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Peasant being great is part of why I say the WHFRP Career system (and the knock-on effects from balancing 1st Tiers) makes the setting surprisingly non-elitest for a fantasy setting. In the RPG, at least. The ordinary is valuable. 'Ordinary' men and women are given skills and talents that are actually really useful for having fantasy adventures, because making it in life as a peasant in a fantasy world actually would make you pretty able. Non-elite skills and professions are valued, and the social elite aren't treated as more powerful from a game perspective. They have social standing, and many of them learn how to try to keep it or how to navigate among others with elite status, but it's not 'more powerful' to roll Noble vs. Peasant. The classes just do different things, because they learned different things growing up. It's an interesting touch for a fantasy setting.
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Sep 3, 2019 16:31
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Career Compendium Woodsy Folk One of the odd and interesting things about WHFRP is that almost everything in it is written as if a character was a human. This is very, very apparent when you get to the various 'Ranger' classes, which are perfect fits for elves and are very common starting Careers for elves...but are all written about being human. Meaning that the Woodsman's fluff is all about how they sometimes clash with the Wood Elves because they cut down trees and Wood Elves are considerably more proactive and violent than the Lorax. Despite the fact that the Woodsman Career is a common starting Career for elves. This sort of thing is the same stuff that leads to Liniel of Caledor: Elf Gunslinger. Which is even more common in WHFRP4e, because classes like Cavalry are some of the only ones available to Wood Elves, but assume that you are an Empire Pistolier, so it would seem to be fairly common for a Glade Rider to come trotting out of the forest, be exposed to handguns, then throw their longbow in the trash and start blowing beastmen's brains out. Not that I mind that element because it's fun, it's just a weird unintentional effect of almost all Careers' fluff assuming they're writing about humans. Anyway, Rangers are people who are good in forests and wilderness locations. They are often reasonably good fighters, too. Usually with a bow, though not always. Given Longbows are some of the best ranged weapons in 2e, this is hardly a problem. Rangers are best in the woods, yes, but they're helped out by something unique to 2e. 2e is the only WHFRP of the various percentile systems that does NOT treat stealth differently in urban and rural areas. That's right, for some insane reason, 4e went back to doing what 1e did and made Urban and Rural stealth different skills that you have to advance separately (and added Underground Stealth). In 2e, there are instead specific Talents that boosted your stealth skills in those environments (Tunnel Rat, Rover, and Alley Cat), but the general stealth skills work anywhere. Same for skills about tracked and following people. 2e still separates Move Silent and Concealment like the monsters they are (If you have a separate Hide and Sneak skill in your game, this is one of the sure signs you have too many skills) but they work anywhere. Thus, while a Ranger type is usually better (thanks to Rover giving them +10 in rural areas) in the woods, they're not bad at all at stalking and tracking in a city and that's always useful, too. The two marquee Rangers are the Hunter and the Woodsman. Both really showcase what makes a Ranger Career. The Hunter is an excellent shot (+15% BS in Career 1) but gets no bonus attacks, no Dodge, no Mighty Shot, etc. They're perceptive, good at stealth, good in the woods (as you'd expect), and they know how to use Longbows (and if you already had Longbow from being an Elf, you can take Hardy for +1 Wounds in its place!). They get good stat boost talents (they can take Lightning Reflexes OR Very Resilient, both great gets and worth sticking around to get both) and get Marksman if they don't want Rover immediately. A perfectly average human PC who went for everything they could get out of Hunter would hit BS 51% by the end of their first Career, and it isn't even a primary fighting Career. They also all get Rapid Reload, which is basically a core Talent to shooting the same way Strike Mighty is to melee. They're good shots, good at stealth, good at finding things and tracking, and they even know how to set traps and snares. Really solid starting Career (and the Career of the first PC I ever ran a full campaign for!). Amusingly, their fluff additions here talk all about how the horse, dog, and hawk help Hunters, but...they don't get Animal Training. Or Ride. So a Hunter can't actually use half the tools their additional fluff talks about here with just their first class. Most of their fluff is about the tools they use, but also talks about how many Hunters are employed as game wardens for the Imperial Forests. While lots of the Empire is open for common hunting, plenty of the best hunting grounds aren't. Even if the noble who owns them doesn't go hunting at all (which is becoming increasingly common as the Empire urbanizes, though hunting is still a traditional way to keep in shape and relax for nobles) no-one else is allowed to touch the game that belongs to them. The other real power of the Hunter is their Exits. For one, Hunters who want to be pure fighters who always remember their ranger skills can go into Soldier, which will fill in some more general abilities while being a pretty quick 2nd Career for them. Certainly a worthwhile option. Scout is the classic Ranger 2nd Tier, doing everything you want from a Ranger in one class (Gets all the Shooting talents, gets some decent melee ability, gets even better in the woods). And Targeteer is a really interesting 2nd Tier: It breaks a bunch of the normal 'stat caps' because it only does one thing. It shoots. It shoots really well. Targeteers get a massive +40 to BS in a 2nd Tier Career, plus +1 Attacks and all the Shooting talents like Mighty Shot and Sure Shot. If you just wanted to longbow some guys, Hunter to Targeteer can get you a 2nd tier PC with a 70-80 BS. More if you're an elf. The elfiest possible elf can hit BS 95% then and there and just never miss. The Woodsman is the other side of the coin. They're similarly good at doing Ranger things, but they're melee characters for their secondary combat focus instead. They get the rare and valuable Fleet Footed talent for one, and +10 WS and Str. Still no Dodge or second attack, and no Strike Mighty Blow; they're not primary fighters. They do get Two Handed Weapons and start with a great-axe in addition to their standard Hand Weapon and Dagger like most PCs, though. Unlike the Hunter, they focus on being athletic, fast, and ambushing enemies with a bigass axe while still being good enough in the forest to guide a party through. Their fluff actually talks about how their misunderstandings with the Wood Elves are just that; the average Imperial Woodsman isn't trying to clear-cut the forest. Most are devotees of Taal and Rhya, and most are careful to plant seeds as they work. They clear undergrowth, try to prevent forest fires, and try to nurture saplings so they'll have more wood to cut later. It's more likely that they'll cause friction just because Wood Elves are territorial and it's pretty likely a Woodsman might wander into their neck of the woods by mistake. Incidents over illicit logging camps or overreach are more political than environmental. Note that only applies with the Imperial Wood Elves. If you try to set up an illicit logging camp in parts of Bretonnia you end up with the ninja hillbilly elf equivalent of the Blair Witch Project happening to you instead. The example Woodsman is even an example of a human who gets on fine with his elf neighbors. Thangir Hrolkson was out playing in the forest near his home when he stumbled on a bunch of odd children singing songs and dancing in a nice grove. Both sides being kids, when he scampered over to join in, they let him. So he grew up learning Eltharin and playing with elf kids near Laurelorn while they taught him a bunch about the trees. Now he works for a local lord, helping keep the border between elf territory and his Lord's lands and helping to direct the logging operations such that they don't interfere with his friends. For the most part, both sides are happy; humans think he's weird, but the elves exchange gifts regularly and no-one gets shot, plus he's a good Woodsman. Scout is kind of the be all and end all of Ranger 2nd Tiers. You can get to it from a lot of places, and it sort of does everything you want a Ranger to do. Scouts are good shots (+20 BS), decent with a melee weapon (+20 WS), physically fit, agile, intelligent, and fairly brave. Their big weakness is they get absolutely 0 Fel and no people skills. The Career does make you a pretty good shot, though. And it teaches you Longbow and Rapid Reload if you didn't have it (Or Crossbow, but if you take Crossbow you are a fool; Repeater Crossbows are inexplicably terrible). Anything you didn't know about the wilderness you'll learn in Scout, which also means you have opportunities to pay for Skill+10 in a everything you knew coming into it. Scout is so omnipresent as a Ranger 2nd Tier that it's hard to think of a Ranger track that doesn't consider going into it at some point. Its fluff is pretty unspectacular, and it's just well designed to do exactly what it says it will do. They even get Dodge! More interesting is an option you get from Terror in Talabheim. The Knight of the Verdant Field is a 2nd Tier Ranger, and very unusual for an Imperial Knight. These are an order of Myrmidians, rather than Taalites or Rhyans. Originally, they were a branch of the Knights of the Blazing Sun, Myrmidia's famous Imperial Templars, stationed to defend the Drakwald Forest and Talabheim. Being decent strategists, they came to study the area and quickly concluded that 'dense, dark German forest' is not a good environment for standard heavy cavalry. Studying how other forces that fought in similar environments succeeded, the Order's leadership came to the conclusion they would be best off retraining as rangers, ambushers, and archers to try to mimic the style of the Laurelorn elves. Not only are they a pretty powerful and interesting variant on Scout (they have very similar stat advances available), they also say some neat stuff about Myrmidian Templars. They're open-minded enough to look carefully at what worked and why, and to retrain themselves into doing what they've observed. They're a curious mixture of the Woodsman and Hunter approach (and you can enter the Career from either), being significantly better in melee than the average Scout (they get Strike Mighty) but worse at ranged (no Rapid Reload, so if you didn't have it before 2nd Tier, you won't get it here and that really hurts your Longbow). They can also get Fleet Footed OR Keen Senses (and in reality, you'll stick around to get both) which is nuts. Keen Senses giving you +20% on all Perception tests is great, since it was originally a rules workaround to give animals and things good Per tests without them having high Int. Their one weakness is they can't Exit into any 3rd Tiers, but hey. You do Knight of the Verdant Field and Exit into Veteran or Scout, you'll finish it quick. They can also Exit into Myrmidian Priest if they wish, which is a neat option. I'd generally prefer to play one for the variety because otherwise Scout is the all-devouring roundhouse of Exactly What You Wanted As A Ranger for all Ranger tracks. Still, Rangers are very useful people to have around in WHFRP. Every character type is. Stealth, tracking, the ability to deal with dark forests full of Goatman Prime, and a decent ranged/secondary combat fallback makes for a heck of a teammate. And sometimes you're a Myrmidian Commando-Knight, so that's cool too. Next Time: Do Crimes
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Sep 3, 2019 18:51
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That seems like the equivalent of 'I am especially vulnerable to bullets, blunt force, and bladed weapons!' as far as supernatural weaknesses woof-cops have to deal with go.
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Sep 3, 2019 22:20
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Yes, but I can't help but chuckle every time I see a horror monster with the equivalent of 'killed by regular people bullets'.
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Sep 3, 2019 22:25
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I really want to know where splitting stealth skills into multiple skills even started.
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Sep 4, 2019 01:36
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I think my favorite part of 3e is how absolutely anything meaningful is accomplished through magic. Anything and everything. By favorite I mean I hate it.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:06
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It's one of the reasons I really appreciate stuff like Ironclaw, where magic is specifically designed not to be the main driver of plots. It's a thing people will use in their plots, yes, but overall it never really goes beyond being a tool. So the plots remain focused much more on the people getting up to intrigues and stuff. Plus, it's neat to see a 'low fantasy' setting where magic is pretty commonly employed, it just isn't earth-shattering or epic. I like the idea of wizards as professionals and scholars rather than demigods. Same for collegiate mages in Hams.
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Sep 4, 2019 02:18
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JcDent posted:"Never miss" kinda feels wrong in an RPG, but I guess that's before you account for various conditions that may impede your aim. They go down to 55% when shooting at someone with cover and higher range, and to be at a range where they have the actual 95% they'd need to be within a range where most fast PCs can get at them fairly quickly. A shield would take it down another 10%. It's still good, though. The 95% is under pretty optimal conditions. Also, still have to do damage, and depending on armor they might be able to handle that. Similarly, if they're shooting enemies the rest of the team has locked into melee, it would go down to 75%. Ranged weapons are very useful specifically because they can't be active-defended, and they do decent damage if you're good with them. Also great for picking off enemy ranged people or killing wizards or light targets. But there's a reason the majority of fighting ends up done in melee. The other reason is most people can reach someone shooting them in two or three turns at a full run, and running does make you harder to hit; characters are significantly more mobile relative to the ranges of ranged weapons in WHFRP 2e than they are in 40kRP. E: The other thing is dealing with all these penalties assumes someone who is trying not to get shot. Characters won't regularly crouch in cover and someone Running in a spot where they might end up in melee is in real danger since Run gives -20% to BS to hit you but +20% to WS to hit you, so if you have melee buddies ready to intercept before they get into Charge range they can pay for it hard. Similarly, bows are great for ambushing people (like Rangers want to do) because 2-3 (depending on level) shots at +20% to hit are nice and then you keep slamming them before they can get to you. Ranged is one of those things where it's nice to have at least one character who's good at it, and everyone should carry a ranged weapon if possible, but it's a specialty while melee is the basis of the combat system. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 13:05
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The main thing that helps WHFRP's combat in its current state is that turns are fast and combat is simple. Combat in WHFRP2e is mostly numberslam, but it's reasonably well balanced numberslam that goes fairly fast (though that might just be that I have a ton of experience both running and playing it, so it moves fast for me). The other difficulty it faces is that the system as it is is designed around the idea that you have multiple possible chances to deflect or mitigate incoming damage; part of why WH40KRP got so out of hand is that it kept the PC Wound levels from WHFRP but it didn't do anything to address how loving insane damage vs. DR got. 40kRP would have been fine even with its numbers if PCs could get huge numbers of Wounds, too. 4e tries to do something similar to what you're suggesting by making all melee attacks opposed tests, where if both characters fail but the attacker fails less they still hit, but it's still not a fully mitigation rather than avoidance based system like you suggest. I think to design around that you'd have to redesign the entire durability and accuracy system, though a game built on that concept would probably work fine.
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Sep 4, 2019 13:55
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13th Age is a game I really want to see get a second edition with Jonathon Tweet launched into the sun where he can't constantly hold it back. The helpful 'this is each author's commentary' thing in that book really helps show you how much almost every bad or boring idea in that game came from him.
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Sep 4, 2019 15:14
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Cooked Auto posted:A 2nd ed for 13th Age would've been nice yeah. I did enjoy playing that even if some of the design choices *coughroguescough* weren't all that spectacular. You picked a non-magicman in a d20 game where one of the creators spent the entire design process saying 'we can't throw out X terrible d20 design decision, it's tradition!', I'm afraid. I love how the Rogue being the 'complex martial' boiled down to 'hit people someone else is already hitting' and 'have a completely useless momentum mechanic'. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 16:38
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Career Compendium Do Crimes Let's be real: Most adventurers are criminals to one degree or another. Your adventures are probably going to lead to situations where you break the law. At the very least you're going to be shadowing people, potentially breaking into their houses to search for evidence, possibly dealing in illegal goods, etc etc. As a result having a Crime Guy on your team, for whom crimes are a profession rather than an incidental occupational hazard, is very useful. As an added bonus, Imperial popular culture loves the romantic version of the thief or master criminal. This is partly the influence of the Cult of Ranald, but I'd imagine some of it comes from the time a thief saved the Empire by stealing a magic ring from Vlad. Imperials will still throw you in a dungeon or have you hung if you're caught, sure, but if you can get away with your business they'll be really impressed with you. Criminal characters split time evenly between charlatan types and actual breaking-and-entering types, and many of the former can do some of the latter and vice-versa. The headline Criminal basic Career is Thief. Thief can do a little of everything; it has the distinction of being one of those Careers with a ton of 'take this OR this' skills and talents. I really wish Thief got Dodge, but what can you do. They get a massive +15 Agility in their first Career, but they can also pick between being charming or good at climbing, disguising themselves or judging the value of goods, running con gambling games or picking locks, picking pockets or being literate, and are generally set up so that depending on your choices, this one Career can either be great at running scams and tricks or great at breaking and entering. Another of those Careers where it's not a bad idea to stick around for a couple hundred extra EXP and pick up some of those either-ors. Still, whichever type of crime they want to be good at, Thief is competent at it from the beginning. Much like the Hunter and Woodsman, or the Soldier among fighters, Thief can also go into pretty much everything you'd want as an Exit. They can switch out to become Entertainers, Rogues (We'll cover them) or Tomb Robbers (The latter being kind of redundant but at least it'll be fast, and it does open some unique other options), or they can advance up to Charlatan (Extremely good at social crime), Cat Burglar (The same, but for breaking and entering), or Fence (Crime and mercantile skills, very quick, goes right into Master Thief or Crime Lord if you wish). You've got a solid Career track ahead of you if you started as a Thief. This is also one reason you might consider Servant to Thief; Servant's special Talent that got added in this book is useful to a Thief, as is having Dodge, and there's enough overlap that you won't be stuck in Thief for ages. Then slam into Fence and then Master Thief and you're an awesome super-criminal without taking forever. Thief's fluff centers on everyone's favorite fantasy cliche: Thieves' Guilds. The Empire is rife with organized crime. Imperial Thieves' Guilds are as much of a mess as the rest of the Empire; every Guild insists every thief in their territory be a member. Junior thieves who are just starting their careers are pretty easy for veterans to catch by watching their fences or offering training, so most 1st tier Thieves end up attached to one of these. The issue is that many towns or territories have more than one Guild. The Guilds still insist everyone join them. They avoid gang warfare by pretending not to know the other Guild in their area exists, sometimes to the point of farce. This means that anyone operating in an area with multiple Guilds has to be members of both and has to pretend to one Guild they don't know about the other one. This is how Thief PCs end up leaving town to go on an adventure, because the patriarch of the von Drachen family gave them one job and the subsidiary family of Karpfen told them to do something opposite it, so...best to just skip town and join a new Guild. Otherwise that's how you start losing fingers and/or end up having to punch an entire crime syndicate. Usually ends with people shirtless and having a fistfight on top of the Cathedral of Sigmar. Actually, that sounds rad. That would be a good campaign. Still, most Thieves aren't quite up to a life of furious punching and the bicycle hasn't been invented yet, which might make it a bit tougher. The Rogue is the other major intro to crime class, kind of similar to how Woodsman and Hunter were two different approaches to the archetypal Ranger. Rogues are con-artists. Where the Thief is deft and physically quick, the Rogue is lucky, good at telling when they're in trouble, and great with people. These are bawds, 'guides', and scammers. While you get more specialized Careers for stuff like Raconteur or Gambler, Rogue works fine for either of those professions as is. They know a lot about talking fast, picking up on the true value of things (so as better to lie to people about it), making deals, and they're lucky as hell. Starting with the Luck Talent is really, really good; +1 Fortune a day is +1 Rerolls a day! Sixth Sense is another option, and it's a general 'any time you'd be ambushed, or you're walking into a trap, you get an extra WP test to sense if you just realize something's off' Talent. Note that works in addition to any sort of Per test to notice someone's about to ambush you, or Int tests to realize you're getting scammed; it's purely a bonus chance to realize you're in danger. Add in FLEE! and a Rogue is much better at picking up on and escaping trouble than the Thief. Which is a pretty drat good thing to be good at as a starting WHFRP character! They also come with a (probably stolen) really nice outfit so they can try to pass themselves off as wealthier than they are. They're a little more limited in where they go from Rogue, going into mostly Demagogue (an amazing social/political class that isn't bad in a fight, either) or Charlatan; their 1st tier Exits are mostly a wide variety of 'I got caught, now I'm an Outlaw or an Ex-Con or something'. The other notable thing about Rogue is a huge number of other classes can enter a Criminal track by entering Rogue. The fluff they get is a pair of example Rogues to show off the styles you can play. One is a high Tilean official from the wealthy city of Luccini. Salvatore Fiorenzo Bellarmini di Rosselino e Luccini is in Altdorf to make an exclusive contract for a state monopoly with Emperor Karl Franz himself, and is simply exploring Imperial high society while he waits for the Emperor to see him, what with Karl being so busy with the wars and all. In the meantime, he is looking for reasonable business partners, someone worthy of making a huge amount of money by monopolizing trade between Altdorf and Luccini. His real name is Diego and he is an Estalian; he speaks Tilean well enough not to have a detectable accent around Imperials. He knows he only has so much time before someone notices who he really is, so he's selling as many 'confidential' agreements and guarantees among the less savvy Imperial nobles before he's caught. He plans to 'report back to his prince' with his stolen cash soon. The other is a down on his luck playwright. Dominick Guildenstern (lol) is a genuinely talented playwright, but his real problem is he's A: A terrible businessman and B: Really good at talking his way into more loans. He's a Rogue by ability, luck, and nature, not so much by malice. So he has increasingly impossible to pay off debts, but he's talented enough to keep finding new sources of loans, from increasingly dangerous people. At the same time, his plays really are fantastic; if he was better at business, he'd be a rich and famous man. His latest plan for funding to pay off the crime lord he got funding from last time is to find Adventurers who have money from finding a pile of treasure and convincing them to invest next. He'd make a great PC, I think; a campaign where the players are constantly trying to fix their theater business, find the money to put on another performance, and survive the inevitable fallout of their investors until they make it could be great. And really, the play has everything! It's got love, murder, revenge, even a good bit with a dog. This can't possibly go wrong this time. Let's also take a quick look at what an actual 3rd Tier criminal looks like with their archetypal 3rd Tier, the Master Thief. Master Thief is one of relatively few Careers to get a +40 to a stat (+40 Agility). They're competent in a fight (+20 to BS and WS both, +1 Attacks, pick up Dodge), amazingly graceful, excellent at pretty much every thieving skill, highly intelligent, decent with people, and generally just competent criminals in all forms of direct, personal criminal endeavor. By the time you're a Master Thief, you're as good at stealing as the Champion is at fighting. They don't really have anywhere to go from Master Thief professionally; you can go into stuff like Crime Lord but you're mostly at the top of your game vis a vis thieving and it might be time to consider another track if you somehow finish Master Thief during your campaign. You're a bit unlikely to do so because you need something like a total of 6000 EXP over your career as an Adventurer to have finished this Career. Master Thieves are the kind of people who are so good at their job that they don't actually need Guilds any longer. Most of them have their own small support networks. These are the sorts of romantic, adventurey thieves who do the job as much to prove they can do the job as to get anything out of it. They stay quiet most of the time, waiting for something worth stealing to come up; a solid gold tablet brought back from Lustria, some ancient relic of Nehekara, a genuine magical treasure or a jewel the size of someone's fist. They have enough money from their prior work (and make so much from their current jobs when they carry one off) that they can afford to lead a fairly normal life while they study and plan for their big capers. These are the sorts of people the Empire wants to catch not because it can punish them, but because it's sort of traditional to make an offer to a captured Master Thief of 'hey, do this super dangerous and exciting quest/adventure for the good of the Empire and we'll let you go and pay you'. Imperial popular culture is full of daring adventure stories about this caliber of criminal, something that probably pleases them very much. Crime is fairly self-explanatory, but the fact that most criminals are good at stealth and social skills at the same time makes them especially useful in WHFRP. Both those skill sets are very good for avoiding needless confrontations, though you can still run into the classic Thief problem where the Thief PC has all the skills necessary for a scene where they break in somewhere and the rest of the party doesn't need to get involved. The game could use a little more support for the rest of the party running interference or making it easier on their buddy; one of the things I really appreciated in the design on Myriad Song (and why I keep going back to referencing it when this comes up) was how it abstracted 'aid another' rolls to make it much easier to do just that. It's not hard to do the same here to solve this problem; say the rest of the party does stuff like start a staged fight to draw attention, or gets involved studying the floorplan of the mansion the Thief's breaking into to make their rolls easier inside. Thieves and criminals are useful, but it's important to keep everyone else involved if they get up to particularly big capers. Next Time: Fish
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Sep 5, 2019 16:01
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Career Compendium Fish This is just going to be a random collection of things that didn't fit in neat categories and a conclusion. First, let's talk fish and what they mean. So the Fisherman includes a bunch of Imperial fish. I'd like you to remember these are not fish considered tainted by Chaos. These are just fish. People in the Empire think these fish are normal. They include the Augas, a fish with a third eye on top of its head to spot predators. There is also the Sea Scorpion, which is an actual fish with a scorpion tail and venom, which it uses to stun larger predators to escape or to poison and eat smaller fish. The Taurus is a horned fish that has headbutting fights after it spawns. The Polypus is a buff fish. As in, a fish with two buff, clawed, grasping arms and hands attached to it. Bastards can potentially grab a fisherman and wrestle them to escape. These are normal for Imperials. These are not considered weird fish. This is another example of how the world of WHFRP is a really fantastical and odd place. But the odd can be surprisingly commonplace. This is just a world that has scorpionfish. No-one thinks that's weird. Weird is what happens with the big Chaos Whales up in Norsca, who are almost all highly individual mutants and genetic aberrations that can be large enough to feed a settlement for months. As you might imagine, the Norse Whaler is a somewhat more hard-core fisherman, and is also a completely playable class that focuses on throwing harpoons. Selling whale oil to the Empire is one of the most profitable exports the Norse have. You gotta wonder if there are any weird side-effects to burning a bunch of highly magic-infused whale oil in a city like Altdorf, since it goes into the street lamps. After all, Altdorf is already magic as heck thanks to the fanciful wizard colleges. Another little Career that doesn't really fit anywhere else that I enjoy is the Rapscallion. This is meant to be the adventuring upgrade to the Dilettante and was added in this very book. They do a little of everything, like Dilettante, but much more on the mold of being adventurous and active; their main stats are Agi and Fellowship (+25 and +30, respectively, which is very high for a 2nd tier). They're okay at fighting (+10 WS, +1 Attacks, get Dodge and Swashbuckler and Fleet of Foot) but fighting isn't really their main thing; the theme of the class is knowing just enough about a bunch of things to get yourself in trouble. This is because they are people who look for trouble, everywhere. These are meant to be Dilettantes (or other sorts) who fancy themselves dashing rogues and heroes. They spend their lives partying and socializing, looking for frightened or out of place people who might cause An Adventure. Considering Warhammer, this is an extremely dangerous hobby to have. I like them because they're not out to rob or pick on people who are out of place; they earnestly offer to help them. They just find that helping out people lost in the big city is one of the best ways to get involved in exciting, daring action. They're very willing to put themselves in real danger, and to keep doing so; they might be kind of foolish but they're committed to playing at being a hero and I find that fluff endearing. Plus, the class's actual abilities are fun in play because you can never go wrong with someone who is okay at fighting, good at running away, and great at talking in this setting. They also get a cute little detail that when they can't find excuses to stay up all night, they tend to go to bed early and act more responsibly; it helps them maintain their appearance. A night without a party is a good time to fix your clothes, pick out a new hat, and rest up so that you can go two days straight when you find some exciting intrigue and bumble your way into the middle of it next week. Another cute bit is one of their potential trappings is a pistol they don't actually learn to use, carried entirely for the sake of bluffing. Another Career I find interesting fluff-wise (and got an entire plot arc out of) is the Friar. Friar isn't a great class mechanically; they're an option in place of going into Priest, but they're also an option for classes like the Vagabond. They're great at traveling and learn a wide variety of languages, theology, and some medical skills, and they're fairly short, but they don't have a huge amount to recommend them over just going Priest or something. What's interesting about them is their fluff, both their original write-up and the stuff they get in this book. Friars come from the Imperial tradition of Mendicant Orders, started by St. Berndt of Wurtbad. Berndt was a Witch Hunter, and someone who saw so much violence and horror fighting against Slaaneshi cults that he stopped being able to be a man of action. He also came to the conclusion it was simply impossible to kill your way to defeating Chaos. Cults might have to be stopped, but you can't prevent them springing up just by killing everyone. He gave away his sword and possessions and took to the roads as a mendicant wanderer. He believed that providing an example of a simple life of travel and service would turn people away from Slaanesh. Naturally, many Imperial Mendicant Orders are not so devoted to this ideal. After all, a Friar is on the road with very little supervision. Sometimes this is just a theological disagreement over what it means to bring word of a 'simple life', and sometimes it's the normal corruption that can come with religious authority in the Empire. One example given is the Order of St. Olga, a Mendicant Order that focuses on brewing the best ale they can as an act of devotion to Sigmar. Their founder was the daughter of a brewer who claimed she saw Sigmar in the foam on a freshly poured ale and took it as a sign that the Lord wanted people to remember simple and humble pleasures; she thought that was the way to fight Slaanesh, rather than total abstinence. The Friars of St. Olga are certainly popular (and relatively wealthy), because plenty of people agree with the idea that Sigmar would be happy with you having a few simple, nice things in your life. It's not what St. Brendt wanted, but it's still in the same vein. They're fun people, even if the class can be a little meh. And it's not exactly bad, just a little awkward; some classes feel more intended for NPCs than PCs and I think Friar's one of them. The addition of the Prelate 3rd tier social/political priest does give them more of a reason to exist, though; Prelate is great at enhancing what a Friar character was good at to the point that it's worth specializing in, and they're one of the faster ways to get to that Career. Prelate was a class added in this book to represent high church officials and church politicians. There are tons, tons more classes I could talk about mechanically and flavor-wise, but I think this is enough to give a sample of why the Career Compendium is really worth getting if you want to run WHFRP 2e. It also introduces an actual huge table using a d1000 to roll for starting career (bringing in all the new Basics from all the supplement books), as well as 'regional' Career tables and Careers-by-general-role rolling tables. So say you want to play an Academic of some kind but still want to roll randomly, there's an Academic table for you. It's a really great resource for getting a little more out of the best part of WHFRP2e. The added fluff and flavor is usually pretty good, and I haven't even been properly going into how many explicit adventure seeds the book has. Having everything in one place is also a boon as a reference book, and at heart, Career Compendium is a reference book. It's a very hard book to cover in this format, though, because...220 Careers. The best I could do is talk about some of what they mean mechanically and why the Career system itself is such a core part of WHFRP. Really, if you're interested in 2e and pick up the huge bundle Cubicle 7 released in PDF to go along with 4e, spare some time to flip through the Compendium. It's helped me a ton in writing adventures or coming up with characters I want to play, and it'll do the same for anyone interested in that edition; Compendium, Old World Bestiary, and Core Book are what I'd recommend as the 'core' books you want to play 2e. The End
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Sep 5, 2019 17:44
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That seems like very poor odds. That's just comparing successes on 5-6 dice against successes on 17, right?
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Sep 5, 2019 18:56
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Gantolandon posted:I find it funny that just when 'X-Risks' are described, it turned out that Werewolf came up with its own exsurgent virus. The whole reason the Exsurgent Virus and its implementation is so annoying is because that exact kind of thing is all too common in games that try to use save or dies to generate a horror atmosphere. It's everywhere.
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Sep 5, 2019 20:24
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"It's horror because you have an 80% chance to die." is a clumsy mechanical attempt at mood that is easy to do and extremely frustrating in practice. The fact that it's easy to do means it will come up at least once in almost every horror property if it goes on long enough.
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Sep 5, 2019 20:28
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Deptfordx posted:I think if I ever get the urge to run some 40k again, I'd use something like the BASH rpg and reskin the Marines and major threats as superheroes and everyone else is a minion. I will never in all my years understand why as 40k got more 'high power' they made it harder and harder to actually buy hit points. I get that they wanted high power and that giant lists of super powerful weapons sell sourcebooks (and 40k is full of stuff people feel 'should' loving murder you). I get they didn't want a significant chance you land a shot and do very little against the enemy. But for God's sake, if you're recognizing you have to give basic enemies 30-40 Wounds to keep them from evaporating instantly (they still evaporate instantly) why make it so drat hard for players to have more than 25? They kept treating a single Wound like it was a significant characteristic advance through all of 40kRP. A Wound is a significant advance in Fantasy 2e as it's currently balanced. A sort of unexciting one, but useful. Going from 12 to 20 when 'maxed out' is significant since you also increase your effective durability such that each Wound goes further. 40k kept saying 'you can spend 200 EXP on a single Wound when you take 30 in one turn if you get hit and you had 15 to start with, or you could spend the 200 EXP on going first, killing the enemy, or dodging the attack entirely', and of course you spend on the latter.
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Sep 5, 2019 22:49
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More things should be called Warbots, though. It's simple. It tells you this is a robot. Who is for war.
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Sep 6, 2019 00:18
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The main thing I learned from Earthsiege II is that I (not very) secretly love giant stompy robots with guns. And shooting things in the foot so we can swarm over them like ants and take their spare parts and guns for delicious 'build me more giant stompy robots' points. Man, Earthsiege II was fun. E: Man, when you think of it from the perspective of the Cybrids, getting salvaged after a disabling shot must have been one of the most hideous fates imaginable. An AI unit sitting there with leg damage, unable to move its body, until salvage teams cut it apart? That's kind of hosed up to do to a sentient being. But then 'This is kind of hosed up to do to a sentient being, no wonder they keep trying to kill us all' is the Siege games' entire thing. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 13:37
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Are there any options besides the flamethrower/molten silver garden hose on someone infected to that degree? I don't recall if you can cure the infected.
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Sep 6, 2019 19:47
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 10:38 |
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Some of it's real good, though.
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Sep 9, 2019 04:16
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