I'm just starting DMing. And is the Ironbreaker as abusive as it looks? Armour 5+Toughness 4 = minimum total soak of 9. Add a shield and Wargors are down to one damage agaist that. So if I use something to threaten the ironbreaker, everyone else would go splat. And Saga of Grugni means that people can't attack anything else. Should I just ban Ironbreakers as abusive and broken? Also is there anything else I should ban?

Also how do Wardancers play? I can normally figure things out by reading the cards - but the bouncing between stancesjust throws me.

Bouncing between stances is what they do. I'm not even sure if it's a good mechanic, but it's certainly an interesting one. They benefit from having cards in other stances on recharge, so they are contantly moving between one and the other.

Ironbreaker....Sigh. You wouldn't be wrong to ban it. But I have a watchman currently with nine or ten odd soak and he can drop at the best of times aswell. Honestly, I don't rely on my players turtling up around him, there's always one willing to gung-ho his stupid face in front of a greataxe. The ironbreakers' best tactic is to turtle up like a demented tick and take the pain, but that means if everyone else wants to take advantage of it, they have to follow suit. Which makes them slow and not every player is going to be happy dancing to the ironbreaker's tune. I personally would allow it, but then my group is probably too powerful anyway.

IB and Swordmaster have been shown to be seriously broken/overbalanced, however you can take any character and dump a crapload of actions and 5 blue breaks.

I did some fixes: dl.dropbox.com/u/167876/WFRP3%20Hafner%20House%20Rulebook%20v6.pdf

jh

Nah. The best tactic for the rest of the party isn't to turtle round the ironbreaker. It's to move as a buzzsaw with two handed weapons, allowing the Saga of Grugni to handle melee combat and then double team with someone squishy and lightly armoured but lethal.

And Guh! I hadn't spotted what sort of damage you could do by using Path of Falling Water in turn 1, Speed of Asuryan as an active defence, then Final Stroke of the Master. Greatsword +8 damage, with two white dice to cancel out the extra challenge dice. Yeah, that's unpleasant enough to go straight on the banned list.. Still I can use the justification that swordmasters of Hoeth stay in Hoeth and ironbreakers in their holds. And later put the PCs up against a Champion of Khorne using the Way of the Sword... (That says, I can't think of the justification for flinging your sword at someone and path of the hawk is weak by comparison).

Anything else? Especially magic?

Some of my thoughts:

1. The saga cards are not tied to Ironbreakers, anyone (even non-dwarves) can get them, even if they thematically fits the dwarves best. Of course you as a DM can limit their use to dwarves, ironbreakers or ban the saga cards alltoghether, or just ban the Saga of Grugni (that particular saga doesn't make a lot of sense from a story perspective anyways).

2. Any starting character could get Scale armour or even Brestplate & Chain, if they opt for poor quality they will still have money left over for other stuff. So even a starting human could easily get 8 soak without the shield and then add a round/kite shield and end up at 9 (or even 10 if they buy toughness 5 for their 5 extra creation points). Sure, the Gromril is free but it's not impossible for other races/careers to become almost equal when it comes to soak. I would not ban Ironbreakers simply because they get a good armour, there are other ways to hurt them (stress/fatigue for example).

Initially I had the same thoughts as you, thinking that the Ironbreaker was to powerful, so I houseruled that Ironbreakers, Swordmasters and War dancers were to be considered advanced careers. It solved the whole problem really.

Champion of Khorne using a conservative based attack?

Shame on you.

Doh! Point. And I can't use it for orcs or other chaos factions either. Right. I'll just have to introduce the Brettonian duellist and fencing teacher Geoges Argent who absolutely despises rapiers in a reckless stance.

I don't see why you can't use it for other chaos factions. Nurgle or Slaanesh champion with corrupted longsword? Eh? Eh?

I can't really see the lord of Hedonsim going for the levels of discipline the Way of the Sword imparts. Or the Lord of Corruption with that level of elegance. I'd be more inclined by the Changer of the Ways - Strike, random movement, seemingly inept slash, what the -aaggggghh! And they only realised the setup for the Final Stroke of the Master when it was far, far too late.

Now Nurgle and Slaneesh using Ancestor Sagas, and Nurgle using the other powers to make for bloody indestructable masses I can see. And Slaneesh and Tzeentch using wardancer powers.

I think Tzeentch is very much in line for the wardancer actions.

What stance am I in? Not even I know any more!

Ive played in two games that each had an Iron Breaker and trust me, there are plenty of way to take that guy down. Disease, corruption, madness, stress, or even more simply lots of little guys, they may only be hitting for one, but those one damage hits can very quickly add up to a downed iron breaker. Especially when you make as many of those hits as possible be critical hits. In short an Iron Breaker has never been a problem in my games, and as stated by others, any other character can get virtually as good defense anyways. I think of their career trait as more of a speciallized wealth upgrade more than anything.

Cabello said:

I agree with this. IBs are tough, and do require the GM to make some alterations, but aren't game-breaking.

Some options/suggestions:

- You can make encounters more difficult in general. Just make sure you warn the group that the IB is making encounters more dangerous. Then, of course, make sure that the majority of the baddest enemies target the IB when possible, so the squishier PCs stand a chance. Or, don't, and make the PCs have to work for it and have an element of danger and potential death.

- Send lots of little opponents. Each hit might only be a single wound, but 12 goblins hitting an IB will still do 12 wounds.

- Remember that opponents get to use Action cards. Feel free to go through your Melee and Ranged decks and pick out ones that ignore armor soak and have the majority of your enemies use those specifically vs the IB.

- Use actions and abilities to inflict Fatigue or Stress on the IB instead of trying to inflict wounds.

- Keep in mind that the Sage of Grungi only applies to enemies in the same encounter. Enemies not currently engaged with the IB can feel free to attack other PCs. Also, nothing prevents an NPC from disengaging from the IB and moving to attack another PC. It does inflict a wound on them (for the extra maneuver), but it is legal if it makes sense for the NPC to do so.

Pah! Legal... We are GM's! Like unto tiny, nerdy, Gods!

Also on the Saga of Grungni breaking, remember, all the other players have to move to keep up with him. Which means if you attack them at range, then the Ironbreaker has to move, and in the iniative step between then and when the rest move... Bam! Dead wizard.

Well, there is always my solution. 100% random starting career selection. Congrats to the guy that actually gets lucky enough to get an ironbreaker.

Before starting the campaign, I actually sat down with my players and told them and I quote.

"The characters we make today will all die horribly or at the very least be maimed to the point of retirement. The characters that replace them will all die horribly or be maimed to the point of retirement and so on and so forth."

I then went on to describe what limited knowledge I had of warhammer. They had questions about the differences between warhammer dwarves and tolkien dwarves as well as about the world. I explained that I was looking to run a grim and gritty campaign that morphed over time in direction with the ebb and flow of characters. They had all participated in Pathfinder and DnD campaigns with me, some of them had been playing in games with me as far back as 20 years ago. Some have only played in one game run by me. After answering what I could, I repeated the above quote.

The response could be summed up to....., "$%^&* man, I'm in."

So, if they get ironbreaker. I'm ok with that.

I have to go with cd8dman, because the way wfrp3 characters work means that everyone can now find a niche that they can fill.

I just wish I'd made my players draw randomly before I started my game.

*sigh*