Hi, I just ran my first game with "a day late" & tpk'd the party!

They rolled up an envoy, a dilletante & a coachman, plus I added Birgitta as an npc. Though I suggested using the pre-gens, they wanted to generate new characters, so I should probably have replaced the war

gor with a second gor.

The wargor hit hard enough to take most to zero wounds, & the ungors success line was responsible for them all having vast numbers of criticals. The players were also a little unlucky. I did try tricks like the merchant running off & 2 ungors chasing him. Then rutger regained consciousness & contributed to the fight, but he fired a pistol into melee, rolled a chaos star & killed a PC! I think it should have just caused 1 damage instead of normal wounds..?

Anyway, 2 questions came up which I didn't know the answer to:

1) one PC was caught by both bestial howls & passed out from stress. First aid was attempted, but I don't think it helps stress, only wounds. Is the PC out until the next rally step, or is there an action a PC can take to break out the smelling salts?

2) when the wargor was at long range, the PC with the blunderbuss won initiative & wanted to ready an action to fire when it was in range, instead of gaining fatigue himself to get to close. I let him do it, but couldn't see any rules on readying an action/interrupting a turn?

Any comments appreciated!

The answer to both questions is essentially the same: Actions exist that specifically do these things, but they aren't basic actions that just anyone can do. You have to buy them with XP.

The GM might allow a Perform a Stunt action to roll Leadership or First Aid with a success getting rid of 1 Stress. I'd keep the amount of Stress cured very low though so you don't set a dangerous precedent or undermine the value of the action cards they didn't buy.

I would definitely not allow Perform a Stunt to interrupt actions, though, as that would be so powerful it would see tons of play. You'd undermine the value of the existing interrupt actions, and end up with all sorts of ripple effects. Combing a general interrupt ability with the group initiative rules would make larger combats much more complicated. This sort of thing works okay in D&D because each person has their own initiative roll and movement rates are set in stone. It's not such a good mix for Warhammer, IMHO.

First of all, I would like to congratulate you, Yavathol, for quick thinking, GM flexibility and the ability to resort to a couple of options in the face of a challenging situation! That's the sort of thing that makes a game memorable, specially when you are still absorbing the rules.

r_b gave us an accurate description on how the game works mechanically. What I think is missing here is one of the main directives of Warhammer 3ed, and one of it's greatest aspects IMHO: to say "yes" to players, and adjust the difficulty accordingly.

When the matter is the use of skills without Action Cards, you'll have to make decisions on the fly - as you did. You don't have to hide from the fact that you are starting with this system. Probably your players know it also. Remembering this, and being clear about it, I wouldn't worry about creating precedence for future actions. I would just say "well, folks... I don't know exactly how this works, and I don't want us to lose momentum, so let's do it this way, and I'll research it during the week and explain how it works for future occurances... alright?".

But, as you start gaining familiarity with the way the system works and with it's many different Actions, you'll be able to base the ruling of the use of skills without actions, as you understand how they would work if the PC had that special Action Card. I normally wouldn't say the PC couldn't do something because he doesn't have a card. I would just say it would be more difficult, or the results would be less impressive.

There are a lot of cards that would recover some stress (of fatigue) of the character using the card or even from another character. And there is the basis Assess the Situation that does just that. There isn't a rule for First Aid to do that. But maybe First Aid could be used in more ways than just recovering wounds... Like you said, using some pungent herbs to make a character wake up from stressful conditions.

I would permit the use of First Aid in this way. Two ways to do that crosses my mind instantly: the successful First Aid test recovering just a couple of points (as r_b suggested, it should be little). Or it's successful use giving fortune dices for an unconscious use of Assess the Situation by the character that has passed out - this to be tried in the last Hero Initiative of the turn. Personally I prefer the second option.

Regarding readying an action, I found 2 cards that allow a character to act before or after another one. Both of them are from Lure of Power, which I don't know if you own. "Me First" allows a character with Agility 4+ and Coordination trained to act (if he or her had not acted yet this round) just before any other character to act. "Do it Now!" allows a character with Leadership trained to make an ally to act just after another ally has acted, and before anyone else. Both are reaction cards (they are used outside your turn, in reaction to some specific thing that has just happened) and both make the heroes to jump the last Hero Initiative of the round (since one Hero has already acted out of Initiative order).

So if in a given circumstance you want to allow some form of ready action, it should have a poorer effect than those cards (or any card that allows someone to do it). I would suggest: ready an action is a Prepare Manoeuvre that requires the character using it to postpone his action (so if he does any other manoeuvre before readying himself or when he does act, he gains 1 fatigue per extra manoeuvre). The action attempted then is a little more difficult (adding 1 misfortune to it, or more, if it's to difficult a situation to ready an action or if the circumstances that trigger the action have too little a window). AND the Initiative token the PC that ready the action used goes down to be in the place where he actually acted (so if he uses Initiative 3 to act when the Beastman with Initiative 2 moved closer, the Initiative the PC used becomes 2 for the rest of the encounter). On the other hand, if the situation that would trigger the action (i.e. the beastman getting closer) doesn't occur, the PC does any action at Initiative 1 or 0, the Init. Token he used becoming this number, or loses the chance to act this round, in which case the Init he used remains the same.

Kinda complicated, but that's the type of ruling-on-the-fly you can do to allow players to try something.

Regarding adjusting challenge levels or the unexpected consequences of some actions (like using a Blunderbuss in melee), you are sure to get a better hand of it with. I would bet you are much more experienced now than before all your characters died. :] One thing that you could consider is describing that they did not died, but were captured by the beastmen and kept alive to be used in some dire ritual. And the they could make other characters to go rescue the first ones, or something happens when they are prisioners of the beastmen that makes them wake up with a chance to run for their lives.

But do try that scenario once more, or develop it further! That way you can cross the trauma and make it a worthwhile experience.

Wow, ok..thank you both for your help:-)

Actions may exist to cover these situations but it seems unreasonable to expect the GM to know all the possible actions in order to tell whether there is overlap or not. Also, I don't have all the expansions so I didn't even know about those two cards in Lure of Power.

I have looked over the cards in the basic set, but all of those which recover stress or fatigue are either taken by the acting character (like Assess the Situation) or require an ally who is able to see and hear the acting character.

It makes sense that First Aid should be the action to use, and in future I think I would allow it to be used on an unconscious ally to bring their stress/fatigue to one under the "pass out" threshold, keeping in mind the rule about only allowing First Aid to be used once a day. Enabling Assess the Situation to be performed while unconscious seems a little complicated, and unintuitive!

With respect to holding fire until the enemy is in range, in hindsight I think I should have asked for some kind of Willpower check to see if the PC has the nerve to wait until, traditionally, "wait until you see the whites of their eyes"! I'm unsure about making it too complicated but certainly it makes sense to move a player down the initiative order if you are waiting for an enemy to go before you react.

I wouldn't allow any more complicated interrupts without an appropriate action, but it does surprise me that there isn't a standard rule since I think it should be a basic action, no training needed, when you can see an enemy coming from long or extreme range, to be able to wait until he gets in range. Certainly the enemy shouldn't be able to avoid getting shot because he is willing to spend enough fatigue to get from medium to engaged in a single turn!!

On which matter, actually, I originally missed the rule about fatigue causing monsters wounds instead, which would have injured the wargor a little more but probably not enough to kill him. I'm not too worried about the TPK, hopefully we can generate some new characters for "An Eye for an Eye" and that adventure seems more investigative and less combat-oriented. I do have a question about that, but I think that should go in a separate thread.

About Assess the Situation while unconscious... I drew the idea from the regular way to recover wounds. Each day a character gets a Resilience test to see how many wounds he recovers, right? That's his body working by itself. In the middle of a combat, a tense situation in which the character passed out, his instincts would be working in alarm to make him survive. So a similar test, aimed to fatigue and/or stress, could be tried, and the First Aid would help in that test the character does for himself. I would use Assess the Situation success lines, but request a Resilience test probably.

But that just one way to look at it. You should go about it the way you feel makes more sense, for sure!

Ready was a manouevre in second edition. It was from there that I drew the basic idea to the house ruling I made on the fly while answering your post. I'm used to adapt, and I feel comfortable with it. I think I already got used to the rules, so I don't need to break my head too much to adjust them. And I do think they need adjustment a lot, as there are a lot of Action Cards that will need some minor changes in specific situations. So I'm sorry if it seemed too complicated. It was an example, and you should go with what works for you!

Knowing all the cards is an imposibility, I guess. I'm always checking even the basic ones. What I do find I need to know is their existence, more or less. So I can remember going to check them. It's not something you'll need to work to make it happen: it will come naturally with the use. The thing is: if you can remember a card that does something similar, you can use it as reference for allowing a player to try that effect without the card. It should only be harder and with a less impressive effect. And that's all!