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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9364287" data-attributes="member: 6796661">Yeah, I think many people understand "gritty" as "deadly."  I think WFRPs reputation for deadliness is overblown. But the rules do make rushing into combat something you want to think about moreso than 5e. Some reasons for this:1. Yes, there are ways to mitigate the deadliness, but there simply are more chances for bad rolls (or good NPC rolls) to make bad things happen. If you are facing a very beefy foe or are outnumbered, not only will the enemy have bonuses to their rolls but may have many more attacks. The existence of crits makes the action economy matter that much more. I like the the flavor of someone bashing away at a foes armor in a fight. It also gives another thing you have to spend coin on. Battles can be costly no only in wounds and injuries but in gear. 2. Advantage. Advantage has a way of snowballing. One you have it you have more opportunities of getting more. I like how this captures the feeling of battle swinging to one sides favor. The building up of momentum. If enemies the PCs are facing get in some good roles and hits, they can start building up advantage. That can make things go very bad for the PCs quickly. And vice versa of course. When PCs are overpowered compared to the foes, most of the time the PCs are going to win. But it isn't as much of a given in WFRP as it is with DnD 5e, esp. as advantage gives the DM a powerful tool to make enemy tactics matter more. (And the players have more reason to be tactical in their preparation for and during combat.). I find that group advantage makes things a bit less swingy, but it strikes a good balance.  I do, however, kinda miss how with advantage in the Core Rules, you can have one character whom the dice gods decided to smile upon become of bloody snowball of advantage wreaking havoc on the battlefield. 3. Difficult in-combat healing/aid, slow healing, and lingering injuries. Unless you have a higher XP party fighting enemies they far outclass, they are not going to be running from on combat to another. You don't just heal with a short rest and even a long rest isn't necessarily going to get you back to full health. When you do get injuries, they affect you for a long time.  Certain injuries--and most injuries if not properly treated--can lead to permanent disabilities. 4. Disease. I know many groups just ignore diseases. The Core Rulebook calls out that you can ignore the whole section on disease. Other groups love using the disease rules. I'm in the later camp. And disease adds to the deadliness of the campaign. Not only from the potential of dying from a disease, but also because of how disease can make you less effective in combat, making combat more deadly for ill characters. 5. The setting. I realize you can play WFRP in your own setting or change the default setting anyway you want. But the default setting as presented in the books is not a modern, accepting one. You start getting exposed to chaos, get some mutations--life can become very difficult for you. Open displays of magic can bring you trouble. Your social status can bring you opportunities or trouble. If a DM really leans into the setting flavor, it makes the game a bit deadlier. So WFRP is not old-school D&D deadly in terms of character death. There are no real save or suck mechanics. A careful tactical party in WFRP is probably less likely to get a quick death or TPK than low level characters in OD&D. But incautious players will see their characters suffer a long miserable process of slowly dying from injury and disease, though they still have a not-negligible change of having their armor bashed away and dying a quick death on the battlefield. Thank Sigmar for small mercies.</blockquote>

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