Have any of you tried WR&M and can offer feedback?

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Occluded Sun
Duke
Posts: 1044
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 6:15 pm

Have any of you tried WR&M and can offer feedback?

Post by Occluded Sun »

I stumbled across Warrior, Rogue, and Mage some time ago, and I was intrigued. I mostly liked what I saw, but wondered how effectively it could be tweaked to better represent my current gaming obsessions.

Searching here has shown only a few references, and one person who seems to have played it a bit (while exploiting what I consider to be a serious flaw in the existing RAW).

Have any of you tried it, and not posted about it? I'd be interested in hearing your experiences. I'm currently trying to alter the rules to better emulate a sort of Dark Sun setting, so if you had any houserules I'd like to hear about them too.

Loved it, hated it? Either way, tell us about it.
User avatar
DrPraetor
Duke
Posts: 1289
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:17 pm

Post by DrPraetor »

I've played Toon. This is Toon, only... with fewer attributes.

I'm all for a rules-light, but this is a bit ridiculous. Read the "Circumstantial Modifiers" section, for example.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
User avatar
momothefiddler
Knight-Baron
Posts: 883
Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
Location: United States

Post by momothefiddler »

It really can't make up its mind on how rules-light it wants to be, though. For instance:
Circumstantial Modifiers wrote:There are circumstances which can make tasks harder or easier to perform than usual. The lack of tools makes it harder to craft something. A master crafted weapon grants a bonus to an attack. Or bad lighting conditions make it easierto hide in the shadows. The GM may add circumstantial modifiers to any DL if appropriate.
[i wrote:Two-fifths[/i] of the non-combat hazards]Mild poison: 1d3 initial damage, 1 damage per round until successful Warrior check vs. DL 7.

Lethal poison: 1d6 initial damage, 2 damage per round until successful Warrior check vs. DL 11.

That said, glancing over it, it appeals to me. I suspect it's not good, but I'd play it at least once.
User avatar
Occluded Sun
Duke
Posts: 1044
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 6:15 pm

Post by Occluded Sun »

I am most especially interested in learning how combats actually work. I can try playtesting with my groups, but I'd like to be able to offer them a good system (or a good tweaking of a mediocre system) right off the bat.
"Most men are of no more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into excrement." - Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
User avatar
DrPraetor
Duke
Posts: 1289
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:17 pm

Post by DrPraetor »

Okay, let's math-hammer it.

One thing I do note - the heavily armored NPCs in the beastiary seem to have defense penalties from their armor (?). But I can't find any mention of this in the rules text. It may be that armor and shields don't raise your defense at all, or your defense is supposed to be capped at 10, or something...

Supposing you have a Fighty of 6 and a Rogue of 4, and spend your initial 250 SP on Full Plate, a Tower Shield, and a Hand Weapon.

You roll 1D6+8 to hit people (assuming you have the skill in your Hand Weapon), so you hit the Drake on a 3.

The Drake rolls 1D6+8 to hit you back, but your defense is 3 (Fighty) + 2 (Rogue) + 4 (base) + 10 (plate and shield) = 19, and you are right off the RNG for all the monsters in this book - unless the golem or elemental also gets +2 for a skill, in which case they'd hit you on an exploding 6.

Of course, if the GM throws up a random warrior with a Runesword, he will cut a bitch, so you want a 2H sword as a backup, I suppose?

My read on this game is that Toon was better designed.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
User avatar
Occluded Sun
Duke
Posts: 1044
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 6:15 pm

Post by Occluded Sun »

Oh, I'm reasonably certain the numbers given for certain monster stats are in error.

I would also note that having a Mage score of zero puts that character in the same category as the various animals statted up. Yeah, they're gonna be a beast in combat... but also, outside of combat. But yeah, having high defense is very potent.

One of the supplements to the game - The Art of Combat - notes that high defense wins, and offers optional ways to deal with that problem. One made armor reduce damage taken rather than chance-to-hit, another gave armor HPs, and a third option (recommended to be used with the first) let the to-hit roll spill over into damage, up to the max damage of a weapon.

I'm not sure how any of these options work in play.
"Most men are of no more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into excrement." - Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
User avatar
momothefiddler
Knight-Baron
Posts: 883
Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
Location: United States

Post by momothefiddler »

Given Ritual Magic, Magic Armor gives 4hp at Mage 1 and 8hp more with every additional point of Mage, requiring a maximum of 25 minutes at Mage 1 and 5 additional minutes per point of Mage. For comparison, each point of Warrior gives 1hp.

Now, sure, the Magic Armor hp are ablative and can't be regained without recasting the spell, but there's no maximum duration so you can just cast it before bed and be fine. (By contrast, natural healing gives you max 6hp/day of full rest, or 1hp/day of activity, so the fact that the hp are ablative is basically irrelevant)

This means that if Ritual Magic is allowed, basically everyone should have Magic Armor and use it regularly, even if they don't do any other magic.

And if everyone has it, and you're casting it ritually anyway, you might as well just spend a day circlejerking cooperating and meditating to jack it up even more. Even with no proper casters in the party, a party of 4 with Mage 1 each can spend 3 hours casting and meditating to give one member +28hp and recover their mana, letting them do the same for every member in 12h total. Upgrade one of those to a Proper Wizard with Magic 6, Thaumaturgy skill, and a level 2 implement and you get +68hp in those 3h. If the Proper Wizard decides to go all-in on it, she can use an additional 20 mana from the implement as well, which makes it +148hp, though that does take 2:40 to cast and a whopping nine hours of meditation to regain the mana.

I think the issue might be with Ritual Magic, honestly, but it really sticks out with the way this spell scales and the unlimited duration.
Balance issues aside, the availability of magic as a support option for everyone as just a basic assumption is one of the big things that appeal to me about this system.
User avatar
Occluded Sun
Duke
Posts: 1044
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 6:15 pm

Post by Occluded Sun »

Mage Armor was one of the things changed in the "From the Imperial Library" supplement, which is very, very long compared to "The Art of War".
"Most men are of no more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into excrement." - Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
User avatar
momothefiddler
Knight-Baron
Posts: 883
Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
Location: United States

Post by momothefiddler »

I'm not exactly sold on a product that's so rules-light that it says you should probably have circumstance modifiers or something but that has five extra supplements so... your insistence that things are fixed in other books rapidly erodes any value this has as a rules-light.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

The basic premise of "You have 3 stats, finesse stuff, knowledge stuff, and muscle stuff" is straightforward. When they start explaining the magic system and give specific spells though is where I feel the system goes from "rules lite" to "and here's where we jam in complications".

Many solar cycles ago I made up a similar system for a game design job application, my solution to magic was "X times a day/encounter you get Y bonus to your finesse/knowledge or brawn roll". Sure there's a "5 minute workday" problem in there but it's rules lite and easy to grasp.
User avatar
Occluded Sun
Duke
Posts: 1044
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 6:15 pm

Post by Occluded Sun »

momothefiddler wrote:your insistence that things are fixed in other books rapidly erodes any value this has as a rules-light.
Oh, I'm not insisting things are fixed at all. But they *are* changed.

I did think that having substantial rules alterations presented so rapidly doesn't speak well for the amount of thought that went into the original versions.

In defense of the original, the bloodmage-healing problem doesn't exist in it. It's the expanded versions of the game that introduces the problematic talent, although I don't like the way the game addresses healing all that much. Why have rules for 'normal' healing if virtually everyone can cast magic and magic is inherently superior?
User avatar
momothefiddler
Knight-Baron
Posts: 883
Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
Location: United States

Post by momothefiddler »

Occluded Sun wrote:
momothefiddler wrote:your insistence that things are fixed in other books rapidly erodes any value this has as a rules-light.
Oh, I'm not insisting things are fixed at all. But they *are* changed.
Yyyyeah, that doesn't help at all. I'm out.
User avatar
Avoraciopoctules
Overlord
Posts: 8624
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:48 pm
Location: Oakland, CA

Post by Avoraciopoctules »

This is a game I have played before, and it is deliciously broken. Blood Mage lets you spend HP instead of Mana. You can use that to spend 1 HP to heal 1d6 HP.

This means effectively infinite mana at level 1.

EDIT: on the less awesome end, I remember a guy who put nothing into Mage and was incapable of even making a spot check.
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Sat Nov 12, 2016 2:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply