Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - 3rd Edition

[Zinegata]

Tried it out yesterday. It was interesting. A few notes:

1) It's a bit of a padded sumo game. The monsters rarely inflicted more than 1 wound of damage against chainmail-wearing characters.

2) The lack of randomized damage was surprising and made combat a bit more dull. We scored a fair number of critical hits which were supposed to spice things up... but most of the time the critical hits didn't really do anything relevant. The deck is too thick and the penalties are too specific it seems.

3) Casting spells can still kill you, but only if you botch a lot of rolls. Wizards still have some pretty powerful abilities though... their basic magic dart attack for instance has a chance to ignore armor.

4) The dice are a mixed bag. I think it's faster to pick up the dice than to calculate and re-calculate various bonuses, but actually figuring out the result takes more time. Figuring out the results take longer, and having so many dice often results in them flying all over the place.

5) They need to be a lot more specific about what's DM fiat and what's stuff you actually get in character creation. For instance, there's a long list of stuff that each profession "normally" gets... but it's apparently DM fiat if you actually get any of it.

6) Action cards with delay mechanics feel a bit better than 4E's system of At-Will and Encounter powers. You can hit with a sword every turn, but you can only use Double Strike every 2 turns sounds reasonable. And there are ways to lessen the delay with your special moves.

7) Having only one copy of each card can get annoying if you have two people playing the same archetype (i.e. Two sword and board fighters)

8) It's nice that enemy mobs actually have to check if they start running away once you kill enough of them or their leader as a core part of the rules.

Overall though, I still had fun. I'm still interested in seeing how they further develop this hybrid system.

[TheFlatline]

I just picked the core set up and am studying it and it's... weird...

I'm *positive* that the designers didn't calculate percentages and shit when it comes to adding different dice in. That would require someone who jerks off to Fermat's Last Theorem to crunch all the numbers.

[Psychic Robot]

Give us more information about the special abilities.

[TheFlatline]

Give us more information about the special abilities.

From what I've seen special abilities change based on your stance: either reserved or aggressive.

Abilities generally add specific types of dice into your dice pool (luck dice, professional dice, aggressive dice, etc...), and you spend successes on extra damage or condition modifiers or whatnot.

Then the ability has to cool down. Which is fine, except that there are negative dice results that extend cooldown times.

[fectin]

Are there really magical bouncing elves that jump [Dex] feet straight up?

[Blicero]

How would you say it compares to 2nd edition? I acquired a copy of 2E a bit ago, and it seems like it could be fun enough in a game that was explicitly not meant to be that serious.

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

How would you say it compares to 2nd edition? I acquired a copy of 2E a bit ago, and it seems like it could be fun enough in a game that was explicitly not meant to be that serious.

The rules are completely different. The tone is (imho) a lot lighter, with the odd hint of the 2E quirkyness here and there.

[TheFlatline]

Everyone I've talked to says it's "brutal, but less lethal than previous editions of WF."

I played first edition which was basically an RPG tacked onto the tabletop rules, and it was pretty f*cking lethal. 3rd edition takes elements from Fantasy Flight boardgame design philosophy and applies them to RPGs.

Is this good? Bad? This probably depends wholly on if you dig FFG design philosophy.

[Zinegata]

It's pretty lethal only if you don't have a decent armor like chainmail. If you do have chainmail though, you tend to lose HP very slowly.

For instance... our three fighters (all with chain mail) ended with between around 4 wounds (max 13 wounds) each after 3 major encounters. The wizard had 10 wounds out of a maximum 11, albeit a lot of it was self-inflicted...

[Morat]

4) The dice are a mixed bag. I think it's faster to pick up the dice than to calculate and re-calculate various bonuses, but actually figuring out the result takes more time. Figuring out the results take longer, and having so many dice often results in them flying all over the place.

The weird dice can be used to convey more information than just pass/fail, too. I've seen it used like, "Well, you failed to find the gang hideout, but you got two boons so you meet a friendly watch sergeant in your inquiries," for example.

5) They need to be a lot more specific about what's DM fiat and what's stuff you actually get in character creation. For instance, there's a long list of stuff that each profession "normally" gets... but it's apparently DM fiat if you actually get any of it.

IIRC it's supposed to be "This is stuff you should probably buy" rather than "Free stuff".

[tenuki]

Major thread necro.

A friend introduced me to WFR3 the other day. I think it's pretty awesome all in all. The resolution mechanic is the first genuinely new thing the industry has seen in 20 years, and, more importantly, it works really well. Interpreting the die results is fun and directly feeds into the narrative. Reading the dice takes more time than with most other systems on a per-roll basis, but you get a LOT of story information out of each roll.

The only downside I can see is a slight case of what I'd call the Apple syndrome: All very shiny, works like a snap, but slightly on the pricey side and not very DIY-friendly. The last point is mitigated by the fact that there is a wealth of well-made, professional-looking support materials available on the web for free.

I foresee this game becoming a staple in our group.

[OgreBattle]

Could you explain the resolution system ? I'm guessing it uses the funky dice right?

As for the special abilities, is it basically "you can use these moves, but after a move is used you cant use it for X rounds"? Magic work the same way?

Has the game been doing well? I never hear about it.

[Zinegata]

Resolution is this: You roll a pool of "good" dice and "bad" dice. You count up the number of success symbols you got in your good dice. Compare with the number of fail symbols in the bad dice. If you have more successes than failures, you do the action successfully.

There are also boon (good dice) and bane (bad dice) symbols. Having extra boons generally lets you activate special abilities (i.e. you inflict an extra point of damage for every Boon) or mitigate a failed roll (you can have more fail symbols, but plenty of boon symbols).

The game isn't doing well compared to their 40K line, which is already publishing yet another new game (Only War).

[tenuki]

Could you explain the resolution system ? I'm guessing it uses the funky dice right?

That's right. The resolution mechanic uses dice pools made up of a total of seven different types of dice, 5 of them generally good, 2 of them bad. This may sound intimidating at first, but it's actually quite easy. The dice are color-coded, and each type has a designated purpose.

Instead of numbers, the dice have symbols for success/failure, good/bad side effects and awesome/catastrophic stuff on them. The distribution varies between dice. Some sides are blank.

The dice can be grouped as follows:

• -- Attribute dice (blue d8). These are the basic building blocks of every dice pool. You use one for every point you have in the attribute being tested. The attributes of a starting character range from 2 to 5, with 3 being considered the human average.
  
  -- Stance dice (green/red d10). Depending on whether you're in a conservative or reckless stance, a number of your attribute dice are replaced with stance dice. Either type is better than your basic attribute die, so most times you want to take as extreme a stance as your character can manage in one direction or the other. The green (conservative) dice are very safe but give fewer crits and can slow you down even if you're successful, the red (reckless) have more extreme results with more crits/failures and can give you fatigue.
  
  -- Skill dice (yellow d6). Depending on your skill level, you may get to add one or more (maximum of 3 for very experienced characters) skill dice. These are generally the best dice and have no negative effects on them.
  
  -- Challenge dice (purple d8). These dice represent the general difficulty of your action. The basic difficulty is 1, the maximum for practical purposes is 4. These dice have no positive effects.
  
  -- Fortune/misfortune dice (white/black d6). These dice represent favorable/unfavorable circumstances. Fortune dice also represent skill specialization and the use of fortune points, misfortune dice also represent the target's defense if the roll is an attack roll.

The result of each roll is evaluated based on the action you're trying to perform. The rules for each type of action are written down on cards for easy reference. Action cards have instructions for each of the three classes of good/bad results outlined above. Action cards also have a green and a red side (for conservative/reckless stance), and the instructions on the two sides are different for most cards.

All this makes for an astounding amount of variety and is surprisingly easy to handle. I generally tend toward the rules-light side of the RPG spectrum because I don't want cumbersome mechanics to distract from the story. WFR3 however managed to build a complex mechanic that's quick to resolve and integrates exceedingly well with the narrative.

As for the special abilities, is it basically "you can use these moves, but after a move is used you cant use it for X rounds"? Magic work the same way?

Some actions have a recharge value, meaning they can't be used every turn. Recharging is handled by the use of counters called recharge tokens. After using an action, you place a number of tokens equal to the card's recharge value on the card. You get to remove one token from each of your recharging action cards at the end of your turn. The action becomes usable again when all tokens have been removed. Some special effects on action cards may add or remove tokens to/from other action cards cards.

Spells and special abilities are actions (and have action cards) just like your basic melee strike. The difference is only in the effects, and those are written down on the card.

This is where the downside comes in: Modding the system is hard because it's a lot of work to make new action cards. You need to come up with all those effects - three classes of good/bad for each side of the card - and balance them with the rest of the game. If you want more stuff, you basically have to buy it from Fantasy Flight unless you have a lot of free time on your hands.

Where can it be found?

I don't understand this question.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I got the Only War quickstart book during Free RPG day. Looks overly simplistic but fun. Haven't delved too much into it.