Do you like Warhammer FRP 4th edition?

Flexor the Mighty! said:

Is the statement that it is "crunchier" than 2e accurate? Heavier systems are a turn off for my group.

Click to expand...

A bit, but not much. If you can handle 2nd ed, you can handle 4th.

CapnZapp said:

Unfortunately the new edition comes across as a bad fan job of 2E.

Almost every conceivable option has been tweaked.

Individually graded, many of them are even quite nice. You can easily point to a page and claim they solved this or that problem with the previous editions.

However, when you put them together, the multitude of changes creates a huge mess. The game sinks under its own weight.

This game is incredibly convoluted and massively more crunchy than either 1E or 2E. Combat runs at a crawl with loads of die rolls.

That reviewers haven't caught this is probably because it takes time before the structural flaws become apparent.

Click to expand...

This is basically a list of advantages that you summarize as being a problem.

- The system has been tweaked only. It’s still recognizably WFRP, adventures are easy to convert and if you get the percentage system from earlier editions it will be easy to learn. SLs are the biggest change but even they were a part of earlier editions in a form.

- lots of things have improved: magic is punchy but not easy; combat is still dangerous but now a lot less whiffly; the setting is undeniably the old world.

- The Game sinks under its own mass? It takes time to learn a new edition. Once you have a system for tracking advantage, conditions and channeled energy everything else is easy. We use the rings from pop bottle caps. Different colours for different conditions, silver for advantage.

- There are less die rolls in this combat. You literally roll one opposed test for each round that gives you everything. How can that compare to multiple attacks, damage and wound locations in earlier editions.

- It’s possible that reviewers just disagree with your assessment.

No system is perfect and it is very early days. However having tried some of the published adventures and converted a few encounters from 1st ed into 4th I’m very happy with it. I’m about to introduce it to a second d&d group as an alternative.

To be honest, Graeme Davis being heavily involved (he has written Rough Nights and Hard Days) is awesome. The encounters are solid and faithful adaptions with some new additions. Definitely with the feel of 1e.The fact that he is revising and updating The Enemy Within is pretty freaking amazing. With the last two books re-written, all the books edited and updated following 20 years of play testing, and with a companion book for each adventure. It’s the only reason I haven’t converted and started doing it already.

Staffan said:

I don't have much experience with 2e, but 4e is definitely crunchier than 1e. When reading it, I've noticed a tendency to define a lot of things like downtime activity and combat maneuvers. Some people appreciate having that sort of thing defined, others would prefer to wing it.

One thing I do like is that you can have unlimited advancement without switching careers. In 1e, you could only ever get +10 to WS and BS as a mercenary - if you wanted more than that you needed to become something else, like a Mercenary Sergeant/Captain - and if you were playing by the rules, that basically meant that you needed to be part of a mercenary unit and become promoted. That's something we usually ignored, because our characters were adventurers and being blocked in your advancement is no fun, so we basically just paid the XP and moved on. But in 4e, there's nothing that says you can't boost your WS as high as you want it as a Recruit or Soldier - advancing to Sergeant offers the chance to learn other things, but if you're happy being a soldier you can keep on keeping on.

One thing I'm less happy about is increasing stats and skills in increments of a single percentile. I think increasing them by fives would be much easier (so instead of paying 10 XP each for the first five advances in a skill, you'd pay 50 XP for +5).

Click to expand...

I agree that downtime systems can overly regulate something that doesn’t fit in every game. We dropped the equivalent system from Adventures in Middle Earth and just winged it. We kinda do that here too. Though it looks simple enough.

What is the issue about the 1% increases? It gives granularity and allows you to improve multiple stats in a single spending of XP. Also if you didn’t break it down the escalating cost would mean improving a stat to +30 would take 450 XP and might take several sessions of no improvement. It’s quite nice being able to spend half your points scaling your main stat slowly whilst spending the other half on a talent, new spell or advancing a new skill or stat quite a bit.

I think adjusting to the art is partly a challenge because it’s full colour. It’s really hard to compare the black and white sketches from 1st/2nd edition to full colour illustrations of which there are many. I think they’ve tried to bring the style of the old world into line with how Warhammer FB changed miniatures and art from 1995 onwards whilst detailing ordinary folk and places. 2nd edition did the same but in black and white. The end result for 4th ed art feels something like the Witcher 3 to me in style and colour. I have no problem with that, though I get that it might be jarring. It’s great to see more maps... a lot more maps particularly in Rough Nights and the building supplement.

lets be honest some of the artwork in later 1st and 2nd was frankly awful. On the other hand nothing will compare to the first time I saw the illustration of Castle von Wittgenstein, and it’s poster map. Hopefully the artwork for 4th falls somewhere in between.

Flexor the Mighty! said:

Is the statement that it is "crunchier" than 2e accurate? Heavier systems are a turn off for my group.

Click to expand...

Yes, it is significantly more detailed and laden with special rules than 2E.

aramis erak said:

The combat mechanics look like they should internalize relatively easily, and speed up, but it's going to slog until players learn it.

Click to expand...

Our group is very experienced, but unfortunately it was far too much.

Everything has niggling special rules. There are modifiers and extra dice rolls everywhere.

As I see it, the developers lost oversight and just added stuff everywhere.

TheSword said:

What is the issue about the 1% increases? It gives granularity and allows you to improve multiple stats in a single spending of XP. Also if you didn’t break it down the escalating cost would mean improving a stat to +30 would take 450 XP and might take several sessions of no improvement. It’s quite nice being able to spend half your points scaling your main stat slowly whilst spending the other half on a talent, new spell or advancing a new skill or stat quite a bit.

Click to expand...

Mostly that it feels off to have some things you pay for with tens of XP (percentile increases), and others you pay for with hundreds (talents). It feels like the main benefit is to be able to pay slightly less in order to bring some stats/skills up to various breakpoints (mostly even 10s). But that's based on playing it once and then reading it once or twice, so it might work better in practice.

Tracking multiple conditions is a red flag for my table right off the bat I must say. Can anyone flesh that out a bit?

Flipped though it at the store and didn't care for the art style at all.

if anything I'm excited to see TEW updated.

Flexor the Mighty! said:

Tracking multiple conditions is a red flag for my table right off the bat I must say. Can anyone flesh that out a bit?

Flipped though it at the store and didn't care for the art style at all.

if anything I'm excited to see TEW updated.

Click to expand...

You occasionally suffer from conditions, like Bleeding (lose X number of wounds a round), or dazed or blinded or the like. Usually as a result of suffering crits.

It isn’t really any different to Pathfinder with different levels of fatigue or multiple instances of bleeding.

Conditions have been a regular part of rpgs since Final fantasy 7!