Hello there community, since we play on and bought new supplements we stumble over new holes in the net of WFRP every session. In those moments we just stick with the GM decision over the topics but we are eager to hear your opinion or some “official” rules for our situations and encounters.

This time we meet some really nasty nurgel servants who attacked us viciously so the questions involve fever and gore.

Situation 1: Got Ambushed in the deep wood by 6 beastmen

1. Do the PC´s roll observation so see if we can spot potential threats in the forest or do the enemies roll for stealth to sneak into close range?
2. If you manage to sneak up to your target, do you get a “free round” before the enemy can respond due to surprise? (The GM handled it that way but it seemed kind of unfair, they had one surprise attack for free and then won initiative and we couldn’t even unsheathe our weapons so only dodge was possible and we got attacked for two rounds without a chance of retaliation)

Situation 2: What if you get sick?

One of our PC´s got sick from being hit repentantly by a servant of nurgel and rolled a normal (2d) resilience check to evaluate if he would suffer from a sickness after. He did and got “yellow skull fever” with a severity of 5. Since he only got 3 toughness it’s kind of inevitable, that he dies from that sickness in time since he wouldn’t be able to roll 5 successes with only 3 dice ever. Even with medical care (+1 fortune) and the right medicine (+1 fortune) he has only 4 dice to roll 5 successes. Now he could use all his fortune (5 dice because he is human) and hope for the best once a session. But normal we play more than 1 day in one session. So my question is:

3. Do you have to get all successes against a sickness with one single roll? Or can you gather successes over time?

P.S

After playing the system for a while now, I’m convinced toughness is the most important characteristic there is if you want to enjoy your character a little longer than rank 1 or 2.

Toughness:
- reduces incoming damage and isn’t reduced by pierce
- gives you more HP at the creation & states how much criticals you can take before you are dead
- heals criticals and normal wounds incredible fast & allows you to run for your life (fatigue galore) and regenerates fatigue almost completely after a fight
- determines your corruption threshold & allows you to withstand the dark powers like it’s a summer breeze

pretty common situation actually. i hand out alot of diseases actually, although i like corruption alot more, since mutations are the best fun of all for a GM.

ok, to your questions:

1. a roll for stealth is in this case an opposed check already. that means that the beastmen make a stealthcheck opposed by the highest observation score amongst the PCs. so if the highest INT is 5 with 1 rank of training and the beastmen stealth is AG 4 and 1 rank of training too my dicepool would be modified like this: difficulty is 2d (i think that's when your characteristic is lower) and 1d additional for the rank in trianing. if the PC has a specialization in spotting ambushes that would be an additional black die.
so the beastmen must have had a **** good roll. and if you really go by the rules your GM did everything right, they got their free attack, which is for the ambush and would then go to initiative.
if i want to be nice i let them screw up initiative at least, so the PCs get a chance, but that's up to the GM.

2. you cannot gather successes over many rolls actually. but if your character can adopt a stance while he his doing his check he has a fair chance to make the check with a good treatment. maybe you can find a healer/doctor somewhere who can give him an expertise die. if not, he could eventually get very frustrated over the disease and in attempt to finally cure it himself he can go as deep into reckless as possible and attempt the check. but if the PC does that, i would rule that any too many banes might add a symptom to the disease if it is not cured.

and you are absolutely right, TO is the most important rating of all in the game. we learned that pretty fast and now most of the creation points people get normally go into a decent TO rating of at least 3, if not 4, so to be able to eventually get a heroic character who can withstand the evils of warhammer!

but i would talk with my GM about question 2 in particular. there are MANY ways of curing a disease. "shallya have mercy!" i would say. maybe he can modify the check to a point at which it is actually likely the disease can be cured.
and bad luck was a big part, red skull fever is one of the view with a severity that high!

1. I let my PCs roll an observation check when they get ambushed if they fail the ambushers get bonus fortune dices on thier Initiate check. One PC succeding the observation check is enough if he warns everyone by by yelling "BEASTMEN ON THE WOODS" or something like that, if he for some reason doesnt warn his friends then he takes the bonus dices but the ambushers take their dices too.

2. I had a PC who cured a disease with a severity of 5 with 3 WP. He got 2 fortune dices from the doctor (1 for every doctors medicine rank), 1 for the good enviroment,1 for trying to cure the same disease before and finaly 1 fortune point. So his dice pull was 1 characteristic, 2 conservative, 5 fortune and 2 chalenge. There are many ways to get bonus dices to cure a disease.

Agree. SOAK (including toughness is everything in a combat oriented WFRP campaign.

Your average chance to hit/be hit is around 87% (and higher with a/c/e dice), so focus on soak is paramount and explains partly why the ironbreaker is iron-broken

When choosing special actions, go for high damage. Since 2-handed weapons are lopsided and the action cards for them exxagerate it further, this is another major strength.

In the sake of interest in this subject, I feel having diverse skills is more important for role-playing, however the career completion rule that penalizes you if you don't start instead with min-max actions and talents instead of skills. It retards the probability that characters will start the game as anything other than talent and action munchkins (so we did away with that penalty in our house rules).

Other secrets of the game: Green dice are about 8% better than red dice and have minimal side effects in comparison (fatigue is always worse than a delay).

Rapid fire and Double strike are still better than any other card except troll feller strike and reckless cleave.

Affluent starting is more important than having an extra talent.

Exhaustible talents are generally a waste except for flanking maneuver on the party sheet.

Superior items are not worth paying for.

Always maximize Fortune Dice in your characteristics.

Combats should always be a last resort. They tend to be a waste of resources.

Dwarfs, as written, with high toughness, massive disease resistance, corruption resistance and high hits are by far t.eeh most powerful race in the game.

Other thoughts?

jh

Emirikol said:

What and old friend!. I have found that swaping the career abilities of the Ironbeard and the Ironbreaker fixes in my opinion this "problem".

Emirikol said:

Are you sure of dat? In my games I have found that delays are very bad. By placing 2 rechage tokens into cards like rapid fire, double strike, active defences etc. you can undermine alot the capabilities of the PC's. Some times, moving an hero token one space down is also a very bad thing, since it may mean the big guy will act first.

Emirikol said:

I guess by "powerful" you mean in combat, right? Following your idea, shouldn't then be the Ogres to most powerful race?

I agree on the rest

I wont agree on double-strike, while rapid fire is the best ranged action in play. Double strike does “ok-ish” damage but only to a single target. Consider the twin-weapon style esp. the off-hand-flourish which is actually a second attack or whirlwind, two cuts or trail of devastation that allow you to do more damage, since you can combine them with berserker rage.

On the other hand yes, 2-handed weapons are the most powerful dmg source in melee for single opponents and action cards like “mighty blow” enhance that even further. Which is the reason why the elf-swordmaster is that powerful, taking in regard the he benefits from delays most of the time and stoke of the master is more devastating than anything so far.

But normally its not the single potent enemy that threatens your life it’s the consecutive 1-3 wound hits you get from the swarm of “normal” enemies, well that’s what happens in my group though.

Any other secrets you want to share with me ; ) ?

I'd argue the dwarf is more powerful than the ogre because the dwarf is immune or highly resistant to EVERYTHING. They have universally high toughness, high resistance to disease, cannot be mutated, have a higher corruption threshhold and also have a higher strength. The dwarf-specific careers are "tougher" than the other careers in the game on average as well. -- Yes, this considering a physical standpoint, but not just combat.

The ogre can go higher in some things, but doesn't have the resistances, and with the other lower abilities, they don't balance out the same.

jh

true that, dwarfs are the most "powerful" race. but send them into a town alone and they will lose it.

they are short, they are normally not the most intelligent of them all and thus might get tricked alot. in my games humans tend to overlook dwarfs or trick them alot. they pay more for food, because they have no idea how much meat is actually worth for example. so that makes up a little for it at least.

same for the elves

Emirikol said:

Not sure about that

Ogres Dwarfs

Wound threshold 12 + To 10 + To

Corruption threshold 10 + To 10 + To

Initial St 3 3

Initial To 3 3

Then Ogres have +1 soak, start with the Gutplate, and as man eaters they have with 0 creation points St4 and To4. Since they are Ogres, rising them to St5 and To5 costs only 8 creation points.

From my point of view ogres are by far tougher and stronger in combat than any other race, including dwarfs.

Both have the same corruption threshold, strikly speaking are equally resilient, but of course it is not generally the same to gain an insanity than to gane a mutation, that I do agree.

As for diseases….ogres start with To5. I am not so sure then that the 2 fortune dice will make the diference, but indeed, Dwarfs resist better the diseases.

Where Dwarfs are better than Ogres is in: they do not gain mutations (insanities instead) and they get two fortune dice to resist diseases (the ogres get the same in the case that the contagion is due to ingestion), but in this case they are equal to Elves, ok may be with a higher To, depending on the starting careers.

Maneater to Ironbreaker? ..or is Maneater the new class to be feared for total soak?

jh

Emirikol said:

hehehehe

Definitely without any house rules, the ironbreaker is still the short term high soak class, but give a Maneater a few games to build his character and he will hulking unstoppable combat machine.

Imagine it with St6 and To6 (10 exp) plus a full plate armour over his gutplate Soak:6 def:1 plus the ability to ignore 1 critical wound….

Dang! Good thing there aren't dragon-ogre characters!

jh