If Gms are adopting the cardless, chitless system, then here is a solution to recharging cards

Recharge roll

After using an action, each player should roll 1d12. If the result is equal to or less than the actions Recharge rating, then it is exhausted, and may not be used again this encounter. If any result from cards or abilities adds tokens to an actions, subtract that amount from this draw. If it removes tokens, then add that amount to the recharge roll. Regardless of penalties to the draw, a zero Recharge action can never be exhausted. When Talents are exhausted, they now cannot be used for the rest of the encounter. Each Fortune point invested on this roll adds +1 to this roll, and this may be done after the roll.

If an action is ongoing, it has a duration equal to its Recharge rate in rounds, after the last round of duration, roll to determine if the Action is exhausted.

For actions with a recharge rating of !, the player must decide what the rating will be , as noted in the text. This is the amount you need to roll against after this action is used. If the Action is Ongoing, the roll is made at the end of the duration, which is equal to the total amount recharge tokens placed on the effect, in rounds.

I'd let them use a fortune point if they wanted to reroll (or you could just make it an auto success with a fortune point).

jh

I'd go with Emirikol's addendum.

Too many 1 or 2 recharge abilities that can make up a core engine for a player during combat.
Or perhaps make it only exhaust on a roll of < rather than <=

There are a lot of abilities where you can't use this "doing away" however. They usually adapt the recharge tokens as a duration for the "buff" they give, or a countdown until the action's effect manifests.

However, any attempt to remove the recharge tokens, is a good one (imho )
I'll try it this weekend, and let you know how it goes.

Cheers for the advice!

An even simpler fix we used was to subtract 2 from the recharge rating and charge this as fatigue or stress cost to use the action card. If the recharge rating is 2 or lower, it's essentially free to use.

This worked very well for us, reduced the amount of tracking required and still kept a drawback for the higher recharge abilities (reducing how often you can use them), but eliminating all the recharge tracking.

The only tricky part was with some action cards where the high recharge is to the benefit of the action. In those cases, we determined either a lower or free fatigue/stress cost and used the recharge rating as the duration of effect (which is essentially what it is anyway in those cases).

As said in my other thread, I've abandoned this way of working, it seems counter-intuitive when actually using it. (You're adding numbered dice in a game that doesn't use em). Plus there are really too many cards that make use of the recharge-mechanic (adding/removing tokens, counting the number of recharging abilities, durations, ...), meaning too much houseruling to make it streamlined.

The suggestion with recharge -2 = fatigue (/stress as well I suppose) I see working even less... A reckless melee character with To 5 is bound to rack up a few fatigue simply by playing reckless. Let's say he easily gets to 3 fatigue at the start with an extra manoeuvre, already tired before fight, and he rolls a single blood-drop on his first roll, whatever it is.
That means as soon as he uses one recharge5 ability, he'll already be at 6 fatigue, getting winded. He'll have penalties on all his physical stats, simply because of him using 2 attacks. He'll need to spend the next 2 rounds assessing the situation, because even using melee-strike in reckless stance risks putting him closer and closer to unconsciousness (and upping his penalties with the extra fatigue each time).

Similarly, a mage takes 3-4 stress easily while casting a somewhat powerful spell... I'm a fan of Raistlin, but this seems a bit much.

To me, it quickly breaks your character. Higher levels characters have multiple action cards for use. The current recharge system takes that into account, it leaves them the other options, if they chose to take them.

This system leaves a reckless player the option to cast/use 2 bigger actions, and be out of combat for half the time as a result. (Or have a priest on "stress"-duty full time for that particular player).

I never counted how long fights last in an average but they tend to be fast and deadly (well, at least in my games). My guess is that they don't last much more than 6-8 turns, on average.

Considering this, what about this :

When you use an action card, you tap the card.

- Recharge 2 and 3 cards : You untap it at the end of your next turn.

(so you can use them as per RAW, once every other turn.)

- Recharge 4 and more : will only recharge at the end of the encounter.

Using a Fortune will immediatly refresh any tapped card.

Nisses said:

Actually, if you are playing Warhammer Lite, you do need regular d10s, for critical wounds, insanities, miscasts etc, etc. Thats why i suggested it. But of course, if you do like playing the regular game, then my suggestion wouldnt be much use anyway. Its meant to help actually run a warhammer lite game with just dice and character sheet like its supposed to do, but doesnt actually work, due to relying on tokens, cards etc. There may be another solution to this, but I will probably try it out. For actions that last until a charge recharges, thats just a duration effect of 1 round, per recharge, so thats pretty easy to houserule. For token adding subtracting, just apply that as a -1to the recharge roll for each token added, or +1 for each token removed. Everything shouldn`t be too difficult to adapt. Anyway, just a suggestion.

Nisses said:

Actually, if you are playing Warhammer Lite, you do need regular d10s, for critical wounds, insanities, miscasts etc, etc. Thats why i suggested it. But of course, if you do like playing the regular game, then my suggestion wouldnt be much use anyway. Its meant to help actually run a warhammer lite game with just dice and character sheet like its supposed to do, but doesnt actually work, due to relying on tokens, cards etc. There may be another solution to this, but I will probably try it out. For actions that last until a charge recharges, thats just a duration effect of 1 round, per recharge, so thats pretty easy to houserule. For token adding subtracting, just apply that as a -1to the recharge roll for each token added, or +1 for each token removed. Everything shouldn`t be too difficult to adapt. Anyway, just a suggestion.

Another way of doing this could be with a new resource called Action Points. Every character starts each encounter with a number Action points equal to their Agility or Fellowship (depending on if its a combat or social encounter). Whenever you want to perform an action, you need a number of Action points equal to the recharge rate of the action. At the end of each round, each player gains 1 Action point, which can take their total above their starting points.

For example, Gustaf the thief , with 5 Agility, starts with 5 Action points. On the first round of the encounter, he draws a throwing knife, and performs the Ranged Shot action, with a cost of 0 Action points. At the end of his turn, his action points rise to 6. On the second turn, he decides to use his Backstab action, and pays the 4 action point cost, reducing his points to 2. At the end of his turn, his total rises to 3. In the next round, unable to make use of Backstab, Gustaf moves into position to use another Ranged Shot. However, he does need to make use of a Dodge attack, to avoid harm, with a cost of 2 action points. At the end of his turn he is down to 2 Action points and still unable to use Backstab for at least another couple of rounds.

For effects that add or remove recharge tokens, removing 1 token is the same as adding 1 Action point, while conversly, adding a recharge token, removes 1 Action point. Therefore a character could spent a Fortune point to increase their Action points by 2.

Phantomdoodler:

Thought of that one as well.
Unfortunately, there are several action cards that count the number of your recharging abilities and apply a bonus based on that.
Priest of Sigmar, Greatsword of Hoeth & Wardancer I believe. And a Gold wizard most likely as well.

Not only that, but in order to do away with recharge tokens, you're adding a new resource, which you're going to have to track with... tokens... (a slider is possible of course, but pushing a marker across a slider, or adding/removing a token isn't all that different.

And finally, according to the RAW, you can at present perform an action with recharge 8 in round 1, a recharge 7 in round 2, a recharge 4 in round 3, a recharge 5 in round 4, and an active defense between rounds each time. For a total of 32 action points. All perfectly legal and normal.
As per your suggestion, you'd need a lot of rounds to make that possible.
With a system of action points, you'd need to either up the amount of action points gained each turn, making all lower recharge-rate abilities effectively have recharge 1, or let the character gain 1 action point per recharging action card. In which case you're effectively doing the same thing as RAW, but storing your action-points in a central pool instead of on the separate cards themselves.

A lot of the suggestions going around these days really destroy the entire system and I think the best approach would be to just play 2nd edition.

So many details of the system is removed by the suggestions floating about. The recharge rates etc. are not just random. Just look at the wardancer cards. They have been created to create a flowing combo that under the best curcumstances can be very lethal if executed right. Your suggestions destroy systems like this completely and you may as well play something else, because a lot of cards will be pointless, completely gimped, overpowered and gameplay balance will be completely gone. The things they have done with cards aren't just random. I see systems in this game that I haven't seen in RPGs before. In older RPGs attacks or spells just stood on their own. In this game it's very different and the recharge system is very central to the action card system.

I don't think the question should be "How do we remove/change the recharge system", because doing so will screw so much with the system, that you'll break it. Instead I think it would be wiser to explore how to track the recharge so it's easier and requiring less space. I have a few idea that I will present here:

1. Each player gets an A4 paper with 9 spaces. These 9 spaces are used for recharging. When a card with 5 recharge is played it is placed in the 5th box. When the players turn is over all cards are shifted one box down: Recharge Sheet
2. Use dice to represent the tokens.
3. Can't think of anything else, but I think the system itself is so fundamental to the game that changing it will make the combat and action card system fall completely apart.

Gallows, I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but the Recharge Sheet doesn't work too well either
For one, you lose extra space at the table, because you add a whole new A4 per player. (plus NPCs)

You also can't easily use a common sheet for the whole party, because people lose track of which card belongs to whom.

I thought up a "gameclock" a while back, that sort of uses the same mechanism, but on a central sheet for the entire table. It's one idea I've yet to try in practice. http://users.telenet.be/Nisses/GameClock.jpg You use 2 chits with an identical marker and 1 of the pair is put on your card, the other is put on the clock, x spaces away from the current marker.

dice: is a possibility. small d6 dice, and combine 2 for those big recharge-value actions. Still doesn't reduce table-space used, but it's less fiddly already.

As a final attempt, I'm trying to think of a chit that is literally a dial. At the end of each turn, you simply turn the dial 90° each turn. That makes it only 1 chit on the card. With a different back-color, you can flip the dial to accomodate a recharge of 8.

Using dices will be worse than using tokens. First, you'll need to add a bunch of d6s (or d8s) for each player and a whole lot for the GM. Second, finding the right number turning the dice around will take as much if not more time than actually reaching for or returning a token back in his cup or pile.

The idea of the dial chit is kind of nice though. But you need to make sure it's big enough so that if you move a card accidently, it doesn't turn the chit around and you lose track of where you were.

That said, I'm confident that there's a way to remove recharge tokens entirely without affecting the game TOO MUCH. Sure, there probably some consequences of doing it but I'm more willing to accept few things aren't working as well and gain 15-30 minutes of game time every session than keeping the system as it is and lose precious game time (I mean, game time where you actually do something and not just fiddling around with tokens).

Silverwave said:

If you're using 15-30 minutes each game session just fiddling with recharge tokens (assuming an average 6 hour session), then you're doing something wrong.

It takes maximum 10 seconds each round to fiddle with the tokens for recharge. And that's even stretching it, because sometimes you use a zero recharge cards.

That's between 90 and 180 action cards played in a session. I don't think I've ever seen that many in our 12+ hour sessions.

Last session was fairly average. 2 fights. 17 combat rounds total times 4 players which is 68 action cards. That's not even considering that putting tokens on your cards is most likely done once you have used the action and the next player has already started his turn. Even then, if we say we used 10 full seconds for each fiddle of tokens for recharge, we still used less than 12 minutes and that's 1,67% of the play time. But like I said... I don't think I have ever used for than 5 seconds to put recharge tokens on a card, considering other people can do something while I fiddle with tokens. We're not all sitting there watching those tokens going on the cards.

The most time consuming aspect of the game by far is assembling your dice pool, making the check and interpreting the result. If you want to save time the best way to go is to remove the special dice system from the game.

I see the tokens as a very simple and easy way to manage book keeping of a rather complex combat system.

Right.

So what were we saying?

Well, I ama little frustrated to think the game cant work without chits. I actually bought the Players guide etc, so that I wouldnt need all the shiny cards and tokens, using the Warhammer Lite rules. Its a shame its not easily possible. But heres another idea:

Action Tokens

Each character has a series of numbers running under the character sheet, for each encounter round, and a cardboard token for each action, a small square of card with the Actions name. After using an Action, if it has a Recharge value of 1 or more, place your token on the next round number, and move it a number of places forward along the chart, equal to the Recharge rate. When the current round comes up, remove the action tokens on that number - these actions are now possible to use. Any Action tokens on the sheet count as recharging actions. If you need to remove a Recharge token, move the action one place back for each "token". If you need to add a recharge token , move the action one place forward for each "token".

So Gustaf, acting on encounter round 2, uses his Backstab action (Recharge 4). After using the Backstab action, he takes his Backstab token and places it on 7. He then decides to spend a Fortune Point, and moves the action two places backwards to 5.

Ok so you may think, arent you just replacing tokens with tokens? Well yes, but the with this system, each player will only need a handful of Action tokens, a character sheet, dice and possibly a separate Round number strip.

Actually, if you do have the full game with cards, you could use the cards as your tokens, laying them out on a special sheet with places for each Round number . If these overlapped (so cards laid down would look like fanned cards), it neednt take up too much room).

Round Sheet

I would suggest this being a sheet running 1 to 10, and everytime you go past 10, you loop back to 1 again, adding 10 to the round number. For Gms, this gets a little trickier since he has multiple creatures. But he could have multiple action tokens for each npc, with their name as well as their Action.

http://users.telenet.be/Nisses/GameClock.jpg

Phantomdoodler, then you're at the same thing I tried to make a few months ago

The above is an idea for something the way you describe.
I used paired chits, like you say, with a name on it and a number, 2 of a kind. 1 was put on the action card, the other near one of the 12 edges.
On the spaces of the image, was a tracking token that moved up one each turn at the start of the turn.

Each time it hit a space where there were recharge-chits, those actions recharged.

The idea was that the whole party as well as NPCs & events could be put on that thing, meaning only 1 person takes care of recharge for the whole table (preferably not the GM )

(The track in the middle was simply an integrated initiative-tracker.)

Great minds think alike! Great work.

There are some ideas in this thread... they all have one thing in common though. They don't really simplify the system and in some cases makes it even more complex (my own ideas includes as someone else pointed out).

IF you don't have access to the bits (only having the guides), then I can see a good reason for comming up with a system. The best system however would be to simply write the actions down on the custom action sheet that FFG provides and then keep track of the recharge there either by a pencil or random tokens.

Although I am in favor of using all the bits and pieces of the game, I want to contribute by saying that if you use a software to manage encounters your life as GM is much much much easier.

You have two options in that direction:

1) You create your own software (as we did).

If you do not have the option to create your own software that satisfies your personal needs

2) Start using Fantasy Grounds 2 , it is a very good option. At the beginning you will be investing quite a lot of time on preparing encounters, but as you build up your library with more and more NPC's and actions, you will able to prepare encounters on the fly, and of course with the big advantage that it keeps track or recharging actions, initiative, wounds, diseases etc.

Come to the dark side of the tablet

I'd like that

But I don't seem to see a lot of support for Android, or am I mistaken?

Yepesnopes said:

Now THAT is a true and honest alternative. I have fantasy grounds, but I'm not good with coding so making all the card would be... well difficult

But a good option to save time if you know how to do it.

Except that bringing my laptop on the game table takes even more space on my already small table. Besides, I don't like to have computers/phones/tablets on my games. I'm already too much in front of a computer, when I play RPGs, I want to take a break of all that!

Well, looks like there's no real miracle of a solution on this one

Silverwave said:

Unless you have a good memory