Hello,

It's been a few years since I ran a fun campaign with the new system. Personal issues brought it to an end, but I had actually begun winning the group over to the mechanics.

My questions are mostly for those who have been running the game for a while. I'd like to know what you see as the weakness of the system? How is character development at later stages? Does it stay balanced? Anything you have learned to dislike?

I have essentially everything up to Omens of War, what, if anything are must haves since my last purchase? I am also wondering if there are master check lists for the cards and sets they came with. I have thrown them all together unfortunately and I have no idea if they're all there.

One thing I was hoping to hear, were that someone had come up with a novel way to keep the cards together, like a card sleeve with the plug in slots, something to keep the elements of the game a little more tidy. Has anyone made anything to help keep up with the cards, as well as character sheets and plug ins?

Lastly, where do you see the game going? It would seem that there will be adventures, but anything else on the horizon? I'm wondering how much longer FFG will support the game.

Uff! The answers you will get are going to be based on very personal experiences, and due to the vagueness of (some parts of) the game design, they will be very varied

sugarwookie said:

In short:

Weakness: Many. Mainly the Opposed checks system is a very very bad mechanics of the game. It is a game heavely based on stats instead of characteristics (see below) which brings up some game issues like the Wizards beign top on track following, or the archer beign better than the thief at picking up locks. The system to handle NPCs is cumbersome at least, there are few of us (if any) that stick to the raw, most handle both recharge tokens and A/C/E budget at will .

Character development: I dislike (not too mcuh) character advance, although it has some good things. Regarding combat, a part from the poor players playing a spell caster, characters will (or can) already at rank 1 have the best action cards, and this is what makes the difference. Which means that the only advance they will see is getting more dice in their dice pool. Yes, indeed, getting more dice in your dice pool is advancing, true, but the big step is done at early stages of rank 1 with the action cards. Contrary to spell casters who have to crawl through chracter ranks to obtain more and more powerful action cards, non-spell casters don't have this issue. The good side of this is diversification, since you become very good at your specialization soon (technically as soon as with 20xp you cannot get better) characters start to explore other areas.

This issue is less pronounced in non-combat situations where action cards do not play a major role.

Later stages: At later stages if you don't totally remove or heavily cape fortune dice in characteristics the game becomes a joke, where the GM must think of the most ridiculous situations in order to add a huge amount of misfortune dice so that checks keep beign a challenge for the PCs. Additionally you will be thinking how to interprete boons and comets at every single roll, which makes the game sometimes tyring.

sugarwookie said:

That is a difficult question because the developer team does not communicate anymore with us. So far they are producing print on demand card supplements, mostly spells, but recently they brought a print on demand with three new careers based on necromancers.

My especulation is that they will keep on releasing PODs and nothing else because the game is not selling well and PODs are not expensive to produce. For example, three months ago, the owner of my local game store told me he is not providing Warhammer 3 anymore.

Cheers,

Yepes

My questions are mostly for those who have been running the game for a while.

First off, WELCOME BACK! There's something about this game, that keeps sucking people back in no matter what!

I'd like to know what you see as the weakness of the system?

I find the main weaknesses of the game to be the following: Lack of dice. Lack of FFG participating on their forums so there's a perpetual fear that it's suddenly going to go out of print.

How is character development at later stages? Does it stay balanced?

I'm on my 4th campaign that goes up to 3rd career. What we've found is that characters are essentially strong from the start and become more diversified as they go. The success rates are high from the beginning, because one thing FFG wanted to change from the olden days was that they didn't want people to whiff in combat for the 55th time with only a 35% success chance. So the success rates now run around 80% on average.

Most of us Gms have increased the difficulty ranks by one or two purple dice and everything becomes a bit harder then.

The good thing is that it's very easy to modify without breaking the whole system.

A crucial thing to remember for ALL EDITIONS of warhammer is that it isn't D&D. Every single round of combat is a virtual deathtrap whether you're on the good side or the bad side. Combat is deadly and brutal. Lucky for the players and GM, there are lots of other things going on that can be pursued instead of death. You've always got insanity, madness, disease, lopped-off-limbs-to-peg-leg-recovery, Shame, curses, and a whole host of conditions.

Anything you have learned to dislike?

Talent socketing is GONE from my game. See my house rulebook in my sig and look at the first page for the "game play" rules that we changed. Other thingst that I dislike and have houseruled or nerfed: ironbreakers, swordmasters, trollslayers, and characteristic fortune dice advancements. Other than that, I can say that this game system is a lot less house ruled than any of my days playing CONAN, D&D, AFMBE, Call of Cthulhu or Pathfinder. I also just set defenses to a straight number of black dice rather than bothering with every other round recharging of dodge/block/parry. Now, the only thing people have to track is their wounds and their special action cards.

I have essentially everything up to Omens of War, what, if anything are must haves since my last purchase? I am also wondering if there are master check lists for the cards and sets they came with. I have thrown them all together unfortunately and I have no idea if they're all there.

Yes. You can download it from the support page from FFG for WFRP.

One thing I was hoping to hear, were that someone had come up with a novel way to keep the cards together, like a card sleeve with the plug in slots, something to keep the elements of the game a little more tidy. Has anyone made anything to help keep up with the cards, as well as character sheets and plug ins?

There have been scads of innovation for this game. The best way to track cards is simply put them in trading card album sheets in a binder. All of the cards fit except for the 4x5 career sheets, etc. For those you can order 4x5 negative preserver sheets as well.

Since we don't **** around with Talent socketing anymore, we don't have to worrry about sockets, plug-ins, etc, but that's as simple as simply taping a small card holder to the side of whatever you use for a protector for your 4x5 sheet.

A MUST is that you skip the basic action cards and instead just use the summary sheet for basic actions. Either use the one from Gitzman's gallery or the official one from the WFRP support page official stuff. If you use the character sheet from Gitzman's gallery, it has all the basic actions on it.

Since the Career sheet talent sockets can be hand written on the caracter sheet, there is absolutely no reason to have them on the table. The same goes for writing down career ability and talents (if you don't bother with the socketing mechanic).

Asf or advanced actions, just give your player a card album sheet and stick them all in there. They're eitehr on red or green anyways and you can track with vis-a-vis marker or counters if need be.

We actually use table-tents for each character with his name, race, and then a sleeve that you stick the career card into so everyone can see the picture on the career card. On the back of each player's table tent I put a quick reference chart for maneuvers, dice-chart, rally step, and healing-rules.

Lastly, where do you see the game going? It would seem that there will be adventures, but anything else on the horizon? I'm wondering how much longer FFG will support the game.

FFG is stuck with the WFRP license as long as they want to do the 40k stuff, so I guesstimate that they will continue to put out random print on demand packs for the next three years. BUT, since they don't participate on their boards (unlike every other gaming company out there) or give any indication of what the hell they putting out next, we're all just left in limbo and have to just man up and defend the Empire as best we can with what we've got. The person who actually liked WFRP, Jay Little, is no longer in charge of WFRP.

Much like 2e, there's plenty of product out there. It's not like we're suffering. Another big campaign like The Enemy Within would be a nice release kind of thing every 6-8 months and would keep this product line from dying, and an elf product would be nice for completeness, but I doubt there is anyone with that kind of motivation and fandom working at FFG anymore who can pull that off..at least, that's what wild speculation produces WHEN FFG DOESN'T PARTICIPATE ON THEIR WFRP FORUMS…

A couple final references for you:

The Daily Empire has some good stuff

The fan-scenario-contest results that I paid for are here: http://gallery.rptools.net/v/contrib/emirikol7/?g2_page=3

RpgGeek.com has good downloads, etc.

There are other forums out there, but some of them can be..uh..less than helpful. to people asking about 3e…

To get back into it, get yourself a campaign set up, remind your players that combat isn't the only way to die in this game, and rock on!

..

Welcome to a game I love. You've gotten answers from two gurus, I'll add my two cents (which here in Canada now round down to zero, poor penny)

sugarwookie said:

I've been running game since about May 2010.

The Party Card is the only thing that is really a problem from the get-go as players (and GM) tend to forget about it. The idea of sharing channel etc. is great, you just need to remember it (blow it up to triple size and display it or something) and enforce roleplaying the sharing of talents not just "using it".

I ran a game to 90 sessions continuiously and only in the last 10 did it get really off the rails in balance. Now I'm a "tough GM" adding challenge die to monsters' defences who are "potent" etc., using the Hero's Call template cards liberally - the fact the game can easily be tweaked like that by the GM is part of what keeps it running.

The biggest things to do are simple - remove some cards and careers (or revise them but it's easiest to just remove).

I was also lucky in that game breaking player action cards didn't see much use, no Reckless Cleave and Stapling Shot (or whatever it's called).

Some careers also are problem (Iron Breaker hello).

Yes the opposed check system can make things easy on Players when it's used. You need to (a) use it against them too, let NPC's be the active party often - 4 Players making opposed checks in social encounter vs 1 NPC will be a romp for the PCs in standard they act 4 times NPC once etc.; (b) not make simple success enough in social situations, searchs etc. when it's a key dramatic point but instead use progress trackers with negative effects for not making fast enough progress etc.; © use competitive checks at times; (d) add automatic failures and/or banes at times when the opposed check is against someone good at whatever (the same way action cards sometimes have these as modifiers). Or consider one of the houserules for adding challenge dice to them when the opposing side has average or better stats.

Overall there is more to love in the system than change or drop.

sugarwookie said:

Others have answered (the support page and Emerikol has done an updated list I think).

The Slaanesh social book is good to have (I love that cult but then I'm twisted) but not a must have - it doesn't add really neat things like disease, corruption - the Wizard and Priest boxes were the best add ons in my view, if you have those you're doing well.

Hero's Call is good to have at high level though the monster templates are handy even at lower levels.

sugarwookie said:

I use craft/dollar store/home store storage containers to keep tokens in and sort Player cards (action types, schools, faiths etc.), and put monster cards in their own piles (skaven creatures with skaven actions etc., with old business cards as placeholders to remind when same card also used for dark elves etc.). I use large envelopes for the different ranks of career cards, with the card lists written on the front of envelope. The fact I have a wonderful wife and large 'man cave' for my gaming helps in allowing it to 'spread out'.

sugarwookie said:

Tough to say, after Enemy Within , the only things we've been seeing lately are the PODs, which aren't pre-announced. They're nice though a bit pricey. There is quite a bit published now and I find converting earlier edition stuff and free online player stuff for earlier edition pretty easy.

Even if they don't publish more adventure boxes I plan on sticking with it. I made my Favour for Fostenklauster adventure available and encourage others to do likewise their work, as I will with another adventure I create and ran when I get time.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of that!!! I'm a very torn man, not sure I want to stay on the ship, or jump back to 2e for a change from PF. I truly love the dice mechanics, wish it was available with a generic system of sorts in addition to WH3.

Thank you again though, I can tell you've loved the game, for better and worse!

wookie

Much appreciated response lads. The campaign I ran was well received when they gave it a chance, but Pathfinder has been their baby for the last year. I'm wanting a second campaign, and went to the storage unit to get all my WH3, but I'm still on the fence with it. It's a beautiful child with some very obvious quirks, eh?

Cheers, wish I was in your area to be able to enjoy your games that you have put so much into……….