Opinions on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4ed?

[beholdsa]

WFRP 4e is the best edition of Warhammer Fantasy yet! It fixes lots of small problems from the older editions and the production values are great.

 

[Mercador]

I just saw this deal come up, which if you're interested in WHFRPG fluff, might be of value....

Bundle of Holding - Chaos reigns

bundleofholding.com

Yeah I'm looking for physical books, I can't read on the screen that long. And there aren't any epub releases of RPG books (or only a few).

 

[TheSword]

Go with the novels referenced then. Most are available on Amazon nice and cheap.

 

[macd21]

Disclosure: I wrote two adventures for WFRP 4.

4ed is by far my favorite edition of WFRP, solving the issues that put me off 1st and 2nd ed. But 4 creates issues of its own. A lot of it is just in parsing the rules. Space in the core book was tight, with the result that examples were cut. if you’re reading the rules for the first time, you should keep a copy of the errata and both the official and unofficial FAQs handy. But once you grasp the rules, the game is fine. There are a few bits people like to house rule (advantage isn’t to everyone’s taste, and magic probably needs some tweaking), but it’s a lot better than 2nd ed.

 

[TheSword]

Disclosure: I wrote two adventures for WFRP 4.

4ed is by far my favorite edition of WFRP, solving the issues that put me off 1st and 2nd ed. But 4 creates issues of its own. A lot of it is just in parsing the rules. Space in the core book was tight, with the result that examples were cut. if you’re reading the rules for the first time, you should keep a copy of the errata and both the official and unofficial FAQs handy. But once you grasp the rules, the game is fine. There are a few bits people like to house rule (advantage isn’t to everyone’s taste, and magic probably needs some tweaking), but it’s a lot better than 2nd ed.

Awesome. Would you be willing to share which?

I’m a big fan of it so far.

Regarding the advantage, ironically in Covid times using a VTT seems to make it much faster and smoother as the macros work out the calculations for you. Very satisfactory.

 

[macd21]

Awesome. Would you be willing to share which?

I’m a big fan of it so far.

Regarding the advantage, ironically in Covid times using a VTT seems to make it much faster and smoother as the macros work out the calculations for you. Very satisfactory.

Bait and Witch and Double Trouble.

 

[TheSword]

Bait and Witch and Double Trouble.

Nice, two of my favorites from a book of good adventures. It’s really refreshing after the far more straightforward hack and slash of d&d and pathfinder.

I was really chuffed to see Ubersreik adventure 2 coming out. Hopefully we’ll see more of the same?

 

[macd21]

Nice, two of my favorites from a book of good adventures. It’s really refreshing after the far more straightforward hack and slash of d&d and pathfinder.

I was really chuffed to see Ubersreik adventure 2 coming out. Hopefully we’ll see more of the same?

Hopefully. Afraid I’m out of the loop at the moment, as some day-job commitments have meant I’ve had to put WFRP writing on hold. But Dom and Padraig certainly seem to have a lot of releases lined up!

 

[CapnZapp]

After having played 4th Edition extensively, I'm afraid I have found that nearly none of the rules additions made in 4th edition work.

At all. Some of them are so ineptly imbalanced it is a disgrace Cubicle 7 allowed the game to release in such a state.

Just to pick the largest elephant of many in the room: Advantage.

It. Just. Doesn't. Work.

Advantage in WFRP4 is a mechanism whereby you keep getting +10% bonuses (the game uses percentile dice) each time you succeed. When you lose you lose all of the advantage you've accumulated. This massively transforms the game, and not in a good way. In fact game-play becomes unrecognizable from the rather down-to-earth game WFRP has always been, and WFRP4 still pretends to be (even though it secretly wants to be more like Warhammer Fantasy Battle).

If your players are even a little trying to act in rational and effective ways, they will immediately start chasing Advantage, rather than performing actions that make sense in the game and in the scene. You will always go for the easy shot, since you can always attempt more difficult actions later, when you've amassed a game-changing +40% or some such... You will also start looking to prevent the monsters from going on an "Advantage avalanche", meaning you will find yourself taking actions from a pure meta perspective. ("I know it makes no sense to whack this Orc here, but trust me, he would have become unstoppable if I didn't").

That kind of meta game might have worked for the Hulk and Black Widow - but it falls completely flat in a game featuring ratcatchers and guttersnipes.

Advantage is just one out of far too many rules additions that have been added with seemingly no play-testing, and no thought on how all these new rules add together. 4E also introduces opposed checks. A given bonus (say +20%) that works fine in 2E is almost always too large in 4E. This seems to have flewn right past the devs - most numbers remain in the same ball-park (if not identical). While getting the above +40% in 2E would be good - great even - it would still not save you against the monster, since you don't oppose its rolls, and you have limited chances at active defense. In 4E, it changes everything, and basically lets you go on a super-hero spree that I can't believe anyone want.

WFRP4 is a horrible mess of a system. Nearly every facet of the 2E rules have been made more complicated, with loads and loads AND LOADS of little niggly special conditions and exceptions... but Warhammer doesn't need a massively complex game. (Don't get me started on how fiendishly complicated resolving an attack can become once the PC and the NPC becomes moderately complex - there are Talents who only activate on a success, separate from a win; there are modifiers from talents, equipment, injury, circumstances, the enemy... it all too easily becomes nightmarishly complex. I'm talking D&D 4th edition levels of cluttery complexity)

Weapons, Armor, Critical Hits, Monsters, Talents... every one of these areas has been cluttered down with loads of little special conditions and modifiers that make it much much harder to gamesmaster WFRP4 than WFRP2.

Wizards start out cripplingly ineffective, only to become entirely unbalanced powerhouses given experience and a minmaxed talent selection. Warhammer has always featured a boring spell selection far too combat-focused, but in WFRP4 you don't even need the spells with higher Casting Numbers. Dart and Blast will remain far superior no matter how powerful you become, because - again - several rules changes were implemented at the same time without anyone considering the complete picture.

Warhammer doesn't need most of the rules additions offered by WFRP4, even if they had worked.

 

[TheSword]

After having played 4th Edition extensively, I'm afraid I have found that nearly none of the rules additions made in 4th edition work.

At all. Some of them are so ineptly imbalanced it is a disgrace Cubicle 7 allowed the game to release in such a state.

Just to pick the largest elephant of many in the room: Advantage.

It. Just. Doesn't. Work.

Advantage in WFRP4 is a mechanism whereby you keep getting +10% bonuses (the game uses percentile dice) each time you succeed. When you lose you lose all of the advantage you've accumulated. This massively transforms the game, and not in a good way. In fact game-play becomes unrecognizable from the rather down-to-earth game WFRP has always been, and WFRP4 still pretends to be (even though it secretly wants to be more like Warhammer Fantasy Battle).

If your players are even a little trying to act in rational and effective ways, they will immediately start chasing Advantage, rather than performing actions that make sense in the game and in the scene. You will always go for the easy shot, since you can always attempt more difficult actions later, when you've amassed a game-changing +40% or some such... You will also start looking to prevent the monsters from going on an "Advantage avalanche", meaning you will find yourself taking actions from a pure meta perspective. ("I know it makes no sense to whack this Orc here, but trust me, he would have become unstoppable if I didn't").

That kind of meta game might have worked for the Hulk and Black Widow - but it falls completely flat in a game featuring ratcatchers and guttersnipes.

Advantage is just one out of far too many rules additions that have been added with seemingly no play-testing, and no thought on how all these new rules add together. 4E also introduces opposed checks. A given bonus (say +20%) that works fine in 2E is almost always too large in 4E. This seems to have flewn right past the devs - most numbers remain in the same ball-park (if not identical). While getting the above +40% in 2E would be good - great even - it would still not save you against the monster, since you don't oppose its rolls, and you have limited chances at active defense. In 4E, it changes everything, and basically lets you go on a super-hero spree that I can't believe anyone want.

WFRP4 is a horrible mess of a system. Nearly every facet of the 2E rules have been made more complicated, with loads and loads AND LOADS of little niggly special conditions and exceptions... but Warhammer doesn't need a massively complex game. (Don't get me started on how fiendishly complicated resolving an attack can become once the PC and the NPC becomes moderately complex - there are Talents who only activate on a success, separate from a win; there are modifiers from talents, equipment, injury, circumstances, the enemy... it all too easily becomes nightmarishly complex. I'm talking D&D 4th edition levels of cluttery complexity)

Weapons, Armor, Critical Hits, Monsters, Talents... every one of these areas has been cluttered down with loads of little special conditions and modifiers that make it much much harder to gamesmaster WFRP4 than WFRP2.

Wizards start out cripplingly ineffective, only to become entirely unbalanced powerhouses given experience and a minmaxed talent selection. Warhammer has always featured a boring spell selection far too combat-focused, but in WFRP4 you don't even need the spells with higher Casting Numbers. Dart and Blast will remain far superior no matter how powerful you become, because - again - several rules changes were implemented at the same time without anyone considering the complete picture.

Warhammer doesn't need most of the rules additions offered by WFRP4, even if they had worked.

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I think it very much depends on the mix of careers in the party and which optional rules get used.

I don’t think there’s any doubt the system can be exploited with the right combinations. That was the same in earlier editions too though, just different exploits.

I think the combat modifiers make things very swingy and need reigning in. I use very strict interpretations of when outnumbering happens for instance. I never had a problem with advantage per se, limited to Agility but in combo with the combat modifiers i do find it overwhelming.

I also found it necessary to allow actions in combat to break the advantage cycle as a DM. This requires some judgement calls, but it might include a PC flipping over a table as part of a Defence roll to get an extra modifier, or a troll smashing down a wall to break the combat up. It may not be ideal but it works for me.

Also the suggested implementation of part-Channeling help make more powerful spells more viable. I see the spellcasting rules as a base and I’m sure it will develop as time goes on.