After all these years, which are your thoughts about the action cards?

By Yepesnopes, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Posted at

willmanx said:

1) There are too many cards, and those card often offers a small effect that a simple dice roll interpretation or roleplaying could provide (i.e : almost all the social cards only gives a white dice, or such a city bravado, winning smile, flirt).

2) There are a lot of actions that anybody should be able to attempt (catch someone, seduce, break with a music instrument on someone - do you remember that card ?).

So what ?

I know EMIRIKOL allow anyone to use any card by adding 1 challenge dice but, once again, the card effect is too weak to justify it for us.

In our game, those cards are considered like basic cards, rule remembering, all players have access to. The GM keeps them by himself to rule those action everybody may attempt. Players may only acquire action cards with a major effect.I'll soon report you the liste of action cards considered basic.

What do you think of it ?

I haven't forgot ! Tonight, I'll put the card list considered basic in our game here, juste before the 7th session in Witch's Song (enhanced by the Dreadfleet Pod and Dwarf Supplement). Input welcome.

Posted at

My group is a lot less experienced at WFRP3 than many of you but we're finding the cards invaluable. When life has been hectic and game nights have been postponed it can easily be more than a month between meetings. Each player having the rules in front of them for the specialised actions they can do is very useful. Without it the GM would be spending a lot more time explaining the mechanics to players or waiting while the players pored over the handbook instead of playing the adventure.

Having a lot of similar cards, some inferior to others, is not particularly useful in a group that permits duplication but is essential if you don't like your players to share cards. The same is true in social situations if you don't allow your charmer to use the same response for multiple tests in a particular time period. The winning smile may well get them through any one of those tests but only one. It's handy to have the card to be able to succeed more easily at flirting with the countess so that the winning smile can be saved for a possible encounter with the baron.

The only thing I don't like about the action cards is the amount of card management involved. I think FFG should have found a more elegant way of managing the card pool and reuse of cards than tracking them all.