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The winds of magic is blowing potently into Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in the form of the aptly called supplement: The Winds of Magic. The supplement includes more options for wizards and other characters with a scholastic flavour, as well as introducing the changing, corrupting and mutating ways of the chaos god Tzeentch.
The Winds of Magic is the priciest supplement so far to come out for WFRP, it contains two books, called Winds of Magic and Liber Mutatis, and increases all aspects of the core set. That means classes, talents, actions and much more. The only deck that isn't enhanced by the expansion is the critical wounds-deck.
As mentioned, the supplement has two books. One is supposed to be for the game master, while the other is for the players. I find this to be a good way of organizing the information, as well as making it useful for everyone around the table. Most of the player's book is used describing the role and history of magic in the Warhammer world, but it also includes expanded magic rules and items for the wizard, as well as new rules for corruption and mutations.
Unlike the Adventurer's Toolkit, which mostly adds more of what you already have, The Winds of Magic expands the game into new directions. As the titles suggests, it increases the options available for magic-users in the game. Players can now choose from all the Warhammer schools of magic, and many new spells, of both high and low levels, are added. You even have rules for Dark Magic, for those that want to take their game in that direction. The wizard career tree, if you can call it that, have been expanded one level, so it is now possible to play a spellcaster for three careers in a row. As the tree now stands it goes from apprentice to acolyte to wizard. This seems like little, and it is. To be able to choose between eight schools at the beginning is good, but there should be more variation later on.
A welcome addition is more careers for higher level characters. Several advanced careers are in the expansion, all with either willpower or intelligence as a primary characteristic. The set gives more options to those on higher levels, but still offers little to those with combat oriented characters. And, as mentioned earlier, only one of the new classes is a spellcaster. There is also no options for non-human characters. Neither dwarves of elves have any way of getting into magic, it seems odd that this is not included when rules for mutations and dark magic is. Some might say that elven and dwarven magic doesn't fit the theme of everyday heroes that is in WFRP, but on the other hand you already have Swordmasters, Ironbreakers and Wardancers in the game.
For the game master the Liber Mutatis-book includes several things of interest. A write-up on the changing ways of Tzeentch, how they can be used in a campaign, and several new monsters. Not to forget that all the exciting player options also can be given to hostile NPCs. The book also alters the way monsters are presented, and includes what is now called Advanced Creatures. This addition aims at making monsters easier to customise, but simply put it mainly works by giving monsters regular action cards, a system most game masters already use. An interesting addition is rules for several types of greater daemons. What makes this interesting is that the game's support for high level play is a bit lopsided; much for the game master, little for the players.
The Liber Mutatis also includes an adventure, Winds of Change. The adventure is set in Altdorf, and doesn't really fit with the storyline presented in adventures already published. Not having run the adventure, I will not pass judgement on it, but it contains two tools that might come in handy in any game, a tracking sheet called The Clocktower and one called The Investigation. These two trackers can easily be adapted to any game to simulate either time slipping away or a protracted investigation.
The Winds of Magic offers a lot more than just magic, but nothing you really need. The sad thing is that by giving something to everyone, this supplement fails to give what most expects of it: letting those that play spellcasting characters crank it up more than just to the next level.
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stephen
United Kingdom
Burton on trent
Staffordshire
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Good review of the Magic supplement. I was a little confused by some fo the choices made in the supplement, the extra careers for instance, most of them have no relevance to magic at all, which means if you are not running a setting which features much emphasis on magic (entirely possible with the old world setting) and dont buy the magic supplement you will miss some valuable options for a more low level campaign. These careers should be elsewhere in my opinion.
I was also disappointed by the lack of elven and dwarven magic in the book, in my opinion the magic supplement should be a definitive work on the subject, I guess we will get separate supplements for elves and dwarves which will probably have their magic there, which inevitably means swapping between books to find information on this or that magical options in the future.
Generally though it does exactly what it says, which makes it a pretty essential addition to the system.
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Stephen is making a very good point. There is some really good stuff in here, but it is a pity one needs to buy a magic supplment to get it. At the moment this is the only source of advanced careers that isn't tied to a career tree. Hopefully this will be corrected soon.
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emmersonpoole wrote: I was also disappointed by the lack of elven and dwarven magic in the book, in my opinion the magic supplement should be a definitive work on the subject, I guess we will get separate supplements for elves and dwarves which will probably have their magic there, which inevitably means swapping between books to find information on this or that magical options in the future.
I don't see what you'd need to look up in the book. There's not really much in the way of rules in the book.
I also don't miss elven magic. If I understand correctly, according to modern Warhammer canon, elven magic is way more powerful than human magic, and not exactly suitable for simple adventurers. Even moreso because I personally think elven wizards have even less business in the old world than elven adventurers in general.
I agree about the inclusion of non-magical careers. They should have been in the core set. But it's part of FFG's release strategy to give everybody a reason to buy every single supplement. Even if you're not interested in magic, apparently.
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stephen
United Kingdom
Burton on trent
Staffordshire
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Its not necessarily rules I want to look up, sometimes I want to find out a piece of background or flavour text and we already have two books on magic to look in, if we have to wait for the dwarves book for dwarven magic that will be three books, I assume elves will have a book too, so that will be four books to get all the information on magic, not allowing for extra books on chaos and its magic, I assume four books for that, one for each chaos god. Its not the end of the world by any means but not very efficient.
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You are waiting for dwarven magic? Good luck. Really.
I think that 5th level of magic will be included in special books for elves, cause only elves can learn High Magic. Human life is too short for learning to wield so much power. BTW, there are no dark elves in the third Warhammer so far, so I think such book is really making sense.
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