Witch Hunter: time for buyer's remorse?

[Carnivorous_Bean]

Well, based on some rpg.net reviews and what I read here, I bought a copy of Witch Hunter: the Invisible World.

It had a lot of elements that I like. A 17th century setting (one of my favorite historical periods except for Medieval times); the idea of at least pseudo-horror in that time period, which seems to go along perfectly; and the concept of the witch hunters themselves -- I'm also interested in religion, and having religious or semi-religious heroes also appealed to me.

However, now I found the Witch Hunter forums over on Paradigm's site, and I'm struck with potential buyer's remorse before I've even gotten the book.

Specifically, it sounds like the system is pretty poor. Combat is weighted to make two-weapon fighting the best option; parrying is so powerful, according to threads over there, that a melee fight is destined to be a long, drawn-out affair; some stats are very powerful, while others are very weak, and only justified because they're an arbitrary prerequisite for some professions; etc.

Now, as I've gotten older and have less time to game in between work and relationships, I've also gotten so that I want to keep fussing with the rules to a minimum. I want something I can just pick up and run, with maybe one sheet of house rules for personal flavor and eccentricity.

So is WH really the unbalanced, poorly-designed system (RAW) that these threads lead me to fear? Am I going to have to ditch the entire system and replace it with something else -- perhaps Fudge? Or is my buyer's remorse premature?

 

[BluSponge]

Hrmm...

I don't know what to tell you other than to try playing the game and judge it by its own merits, not by what you are hearing on Paradigm's scarcely visited website. In the interest of fairness, you should at least join the Dark Providence group and get feedback from that crowd, don't you think? I mean, they get more traffic in a week than Paradigm's WH boards get in a year! So it should only stand to reason that if you are going to base your opinion on a game on someone else's kevetching that you seek out the biggest possible group, right?

It seems like you are predisposed to liking the game, so give it a whirl. If you are really worried about the experience, download the errata from the Dark Providence Yahoo Group. Play the game once or twice before drawing conclusions.

I can say that the four sessions I played in, none of the issues you mention came up or ruined my experiece. The only issue I had, in fact, was that the GMs didn't award enough hero points for my tastes.

Tom

 

[Crothian]

It has some mechanical problems but I guess it will depend on your style. When you game is there lots and lots of combat? Do your players min max and look to abuse the system? If yes, then the game might not work that welkl for you.

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

Actually, it sounds like I might be in luck.

I'm generally pretty sparing with combat -- I usually keep the combat scenes as few and far between as I can so that they're more dramatic and memorable. I'd rather have 2 fights in total in the adventure, that the players will talk about for weeks afterwards, than 2 dozen that they forget in a few minutes.

And most of my group could care less about min/maxing. There's only one min/maxer, and he's fairly mild as far as min/maxers go -- just looks for advantages, rather than working up mathematically perfect builds, etc.

So from what you say, it may be possible to 'ease around' the rough spots and run a basically mystery-and-suspense driven style of adventure, and leave the problematic mechanics alone most of the time.

Thank you -- just wanted to know if they worked at all!

 

[Aus_Snow]

I haven't tried that game, but well, I just hope it isn't yet another case of a lack of (sufficient) playtesting. This issue plagues the RPG industry. IMO, anyhow.

I hope its problems are minor, and that it's a blast, whatever the case.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I personally think you're jumping the gun here. Have you read the thread I made? It talks about some if this stuff. It also addresses some of your concerns.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=232745

Parrying can be really nice, yes. It also means you lose your next action. That's not exactly clear in the book, but it's mentioned in the errata.

Two weapon fighting... *shrug* this is a common problem in any game system that gives a mechanical advantage. They're either going to give it an advantage, which means people will suddenly declare how _everyone_ has to fight with two weapons. Or they don't, and people all complain about how it's worthless and not realistic that fighting with two weapons does nothing.

I handled it by telling the player that thought about it, "Well you can actually _use_ two weapons and get a mechanical benefit from it in the form of an attack against 2 different targets and all that. But you're going to be at the penalties in the book.

Or, your character can simply use two weapons as a stylistic thing and there's no real mechanical benefit in terms of extra damage or attacks. Just being able to do something like throw an axe at someone and still have a weapon in hand".

He went with the stylistic approach, and in the course of combat we simply described him chopping around with with both hatchets and so forth. It works especially nicely with the mook rules, but it works fine for the "real" monsters too.

Combat _can_ be a long drawn out affair if you're not clear on the rules. Like I was the first time. I got that straight though, and combat went _much_ quicker.

Ganging up on someone/something? It's _deadly_. Armor only gives you successes. It doesn't soak up damage versus everything. The group learned _really_ quick that a few good blows from someone means that everyone else is going to hammer the opponent unopposed.

For example, my Big Bad gets 4 successes on his Defense Pool and has armor that grants 2 points. That means he's got 6 total. The first player smacks him and scores 5 successes.
Player 2 smacks him and scores 3 successes.

Player 2 has just blown through all the defense of the Big Bad and scores damage. Player 3 and every other player after that? As long as they score a success, they're doing damage. Because Player 1 and 2 chewed up the Big Bad's defense.

Stats being useless? *shrug* I dunno, I guess. Every game that has fixed stats is going to have "dump" stats of some sort or another. I haven't seen any stats that I'd consider useless at this point, although it's possible that it'll change.

Witch Hunter isn't my favorite rule system, but it certainly seems serviceable. I made one critical misstep with the way combat worked my first time out, and otherwise it's gone pretty smooth actually.

Then again, I don't just buy games just to read the book. I've got no idea if the complaints that you've seen are coming from people actually running the game or not. I also tend to be a pretty easy going GM, and the players I've got are relatively easy going as well.

But any system _can_ be broken if someone tries hard enough. Just because someone's figured out how to be obnoxious doesn't mean that it's actually going to be a problem in the real world.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Ok, now that I'm home and can look at my Witch Hunter book...

Could you please explain to me the reasoning that combat is weighted towards people going with Two Weapon fighting? I'm not being snarky here, I'm honestly confused.

Page 107 has this to say about Two-Weapon attack:

You may fght with two weapons at once, such as a sword and dagger, sword and shield, or sword and pistol. You get two attacks on your action, but the attacks are made at a penalty. If wielding two medium weapons, you take a –4 dice penalty to each attack, or if one of the weapons is small, you take a –3 dice penalty to each attack. Finally, if both weapons are small, you take only a –2 die penalty to each attack.

Example: Tom, armed with a cutlass and dagger, faces two pirates. Rather than directing his full attention against a single foe at a time, decides to attack both targets. Tom’s normal Hand-to-Hand is 6. In one hand, he wields a sword and in the other, a dagger—a medium and small weapon, giving him a –3 dice penalty. Since he’s attacking with both weapons, he rolls 2 dice for one attack and 1 die for the other.

Doesn't sound great to me. But it gets better...

See, page 99 lists the weapons. One of the things about weapons is they've got a Complexity rating. This rating is subtracted from your pool of dice too.

The following weapons have a Complexity of zero (meaning no penalty when using them):
Club (Medium weapon)
Dagger (small weapon)
Hook (small weapon)
Javelin (medium weapon)
Unarmed (small weapon)

Everything else has a complexity of 1 or higher.

Cutlass, Sword, and Rapier are all Medium weapons and have a Complexity of 2.

Now, there's some ways around this, but they aren't exactly cheap either.

You can take Attack Focus, which reduces a weapon's complexity by 1. No, you can't reduce it past zero, and there's no benefit for it being zero, other than the fact that you're not being penalized.

That's a Basic Talent. You only get 4 to start with.

If you want to actually have a chance to do something with Two-Weapon fighting, You need to blow a Talent to take Basic Fighting Tradition, and select the Fe En Acero (Faith in Steel) school (page 136).

This by the way requires the character to have a Hand to Hand of 3 and a True Faith score of 2 (you start with True Faith 1)

That means you've got to spend a third Talent to get Pious, which will raise your True Faith to 2.

Then you spend your last Talent to take Basic Fighting style, and select Balanced Strikes (page 136) for your fighting style.

It reduces your penalties by 1.

As I understand it, the example in the book is actually off.

Tom starts with a skill of 6. Because he's using a Sword and a Dagger, he's at -3 dice. But unless he's taken Attack Focus, he has to figure in the weapon complexity. In this case it's a cutlass, meaning a compexity of 2 and therefore an _additional_ 2 dice penalty. The dagger has a complexity of 0, so no problem there.

Which means (as I understand it) Tom would really be rolling a single die.

If he'd gone for the Attack Focus and Fighting tradition, then he'd be at:
-1 for weapon complexity (instead of -2) because of Attack Focus
-2 for Balanced Strikes.

In other words, the example given of Tom being at a -3 is what he'd be at if he'd taken all the stuff he could to do Two-Weapon Fighting.

I could be missing something, but that's how I interpret the rules. If someone has gone to all that trouble and pumped up their combat skill so that a 3 dice penalty is still workable? I say "You deserve to be able to kick some ass. You've paid for it."

 

[BluSponge]

Ok, now that I'm home and can look at my Witch Hunter book...

Could you please explain to me the reasoning that combat is weighted towards people going with Two Weapon fighting? I'm not being snarky here, I'm honestly confused.

I'll explain it to you. Because you likely have a better understanding of the game and the rules than the handful of people complaining about it on Paradigm's boards. That's just a guess, based on experiences on other message boards that shall remain nameless (no, not this one).

Tom

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

@ Tom: funny thing is, of the folks currently doing most of the posting over at the PCI forums, Scurvy and myself are two of them (and some of the others have been posting in the other Witch Hunter threads around here). There's a lot of older threads from when the game came out last year and the answer was either given in the Dark Providence list or not at all. I'd say stick to the more recent and the active threads and you'll get a better sense of how the game plays and feedback from people actively engaged in it now.

@ Carnivorous Bean: To address your preocupations, I've been playing the game for 6 months now and I have not encountered any problems I could not deal with quickly and usually by simply defaulting to the base mechanic of the game. Take the game for a spin first, enjoy it for what it is. Focus more on the story aspects, and when it comes to combat, play it stylistically, more cinematic. Combat will be as complicated as you let it be, really, so don't. Once you do it a couple of times you'll find it's actually quite intuitive and you learn the few basic rules you need and go from there.

 

[Paradigm]

I think that the fact that some fairly sharp gamers were willing to nominate us as Best Rules should indicate that the game is playable. Having designed and published gaming product for many years now, I've come to realize that anything that does not fit a person's perception of balance will not just be described as "too good", it will be described as game-breaking-play-ruining-anyone-that-doesn't-use-this-is-an-idiot-what-the-hell-were-you-thinking-you-morons bad. The simple fact is, no matter how smart you are, no matter how skilled your play testers are, you are massively outnumbered by players that want to get the most out their characters.

The game has errata, but what game doesn't? I can tell you that combat does not drag, at all. It has the advantage that nobody is worthless. Even the two weapon fighter, streamlined to gain maximum advantage from his fighting profile, serves to make the characters that did not spend as much of their build on fighting even more effective.

The game was designed with certain principles in mind:

• The rules should be robust enough to handle the unexpected
• The rules should be easy enough to prevent a player from looking in the rulebook
• The terrors of the Invisible World are powerful, and Witch Hunters will have to work together to defeat them
• Every character can participate, effectively, in combat
• Witch Hunters are extraordinary, and even the least of them is a match for several ordinary mortals
• It is very difficult to die a hollow and pointless death
• The rules should have mechanics to directly reward and encourage role playing
• The game should be fast and fun

On these points I think the game has succeeded. For example, a typical Dark Providence adventure contains at least 2 combats, the players spend more time role playing and investigating than fighting, and the adventure is completed in under 4 hours. That should make it pretty obvious that the game does not drag.

My main complaint is that we didn't put more encouragement to the Grand Master to give out Hero Points easily, because when we play, they are earned and spent constantly. That was our intent, we want players to go over the top and get themselves into the kind of binds that the heroes in movies and novels routinely find themselves in, and then use the Hero Points to simulate the fact that the script-writer is on the protagonists' side.

I hope this post illuminates this discussion, and I remain available to answer questions.