Hello Everyone

So I just got my core set and last night I read through the Role-Play Rulebook. This morning I sat down and decided just for fun to create my first character. I cracked open the chapter related to the topic in the Roleplay Rulebook and after about 30 minutes of trying to decipher this bungle of confusion I have given up. It seems like some key pieces of information are missing from the process and since their are no examples of character creation in the book Im not sure what else I can do.

Are their any good online resources or examples on character creation anywhere that might be useful in helping to unconfuse me? And just out of curiousity, why in the world would you write a character creation chapter of a role-playing book without examples? Are you trying to start a new trend or did someone forget to hit save for the last version of the document before it went to the printers?

Ok perhaps if I ask some specific question I might get more help.

According to the rulebook you recieve 20-25 Creation Points when making a character, but it seems the math is quirky here somehow and I feel like Im missing something. If to get everything at the highest level (3) aka Wealth, Skills, Talents and Actions(cards) only costs 12 points total, why would anyone ever not always start by buying the max? I mean you still have a minimum of 8 points which can be used to raise to stats from 3 to 4 for example? It seems kind of automatic, I don't see where the disadvantage of doing that would be? In particular given as I understand it that those 4 areas aside from attributes (str, agi.. etc..) there is nothing else to buy? It seems to me every player would always do this so why not just automatically give it to them?

lets start there.

Addressing your question about resources to assist with the character creation process, there once was a *very* good character creation summary worksheet that was developed by Headless Hollow that I considered absolutely essential. Unfortunately, it seems that the creator may have been prompted to remove it from his website for whatever reason (along with the rest of his brilliant WFRP3 stuff). There may still be copies of it drifting around somewhere and if I can find a link, I will try to point you toward it.

That said, my experience with character creation is that not all players (in fact, very few) will actually spend all 12 points to max out the non-Characteristic categories. Rather, what seems to happen is that players will tend to spend points increasing their Characteristics to the desired levels first, and then figure out how to divide up the left overs. For non-Characteristic purchases, 1 Creation Point can actually mean something but raising Characteristics forces you to spend them in groups of 3 or more.

As an example, I had a player roll up a Troll Slayer. He began with 4 in Strength and Toughness. He decided that he wanted to buy those up to 5 each to start and right there he had already spent 10 of his 20 points. I don't recall if he ended up raising his Agility to 3 as well but in either case, he only had 10 or fewer points to spend on the other four categories.

I don't think that any of my PCs spent the full 12 points on the non-Characteristics.

Sure, Humans get 25 Creation Points to start but they also begin 2 Characteristic points behind the other races, so they need to spend more points on them if they want to be on the same level.

maybe this will help

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

As an example a human starts out at 2 in all the statistics (str, to, ag, fel, int, wp) and gets +1 in two of them depending on career. Having 2 in any stat will come back and bite you in the ass quite often, as stress/fatigue will quickly start affecting them, at least to my mind you want at least 3 in all your stats. So to raise the remaining four stats into a value of three will cost 12 creation points (3 x 4) and then you "only" have a row of 3:s, which is quite avarage and not very good at anything at all.

Sure, you have 13 points over (as a human) and can max out wealth, talents, skills and actions. But if you want 4 in any stat you either have to have a dump stat of 2, or start compromising on other stuff. Not to mention if you want to have two stats at 4 or one at 5. A soldier character might well want to have 4 in both toughness and strength and 3 in all the others.

It depends on how you play, in my gaming group as an exampe everyone had different views when creating characters. Some did as you suggest, maxed out wealth, talents, skills and actions and had lower stats. Some went for some high stats and had some dump stats, while others went for higher stats and put less in wealth, talents, skills and actions. As a general rule, those with dump stats are "paying" for it every session in form of stress, fatigue, insanities, desease, corruption (which affect them easier depending on what stat they dumped), but then they "shine" when using their characteristics of 5 or similar.

So it depends a lot on how you plan on playing the character and how you want the character to go about in the world.

Remember that a characteristic value of 3 is "average", and not good at all. Having 2 in a characteristic reflects that you are very weak in that area. So if you want to be a strong, tough dude you need at least 4, maybe even 5.

I do agree that the character creation section isn't very good, examples could be good and I think there are character creation examples present in the players guide (the hardcover book) and also a slightly better structure in that chapter overall.

skolo said:

Thanks mate that was bloody briliant, exactly what I was looking for.

Well Its hard for me to judge the importance of characteristics at this point being a newb and all, but I think after a couple of sessions it will all make more sense. I can't help but get this feeling that Im going to end up printing a lot of these guides and keep them in binders because as odd as it may seem the community has done in many ways a better job of explaining the game and rules and such than the core rulebook does, at least the one that comes with the game. Its very light and without an index its not much of a reference. Perhaps the players guide is a good second purchase after all.

Characteristics are pretty important and they also cost a lot to raise through play compared to everything else (talents, skills, actions cards) that for the most part cost 1xp to raise. I know if I was going to be a player, I would be sinking as much of my points in the characteristics then anywhere else.

While on the topic of character creation, I noted that in the core rule book it references "Item Cards", but my set seems to have only come with 1 item card "Khordens Hammer". Was their supposed to be more cards or is it when they said cards they ment card.

TheBoss said:

You'll find more item cards in other sets/expansions/adventures. I really wish there were more! I really love the card aspect of this game. Coming from D&D 4E where I made a lot of my own cards for items, NPCs, Quests, etc, I really appreciate the inclusion of cards in WFRP.

TheBoss said:

You don't really need a lot of special item cards to get rolling. Korden's Hammer is used in the Eye for an Eye adventure in the back of the GM booklet in the core set. Items in general are very hand-wavey as written in the rules and you won't need a card if you are simply taking armour or weaponry and applying the superior or crappy conditional modifiers to it (which is also handwavey lol). I personally nabbed a bunch of the Paizo item cards from my game store and made a slew of new "special" items and to provide some quick references to mundane items for encumbrance, etc....after patting myself on the back I will probably never unearth those cards from their current resting places in-game.

Regarding character creation...holy beans what a mess. I would heavily recommend picking up the player's guide in pdf format at the very least (the book isn't much more expensive these days so it really comes down to preference and whether or not you are located in Nome Alaska). For P.G.they've shifted the text around to make it a bit clearer. The inclusion of the full spectrum of magic and religion is a major plus as well. Additionally they provide an example creation of a Troll Slayer which is helpful.

However, it is still like having four people talk to you at the same time about how to file taxes in the U.S. if you have offshore holdings and corporate taxes to deal with. It's like wait...you? no me? How many dependents? What the heck does "head of household mean"? How much of my corporate expenses can I write off? Wait what?

Also go to Liber Fanatica's website and at least nab issue #7 because there are pre-genned characters that make life oh so easy (both for the ease of just handing out a character or for examples of a ready-to-go PC). When I was first diving into the hornets' nest that is v3 I suffered through generating characters for my skeptical players all by my onezie. I knew that if they had to sit through char-gen with their pre-existing notions of v3 that it would have scuttled our efforts and they would have beat their money out of me (or stolen my credit card, ordered a bunch of blow-up dolls and shipped them to my office at work...they're evil s.o.b.s). Unfortunately for me I found out about LF VII literally a week afterward. There was some minor fist shaking at the heavens.

I hear that and to be honest with you as I look at the core set as a whole it definitly has kind of a beta feel to it. I can see that buying the players guide is probobly high on the list if for nothing else just clarity. I haven't read any of the other books yet and of course I haven't played yet so Im not sure how its all going to come together, but so far with the Rules Book read I have to admit that while Im not confused I already see a few problems with component distribution, despite being made for 3 players I see us having to share cards and components none the less. Its a very minimalist set, Im suprised they are calling it the core set because while you certainly get more than the 4th edition red Box this set has a very minimalist feel to it and most of it seems very poorly put together in terms of writing clarity and depth of content, its all extremly surface. It may be enough but im not so sure, getting a bit nervous about this money sink.

I got the core set when it came out and photo copied an extra set of basic actions (since I have 4 players) and it worked really well and we had tons of fun with only the core box content (and an extra set of dice) and we are still having loads of fun with the game (but I've added most of the expansions). Sadly, some sections of the core box isn't very well written (or proof read) and that's a shame.

Check out the free downloads section of FFG's site:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=93&esem=4

Pick up the Basic Action Reference & the Action Worksheet pdf's. That should go a long way toward aiding in spreading the actions around if-needed. My players thus far haven't picked up the same actions with advances which, while useful in having enough components for everyone, also makes each character varied from the others. But I suppose you'd have to view it in that light to not be bothered by the restriction. In that case the action worksheet is easy and free.

Also try and pick up Strange Eons custom card application & the Liber Fanatica add-on to help in making your own cards/duplicates/etc. This makes house-ruling and custom tweaking really fun and easy. We haven't found any issue with printed-out cards ruining our gameplay but if you like to stick to professionally and officially distributed product then Strange Eons won't be for you. My group-mates and I have been playing for...sheesh almost 20 decades with a couple of em, so we aren't squeemish about function-over-form (without Strange Eons I'd just use post-it notes or playing cards with my rules taped to the fronts lol).

Strange Eons is Here:

http://cgjennings.ca/eons/download/update.html

The WFRP plug-in is here:

http://www.liberfanatica.net/Addenda.html

L.F. #7 is here:

http://www.liberfanatica.net/LF7download.html

If you are looking to delve into the Warhammer World a bit more there are quite a few fan-made resources but I won't bother you with links since you may not need those.

Callidon said:

Seriously, these links should be in the support section and in a sticky, this stuff is priceless.

Regarding character creation, I´m begining to write a adventure that teaches how to play the game and create a character (remember teh zanzer dungeon on the D&D box?). It will be like a "tutorial". If anyone has a suggestion to add, send me.

As for the # of players, using the pdfs of blank cards solve the situation. We play with 6 chars and I have the core, all expansions, neither vault or guide (except the creature vault), and all goes fine.