Thinking about Warhammer?

[Nebulous]

I'm sure they will. But considering the sheer volume of stuff that Black Industries had on their site, it's gonna take a while for FFG to catch-up.

By the way, a poster named Sythorn over on the FFG boards nice enough to compile all the BI stuff into a MediaFire download folder (if you don't feel like hunting and picking through the BI archived site like I posted earlier):

Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire

wow. Thanks. That's over 200 MB of free stuff!

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

wow. Thanks. That's over 200 MB of free stuff!

Hey, always happy to help a fellow gamer. Besides, just goes to show the level of commitment Black Industries had to their fanbase considering how much of that material was probably fan-created in the first place.

 

[TheNovaLord]

I dislike WHFRP as a system, even more so as a setting

ive played both 1e with the original developers in nottingham way back, and 2nd edition, which as a system sucks slightky less

mostly people burn down inns, touch warpstone they shouldnt and spend times in sewers

it is clunky...but i dislike all games where you roll an active defences as its one dice (or two if you can parry and dodge) too many.

its supposed to be grim and gritty, but is more like other words that rhyme with those.

magic is supposedly mysterious and dangerous, but in play is way overpowered still.

 

[jasin]

In my, still limited, experience: the setting can range from silly grotesquerie to depressing grimness, but there's a lot of room in between for something really engaging.

Character creation is really interesting. Once you let go of the need to create just what you want to be and look at it as fighting to become what you want to be, the random starting career is fun, and the more modest-sounding careers like rat catcher or camp follower measure up surprisingly well to nobles and duelists of the game.

The system is tolerable at best. With about 35% chance of success at things they're good at, and about 15% at things they're not, starting characters are at some sort of bizarro sour spot, where they feel almost comically incompetent unless the DM skew the odds by declaring most difficulties to range from easy to really really easy.

 

[arcanaman]

my players want to do dark hersey instead of oldworld that does not bother since as of yet I own sourcebooks for neither how does dark hersey warhmmmer 40,000k differ from what you told me about oldworld?

 

[Nebulous]

The system is tolerable at best. With about 35% chance of success at things they're good at, and about 15% at things they're not, starting characters are at some sort of bizarro sour spot, where they feel almost comically incompetent unless the DM skew the odds by declaring most difficulties to range from easy to really really easy.

That's the kind of advice i like to hear.

 

[Rel]

That's the kind of advice i like to hear.

I think that the secret of keeping this from bogging the game down is similar to many other games: Don't go to the system for every little thing.

What I mean is that there are some things that are clearly within the realm of a character's abilities if they are trained at a certain skill. If a character is a cook then you don't have them rolling a cooking test for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. If they want to cook a "meal fit for a prince!" then you have them roll. If they want to conceal the taste of a poison intended for this prince, then you have them roll.

I will grant that this isn't so doable with skills used in combat. However there is where your players need to learn some of the parts of the system that help them out. Ganging up on a single foe and doing All Out Attacks considerably increases your odds of hitting (and most foes can only parry once). These are also important lessons to learn as a GM because they can make low powered foes (like Goblins) dangerous even after the characters are in their second or third profession.

 

[Obryn]

I will grant that this isn't so doable with skills used in combat. However there is where your players need to learn some of the parts of the system that help them out. Ganging up on a single foe and doing All Out Attacks considerably increases your odds of hitting (and most foes can only parry once). These are also important lessons to learn as a GM because they can make low powered foes (like Goblins) dangerous even after the characters are in their second or third profession.

Yep, there are several great ways to increase your chances to hit.

(1) Use the Aim action. Someone with a shield or offhand weapon should do this most rounds. This gives you a quick +10% to your attack.

(2) All-Out Attacks. Yeah, you can't parry or dodge, but if you're swinging a great weapon, odds are you don't care. +20% to WS is huge.

(3) Gang up on your opponents. The Combat Modifiers table lists "example" percentages for this. More or less, any time your side outnumbers the bad guys, you get better chances to hit... It's great for tactics, and it means you'll want quite a few people who know how to fight in melee.


WFRP2 can absolutely drag in early combats if you don't use these little shortcuts, and if your players don't bother with tactical positioning. If the enemies have high TB + Armor and know how to parry, it can be a sickeningly long grindfest where you're doing 1-2 points of damage per (rare) hit. An easy solution is to use weaker enemies without ridiculously high TBs.

-O

 

[Iron Sky]

The character's relative low chance of succeeding is actually one of the things I liked about Dark Heresy. It encouraged characters to specialize so everyone had their niche in the party.

Everyone, of course, wants at least a little bit of combat capability (and ARMOR), but between the limited selections of skills and powers (or whatever they call them, don't remember atm) that each career gets and the need for someone really specialized to have a 50% chance of succeeding at something...

Interestingly, I found the specializationg kept the group together in Dark Heresy, while when we played Shadowrun it had the opposite effect. I guess the difference in Dark Heresy is until late in the game, you pretty much get to be badass at 1 or 2 things - leave someone else to talk if you're the combat guy, leave someone else to fight when you're the lore guy.

 

[Sanzuo]

The character's relative low chance of succeeding is actually one of the things I liked about Dark Heresy.

At the same time, though, I don't really think they're chances of succeeding are too terribly low.

Take for example the typical D&D attack roll. You roll your attack vs a target number (AC score) to succeed. Say you're specialized on attacking in melee and you have a +15 to hit. In my opinion a balanced encounter in this instance would have opponents with ACs around 26. So that's a little less than a 50% to "succeed" at your attack roll. Of course I don't like balanced encounters, I like challenging encounters. So my preference would be to make the opponent's AC closer to 29 in this instance, meaning you would need to roll a 14 or better on a d20 to hit.

In both Warhammer systems that attack roll is abstracted into a simple percentile chance to hit the opponent. If you are really good at attacking something you're skill to hit would be around 35-45%. The opponent usually gets a last ditch attempt to parry or dodge the attack. (If they're good, also about 35-45%) Keep in mind that because the game is grittier a hit is more meaningful. It takes fewer hits to drop an opponent. Generally about 2 or 3 solid hits will take them down!

I think the blurb in the Dark Heresy book sums up my meaning well.

...Generally speaking, when two characters are engaged, they are exchanging attacks, Parries, Dodges, Feints and a number of other manoeuvers, all of which are rolled into the Standard Attack. Therefore, a test against Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill assumes that the defender is attempting to defend himself to some degree- hence a typical Attack Test is Challenging (+0). A failed test means that the defender was too difficult to hit effectively, whilst a successful Test means that the attacker was able to strike a telling blow. Where Dodge and Parry come into play they represent your last line of defence against an attacker, giving you one more chance to avoid a bullet or the swing of a chainsword.

Keep in mind the gamemaster should be adjusting the difficulty of different tests accordingly. Which is why attacking a surprised opponent is a +30 to your effective skill! Other tests should be given bonuses and penalties based on their difficulty as well.