From last night's game:

4 Rank 1 pcs vs dragon

navigator, mystic, pit fighter, smuggler

Front line fighters in plate armor with halberd (navigator) or great axe (pit with reckless cleave)

Back line shooting arrows: one had rapid fire

Dragon had WT of 40, soak 9, def 2 black

The Pcs wone with the navigator dying from crits (he sacrificed himself, but died from healing)

In this case, with good soak value, the rank 1 PCs were triumphant.

SOAK is everything.

jh

Wow. They should get that blood and sell it to some blood dragons, they'd make a killing AND the vampires would be able to day walk and be like their master.

Emirikol said:

Please note we did not run away from this fight! Of course, we were *locked* in the treasure vault and could not get out, even if we wanted to…

In that case I have to disagree with you. Soak is not everything.

Action cards are everything. Give the dragon nice action cards and the PCs won't stand a chance.

Give the Dragon the Devouring Grasp or the Swallow Whole action cards. In the firts round just aim for one character, the one with the higer soak, and spend some manoeuvres after the action to fly high in the sky, out of range of the arrows. The PC dies, from the fall if he breaks free or from the effects of the card if he does not.

Throw into the wall is another interesting card to do a lot of damage 12+Str.

Peerlees Strike is a very nasty action card, up to +4 damage and with 1 boon you ignore armour.

there are more.

With this kind of scenarios the game world becomes very unbalanced and not very immersive. Where the hell does those cannonfodder dragons emerge if few novice adventurers can kill them? This reminds me of some stupid hack and slash computer game. I don't know where the problem is. Is it the GM's unwillingness to play dragon's strengths using its incredible raw strength, intelligence, and abilities (it really should have proper action cards)? Or is the combat system really so heavily favouring PCs?

I believe it depends a lot on the group composition and the GM as well. My players (three of them) got into a fight with 6 ordinary skeletons with their associated actions. I believe that 6 skeletons are far less powerful than a dragon. All the PC's died in that combat agains the skeletons and they only managed to kill two of their undead assailants. The PC's are all rank 2. I believe that a dragon would absolutely slaughter them.

Jay, could you try the dragon versus the 6 skeletons, please?

;o]

Thug said:

Actually the encounter and scenario was written by Jim Bambra (who co-created Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition so you could take it up with him) and Graeme Morris. The original portion of the encounter (without further discussion of the scenario) is as simple as this, "We sent the priests in and they died..so we'll pay you guys to go down there and find out if one of our 8 relics has been stolen."

It is somewhat difficult to make combat immersive, but not impossible I think. Thug, how would you have done it or is it just not possible to have immersion in a dragon encounter in a chamber of any kind unless I deliberately TPK the party by min-maxing the bad guys like some kind of game of Descent? [not being snide here,but serious]

I kept the encounter simple as it was a semi-intelligent guardian daemon that had been deliberately released by the previous thief (and a more complicated backstory). My intent was not to TPK the party. That would have been a**hole-ish. On the other hand, the party was allowed to stock up on plate armor and a tougher weapon. They had just escaped from the Wasteland Swamps north of Marienburg after being dumped off of a boat and most of their equipment was gone or damaged.

I think the issue that surprised me was that since the Dragon has no standardized abilities listed in the Creature Guide (because of the incomplete effort by the FFG team), using Savage Strike, Brutal 'something,' and I used the squig's Chompity-something ability. First round I had it breathe on them. Failed agility check gave them the SCORCHED condition.

Situationally, there was a massive display cabinet, with glass and tiled roof that the dragon would periodically bang into to make the ground unstable. Otherwise, there's not much else to jazz it up (off the top of my simple, unwilling mind).

jh

Yepesnopes said:

My character was hit by two action card strikes. I don't remember what they were but I had four crits by the end of the combat (my Navigator had a Toughness of 4).

When I got flamed I also spent a round to get rid of the scorched condition. Yikes!

Regardless of combat balance, was it a memorable fight? Was it a satisfying result. Any combat where at least one of the PCs doesn't walk away should be a dramatic scene. Even if the drama ends up retrospectively injected with morning and anguish etc

Eradico Pravus said:

Action cards are everything indeed. I once had a rat ogre hit a PC for 13 points of damage and three criticals in one attack! On the topic of the fight with six skeletons sometimes it's just not the PC's day, my online group have smashed through some tough fights that my regular group would have been torn apart. Luck of the dice I guess.

Emirikol said:

Did you just use those three? I'd be curious to hear if there were any more, because that does make a difference. I personally like that the cards are only suggestions so that you can customize it more. In our last session I gave the cave spiders aerial charge or something to represent them leaping from the cave roof onto the characters.

But the reason action cards are key is because they can deal critical wounds to get at the PCs with high soak (which otherwise would be key). Hell, my group is only at three advances and I'm already thinking I need to choose cards based on the number of crits they can deal to keep our Ogre Maneater in line.

Daedalum said:

Absolutely! The whole night was a blast. We knew something bad was going to happen because the High Lord Baliff was being so nice to us and giving us lots of gear. Quote of the night: "This doesn't happen in Warhammer!" Too funny.

Can't wait till the next session in a couple of weeks, albeit with a new character!

To clarify something earlier:

Soak is Everything (for the PCs)

If the players had not been tricked out in plate armor, they wouldn't have lasted two rounds from the bites. As it were however, SOAK is everything in keeping rank 1 players alive (and I suppose higher rank characters as well).

2 ironbreakers could have taken on the dragon without a second thought, for instance.

This is essentially what surprised me was how easy the combat became when the PCs had high soak values. High soak values always trump single monsters, whereas multiple enemies are always the most dangerous (especially if the GM foolishly attempts to defeat a high-soak PC in a party of less-defended allies).

The swallow whole ability would work for anyone, but disability/immobilization is really the only way to defeat a PC that is heavily armored in a reasonable encounter (i.e. non-dragon) without annihilating all of the other PCs first, every time.

jh

Emirikol said:

Indeed, I agree totally. I was not trying to deny the importance of Soak, which is crucial in a combat.

Emirikol said:

Here is where I wanted to point, that with a few well chosen action cards, soak becomes not so determinant. You can go either for things like devouring grasp to one shot one character, or for action cards that with one or two boons ignore armour.

You can also give a big guy action cards to hit multiple opponents; like whirlwind, double strike, run amok…

In that sense; depending on which cards you chose, you can rise /lower the threat level of a NPC.

But indeed I agree, which serves against a PC or NPC with high soak, also serves against one without soak, so better have a good armour with you. Which of course is not so odd, since we are talking about combat, an amrour should make the difference.

What I don't like in the 3rd ed regarding armours is that they are easy to wear for everyone. I am not talking about that there is no warrior skill or talent governing armours like in other RPGs, but moreover, here you don't even need to be strong to wear a full plate armour, a normal street guy with St3 can wear a plate armour without sweating, but that is for another thread.

Agreed on armors. They don't have enough clear drawbacks imo. There should be substantial, standardized, clear penalties to things like agility checks and other things.

I've started adding penalties to things such as when the PCs are trying to commuinicate with someone, but they're openly carrying weapons or wearing armor. I'm thinking of just having an unarmored bonus instead.

Problem with this concept is that PCs who wear armor already aren't doing the talking for the party..or the climbing..or the swimming.

Not to nerf armor, but I think if the "damaged" condition is used liberally, armor can become as expensive as it "should be."

jh

Emirikol said:

Funny, I started doing the same regarding the penalties, but I also found the same thing.

I think we have to be creative, like adding long term fatigue to characters wearing an armour all day long or may be they can suffer fatigue whenever there is one bane which has been not allocated to any other effect.

And of course, as you mention, adding misfortune dice for everything, from grabbing a fork to eat, to speak to the city watch guarding the city gates.

Damaged condition after a heavy rain? some rusty pieces?

I nerfed armour in my games, well what I did is to ris the encumbrance back to the 2nd ed levels. At least, like this only a well trained warrior can wear one.

Are you using encumbrance rules? I find it easy for a PC to pass encumbrance level, and then it's misfortune all the time!

How many combats with farly amount of damage do you think would be a good standard reference for a regular armour to last? I'm thinking with just 2 or 3 they would be needing some work, maybe the Damaged condition since then (great idea), and with 5-6 without being cared I recon any armour would considered good material to use as a plate to eat your camp soup, and for no other use.

Pedro Lunaris said:

I'm not finding that at all. PCs can carry a lot of stuff in this game. (I'm still trying to figure out how much food our Ogre can carry as they go into the mountains.)

Pedro Lunaris said:

Pedro Lunaris said:

I only apply damage to armor on a chaos star effect or Comet (I use a d10 chart for inspiration..see my house rules). Rather than criticals, you can hurt PCs a lot more with damaged armor!!! Money is always harder to come by than healing.

jh

We had encumbrance come into play when they were in the swamps recently, otherwise we don't really pay much attention to it. I'll probably have them periodically figure it out.

jh

Pedro Lunaris said:

What I meant is that I rised the encumbrance of armours back to the 2nd (and by extension 1st) edition of the game, where armours where much more "heavier" as compared to the encumbrance level of a character (a part from dwarfs of ocurse).

Dragons have some inherent abilities that are really nasty. The breath weapon of course being the most iconic, as far as I remember it's to +3 piercing 2 (ignores 2 armour points) damage then added damage for the roll and it will most likely hit the all of the players or at least the melee ones combined with strafing talon strike as it dives down, bite and bone ripper actions a fight in the open will mean that the melee characters will never be engaged with it. It strafes down, hits a healer or a caster/ranged for 13-18 points of damage and flies off again. Flies down breathes then flies off. Like this is will continue to toy with the party until it's depleted and spent. Then come in and gobble them up.

IMO it's not the abilities, it's the way you play any monster wrong it will be easy to defeat. Also remember that dragons are ancient, cunning things. They might have extra action cards as you see fit.

I used a Chaos Dragon on a rank 3 party thinking that they would be able to handle it somewhat. It ate the slayer more or less outright, blasted the mage and then proceeded to toy with the assassin and the sigmarian priest for days as they fled across the mountains. They managed to not gain any mutations from sheer luck of the dice and the healing from the priest did keep them alive.

It was a glorious death!

Edit: Secondary effect, a chaos dragon would cause corruption tests just by being close to them being hit by the fires would probably cause a mutation. Also unless it's almost a spawn it would be smaugian in it's intelligence. Attack from cliffs, herd the players into areas in caves where it's fiery onslaught would hit all of them

I might not be a nice GM, but I play my monsters/NPC's to reflect their INT.

Clever opponents will target mages/support and try their best to not fight melee. This is unless the PC's can show some actions that "taunts" (believe there are some, but the players are to dumb to take them, as they're a full action which doesn't do any damage…), but lacking this "tanks" will be the last a clever opponent fights.

Of course, choke-points can also affect this, if the PC's manage to fight in door ways, but be aware that nothing stops clever enemies from doing the same, and/or withdraw away from the PC's.

Emirikol said:

I just recently got to play with my group again (fyi Warhammer is STILL a kick in the pants whilst jet lagged in Singapore). When we last played WFRP in the fall I was also finding that armour seemed too good for the fights we had that featured it. Granted it also tends to be hard to come by things such as full plate so the wow factor is warranted. Yet every so often you will run into a situation like mister Hafner where kitted out PC's are going to play out like they used a cheat-code in a video game. I think everyone has had their run-ins with the Ironbreaker's gratis gromril armour and gone…wtf (at least a little bit). I tried nerfing armour for a session and it was lame. Then I went the route of using armour bypassing actions or actions that don't even consider armour and it felt like I was playing against the players which also felt lame (a soupcon of these actions keeps things interesting, but if you over season a combat with them your heavies will begin to hit you with dice bags filled with metal dice and posting photoshopped pictures of you in a dress to Facebook).

So I took a hint from Burning Wheel (pg 474 - 479 of the Gold Edition). After noodling around a way to implement some of the armour damage and armour clumsy weight concepts from Burning Wheel in Warhammer we have had a modicum of success. We mostly run armour as written in the core rules. Soak is friggin awesome…for a while…and with a set of drawbacks. Now armour is consistently but not unfairly (our group's opinion of coursed) bashed up and enough of a hindrance that my heavies are now considering their armour when planning their battle tactics. Depending on how long they are going to be out of a city, where they plan on going, and the amount of resistence they are "expecting" (a key bit of fun for any GM right there), they might decide to stow their fancy plate (propperly festooned with ribbons, prayer strips and heraldry) behind for a nice breastplate and some boiled leather…and then commence murdering their foes with rock slides, hired sell-swords and explosions before getting in there toe-to-toe.

All that being said…Ironbreakers still have to be drowned, set of fire, infected with diseases, shamed into becoming slayers or sucked into a caster's miscast chaos vortex :-). There really is nothing for the plague that is the Dwarven race…like turnips in a flowerbed that lot.