It's About Time
Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 8:03 pm
What to say about WFRP4e...
It's a gritty fantasy setting with mechanics to boot. The only thing special about PCs are their use of fate, fortune, resilience, and resolve. Also the meta knowledge and common sense the players have. That's really about it. NPCs can easily match the PCs in terms of skills and could easily kill a PC in the first round of combat if they get really luck. And a thing about combat-- it's built to make sure whiffing stays to a minimum. Even if the attacker fails, as long as they fail less than the defender, they still hit. Then they will earn 1 advantage. Every advantage gives a +10 to combat abilities, so the more you win the quicker things are going to be. But if you lose once or take damage once, you lose all advantages.
The biggest thing Warhamma has going for it is the world. Although Cubicle 7 has been severely lacking in offering chances to play somewhere outside of Reikland/neighboring Empire states, that just means if you stick with Reikland you'll have a lot of info and options as the GM. WFRP2e had a book to create & play as Bretonnians, Vampires, and Skaven. That's hella good compared to 4th Edition all you really get is more humans (as race is more about starting skills and talents, so humans that come from Middenland are modified) and usually a few careers exclusive to the other races. That's not to say you can't do anything outside of Reikland. You just have to put more thought into it than usual. And there's plenty of homebrews.
Oh, if you don't care about premade adventures at all, don't waste your money buying the supplements and what-have-you. There's few mechanics sprinkled into them, but far from enough to warrant dropping $20 on. The only two that seemed worth it was the one that added ships, artillery pieces, and a decent big of new creatures and then the one that added new skaven creatures like the ratling gunner!
Lots of homebrews. Plenty that are collections of house rules, one brave anon made a bunch of books to play as a wide variety of races to play as like Dark Elves, Greenskins, the undead of Nehekara, Vampires, and an expansion on High Elves. There's some skaven homebrews that are of varying degrees of quality and some Bretonnian homebrews. Then there's homebrews to give more tactical depth for when you're in-charge of battalions.
I believe the biggest strength WFRP4e has over every other TRPG is that you can do whatever you want. You don't have to be a group of adventurers going to slay a dragon. Heck, a lot of the premades have a certain degree of investigation and sociability. Not to mention, Warhammer Fantasy doesn't take itself too seriously. A lot of the noble NPCs can be pretty silly... The careers range from noble to knight to pig farmer, so it easily supports whether you want to plan being a bunch of smell villages trying to survive in the goblin-infested woods or a noble and his knights preparing a mini-war against their neighbors. There's also mercantile rules if you want to become the richest merchant this side of the empire.
It's a gritty fantasy setting with mechanics to boot. The only thing special about PCs are their use of fate, fortune, resilience, and resolve. Also the meta knowledge and common sense the players have. That's really about it. NPCs can easily match the PCs in terms of skills and could easily kill a PC in the first round of combat if they get really luck. And a thing about combat-- it's built to make sure whiffing stays to a minimum. Even if the attacker fails, as long as they fail less than the defender, they still hit. Then they will earn 1 advantage. Every advantage gives a +10 to combat abilities, so the more you win the quicker things are going to be. But if you lose once or take damage once, you lose all advantages.
The biggest thing Warhamma has going for it is the world. Although Cubicle 7 has been severely lacking in offering chances to play somewhere outside of Reikland/neighboring Empire states, that just means if you stick with Reikland you'll have a lot of info and options as the GM. WFRP2e had a book to create & play as Bretonnians, Vampires, and Skaven. That's hella good compared to 4th Edition all you really get is more humans (as race is more about starting skills and talents, so humans that come from Middenland are modified) and usually a few careers exclusive to the other races. That's not to say you can't do anything outside of Reikland. You just have to put more thought into it than usual. And there's plenty of homebrews.
Oh, if you don't care about premade adventures at all, don't waste your money buying the supplements and what-have-you. There's few mechanics sprinkled into them, but far from enough to warrant dropping $20 on. The only two that seemed worth it was the one that added ships, artillery pieces, and a decent big of new creatures and then the one that added new skaven creatures like the ratling gunner!
Lots of homebrews. Plenty that are collections of house rules, one brave anon made a bunch of books to play as a wide variety of races to play as like Dark Elves, Greenskins, the undead of Nehekara, Vampires, and an expansion on High Elves. There's some skaven homebrews that are of varying degrees of quality and some Bretonnian homebrews. Then there's homebrews to give more tactical depth for when you're in-charge of battalions.
I believe the biggest strength WFRP4e has over every other TRPG is that you can do whatever you want. You don't have to be a group of adventurers going to slay a dragon. Heck, a lot of the premades have a certain degree of investigation and sociability. Not to mention, Warhammer Fantasy doesn't take itself too seriously. A lot of the noble NPCs can be pretty silly... The careers range from noble to knight to pig farmer, so it easily supports whether you want to plan being a bunch of smell villages trying to survive in the goblin-infested woods or a noble and his knights preparing a mini-war against their neighbors. There's also mercantile rules if you want to become the richest merchant this side of the empire.