Opinions on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4ed?

[TheSword]

For one, I’d love there to be more of a WFRP community ( for any edition) on Enworld. I’m on the rat catchers guild but I find discord quite challenging.

 

[CapnZapp]

That was the same in earlier editions too though, just different exploits.

No, that's relativizing. It makes it seem like the issues with each edition are comparable.

I have played 1E, 2E and 4E. I don't deny 1E and 2E has specific issues. I emphatically disagree the issues with 4E is anywhere close to that. 1E and 2E were relatively simple games. 4E is not. It is a ramshackle construction that falls under its own weight as soon as you give it a real look.

I've played 4E for over a year, and the players have seen gameplay at 0 XP as well as many thousands of XP. I am no stranger to creating house rules, but I have simply given up - I have tried real hard to make 4E work (modding Advantage, the injury system, how armors and shield works, creating monsters, and so on and so on), but I've realized the only way to do so is by ripping out essentially everything that's new in 4E.

Not even the new career system, with you purchasing points of characteristics and skills separately, works in the end - it's far too easy to max out, say, Fellowship and Charm, and essentially mind-control every hapless NPC (whose "defense" value of Will Power is easily crushable). Think of it like an edition of D&D where the developers suddenly allowed you to increase your attack bonus by another +10 or so - but completely forgot that everybody's AC stayed the same. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. (D&D offers saving throws that increase automatically with your power for a reason, folks!)

As soon as you get to 70% or 80% in some skill (and remember, now you have a 70% or 80% chance at getting one or three extra success levels thanks to how Talents are designed!), you have basically won that interaction on walk-over - the GM can no longer offer any meaningful opposition (unless they in turn completely dominate your friends who didn't pursue that specific skill). It is yet one more idea that sounded cool but just doesn't work. It's at least three ideas that in isolation might come off as reasonable - "open-ended skill advances", "opposed checks", and "talent bonuses" - but when combined, just is a mess. 4E is that mess, over and over. Individual rules added with zero thought on how they integrate with every other new rule!

In the end, we all concluded 4E is trash and when we're starting a new campaign in a few weeks time (this time I'll be a player, not the GM) we will be using 2nd edition. It might not be the most exciting of systems, but it was written by somebody who knew what he was doing.

 

[TheSword]

No, that's relativizing. It makes it seem like the issues with each edition are comparable.

I have played 1E, 2E and 4E. I don't deny 1E and 2E has specific issues. I emphatically disagree the issues with 4E is anywhere close to that. 1E and 2E were relatively simple games. 4E is not. It is a ramshackle construction that falls under its own weight as soon as you give it a real look.

I've played 4E for over a year, and the players have seen gameplay at 0 XP as well as many thousands of XP. I am no stranger to creating house rules, but I have simply given up - I have tried real hard to make 4E work (modding Advantage, the injury system, how armors and shield works, creating monsters, and so on and so on), but I've realized the only way to do so is by ripping out essentially everything that's new in 4E.

Not even the new career system, with you purchasing points of characteristics and skills separately, works in the end - it's far too easy to max out, say, Fellowship and Charm, and essentially mind-control every hapless NPC (whose "defense" value of Will Power is easily crushable). Think of it like an edition of D&D where the developers suddenly allowed you to increase your attack bonus by another +10 or so - but completely forgot that everybody's AC stayed the same. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. (D&D offers saving throws that increase automatically with your power for a reason, folks!)

As soon as you get to 70% or 80% in some skill (and remember, now you have a 70% or 80% chance at getting one or three extra success levels thanks to how Talents are designed!), you have basically won that interaction on walk-over - the GM can no longer offer any meaningful opposition (unless they in turn completely dominate your friends who didn't pursue that specific skill). It is yet one more idea that sounded cool but just doesn't work. It's at least three ideas that in isolation might come off as reasonable - "open-ended skill advances", "opposed checks", and "talent bonuses" - but when combined, just is a mess. 4E is that mess, over and over. Individual rules added with zero thought on how they integrate with every other new rule!

In the end, we all concluded 4E is trash and when we're starting a new campaign in a few weeks time (this time I'll be a player, not the GM) we will be using 2nd edition. It might not be the most exciting of systems, but it was written by somebody who knew what he was doing.

Well Cap, Your dislike is well documented. I’m also not saying you don’t have some valid concerns.

I hope you can appreciate there are lots of us playing and enjoying it. Including people who have played multiple editions and still like and enjoy 4e.

Incidentally I just saw the suggestion to turn Advantage into a resource you spend and not be broken by taking a hit. Either use it every round for a small bonus or save up for a few rounds for that crucial attack.

 

[Bilharzia]

I only have a brief experience with wfrp4e but my experience as far as it goes matches what @CapnZapp has described. Advantage in particular seems like a baffling in-elegant solution in search of a problem. Overall it felt like it had lots of areas of inconsistency and an odd cobbled-together feel masked by very high visual production standards. I'm sure much of it would make sense with tweaking and houserules but practically nothing about the system itself made me want to go back to it. There's lots of potential in the setting and adventures of course aside from the system.

 

[TheSword]

I would say so far the new adventures for 4th are by far the best I’ve seen since 1st edition, and they’re better by far than some of those.

 

[TheSword]

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!

I just realized that Double Trouble was in UA2. I get them as they come through on DriveThru so I lose track. An adventure in each book is awesome. Shame the writing is on hold, you’ve got some awesome twists and turns there!

 

[Emirikol]

I like how easy it is to house rule the game.
We removed almost all the combat modifiers, set advantage max to 2, limited per-level characteristic and talent spamming, and it runs smooth and fast.

 

[Crusadius]

I really like the changes made to character advancement that allow a character to remain in their current career but still advance. I like how 4th edition brought back the classes from 1E. I like how skills and characteristics both allow advancement. I like how social class is built into the career paths.

Combat has gotten more complicated, but it does address the whiff factor often complained about in 1E+2E. Combat also now requires players to change their tactics if they don't want to modify or remove how Advantage works.

The bestiary is... raw. Little or no advice is given on how to make the beasties challenging but I think there were space constraints. There is advice out on the interwebs by one of the developers that should have been included in the core book. I think a separate bestiary should have been one of the first supplements out to address this.

Overall I like the edition and would play it over 1st edition and 2nd. But I will note that I never have read FFG's 3rd edition so have no opinion about how it compares to 4th.

 

[Emirikol]

I disliked advantage at first, but now that we limit it to two, I can really understand what Dom was going for in the final design.

 

[Emirikol]

Agreed on social class. People mistake the levels for dnd levels. They are simply social levels.

We still play 3e and I love that system because of stance and special actions.