I was wondering what other GMs felt about letting their players have multiple dodges, parries, or blocks.

It seems to me forcing characters to maintain one defense of one type seems fairly limiting. Sure, a warrior with decent stats could parry, block, and dodge all in a combat round. But why couldn't he parry, parry, block, dodge, parry? Is there anything in the rules preventing this, as long as the PC spends advances to purchase multiple copies of the same type of dodge? I looked but could not find any restrictions.

When outnumbered, the PCs are at a distinct disadvantage (we have a small group, only 2-3 players at most, and none of them wear more than leather. Hard to not kill them off. ). A high-ranked warrior, one would think, would be able to fend off multiple blows.

For my own campaign I've decide to allow multiple active defenses of each type. The restrictions are:

1) You can only have one type of each active defense per rank. So a rank 1 character could only have one parry (or dodge, or block). A rank 3 character could have 3 copies of parry.

2) New copies must be purchased with advances (one for the basic, an additional for the improved copy).

3) You cannot have more active defenses of one type than number of times you have trained the corresponding skill

-For parry, only one copy per training point in weapon skill

-For block, only one copy per training point in resilience

-For dodge, only one copy per training point in athletics

I think this makes it difficult, but not impossible, to have multiple active defenses of one type. Of course the character can still only use one active defense per attack. But this will allow my squishy PCs to be able to better defend themselves as they move up through the ranks.

What do other GMs think?

Ted

We just made the characters highest eligible defense a constant. It reduced all the pointless tracking for these things. I say pointless because it doesn't make much of a difference in combat anyways when their chance to get hit is 85-90% anyways (WITH two black dice defense).

Having multiple defenses I think is a great idea because it ACTUALLY significantly lowers a person's chance to get hit and on multiple attacks they will pay the price a little for the loss of defense.

jh

I think it helps to keep in mind that the length of a round is abstract in WFRP3. When a beastman is attacking a character, I don't see it as just one swing. It's a shifting, swirling melee and the roll is the result of the whole exchange. If the character has decided to Parry that attack, they don't simply try to block one swing from that opponent. They are focusing their ability to parry attacks on the flurry of blows incoming from that one attacker.

It's easy for me to see why you can only choose a defense against one attacker, but much harder for me to rationalize the recharge in-character. I understand game balance and the OOC reasons.

If you allow multiple cards of the same type you skew the balance of fighting styles giving access to multiple types of defence ei. 2h fighters cant use a shield, a players only maxing S with low Ag cant use Dodge .... not to mention some of the recharge effects - Its your game, Im just saying it messing with the balances ...

Boehm said:

Not to say, players buying multiple times cards like, rapid fire, troll-feller strike, mighty swing....

It's better to have them purchase the improved (and later the advanced) versions of the active defences.

There are other ways to be defensive:

• You can use guarded position (or improved guarded position)
• Assess the situation (adds black dice to all incoming attacks and also help you recharge your defence cards)

There are also some other defensive cards such as:

• Ward (Bulwark)
• Dirty Tricks
• Armour Expertise & Wall of Steel (Ancestor)
• Shadow's Coil (Ritual Dance)
• Speed of Asuryan (Way of the Sword)
• Bodyguard

I guess it depends on if you allow players to purchase actions from "fighting styles" or not, but there are several options avaliable for the players that really want to have a stack of defence cards.

Also see the discussion on defenses in this thread javascript:void(0);/*1331056985449*/

Shouldn't dodge be tied to Coordination?

Cabello said:

I don't think so. Isn't Coordination "fine motor skills"? Like juggling knives and playing Jenga. I'd tie dodge to Athletics.

However, from the description, I see it includes acrobatics and balance and "Dodge" is listed as a specialisation. I suppose both can be effective, but the coordinated dodge would be an impressive Jackie Chan move and the athletics dodge would be me just trying to throw myself out of the way.

The basic dodge card says

"If you have Coordination trained, add an additional [misfortune die] to the action’s dice pool"

so dodge is tied to coordination in the designers' minds.

Because of the specialisation examples for Athletics (swimming, climbing, running) it has always felt more of the sustained application of strength, not the finesse movements needed for dodging to me