D&D vs WHFRP

[Ourph]

I'm curious -- what makes WFRP combat more 'tactical' as opposed to D&D?

I wouldn't say it's more tactical. You have a lot of tactical choices in both games. I would say D&D focuses more on tactical positioning whereas WFRP focuses more on tactical time management. There are a number of different actions you can take during combat in the W2e combat system that allow you to essentially trade part of your actions during the round for bonuses to offensive or defensive capability. It's similar to fighting defensively, flanking, aiding another, etc. in D&D, but IMO handled in a more intuitive and easy to use way.

The de-emphasis on positioning in W2e means it's probably easier to do without a battlemat in that system, but the system certainly meshes well with a combat grid and I would say the rules pretty much assume you'll want to use a combat grid (or at the very least a tabletop setup with miniatures and a ruler) for major combats.

Let the peasants come and defy Imperial edict! They will be accused of heresy!

I think this is one of the issues the GM is going to have to work very hard to balance. On the one hand, Wizards are now a protected and respected part of the Imperial machinery. On the other, even the best intentioned Wizard is probably going to create some kind of magical mishap at some point. If he does so in front of witnesses, the line between "servant of the Empire" and "secretly a Demonologist - just look at that thing he summoned when he was supposed to be driving away the Goblins" can get very thin. If the wrong person sees his inadvertant Chaos Manifestation your Wizard may go from town hero to kindling very quickly.

If the GM makes this too harsh, no one will want to use magic or become a magic using character. If he doesn't make it harsh enough, a lot of the balancing effects of Chaos Manifestations go away (i.e. - magic becomes safer to use and therefore more powerful than it's supposed to be within the system). Add into that the political power and ramifications of having the College of Wizards as an important part of the power structure of the Empire and the GM has a lot to consider when handling magic using PCs.

It's a really cool system, but it's definitely one that requires a GM with good judgement and a thorough understanding of the implications of making magic use both a mechanical and a roleplaying hazard. It's probably the most complex setting/mechanics issue in the whole game.

 

[Rel]

I'm curious -- what makes WFRP combat more 'tactical' as opposed to D&D?

I think it's mostly "differently tactical" than D&D.

There are some considerations that D&D doesn't have like Parrying and Dodging where, even if you hit your foe, maybe you didn't. That comes into play particularly when you're fighting mobs of bad guys. Let's say you're fighting 3 goblins and they each have a 25 Weapon Skill (meaning that they need to roll 25 or less on percentile dice to hit what they swing at).

First off, with three of them attacking you, they get +10% to hit. This is kind of like how Flanking works in D&D except it doesn't matter where they stand, only that there is 3 of them. So anyway, they roll and 2 out of 3 miss and the one that hits you only does a couple wounds after you subtract your armor and Toughness. You even swing back and nail one of them pretty good (because Goblins are not widely known for having great armor and Toughness), despite him having a shield he can use to parry.

But then the next round the two you didn't wound All Out Attack, giving them a +20 on top of the +10 for being 3 on 1. NOW those 25 Weapon Skill Goblins are at 55! So after they swing (and this time 2 out of 3 hit and you lose another few Wounds), what do you do? Do you swing at the guy you alread wounded and hope to take him out? But he can parry you. The guys who All Out Attacked can't parry. But you're unlikely to take them down in one shot. You might Disengage but they'll be able to catch you and even Charge you. Do you go into a Defensive Stance and offset the +20s they've got but not get to attack back? Will your friends save you in time?

I got to learn ALL these tactics the hard way, at the expense of a couple of aforementioned Fate Points!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

4. Oh, did we forget to mention...
The Starting classes are Brutal. Seriously brutal. If you're lucky, you might wind up as a Soldier, and have some actual weapon skills at game start. Otherwise, you could wind up being a class with only role-play options when conflict rears it's ugly head..

Hey, every character gets a hand weapon at chargen, and all humans have a WS of 20+2d10. Sure, some basic careers might get a second attack, which is huge. But that doesn't mean they actually hit that much better.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Regarding magic: There are a couple of ways that PC wizards can approach this issue.

First of all, they can hide the fact that they are mages, and dress up as ordinary folks. But this can be problematic - if they do have to use magic in public, then accusations of "witchcraft" and "chaos worship" will fly fast and furious, and unless they are able to flee the scene even faster, they might have to face down a lynch mob.

Another possibility is to dress the part. Show everyone right up in front that they are a Battle Wizard of the Imperial Colleges and thus represent Imperial authority. Be polite but firm, and law-abiding citizens will probably at least give you some grudging respect as long as you don't threaten them, even if they won't like you. This allows you to use magic more blatantly when the need is clear. The basic message here is: "I am from the government, and I am here to help." Of course, there are more than a few people who dislike the government and wouldn't mind if something bad happened to you. But as long as you can hint that more people will come looking for you if you were to vanish (whether or not this is true), you should probably be allright.

Finally, you could present yourself as the sidekick of someone more respected: "This is Sir Humphrey Orcslayer, Knight of the Order of the Killer Rabbit, and I am his humble advisor on matters arcane." As long as the locals respect your party leader, some of that respect will rub off on you. Of course, that's more difficult than it sounds, since WFRP PCs have an unfortunate tendencies to be refugees from the law (this is not actually a requirement of the rules, but strangely it always seems to work out that way in campaigns - even when the GM doesn't intend it to happen...).

One general word of advice, though: Don't use magic more often than you have to!

It's all to easy to suffer from Tzeentch's Curse, and it is all too easy to spoil all food and milk near you or have some other unpleasant side effects that will make rurals consider you a witch. People in the cities will be more sophisticated, but that doesn't mean you should push your luck there, either.

 

[Capellan]

I just finished running a short solo campaign (via Yahoo Voice) using the WFRP 2e rules. After roiughly 8 sessions of play, the PC was out of Fate Points, needed only one more Insanity Point before she had to start making Willpower checks or go crazy, and had three significant distinguishing marks caused by near-fatal injuries (including a permanently blood-red eye due to ruptures in the socket after a head wound).

By WFRP standards, she came out of things pretty well ...

 

[MonsterMash]

Wow, that's a pretty big change from 1st edition WFRP that had flying mages performing at fairs. Is it really forbidden in 2e?

I think the big change is 2e is set after the Storm of Chaos which has made magic become viewed as much more a thing of chaos than in 1e.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I just finished running a short solo campaign (via Yahoo Voice) using the WFRP 2e rules. After roiughly 8 sessions of play, the PC was out of Fate Points, needed only one more Insanity Point before she had to start making Willpower checks or go crazy, and had three significant distinguishing marks caused by near-fatal injuries (including a permanently blood-red eye due to ruptures in the socket after a head wound).

By WFRP standards, she came out of things pretty well ...

Player I have is 'lucky charm' crazy because of his lack of points, he carries five to ten on him at any given time! This is his madness!

 

[Dr Simon]

I played 1st Ed., through the Enemy Within campaign and it was great fun. One of the best aspects was the versimilitude of the Old World, which was more a factor of the adventure writing than the game itself. I didn't find it as deadly as some make out, mainly due to Fate Points, but you can be knocked out of combat pretty quickly. With higher powered characters the differential in combat survival could become quite large, as toughness and wounds progressed at different rates. One character, 'Sharp' Spike was a Pit Fighter and was pretty much unstoppable but foes tough enough to challenge him were deadly to the other characters. And elves had an unbalanced iinitiative compared to other races - I don't know if they've fixed that in 2nd Ed.

I also liked using pounds, shillings and pence (which became second nature after a while). Have they still got that?

 

[Hand of Evil]

I played 1st Ed., through the Enemy Within campaign and it was great fun. One of the best aspects was the versimilitude of the Old World, which was more a factor of the adventure writing than the game itself. I didn't find it as deadly as some make out, mainly due to Fate Points, but you can be knocked out of combat pretty quickly. With higher powered characters the differential in combat survival could become quite large, as toughness and wounds progressed at different rates. One character, 'Sharp' Spike was a Pit Fighter and was pretty much unstoppable but foes tough enough to challenge him were deadly to the other characters. And elves had an unbalanced iinitiative compared to other races - I don't know if they've fixed that in 2nd Ed.

I also liked using pounds, shillings and pence (which became second nature after a while). Have they still got that?

They have made character advancement more level, the gap between players vs NPCs and monster is not as steep. I think I saw the odds listed by slaughter margin somewhere: a character with 5 to 10 advances has a 55 to 60% chance of killing an "average" monster in one-on-one combat, this is 45 to 54% if less than 5 advances.

So the breakdown for someone with 5 to 10 advance by slaughter margin was something like this:
Very Easy: 70% or better player will win
Easy: 65?% player will win
Routine: 60% player will win - Clanrat/mutant
Average: 50% player will win - Orc
Challanging: 40% player will win - Beastman
Hard: 30% player will win - common troll
Very Hard: 20% player will when
Impossible: 10% player will win


As for the pound, it was changed to gold.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I think the big change is 2e is set after the Storm of Chaos which has made magic become viewed as much more a thing of chaos than in 1e.

But I wouldn't agree with that 100% either because, unless I'm misremembering (which is possible), the Imperial Wizards were at the forefront many times and Battle Wizards are highly respected.