I'll be starting An Eye for an Eye in the next week or two and was hoping for some suggestions from you guys. We played through A Day Late and a Shilling Short this weekend and I think the group is hooked. We had a little difficulty with the role-playing in the second episode but that was probably my fault. I'm definitely struggling to balance the social interactions with the combat. The Troll Slayer was definitely the dominant player -- saving the day in the combat and intimidating his way through the social encounter. I felt bad for the poor Envoy in the group. But everyone had a good time; I just want to make sure we get off on the right (cloven) foot with our next scenario.

In particular, I'm hoping for suggestions for handling career selection. We are going to start with new characters and I have a couple min/max'ers in the group. Their only experience with pen-and-paper RPGs is through DnD 4e. I'm a little worried about Ironbreakers and Sword Masters. As a PC I usually end up playing the more "under-powered" careers but I know that's not for everyone, particularly if you aren't too familiar with the WFRP setting. Do you guys usually use random career selection or allow players to choose what they want to play. Pros/Cons?

Also, looks like I'll have 4 PCs -- did anyone notice any balancing necessary beyond perhaps increasing the size of the henchmen groups?

I'm sure people have run through this scenario many times so any advice would be appreciated. I did track down the clue cards -- though I wasn't able to find the cheat-sheet for when best to give players particular clues.

I'm really enjoying this edition of the game. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

First of all: Don't have any ironbreakers or swordmasters in your group. Just plain disallow them.

Other thoughts on eye for an eye (and WFRP3 campaigns in general):

• Get the MAP of the manor downloaded
  
• Give the players a list of the NPCs. Make sure you blank out any information about them (such as if they're evil cultists or whatever).
  
• I drew a map of the grounds on a battlemat. That was very helpful so that the players knew to go outside once in a while. This helps split up the party so you can drive one of them insane.
  
• Encourage your players to think outside of D&D. There doesn't need to be "every role filled." Play something interesting and new. ALL of the careers have strengths and weaknesses (except for the ironbreaker..which is just plain broken and is best to disallow until you run the Black Fire Pass campaign)
  
• I would ENFORCE TRAIT RESTRICTIONS for the various action cards that are specific to a career or race. In particular: NOBODY is allowed to take those cards unless they are that career. This only affects a few cards, but it helps keep some careers unique. Traits that limit to race/career: Ancestor (dwarf), Saga (dwarf); slayer (slayer), Ritual Dance (wardancer), Way of the Sword (swordmaster) or Watcher(elf). I say this because for a new group, especially coming from D&D, they will be tempted to abuse their privileges.
  
• Tell them right off the bat, if they min-max their character, the game has built-in mechanisms for finding their weaknesses. Leave it at that.
  
• Remember: Social actions are not an automatic success just because there is a loud-mouthed, spotlight-hogging PLAYER at the table. The same is true for combat. Just because a player was in the military and knows 50 ways to kill a person doesn't mean that his CHARACTER is him. Make them make Charm and Guile perform checks to actually INFLUENCE people (successes must equal the victim's willpower in a number of rounds you specify). If they roleplay what you think their character would do (not just them min-maxing) then grant them a bonus white..or a penalty black as appropriate). When they fail, they suffer stress. This most commonly comes up when you get a powergamer who decides to play the Trollslayer, with a Fellowship of 2, who thinks that he's going to successfully use Charm or Guile or whatever and suddenly realizes what a failure his idea of a 'good character build' was. Use this mechanic for everything OUTSIDE OF COMBAT and you balance the game in favor of people who actually go beyond min-maxing Weapon Skill.
  I usually take a look at everyone's weaknesses and target it at least once per game..as they will know what their strengths are already and this keeps it relevant.
  
• A plot note: have the painting get 'moved' whenever it is convenient to your plot. I had a particularly nosy Thief character who decided to wander about the house to try to steal things. I had him see the painting and gain an insanity..and then the painting went 'poof.' to a differen't room (i just had the demon move it telepathically or a staff member..whatever). I asked him if wanted to keep wandering around the house. He quickly went outside to join the rest of the party in interrogating the dog-keeper who I had feeding dead beastmen to his dogs (innocently enough The same character later died in one more attempt during the 'attack' at the end as he was cornered into a room by himself. ..he was the first of 5 characters that I killed off that campaign.

Have fun!

jh

..

About the combat-part of Eye for an eye.

Look, if things play out so that the pc:s have to fight both beastmen, the whole cult and the demon, this is actually the most difficult fight they are likely to face in a while. The opposition has got a lot of damage output in between them, with the potential of quickly overwhelming the pc:s with critical wounds.

We've played this with all-new characters, four of them, and they barely survived, having failed to act quickly enough to stop, well, anything (about the only thing they managed was to avoid getting drugged and the sigmarite priest found himself sleeping with one of the cultist). So don't you worry about increasing the difficulty of the encounter (unless you've got all fighters, but then additional henchmen will probably do the trick, just as you suggested).

Really, the skills that are most useful in this scenario are Intuition and Observation.

First of all I highly recommend looking into the hints of Emirikol.

I would also advise you to not let players pick their career. Just pick a selection of career that you find interesting and then let every player pick 2-3 of those and select the one he wants to use. That way you can throw out everything that you do not want in your game.

Creating a good mix of social and action encounters is always hard but if players have careers/characters that are not focused on combat that much they might find ways to avoid combat anyways because they will start playing smart. Most players will feel great if they avoid combat or did something smart instead of just getting thrown the generic 1 combat per session at their feet.

If a player tends to control the whole game just create obstacles where his character cannot solve the problem alone so other players get to do something too. I highly advise you to do that because at some point the other players might think that it's boring if they sit at the table and watch how he has his one man show.

I'm really starting to look forward to An Eye for an Eye . I'm going to sit down with the players and find out what type of characters they'd like to play and then try to give them a selection of characters that at a minimum have career progressions in that direction. I kind of miss the formal career paths of 1e but I suppose they're still there, you just need to see the big picture of careers. Same thing for talents and actions -- those were spelled out a little more clearly in 1e as to which were available for each career but I guess I can just help them choose "appropriate" talents and actions.

As for fighting vs investigating. After reading through the adventure again, it appears that it might break pretty well regardless of how the players choose careers. By that I mean if the players are investigation heavy, they may be able to solve and avoid certain fights that would be very difficult. If they play it like brutes, chances are they may have a big fight on there hands. Either way they get to play a scenario that will fit their skills -- I'll just need to be aware of their skills and hopefully tailor the progression and finale to best meet their career choices and game-style. I'll definitely report back once I get some characters and we see how the first session goes.

I was a little worried after A Day Late, A shilling Short . I didn't like how I managed the progress meter or party sheet and in hindsight they could have been very effective during the first episode. I really didn't like how the second episode played out. I probably should have quit the session after the first episode and played that one another day. The social encounter was a let down after the big fight, players were tired, and frankly, it wasn't quite as compelling. The merchant with a broken carriage in possession of a package the players want; it just wasn't fleshed out enough. He doesn't have much to bargaining power, is very unlikable, and the success outcome still leaves the party with a bunch of unanswered questions like how are they getting back to town and what to do with the merchant and carriage. Luckily there were two roadwardens there or the party would have just killed him and dumped the body. Now that I've run a social encounter I hope that I will be able to do it better next time. They're hard.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll definitely track down and create some maps as well as some handouts for people to keep straight all the actors in the scenario.

I agree on DLSS not being a good demo scenario. It's nothing other than a big fight. I think Journey to Blackfire Pass is a better WFRP3 scenario.

Personally, I like the 2e scenario, "The Pig, the witch, and her lover." It starts out with a lot better social encountering first.

You may also wish to check out "False Pretenses," although you have to be creative with the use of the bad guy(s) in there to make them come alive.

jh

I can't seem to find a working link for False Pretenses... any suggestions?

Here is the link for False Pretenses: http://sdrv.ms/1fmqB3w

jh