#wfrpg

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Age of Sigmar - Soulbound: Ulfenkarn: City at the Edge of Death - Last Scion by CM Morin

[the-off]

Athariel  Inktober#3

[derkastellan]

First Impressions: Warhammer 4e - Characters & Careers

I built my first WFRPG 4e character yesterday. This did come with some nasty surprises, at least if you ask me. And of course it’s all about expectations.

I already rolled a WFRPG 2e character once and there are strong similarities, so I never considered. There’s such a thing as not paying proper attention when you get what you want right away...

In 4e you can earn somewhere around 100XP in character creation by rolling randomly some things you can actually chose. I can personally say that it at first feels like you somehow got away with something or just earned a free boon. But then realization dawns...

He huffed and he puffed...

Naturally, this is all about expectations. I personally expected a bit of “Rule of Cool” stuff and that the careers are mostly for color. I didn’t notice until I had done it that “Riverfolk” is indeed intended to be my class. It’s not like you pick origin/background and your adventuring profession separately. Your class & career are interwoven and determine what you can “cheaply” grow in. Coming from many other games I didn’t expect that was it already. Backgrounds are minor in D&D, so are occupations in DCC. I thought you would pick some sort of adventuring profession over it. Games that profess having WFRPG in their DNA like Shadow of the Demon Lord have strong classes you pick as well.

Color me surprised then that “Riverfolk” and “Huffer” are actually my class and my career. I re-rolled my stats and re-rolled my career choices (I managed to roll “Townfolk” twice...) and ended up with 45 XP with no idea if that was much or little. I kind of was waiting for something else. And then character creation was over. And then more realizations came...

You see, I actually envisioned building my character into a tank. And as it is with expectations, unfulfilled expectations build frustration and disappointment. I had actually fun building the character until I realized that there was no more to come. I think it’s a well-rounded “level 0″, much more interesting than for example what you get in SotDL by far. But now I had to somehow get from this level 0 to my intended end result and here the problems started to mount...

Changing career

There was a vague hint in the Character Creation chapter that changing career later had prerequisites. But these were incomplete and vague. So let’s sum them up:

Abandon ship between adventures: You pay nothing if you finished your career prerequisites and 100XP if you have. No mention of changing class.

Abandon ship at first opportunity: You pay a penalty of 100 XP if you haven’t finished your current career level. You then have to pay 100XP for changing career “on the fly.” You have to pay an extra 100 XP and get your GM’s permission if you want to change class as well.

You finish your career level: You can now pay 100XP and change career level, or instead pay the same 100 XP and change career. Pay an additional 100XP and get permission if you want to change class.

What does that mean? Let’s say you have 100XP from character generation because you rolled everything. And then you get 100XP from your first session. You can then change career one session into the game with skills pertaining to your original career having all your initial career skill points, so you start in your new career worse than a newcomer. You have payed 200 XP of which at most 100XP have come for free from creating a random character in the first place. In essence you have paid a tax of 100 XP for rolling a different character than what you wanted to play.

You might say that some people had no character in mind. But still: If you want an action-heavy campaign, how far would you get with rolls like “Townfolk, Townfolk, Huffer”? Had I known how important and costly the choice of career can be, I would have gladly omitted the 50XP and done whatever I wanted instead. But now the character is made and already has some personality, I just don’t want to simply toss it.

Changing career by pulling through

These 100XP “Changing Career” and “Changing Class” taxes - can they be avoided? Partially.

Completing a career level has three components:

Raise each career skill to the minimal required level.

Raise each career attribute to the minimal required level.

Buy at least one talent per level.

Number 1 can already be paid for during character creation. If not, raising a career skill by 1 advance costs 10 XP. In my case, bringing the lower skills to 5 advances would have cost 100XP.

Number 2 costs minimally 375 XP on career level 1. 3 * 5 = 15 career attribute advances at 25 XP each.

Number 3 is covered already in character creation for level 1, else usually 100 XP.

So: If you finish your level you have invested about 400 XP plus the 100 XP for a career change plus 100 XP for a class change. So you clock in somewhere around 500-600 XP for getting your desired career or even class. (For a potential gain of 100XP for rolling this stuff.)

So we come to:

Abandon ship during the adventure: 200-300 XP. Roughly up to three sessions’ worth.

Abandon ship after an adventure: 100-200XP. Roughly up to two sessions’ worth.

Complete a career, then jump ship: 400-600XP. Roughly up to six sessions’ worth.

There should be thick, red, underlined, emblazoned warning labels here. The XP for rolling are an inducement to make a really sub-optimal choice.

Now, personally, I see it as a challenge to roleplay my way through these sessions with my rolled choice and then achieve something else. And the character will surely have some nice skill set and improved attributes in return. Since all the attributes of “Huffer” fit my future goals for the character, the 375 XP spent there will be well-spent. The skills round out the picture of the character nicely while also giving it color. I think I can make this work.

May I?

Which brings me however to another gripe: GM permission. 

I hope they only put it in there to avoid endlessly multi-classed nonsensical characters, but I really have issues with this. You see, if I want to play X, then roll Y, and the GM wouldn’t let me change in the end... Boy, would I be pissed. It empowers the GM to say “Look, this doesn’t fit with my view of how the world works.” That can be handy to stop a power gamer munchkin from trying to milk the game for the perfect combo (though still probably leading into a pissing match) but it can also lead to a GM being a dick to a player because of... whatever. On the other hand, making more rules (like a hypothetical ”You are entitled to 1 class change and 2 career changes in your whole career.”) does not cure any game from having dicks on either side of the screen, either.

Still, GM permission to evolve my character away from a randomly rolled career choice irks me. Why shouldn’t my huffer become a knight of the realm? (This is pretty much the plan, actually. That’s what you get if you ask me to define goals for my character...) 

Don’t believe the hype

Why is the career system actually so full of penalties for changing? The justification written is that the world of Warhammer Fantasy is marked by a rigid class and social structure.

I don’t believe that statement for a second. Period.

The first thing is that it is an extremely convenient way to penalize power-gaming, so I say I smell a rat here.

The second thing is this: Just because your game world is rigid your game system does not have to be. Why penalize players for what they want to do? Why penalize someone for several hundred XP if they want to change and evolve their character? Why reward somebody for sticking with a specific concept of a character that the book outlines?

Truth is, I wouldn’t pick any of the Riverfolk or many of the other classes for my character at all. Why reward me to roll that one up? Why penalize me for wanting to change into something else? You can say there is a price to pay but in reality it’s a tax, a penalty, that only arises because I followed through with rolling a character instead of constructing it.

And you know what? I have absolutely no problem with my class or career. I think they are well-made and interesting. I think the career system itself is an interesting one and allows for varied characters with an enormous lot of background. Hell, I even believe that my character will end up more memorable for going through that change.

Just don’t hide behind claiming that this reflects the game world or there is any necessity for this. Don’t pretend you didn’t induce rolling, o game designer. The thing that irks me is that one follows the dotted path and ends up in a place where one has to pay a tax. 

This can be fodder for great roleplaying, actually. (But don’t expect me to thank you for it.) Overcoming obstacles. Working hard. Then having to learn to navigate an entirely different social class. All of this can work. But most of the 32 careers I could have rolled I would rather break away from than keep.

Don’t roll your class/career combo. At least chose your class. Or prepare truly inwardly to play a Nun, a Bawd, or a Flagellant. Because it will be penalized becoming anyone else.

[derkastellan]

First Impressions: Warhammer 4e - Combat

It took me a while to understand how 4e handles opposed rolls, but after I did I have to say they improved combat a lot, at least that’s my initial impression.

I played only shortly WFRPG 2e before that in a oneshot but the difference was already striking. In 2e you have to roll under your very low initial skill to hit. Everybody also gets one reaction per turn to counter an attack. My character was a damage dealing badass but I rolled poorly. I never hit. I was so happy when I hit finally, only for the monster to make its parry. The only thing I had going for myself in that combat was that my taking away its reaction that turn enabled the others to hit it. By being early in the initiative order I had essentially the lowest chance to do actual damage - because even if I hit they always get a reaction. The monsters were then finished off by a halfling with a sling in a tree while I was there to absorb damage.

Ironically this was a build pretty optimal for a beginner tank. So let’s suffice it to say I got a full dose of “whiffing” - a property of strict d100 systems where you miss a lot on low levels. Miss - miss - miss - hit-but-parried. That’s a bit frustrating. It ain’t game-breaking bad but it’s not for everyone. On top of that, success levels had no impact whatsoever in combat. A hit is a hit. (A success level back then was rolling 10 under your skill - you get as many success levels as you managed to roll under, so roll 20 under your skill and you get 2. Normally this would make your character shine when doing skill rolls.) 

Now contrast 4e: It’s not so important to roll under your skill anymore. It’s primarily important to roll better than your opponent. It’s all about generating success levels (SL) now. And there’s a very simple way to determine SL too!

Example:

I have a melee skill of 43 and roll 59. I take then tens (higher digit) of my skill and subtract the tens of my roll: 4 - 5 = -1. These are my SL. 

My opponent has a melee skill of 52 but rolls 80. 5 - 8 = -3. This is much worse!

Since I have the better SL (-1 > -3) I win the opposed test and hit even though I missed my actual value. 

In 2e this would have simply been a miss. But here I even do 2 bonus damage because of my 2 SL advantage over my opponent. I like this. The combat was not whiffy. It was not overly fast and furious, either. It fell in the middle. (But goodness help us if we roll poorly...)

Rolling over or under then only has a role to play in determining whether a double (same value on tens and ones) is a critical or a fumble. This is quite a change from 2e but I welcome it.

There’s some side effects to this system, though:

Even if you improve your combat skills, it mostly only matters if you hit a new full number (30, 40, 50, 60) because of how SL are computed, using only the tens. The actual value only comes into play when determining criticals/fumbles, when breaking ties, and if you want, when deciding whether you have +0 SL (I rolled under my skill but not enough to have 1 SL) or -0 SL (I rolled over my skill but not enough to have -1 SL) which can also be used for tie-breaking.

This means advancing from 39 to 40 is much more useful than the next 9 advances for a combat skill.

Example:

My character has a Weapon Skill (short: WS) attribute of 38, 5 advances in the Melee (Basic) skill and 0 advances in the Melee skill, so my Melee (Basic) total is 43 and my Melee is 38. Weapon Skill is among my career attributes so I get to buy an advance in it for 25 XP per advance for the first 5. Melee (Basic) is not in my career skill list for career level 1 (I’m a Huffer) so I have to pay double for skill advances (= 20 XP per advance for the first 5, 30 XP per advance for the next 5, etc). 

Since I have to advance WS to advance in my career, I buy 2 advances in WS for a total of 50XP. I end up with WS 40, Melee 40, and Melee (Basic) 45. This at first seems to not help me any - my Melee (Basic) has not yet risen to 50 and hence I do not get 5 in my tens for computing SL. But: Whenever I use a weapon I’m not specialized for I get to roll my unspecialized Melee skill - and now have a 4 in my tens there. I will not benefit from the weapon’s special qualities (because of lacking specialization) but if I happen to get a higher-damage weapon, I still have pretty much the same chance to hit with it as with Basic weapons in most applicable cases. I just have a 1 in 10 higher chance to fumble (on a 44), for example, and it’s harder for me to break ties. Furthermore, when I roll Melee (Basic) now my chance of fumbling has decreased by 1 in 10 because 44 is no longer a fumble...

Sorry that this is already digging into the intricacies of the advancement system which is worth looking at by itself...

Anyway, knowing this I would have designed the character sheet differently. I would have made a special thick box or circle around the tens of the combat skills as they matter the most. Frankly, a better character sheet is generally in order, though this one does the job for now. I’ve definitely seen worse... (Looking at you Palladium really, really hard...)

To conclude: First impressions can be tricky, but I like the WFRPG 4e combat system already.