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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition
Playtest review
Contents
- Introduction
- Character Creation
- Careers
- Skills and Talents
- Equipment
- Combat, Damage & Movement
- Magic
- Religion & Belief
- The Games Master
- The Empire
- Bestiary
- Through the Drakwald (Adventure)
- Designers notes
Introduction
"Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste" - Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
This section includes a 'What is Roleplaying' explanation and a short story "Life, after death" by Dan Abnett. The story is a decent introduction to the feel of the Old World setting and the what is roleplaying section is clear enough.
The Warhammer Fantasy world is used for both the miniatures wargame and the roleplaying game with relatively few differences in WFRP 2.0 which has been set to match the miniatures game world after the Storm of Chaos. This means that many parts of the north or east in the Empire have been devastated by war and depoplulated. In the Warhammer world many of the standard fantasy setting items are there like orcs, elves, trolls and vampires, with relatively conventional descriptions. The world is set in an early renaissance level of technology with firearms and cannon in use. A map of the old world and a chapter on the Empire and its neighbours is included together with a chapter on religion and belief.
Rules
Basics
WFRP has only two types of dice roll needed D10 or D100 so can be played purely with a pair of 10 sided dice per player. The core rulebook does contain enough information to be able to play the game for some time, but a large number of sourcebooks were produced for this edition which are a mixed bag and I will review the ones that I have access to at some point.
Character Creation
"I am what I am, I am my own special creation" - Danny La Rue
WFRP has eight primary characteristics generated using 2d10 plus a base value, which is 20 on all attributes for humans, with secondary characteristics derived from other stats or based on values cross referencing a die result against a table.
Weapon Skill - Melee ability
Ballistic Skill - Ranged combat ability
Strength
Toughness
Agility
Intelligence
Willpower
Fellowship - ability to interact with others, similar to charisma in other games
The secondary characteristics are:
Attacks - how many attacks per melee round, which always starts at 1
Wounds - the equivalent of Hit Points in WFRP and usually in a limited range between about 8-14, found by referencing a die roll on a chart for the character's race and can have limited advances from their career
Strength Bonus - derived from the first digit of strength, used in determining damage in melee
Toughness Bonus - derived from the first digit of toughness, used to determine how a character can reduce damage suffered.
Movement
Magic Points - always starts as 0, the magic system will be explained in detail in another part. This can be advanced if the character's career allows it. Usually a character in a spellcasting class will use their free advance to put this to 1.
Insanity Points - starting at 0 it reflects characters exposure to the insanity of the Warhammer world.
Fate Points - Used to save a character from certain death, there are also fortune points that can be used for less important situations.
Character race needs to be selected before rolling for the characteristics with only four races available: Dwarf; Elf; Halfling and Human. In the base rules player choice is allowed, but some GM only allow human characters or use a dice roll to resolve the race. Unlike the first edition of WFRP Elves do not have a massive power advantage over other character races, but are still strong.
The difference between a score of 23 and 24 in WFRP is minimal (literally 1%), however for the derived values in the secondary profile of Strength Bonus and Toughness Bonus the main stat does make a difference as a score of 29 gives a SB or TB of 2, while a 30 gives a SB/TB of 3. This will affect the damage done in combat or the ability of a character to deal with wounds. This can make it important to choose talents that boost statistics or improvements from careers carefully.
One useful aspect of WFRP character creation is the 10 questions that a player should try and answer for their character giving things like potential allies and enemies for the GM to use and fleshing out what the die rolls have created. By using the 10 questions a player can really get a good grip on who they are playing and how the character will react to situations.
There are tables to allow random rolling of a character's physical characteristics like height, weight, eye & hair colour and distinguishing marks and their family background, but these are not universally used. Personally I do like to use them and try to come up with description that fits in with the results.
Careers
"But there's no danger It's a professional career" - Elvis Costello, Oliver's Army
The Careers system in Warhammer FRP is seen as a strength of the game. It does give a good handle for linking a set of skills and talents for a character rather than just having randomly selected options. As there are over 60 basic and 50 advanced careers in all in WFRP2 I will not list them all, but just discuss the approach to careers and advancement. There are also additional basic and advanced careers in the other WFRP books such as Sigmar's Heirs, the WFRP Companion or of course The Careers Compendium.
The careers can be tied to character race as only Elves can be Kithband Warriors, Dwarves Trollslayers, etc. There are only 7 basic careers open to all four races: Entertainer, Hunter, Mercenary, Outlaw, Student, Thief and Tradesman. A character can either be assigned a career by rolling dice against a table of races and careers or be allowed to choose their career by the GM. Personally I prefer the random allocation method with two rolls on the table and the character choosing between the two choices.
For many the iconic WFRP career is the Rat Catcher with a small, but vicious dog amongst his trappings or for a Dwarf the Troll Slayer. The career does define what a character does in WFRP with it being how they would make a living if they weren't adventuring, unlike D&D where characters are 'pure' adventurers whose niche only has meaning in game terms rather than in the wider world. There does become the question of how a character can still be in his career and adventuring in WFRP, but this can be worked around by creative players and GM.
Each career has an advance scheme which allows a character to improve their attributes or gain skills and talents. This means that a character will be limited in their choices of what to spend their XP on. A character in their first career will get the skills and talents, though they can only choose one skill or talent where a choice is indicated and a free advance to one attribute. The free advance is particularly necessary for an inexperienced spell caster to give them a magic attribute of 1 so that they can actually cast spells. There are a range of next careers for each career, but a character can be permitted by a GM to enter another basic career if they want to follow a different path and this does give scope for role play and plot hooks.
Advancement
Warhammer characters can use XP to buy an advance from their career's advance scheme and once they have completed their advances in the current career change to a different career (either basic or advanced) by collecting the necessary trappings. In the basic career that a character starts in they will recieve all the skills and talents, but once into a second career they need to purchase each skill or talent as well as the characteristic increases. The maximum values for characteristics depend on the career and the starting values, a career will give the highest amount that a characteristic can be raised by and the starting value establishes the baseline.
Though it is possible with GM permission to buy a skill or talent outside those from the career advance scheme this requires more XP and should not be done too frequently. A weakness of the advance scheme compared to say the Basic Role Playing approach is that it does not necessarily represent the skills a character has used in an adventure getting better. For example at the climax of an adventure Dietmar the scribe might have successfully fought a skaven, but may not be able to improve his Weapon Skill due to the advance scheme for his career.
Skills and Talents
Skills
Skills have been split into basic and advanced categories, basic skill checks can be attempted even by a character without that skill, but with much less chance of success. Skills are linked to specific ability scores and a skill check will be made against the specific ability as a d100 roll, on a basic skill a character without the skill is able to attempt it with their ability score halved for the check. If a character moves into their second or later career featuring a skill that they already possess then they can buy the skill a second or third time which earns them a +10 or +20 on their skill tests. Skill tests can have a difficulty modifier applied by the GM between -30 (incredibly difficult) and +30 (incredibly easy).
Talents
A talent may give either a boost to an ability score, which does not count as an advance, or a bonus to particular skill checks. Examples are Suave which increases the Fellowship score by 5 and Resistance to Magic which gives a +10 on WP checks against magic. There are skills that are specificly for animals, but they are not particularly clearly identified in this chapter and that would have been useful.
The skills and talents system is a good feature of these rules making it possible to identify what characters can do well and using a simple consistent approach. This system is basically the same as the combat system with the rolling against a skill level to hit and applying appropriate modifers making the game easier to teach to new players.
Equipment
"Vestis facit virum - Clothes make the man"
In WFRP do the clothes make the man? (or Halfling, Dwarf, Elf). Actually in WFRP for career advancement there is good reason for saying this as the trappings of the new career are required before joining it. One good feature of the rules is that a character starts out with their basics such as appropriate clothing for their social status, a hand weapon and a pack or bag with simple adventuring gear like a blanket, eating utensils and mug.
The equipment section contains the descriptions of weapons, armour and other items that a character can buy or acquire including their rarity which will determine how easy they are to obtain and rules for quality of items which affects price, availability and usefulness. This is reasonably complete, but there was a supplement published The Old World Armoury with much more detail. Notably most hand weapons are abstracted into a single item which could be a sword, cleaver, mace or other weapon as appropriate. Rules for starvation and drunkeness are included in this chapter, but would really belong with the Damage section in the next chapter.
Combat, Damage & Movement
"Life'll kill ya" - Warren Zevon
WFRP uses an initiative system which takes account of participants abilities using a d10 plus the agility score of the character or creature. This inititive order will be last through the entire combat with a new roll being made for anyone or thing joining in the melee. There are a list of the actions that can be performed in a combat round, which is extensive having around 20 choices some of which take less than a round allowing them to be combined with other actions.
WFRP uses armour as Damage Reduction(DR) with the advanced rules in WFRP making this specific to hit locations. In the basic rules in WFRP armour is generalised as light/medium/heavy and that DR is applied to any hits recieved. The advanced system requires the hit location and armour to be cross referenced to see how much the armour reduces damage by. The Toughness Bonus (TB) in WFRP is also used to reduce damage from an attack which means that a character with a high Toughness score and therefore TB may be less damaged by a hit than a character in substantial armour with a lower TB. This is what gave rise to the 'naked dwarf syndrome' in WFRP, particularly the first edition. This effect does still occur, but is not so pronounced in WFRP2 though the anomaly of a character with a low Toughness in armour being less able to withstand being hit than a unarmoured (or even naked) character with a high Toughness score.
Warhammer uses a successful attack roll to give the hit location avoiding the need to roll dice again in some other systems. In Warhammer damage is from a die roll plus the attackers strength bonus minus the defenders toughness bonus and armour on the hit location. There is an exploding damage rule called 'Ulrich's Fury', which potentially occurs any time a 10 is rolled on the damage die. The attacker rols again to hit and if succesful rolls another d10 for damage, if this is a 10 then another d10 damage die is rolled and so on until a lower damage roll occurs. It is possible to parry blows, but this requires having enough actions to do so in the melee round. The damage reduces the defenders total number of wounds and if the hit would cause the number of wounds to go below zero a critical hit will result.
Certain Weapons have characteristics that can alter combat outcomes like spears with the fast characteristic that makes them harder to parry.
Player characters are able to use the Fate Point system to avoid certain death, but a GM will not usually make it too easy on them as they may wake up injured and robbed of their equipment, etc.
Warhammer places a great importance on having allies in combat with this adding a bonus to the attack rolls of the combatants who have allies. Given the fairly lethal nature of WFRP combat this is highly useful in giving an edge. Funnily enough use of miniatures is not required or assumed, unlike 3rd edition D&D, despite the obvious relationship between WFRP and its Warhammer Fantasy Battle sibling, but WFRP does recommend the use of miniatures and a grid. Games Workshop does not actually produce miniatures specifically for WFRP adventurers, but converted WFB or Mordheim miniatures could be used.
Fate and Fortune points are discussed here, with Fortune points being less powerful but renewed on a daily basis allowing a die roll to be rerolled or other similar adjustments. There is more on Fate Points in the Game Master's chapter. The presence of fate and fortune points makes WFRP2 less lethal than the recieved wisdom about WFRP though it does lack D&D's endless healing spells, potions and scrolls that can be a feature of the later editions of D&D.
Magic
"I put a spell on you" - Screaming Jay Hawkins
WFRP has both regular and ritual magic with several subdivisions within the mainsteam of magic, particularly a split between arcane and divine magic. WFRP uses magic points, but rather than being used with each spell cast a target number has to be reached with the character's Magic characteristic giving the number of dice that can be rolled. Material components can be used to provide a bonus to the roll and help to achieve the target number, as can an action to channel the winds of magic. If all the dice come up as '1' then the spell automatically fails regardless of the target number, but as the system is based on rolling scores above a target number it would be quite rare to succeed anyway if a 1 is rolled on any of the dice. In this situation the caster also has to make a Willpower test or recieve an Insanity Point.
A spellcaster in their first magic using career will take a talent for a particular type of petty magic, either divine, arcane or hedge which gives them access to a number of spells. If it is their first career they can use their free advance to get a Magic Point and be able to cast spells.
Arcane magic has different varieties or colours with 8 Winds of Magic that each have a college specialising in its use and Human spellcasters have to choose one to specialise in. Elves are able to work with more colours, but are not included in the rules here and Halflings and Dwarves are not able to use magic. There are only details of divine magic for human gods and this may be seen as implying that other gods do not have spellcasting priests.
Arcane magic in WFRP is risky with casters being able to end up with the effects of Tzeench's curse causing various bad effects on them. This happens when the same number comes up on more than one of the casting dice, so is much less likely for low level casters with a magic of one except when they roll an additional chaos die. The chaos die is usually seen for Hedge Wizards or other untrained arcane casters and they have a high risk in using spells frequently from this as well as the commmon attitude towards magicians in the Old World. The divine casters do have the risk of being struck by the Wrath of the Gods, but this is usually less damaging than Tzeentch's curse and the chaos mainfestations. Spellcasters do take penalties on their die rolls from wearing armour making it hard to go into battle in full plate and still use magic effectively.
Ritual magic in WFRP can be used in a similar fashion to normal magic, but requires planning for the time and resources needed. It does give much more powerful results but at at higher cost if things go wrong. Magic items are quite rare in WFRP as the setting tends to discourage their posession and use and unlike D&D type games it is not common to have even experienced characters with magic items.
The spells described are quite generic, such as magic missiles which can take various forms depending on the colour of magic, but are mechanically very similar. The book stresses that the mages take on a characterstic form depending which college of magic they are in and this limits the scope for individuality in characters.
Spell casting is the only part of the rules that uses a dice pool and target number rather than a skill and roll under on d100 approach which means that it doesn't appear to fit all that well with the other rules. The method of limiting the numbers of spells cast by using the risks of automatic failures leading to insanity or Tzeench's curse affecting the caster is a nicer concept than using spell slots or consuming magic points. IT does allow a character to keep casting spells repeatedly if desparate enough to take the risk and lucky enough not to get hit by a negative effect, but it may need tweaking in practice particularly as novice spellcasters have a 10% automatic failure rate.
Religion & Belief
Religion is an important aspect of the Warhammer world with the Sigmarite inquistion and its Witch Hunters being a significant factor in society. The main human gods are discussed in detail with their templars (military orders). The world is polytheistic with the main gods in the Empire being Sigmar, the legendary founder of the state; Taal and Rhya, nature gods; Ranald, god of tricksters; Morr, god of death; Mannan, god of the sea and Ulrich, god of winter. How each gods cult observes its worship and organises itself is explained not leting them be simple carbon copies, but more like real sects. The section includes a list of holy days and holidays in the calendar which is useful in creating depth in the setting.
There is a very brief coverage of the gods of the non-human races and slightly longer coverage of the four gods of chaos. Like most aspects of this setting there are additional books for greater detail.
The Game Master
"I am the Master of my Domain" - Seinfeld
This section includes the general Game Master advice on how to run WFRP and specific information about using Fate Points and Insanity. The GM advice is reasonable, but not really different or better from that found in many RPG rule books.The insanity section is good as it has characterful names for the different afflictions that can affect characters and the necessary mechanical details of how insanity works within the system.
The Empire
"When I was young, times were hard. When I got older it was worse" - Warren Zevon, Long Arm of the Law
This chapter gives details of the default setting which is the Empire in the Old World of Warhammer. The setting has been updated from the first edition of WFRP to take into account the narrative from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game with the Storm of Chaos having devastated much of the Empire. There is a potted history of the Empire, description of the regions, the Grand Provinces, and the principal cities. The various threats to the empire are described like the Skaven, Orcs and Vampire Counts.
There is a two page map of the Empire and a few other maps, but theses are not particularly clear or useful and I prefer to use fan created versions. There is some brief coverage of the neighbouring countries and areas such as Brettonia, Tilea, Estalia and Kislev. These are based on France, Italy, Spain and Russia in a similar period to the Empire's early modern atmosphere except for Brettonia which is closer to a high medieaval period with its knights and orders of chivalry.
Bestiary
The bestiary includes careers for monsters: Brute, Sneak and Chief allowing creatures to be customised and a basic selection with beastmen, goblins, orcs and skaven. There are relatively few creatures and important things like vampires and trolls are missing. There are details of common animals and various types of human NPC likely to be encountered like beggars, bandits and guardsmen. This section really does look slight for a 'complete' RPG even though there would be scope to create your own creatures from the rules.
Through the Drakwald
Through the Drakwald is an introductory scenario for WFRP2 and as such is suitable for new characters in their first careers. It is set post Storm of Chaos and the plot would not really make it work well unless you go with the post SoC environment. It has a mixture of combat and investigation in the normal manner of Warhammer scenarios. The weaknesses of it are that it has a rather railroaded plot.
Designers Notes
There are some brief notes from Chris Pramas about the design of the game and his experience of playing WFRP in its earlier edition. I would have liked to have seen some more information about the design choices made in creating this game.
There are templates for spell effects if using a grid in combat and an index.
Presentation
The overall presentation is excellent and this has been one of Games Workshop's strengths in the recent past, with clear text, generally good artwork that does match the product and importantly clear contents listing and indexes making it quick to find information. The binding on my Black Library printing is sewn, but I have had one section come loose so I do have some concerns about durability. I'd liked to have had better maps of the Empire included, but the maps in Through the Drakwald are good.
Support
There is less web support available than there was while this edition was in print as much of the Black Library content seems to be hard to find, but substantial numbers of high quality fan sites exist with scenarios and lots of ideas and rules content.
Positives
Consistent and understandable rules
Good character design and development systems
Detailed and well developed setting
Heavily supported by fan sites and published content
Index and comprehensive contents list
Negatives
Rules and information included are complete but very limited in some areas (bestiary and setting information)
Magic system is very generic
Few world maps included
Binding is not particularly strong
Limited number of creatures in the bestiary, e.g. no trolls or vampires despite the troll slayer and vampire hunter careers being included
Introductory scenario is very linear and seems designed to lead into a published adventure rather than giving a location and plot hooks a GM can use
Overall
I'm marking the rules as a 8/10 or four stars as they are comprehensive and work pretty well in play though the actions in combat are a little clunky and this is an area where it can be better for the GM to fudge things a bit more to make it flow.
The layout and design I'm giving 8/10 or four out of five as being very good, but I am marking it down a bit for the strength of the binding given that I've got a section come loose in my hard cover copy. There is a lot of good artwork in this book which does help the atmosphere
A new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is now being released by Fantasy Flight Games and it will seem to incorporate a number of elements that make it more boardgame like from the description that I have seen. I will reserve judgement until I finally get a chance to see it and play it, but I can't see a pressing reason to move on from WFRP2.
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William Hostman
United States
Eagle River
Alaska
Gaming in Greater Anchorage area, Alaska since 1978. Looking for Indy-willing RPG players in Eagle River (or willing to drive to Eagle River). Geekmail me if interested.
Yes, this really is what I looked like when I uploaded that avatar. Not that it's quite current anymore.
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A minor nitpick... the system uses 1d10, 1d100, and 1d5 rolls, all of which can be accomplished with 2d10...
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U Majuran
United Kingdom
Doncaster
S. Yorkshire
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Nice review
I always found WFRP cleaned up a lot of the older rules. That said I preferred the actual setting and less emphasis on combat in the 1st edn.WFRP2 is less comprehensive as a rulebook with an incomplete bestiary and setting guide. Plus the adventure in the 2nd edn was pretty crappy.
Try using the setting and modules from 1st edn with selected rules and career paths from 2nd edn. On another note, the bestiary for 2nd edn is decent from a plot hook point of view, even if it is a bit thin.
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