Warhammer frpg - 2e vs 4e

[Ancalagon]

Hello

I have ran several campaigns using warhammer frpg 2nd ed, both in the warhammer world and outside of it (I wanted to see if it was suitable for a "low-ish" fantasy pseudo earth campaign, and it is!). I avoided 3e entirely because it really wasn't the same game anymore.

Now 4e is here. I've only glanced at the book. One of the big feature seems to be how you can stick in the same career the entire game, which is an interesting change but I don't see it as fundamental. I'm more interested in the other changes.

Some, like @CapnZapp , have said that 4e is "broken" and doesn't work. Is it true? Can you elaborate why? Basically I'm wondering if it's worth investing several hours in reading and mastering this new system.

cheers,

Pierre

 

[Retreater]

Here are my stumbling blocks with 4e:
Advantage is hard to keep track of. What gives Advantage, what takes it away, remembering to increase it, remembering to decrease it, remembering to add it to your roll in the first place, etc. It's a major time sink in combat, keeping up with buffs like you would in a game like D&D 3.5.
Fate/Fortune/Resolve/Resilience - I can't keep them straight. They're similar but function slightly differently, even though they have similar names. I actually have to crack open the rule book each time they're mentioned. I've been running the game weekly for over a month.
Nit-Picky XP - You get XP which you can store up to buy +1% to one skill. Having more meaningful chunks to purchase like in previous editions would've been better. (Like purchase +5% at a time. Who's going to even notice 1%?)
Honestly, if you've got the 2e stuff, I think it still holds up. Unless you're just wanting to use the latest, greatest (or need to get physical copies), I'd suggest you just stick with it if you're happy with it.

 

[Ancalagon]

By "advantage" do you mean the "momentum" that builds up in a fight? I had done some calculations on this, and it was... pretty dire.

 

[overgeeked]

Hello

I have ran several campaigns using warhammer frpg 2nd ed, both in the warhammer world and outside of it (I wanted to see if it was suitable for a "low-ish" fantasy pseudo earth campaign, and it is!). I avoided 3e entirely because it really wasn't the same game anymore.

Now 4e is here. I've only glanced at the book. One of the big feature seems to be how you can stick in the same career the entire game, which is an interesting change but I don't see it as fundamental. I'm more interested in the other changes.

Momentum, Advantage, or whatever it’s called, stacks on each character individually and must be tracked for everyone, so house rule that away or never run a combat with more than a few enemies.

Casters are far more powerful, gain power quicker, and generally throw things off the expectations most have of tbe Warhammer setting. It’s also far less dangerous to be a caster.

Conditions are a ridiculously stacking nightmare. You’re on fire, but how on fire are you? Three stacks? That’s real bad. They could have made it simple, like each stack means the same thing (roughly, mechanically) across the board, but each one is uniue so has unique mechanics so cards or printouts to keep track.

There’s what four different kinds of meta-currency to track now. Each does a different thing, is earned in different circumstances, and it’s a silly mess.

Shields are mysteriously hard to sort out.

There’s a lot more but that’s what I remember from bouncing off it hard a few years ago.

Some, like @CapnZapp , have said that 4e is "broken" and doesn't work. Is it true? Can you elaborate why?

It’s a clunky, poorly written, poorly organized mess. If you strip out most of the systems and subsystems and take it back to the basic mechanic, there’s a playable game in there somewhere. But it’s a lot of work to find it. Me and my table bounced off it hard. It’s one of the most pointlessly bloated games I’ve seen. Almost Exalted levels of why.

Basically I'm wondering if it's worth investing several hours in reading and mastering this new system.

I don’t think so. The nicest thing I can say about it is the books are quite well done and look great. The Enemy Within is amazing so far (I’ve only read the first few of the new ones).

We did take their use of success levels, aka degrees of success, mattering a lot back to 2E. Added that to damage and used degrees of success for other tasks like picking a complex lock requires so many degrees of success before it’s picked...or a particularly sturdy door needing so many degrees of success before it’s smashed.

 

[TheSword]

Hello

I have ran several campaigns using warhammer frpg 2nd ed, both in the warhammer world and outside of it (I wanted to see if it was suitable for a "low-ish" fantasy pseudo earth campaign, and it is!). I avoided 3e entirely because it really wasn't the same game anymore.

Now 4e is here. I've only glanced at the book. One of the big feature seems to be how you can stick in the same career the entire game, which is an interesting change but I don't see it as fundamental. I'm more interested in the other changes.

Some, like @CapnZapp , have said that 4e is "broken" and doesn't work. Is it true? Can you elaborate why? Basically I'm wondering if it's worth investing several hours in reading and mastering this new system.

cheers,

Pierre

Do you plane on Roll20 a different VTT or face to Face? Believe it or not from a tracking perspective it makes a massive difference.

I play on Roll20 and use the blue bar on a token to indicate advantage. I allow other players to see this bar and then everyone updates their own token. It means at a glance everyone knows how much advantage their is and when it’s lost. I’ve used it in a fair few games now and it works really well

 

[Retreater]

Do you plane on Roll20 a different VTT or face to Face? Believe it or not from a tracking perspective it makes a massive difference.

I play on Roll20 and use the blue bar on a token to indicate advantage. I allow other players to see this bar and then everyone updates their own token. It means at a glance everyone knows how much advantage their is and when it’s lost. I’ve used it in a fair few games now and it works really well

We use Roll20. Supposedly the character sheets are automated to add it to your attack rolls - if you remember to add it when you earn it, remember what circumstances allow you to add it, remember to decrease it when you need to do that, remember why you decrease it. Then are you counting the right number of allies or enemies - is this person considered engaged with two people or three people - and what if that enemy is engaged with two people or three people. And then tracking critical effects, conditions, etc. It's a lot of book-keeping no matter how you go about it.

 

[TheSword]

We use Roll20. Supposedly the character sheets are automated to add it to your attack rolls - if you remember to add it when you earn it, remember what circumstances allow you to add it, remember to decrease it when you need to do that, remember why you decrease it. Then are you counting the right number of allies or enemies - is this person considered engaged with two people or three people - and what if that enemy is engaged with two people or three people. And then tracking critical effects, conditions, etc. It's a lot of book-keeping no matter how you go about it.

Don’t your players keep track of their own? We just add it to the token and it’s obvious then. I’ve found once they understand what it means and how it is gained and lost players care a lot about advantage and are more on it than I am.

The key is making it visible. By having a bar on the token that they can see, everyone can point out if something has been missed.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I'm rather mixed.

Momentum is a good idea, in theory, and while tracking can be somewhat odious, it does alot to eliminate the "whiff factor" inherent in 1 and 2e.

I miss big sprawling career trees.

Casters are better, though at the moment, there isn't a huge variety of magic. 4e could definitely use a Realms of Sorcery type book.

I always end up mixing up resolve/reslience and fate/fortune.

I like that everything is D10s only now, no different dice weapon damage etc. That's a nice change for me (who mostly plays first edition).

 

[CapnZapp]

@overgeeked : Are you me? It feels like I wrote that post!

@Ancalagon : I don't think I ever wrote a summary here at EN World, so let me link you to Chuck's Winds of Chaos forums:

WFRP 4 analysis - Winds of Chaos

www.windsofchaos.com

(I have written more recent posts that reflect my later gamesmastering high-experience characters. If anything, they heap even harsher criticism against the edition. My point here is that I stand by every single point listed here. Not one is merely a "first impressions" type of complaint that later turned out to be premature.)

In short: nothing works. Yes, really.

Almost every single addition to 4E (compared to 2E) makes for a worse, frustrating mess. Taken in isolation, many rules might come across as reasonable, but this is a case of death by a thousand cuts. Added together, 4E becomes a game of immense complexity with lots and lots of easily forgotten or overlooked exceptions and/or modifiers. I really REALLY tried making it work, as in trying the game for a whole campaign (40+ sessions, taking heroes from first through fourth careers) and really attempting to patch or houserule or nix each niggle or unworkable rule as I encountered them*. To my surprise, nothing worked. No matter what I did or where I turned, 4E remained a hopelessly unbalanced mess, with horribly entangled and cumbersome rules. I did not give up easily, but in the end, I was faced with the only possible conclusion: that 2nd edition represents a massive improvement that fixes almost everything (by removing what 4E added)!

As a new "improved" edition, 4E must rank as one of the most complete failures I have ever encountered. (Rules-wise, that is. The book does look good.)


Zapp

PS. This link should work even if in the far future Chuck closes the doors on his forum:

WFRP 4 analysis - Winds of Chaos

web.archive.org

*) Feel free to search my posts made in the year or so after the linked post to gain an idea of what those tribulations were... (You might need to log in/register in order to access my profile though). Far less painful is to simply stay away from 4E, though...

 

[Retreater]

Don’t your players should keep track of their own?

Right. I try to help because rarely remember it and often don't do it correctly when they do remember it.