that level of influence and power can be killed in a straight combat sans daemon princes (a large group of city watchmen might suffer some heavy losses but in the end they are going to simply out number the players forcing them to flee or fade to black). But to ME, the fun types of stories in Warhammer that would involve high rank characters would probably be more along the lines of them sponsoring some lowlie group of knobs that they intend to use secretly move against their enemies. AKA a great way to segue into a new campaign with the old characters being the high and mighty types.

It can also make for some fun secondary campaigning if the players and GM meet between sessions to state how they wish to advance their high power character's goals and then figure out how to roleplay through it with their rank 1 Halfling Baker next session.

A Rank 6 Bright Wizard would be pretty horrifying in combat I'd wager. But if he's not in the nut-house by then he deserves to be able to blow up half of Ubersreik if he feels that's the best way to handle a situation. He'd be the best one to rely on, as he's avoided censure by his order for this long and is obviously very influential there with heavy backing amongst the other orders. Additionally he's still able to conceal his mutations enough to go about burning cities to the ground for his own very good, no impeccable reasons. And to top it all off he has weathered so many tremulous miscasts and brushes with consumption by the realm of chaos and the dark gods themselves that he's still a player character and not an NPC. Go Rank 6 Bright Wizard go! Burn that heretic riddled evil city to the ground I say...unless this is you going mad with power in which case....buckle up homeslice it's about to get real.

At some point, it's reasonable to assume that characters NEED to be retired and campaigns restarted.

My intention is to go to about 35 advances in the current campaign. In my campaign, that will put characters at their 4th career (we have career change at 10xp/9-for-humans; keep-your-card).

Thoughts on campaign longevity (advances including meaning nights of play):

• Thousand Thrones - 40 advances
• The Enemy Within - 35 advances
• The Doomstones Campaign - 35 advances
• Path's of the Damned - 15 advances
• The Gathering Storm - 6 advances
• Death's Dark Shadow - 15 advances

We REALLY need a new, longer-term, official campaign. The strung-together scenarios are ok, but I'd really like to see something more along the lines of what they've done in the past , or what Pathfinder does every month.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_Warhammer_Fantasy_Roleplay_publications

We're on the 8th session of our new campaign. We've finished TGS, Rough Night at 3 feathers, Karl's & Scents, With a little help from my friends. Now that our group has lost it's swordmaster and wardancer to an Initiate of Ranald and a Grey Wizard, things will probably slow down a little.

Combat heavy groups simply burn through scenarios faster (ime).

jh

The other end of this argument is "unstoppable, how?"

It's tempting to look at Rank 6 PCs and see their troubles as Rank 1 troubles + 5. In reality, at that level getting killed by some random goon (or even some arch-demon) should be the least of their worries.

At that level, they are dealing with Empire-level problems. For example, they aren't worrying about how many goblins they can kill, so much as how are they going to placate the Elector-Count of Middenland enough that he sends troops to support the northern war effort that they have been tasked to manage. The Emperor charged the PC personally with this mission and (due to a some family madness) is likely to banish said PCs and their families should they fail. Of course, in courting Middenland's Elector-Count, the PC has made some enemies in Nuln, who work against them in procuring the weapons they desperately need. An Arch-Lector of Sigmar sees this as willful mismanagement on the PC's part, and has been discrediting him in Altdorf.

By Rank 6, the challenge of the game shouldn't be in somehow not dying against all odds, like it was at the beginning of their career. It should be in somehow not failing.

Great contribution. My 1st group has now played every printed adventure of the 3red edition and is at 22 XP.

Callidon said:

My rank 4 Bright Wizard got killed by a sneaky goblin on a giant spider. A rank 6 one would barely be any tougher. But as you suggest, he was all but a basket case by then anyway. The party niche system works well (and is nigh unstoppable) when everything is going right, but once it breaks down then party members all have their weaknesses.

When it all comes down to it, players are frequently morons and never spend their xp on wounds...

Keep in mind that defense, even for PCs, does not scale up as much as offense. Fighting Giants, Dragons, Ogres, Trolls... those are all still dangerous enemies, especially if you send them in numbers rather than individually. Or, send the PCs against a more numerous enemy, such as a Skaven invasion or an Orc Waaagh or Vampire's Undead army. The sheer volume of the enemy can itself be deadly, even if the individuals aren't. Remember, each hit does a minimum of 1 wound. So 4 PCs vs an army of hundreds or thousands of skaven/orcs/skeletons still equals a lot of wounds. At the rank they are, if they are personally getting into a combat, then these are the appropriate sort of combats for them to get into (even if backed up by their own army).

In essence, nobody is actually unstoppable

Crazy Aido said:

I hear that. My players have spent all of theirs on stance shifts and ability scores so far.

jh