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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 9020957" data-attributes="member: 6879661">Another interesting thing worth acknowledging is the effect the new edition has on difficulty and progression. I think this gets at the heart of why I really like WFRP 4e and find it so much more enjoyable.Under 1st & 2nd edition the higher you got your Weapon Skill, the easier it got to hit. To the point where it was very unlikely you would miss. The game balanced this by having tougher creatures, more armour, more wounds and better parrying. D&D has a similar solution. To hit rolls increase much faster than AC and so the solution to this is more wounds and abilities that mitigate damage. Both systems could turn into a bit of a slog as PCs tried to hack away at monster wounds while trying not to lose their own reserves.WFRP 4e however doesn’t need to do this as fighting against a high WS foe with just a few wounds can be very challenging as they don’t need huge wound reserves. You can still chip away at them though with successful hits and crits but your hits will deal less as their skill means you won’t get big bonuses from SLs to damage and so that damage doesn’t turn into the city-levelling stuff we see in D&D.Of course there are tougher monsters and creatures with more wounds, a troll for instance and sure they are difficult in their own right but they usually have lower weapon skill to balance things. There are some creatures like chaos warriors with high WS, high toughness, high wounds, and high armour that are going to need the party to be tactical. Ranged weapons to build advantage, or use of the assess action, or defensive fighting which then lets a particularly skilled fighter with the right weapon for the job use Advantage to get a telling hit in.This also brings in WFRP’s other famous difference to D&D - PCs who are herbalists, bankers, rat catchers and nuns. In D&D these would quickly become useless in combat which counts a lot for D&D. In this system that nun can make a good contribution by building advantage and in desperate stage assist with outnumbering. They can entangle the foes or try and blind them. Or invest enough into sword play or dodging that they can at least contribute and last a few rounds. Then out of combat their non-combat skills can shine. It’s worth noting that players can use other skills to defend in combat where appropriate the book suggests Intimidate or Charm. A character can also fight defensively and gain +20 to that test. Remember even if all they do is successfully defend, they’re still contributing to Advantage points.High WS is really effective because it influences damage in melee but even that low level goblin with WS 20 could get lucky and roll +2 SL 9% of the time and that amazing warrior with 100 WS can get 1 SL and be beaten. Sure it’s rare but give those goblins 20% for outnumbering 2-1 and throw in a critical result which can cause a bleed or stunned condition on the fighter or knock them prone and combat will always have a little bite in it. Of course most of the time conditions won’t be this disparate.</blockquote>

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