Question about action cards for creatures

By Banemus, in WFRP Gamemasters

Hey,

In the core rule set books, they always show the monsters first + some extra info. And then the action "cards" for those creatures. Those actions always said: used by race and used by this specific creature, etc.

But then i got my hands on omens of war, and it doesn't say that anymore. I just get a bunch of action cards saying: chaotic, demonic, Khorn. I have like 8-9 of these.

In the book, they talk about those icons on the right side of the cards. The so called action card allotment for the creatures. But then you have a creature that has none of those icons on the card, but in the book this specific creature gets "suggested actions". So now I am confused. ( You probably too after reading this :) ) What card belongs to what creature? I can't just give 1 creature like 8-9 cards or something like that...

Please help :)

Cheers.

i choose the cards free depending on the situation and the monster. cultists and marauders always have "blood for the blood god" and "skulls for the skull throne" for expample.

usually on the right side of the card, below the stats damage, soak and defence there are symbols. spells/meele/ranged/support. by the rules you can attach 2 meele cards on a monster with 2 meele slots for example.

all khorne creatures would also get the khorne action cards with the trait "basic"

but again, just choose what you deem appropriate for the creature and switch them out every once a while, it makes players go nuts hehe ;)

Ok the creature i am talking about is a bloodletter.

What cards would you give him?

The suggested action is "Hellblade slash" (Omens) [with recharge 0 it's like a basic action and expresses its fluff write up etc.]

All daemons can be given Chaos Incarnate (core set).

As a low-rank 3 skull critter (using core set as template) that would be about it.

The rules suggest if looking to broaden creatures (Tome of Adventure "adding action cards", also in Creature Guide) to use guidelines of 1 + # of Expertise dice. Brutal Assault from the core deck would be something to consider.

I would do that if you are using more than one Bloodletter or otherwise setting up encounter so it will be around 3+ rounds and you want some variety in actions.

One of the great things in a system with a lot of options is that you can customize each encounter. So even if you hit the players with the same type of monster more than one time, you can choose different actions or them. You can also increase the difficulty of an encounter by choosing more actions for the enemies, or choosing more powerful ones (higher rank / effect) or ones that work better together (making combos).

Last session the PCs encountered a NPC who was the captain of a river barge. As I know this NPC will probably come back later in the campaign, even though I described him as having two pistols, I chose just leadership cards for him. If the PCs had confronted the captain, he would put his allies against them, boosting the abilities of more common NPCs. But if the captain comes back another time, he will have special ranged attacks for sure.

As for how I choose... It is like the answers you already have. Look in the creature's Creature Card. See if it has any action icons. If yes, that is the standard number of extra actions you choose for this creature. They even give it's type: melee, ranged, support, magic... Than you use the traits of the Creature Action Cards to help.

So, even though in some cases we do have Action Cards that were created to be used by a specific NPC or creature (as it will be stated in it's traits or description), the majority of Creature Action Cards doesn't have a specific owner. They can be chosen for any creature or NPC, and you can use it's traits to guide you. Bear in mind, though, that this traits are only that: descriptors. So if you find interesting that the Beastman Bray Shaman have a necromancy spell, so be it!

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