Hello,
This being my first post, I'd like to mention that I really enjoy the Warhammer Fantasy setting, mainly because I found it to be very believable, coming across as a generally functioning world.
My opinion in this is mainly influenced by WFRP 2nd Edition, from books like Sigmar's Heirs and The Old World Bestiary, though I've noticed a change in tone with the 3rd Editon.
To get to the point of this post, I'm trying to run a game using the Core Set, I've looked over some of the creature stats in the Tome of Adventure and found that they didn't really fit with my vision of the setting. Then I started wondering how changing some of those stats would affect the rest of the game.
Soldier basic NPCs, for example, have 3 across the board, statwise, and 15 wounds. Now, the average soldier in 2nd edition would be a guy taking the soldier career and half the advances, if I remember correctly.
If I were to do that for 3rd Edition, I'd get a considerably stronger soldier, possibly with str 4, tou 4, weaponskill trained and so on. He probably wouldn't have 15 wounds, though, but that's just it, the NPC isn't a human in the way a player character is a human, because a 1st rank tou 3 human character can't have 15 wounds, can he? He gets 9 + tou, + 2 from the soldier advances and that leaves 1 wound from, what, fixed career advances?
Now I'm inclined to change the stats for soldiers using the 2nd Edition method, mainly because they fit my vision of the world better. If I recall correctly, in the Broken Honour novel, halberdiers were described as barrel chested men, with arrogant pride on their faces. That doesn't fit well with "str 3 but can take a 15 wound beating".
The ungor is another example of stats I'd like to change. They're supposed to have roughly the same physical stats as a human (or they did in 2nd edition, 3rd edition makes them equal to a strong, hale human), but they have 4 across the board for physical stats, plus 1 fortune for toughness and they don't suffer any real penalties with mental stats, either.
They have WP 3, yet they're supposed to be cowardly (they had 24% in 2nd Edition, where an average human would have 31%).
To make things worse, they're balanced by having only 8 wounds (so soldiers are on par with them, where they were stronger than ungors in 2nd Edition). How does that make sense? A human has at least 9 wounds and ungors are supposed to be like humans. Couldn't they have toughness 3 and 12 wounds like a human? I'm saying this because the stats mean they'd hit you like a bouncer, but if you hit them back they fall over and die. It doesn't really feel believable.
Also, I really dislike the A/C/E mechanic in general and was thinking of giving everyone skills instead.
So I took 20 or so creation points and built an ungor off a human:
My ungor would have strength 4, toughness 3 (1), agility 3 (1), intelligence 2 (1), willpower 2 (1), fellowship 2 and 13 wounds.
He'd have the following skills: observation (tracking), resilience, stealth (silent move: forests, ambush), athletics, coordination.
That would be pretty much it. It would also mean that a character who has faced them several times would know pretty much what they're capable of (they can probably outrun you, they don't get ill, they'll notice you and they'll hunt you down but they don't randomly increase the difficulty of some of your checks or add dice to whatever).
Now my questions are, since there's bound to be other people who thought about fudging the stats, how much does this change the game in the long term?
Will I start seeing state troops hacking chaos warriors to pieces or ungor stronger than orcs?
Will some of the stats work or will I have to keep changing stuff for every new enemy type the players will face?
Does anyone else get the feeling the stats for some creatures don't represent the fluff that well?
I like to think that the Warhammer world isn't a place where humans are the weakest creatures alive, but a place where the fact that you're the PC doesn't make you special in any way and where humans don't lose battles because they are intrinsically weaker, but because they're foolish, arrogant, "the folly of man", that kind of stuff. I got that impression from 2nd Edition and I'd like to keep that, despite, what seems to me, a move in a different direction with 3rd Edition.
Oh, and I don't want to go back to 2nd Edition, the fiddly bits have utterly spoiled me.