Last night we played our first game. I have purchased the player guide and the 3 vaults so I'd have the bits and pieces. Using that we had plenty of everything to play and I used the "day late shilling short" scenario. Armed with that, we head on down the road.

I had read that some players said that combat was hard and deadly. So with that, I tried using beastmen in the henchman role and lumped together in a group and pooled their hp. One character as an archer with agility 4 and the short bow does 5 damage does 9 when he hits and 11 with his aimed shot action. So doing 11 and subtracting the soak and defense was still enough to kill one beast man outright. Then when the beast man attack, if they hit, did maybe 8 points of damage, going off memory, subtracting soak and toughness they would take 2 points of damage.

The wardancer used a two weapon attack which dealt 18 points as both weapons are figured seperately, even subtracting toughness and soak killed the remaining group.

Basically, I found that by doing a few points at a time really left the pcs safe and they tore through henchmen. Is this what some are finding? It actually seemed better to just use the beastmen as individuals instead of as henchmen.

Ranges as abstract worked ok. The wardancer engaged in melee and the other two engaged in ranged. Worked fine. One was at medium range and the other was at long range. They peppered the beastmen with arrows and bolts while the dancer cut them up with blades.

When the wardancer did go down, the surgeon of the group snuck through woods and used the bandage wounds cards to heal wounds with each hammer of success. Since the card had a recharge of only 1, the token came off at the end of the turn meaning she could heal every turn healing wounds and keeping everyone healed.

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong as the pcs seemed to blow through combat. I think the healing is what turned the tide as the surgeon could heal everyturn. Maybe I did healing wrong, but it seemed like she just had to roll her int. and each hammer was a healed wound.

Could someone maybe give a summary as to how combat should be? I've read some indepth threads, but our combat seemed to be less deadly and more of a meat grinder for the npcs.

Sounds like they did well.

You are correct in saying that henchmen are much weaker than individuals. Remember this as you tailor encounters in the future. If they're having a tough time and you want to avoid a TPK, just have a couple run off or conglomerate into henchmen.

A person can receive only one type of healing per day, so: You can drink 1 healing draught per day. You can only get First Aid healing once per day. There's where it seemed a little easy

You should check out what this guy did with the DLSS demo: rpggeek.com/article/7458432#7458432

jh

Whelp, first of all, I'm pretty sure splints and bandages is a once per encounter ability. You then get to use a first aid check during each rally phase. That would considerably hamper the super-heals.

Next, I think your applying a wee bit too much damage for some of your attacks, double weapon strike is supposed to only add the damage of the weapon, not damage plus character strength. Next, you'll want to chuck in both assists for your monsters, are you using A/C/E properly? Finally, most people gave up on using henchmen a loooooong time ago I think.

My understanding with ace is that gives bonus dice to your rolls. The creatures were hitting, it just seemed like they weren't doing much damage.

So with the one type of healing per day, that will help alot as the splints and bandages is powerful otherwise. I don't remember reading on it that it was once per encounter, I'll re-read it.

The double strike I'll check that again. I'm know to misread in the heat of battle.

I can see why they dumped henchman. The extra dice to hit was fine, again just a damage thing. And toughness for their hits made them very weak compared to the wound value on the cards.

Thanks for chiming in. The game has potential for continued playing. I didn't think I would like the bits and pieces, but they go a long way with tracking data and staying clear of the character sheet. Good visual aids for everything when needed. I'm even thinking of using those card protector sheets so that card usage doesn't sprawl out over the table. When I played DND, the character generator printed them out all on a few pages and it was great. The problem with the dnd power cards is everytime you leveled or changed a weapon you needed to print new cards, so this system is better.

The only problem I see with putting their action cards in sheet protectors is tracking recharge rates.

Speaking of recharge. Could someone answer me when to take a token off? I'm understanding at the end of a character turn, one comes off. That means a recharge of 1 can be used every turn. Again, I'm sure I'm missing something.

Thanks again for all the great input.

As has allready been mentioned, you can only benifit from one source of healing per day. So when the surgeon has used a card on the war dancer, he/she can't do it again untill the next day.

Furthermore, if "healing" in combat I'd add a lot of negative modifiers to the check as applying bandages etc. requires the one treated to be still, so I would not let the character recieving healing do anything else (with the exeption of when healing is done magically/spiritually) and if there are enemies hacking away when performing the healing I'd at least add a bunch of black dice to the check (maybe even an extra purple or two).

Furthermore I believe that when treating someone you get purple dice depending on how wounded your target is, when the cards say vs. targets injury level. So if you are treating someone with only normal wounds you get one purple die as a base difficulty and if you are treating someone who has got one or more critical wounds you will have two purple dice as a base difficulty for your check.

I find that using a mix of henchmen and normal monsters work the best.

Henchmen are "easier" than individuals. Henchmen should be used to simulate extremely large numbers of enemies, and will allow the players to heroically hew them down left and right. Generally, henchmen should only be used to keep PCs occupied while the leaders work their evil plans. I wouldn't ever use henchmen by themselves, unless I wanted a quick fight. For more of a challenge, yes, use individual monsters.

As mentioned by Emirikol, it has been clarified in the FAQ that PCs may only be the (successful) recipient of a particular type of healing once per day. So First Aid may only be used once per day. To be healed more than once in a day, you would need multiple types: First Aid, Blessing, Healing draught, Spell. I think those are the only types of healing (long term care falls under first aid)

That is partially why combat can be so dangerous. Healing is very limited, so wounds tend to accumulate. Unlike D&D where it is usual to be able to full heal up between encounters, WFRP wounds tend to linger over combats, and even between days, they they begin to add up until the PC gets a long time of rest (which they don't usually have while an adventure is happening).

J,

You may wish to put away your basic action cards and just print out one of the summaries below for each of your players (3"x5" size).

Agreed on the D&D power cards. These don't need to be updated!

For actions what you will find is that there are very few, or no, actions with a recharge of 1, It's usually 2 or more.

You take a recharge token away at the end of each character's turn. So, you use, for example, reckless cleave, recharge 3(as far as I remember) and place three recharge tokens on the card, perform a maneuver. Your turn is now over, take one recharge token away.

Recharge 2 actions are every odd turn actions that a character will find incredibely important, active defences obviously are the big ones. Recharge 3 are the kind that you build up to, say for reckless cleave you would perform an action like berzerker rage beforehand, benefiting from even more damage as you power your way through some poor beastman.

Coming from wargaming, I tend to use dice to place on the cards to measure recharge, since I have loads of them. I keep tokens for measuring ranges and initiative.

Using "Henchmen" is a way to make the PCs feel more heroic and make it quicker and easier for the GM to manage large groups of enemies. Even though I generally like henchmen-type rules in many RPGs, I find that they don't really service my needs in Warhammer for enforcing "grim and perilous" combat. As such, I tend to treat all enemies in my games with their "full" write-ups.

The "once per type" healing clarification is good to know. This prevents a group taking on a Shallyan priestess who can simply pray their wounds away every 5 minutes.

While the ACE dice won't directly influence damage output, the additional dice can generate extra successes which, for creature actions, typically either bump the damage output or (more impactfully) add conditions or critical wounds. The Beastman "Savage Strike" is a good example where even just 1 extra success can mean a critical blow. I've found that the best way to handle Agression dice is to use at least 3 at a time. Don't throw them away 1 or 2 at a time. Save them for a particularly advantageous attack or to give a dying creature one last hurrah before the PCs take it out. Afterall, they can't use them if they're dead!

"Normal" wounds are fleeting and not all that scary. Even if the PCs are victorious in the end, it's those niggling criticals, conditions, insanities and diseases that demonstrate the dangers of Warhammer combat.

I don't believe that there ever have been (or ever will be) action cards with a Recharge of "1". That's because Recharge of "1" is functionally the same as "0"...the action can be used every round. So, you'll quickly know the difference between "all the time" actions and those that aren't.

Like Crazy Aido, I also use dice (six-siders) to track recharge. It's faster and easier than shuffling dozens of little chits and I don't have to worry about them wandering around, landing on other recharging cards, etc.

I may be misreading it, but splints and bandages shows a 1 recharge?

I thought it was an exclamation point "!", indicating that it recharged every rally step. I could be remembering it wrong.

gsoul is right, it's one use only and recharges in the rally step.

Ok, cause I'm looking at it and thinking, "Why would they put an exclamation point on the card?" And it confused me because you're right, a one recharge would be useless as it's gone the next round. But I have a good understanding now. Thanks.

You all have cleared up alot concerns for me. My little group is actually looking forward to a real campaign. I did the scenario just to try rules out, now I'll have to make a story and actually try to bring everything together. I'm thinking it will go much smoother now. Thanks everyone.

Post up here about your campaign, we'd love continue helping*.

2nd ed. is always good for long running stuff, plus you could always buy one of the microwa... boxed adventures.

*read:feckless meddling.