Dicepool-ed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
2022-Feb-13, Sunday 11:41![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
It's been a long time since I wrote a TTRPG post about mechanics--looks like the last one was this one about deciding between magic systems, back before the Plague Years. I guess Wizards & Witchery counts too...but considering I used to write multiple TTRPG-themed posts a month, that's quite a decline.
Well, here's another one.
Lately I've been hit with massive inspiration--I have no idea from where--to convert Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay into the Exalted-based system that I used to run Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom. WFRP (2e at least, haven't played any other editions) already has a perfectly fine system that I've used to run a year-long game of biweekly sessions, and I could just do that, but to be honest this is mostly to satisfy my urge to tinker. I have a half-dozen adaptations of this same system to other games--Dark Sun (maybe 33% done), that Wizards & Witchery post (maybe 10% done), Warcraft (maybe 20% done), Forgotten Realms (literally just started)--but the benefit of doing WFRP is that converting things is much easier than writing them from scratch.
Here's some mechanical notes about what I've done and planning to do:
I've finished the Characteristics, which I just took from WFRP 2e, dumping Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill--"skill" is right in the name--and keeping Strength, Agility, Toughness, Intelligence, Willpower, and Fellowship, and added Dexterity (fine motor skills, as opposed to Agility's gross motor skills) and Perception.
I finished the Skills, which involved a lot of consolidation. Swim and Scale Sheer Surface folded into Athletics, Consume Alcohol becomes part of Resilience, etc. But I kept Prepare Poison, Animal Training, Hypnotism, Ventriloquism, Shadowing, Lip Reading, and so some of the more esoteric skills. These are usually gated by the career system, which leads me into:
Speaking of careers, I'm teetering back and forth. On the one hand, the career system is iconic to WFRP and it's one of the things people most remember about the game. On the other hand, the system of aptitudes from Only War that allows focused characters but still some freedom is a really nice way of doing things as well. I could write up the basic careers as a "this is what you did before you started adventuring" character generation system and then allow people to develop however they like. That's what I did in the Warhammer game I ran last time and it worked extremely well. For a playtest, I'd only be writing up the basic careers anyway, so I'll try that and see how well it works.
I'm working on the Talents. Since I switched the system to a dice pool one, Characteristic + Skill, I didn't want Talents to add raw dice so I made them allow dice to explode--taking Talents makes 10s count as two successes in certain situations. According to this Anydice calculation, at 4 dice one Specialty die is equivalent to +1 success one third of the time, which is the same as an additional die when successes are 8-10 on a d10. And unlike additional dice, Specialty dice only get better as the size of the die pool increases, since the odds of rolling at least one 10 go up.
I'm not sure what to do about the combat system--namely, whether to keep it with WFRP's round by round system of Full Actions and Half Actions and so on, or to use Exalted's tick-based timing system. I'm leaning towards the latter, because there's a lot of discourse online about how Swift Attack (attack 2 or 3 times per round instead of once) is so good there's no reason not to use it every single chance it's available, but I would have to figure out how defenses work without clear round divisions since WFRP allows you to block once and parry once per round. I definitely don't have to have separate block and parry timers for every single combatant, but I also don't know if Exalted's system of defense pools slowly going down with every attack would work either, since Exalted by default assumes active defense against each incoming attack. On the other hand, a timing-based system would work very well with the magic system, which often featured spells that took "One Full Action and One Half Action" to cast, or something similar. It's much easier if a standard sword swing is "Speed 5" and then I can say that casting Fireball is "Speed 8."
One thing I definitely want to keep is the WFRP concept of a "Hand Weapon," where most weapons have basically the same stats and are distinguished by particular special features like Armor-Piercing, Fast, Experimental, Pummeling, and so on. It'll help prevent the "everyone gets a Grand Goremaul" problem.
Magic is half-done. I'm taking Aranai's Magic Overhaul (PDF warning) as the foundation and setting the Magic Requisite as the Successes needed to cast. I wasn't sure what to do about Tzeentch's Curse, but Exalted 3e actually gave me the inspiration I need--I can look for matched 1s. A single 1 might just give an eerie feeling, but two 1s cause a minor manifestion, three 1s cause a serious manifestion, etc. And then allow wizards to choose how much of their pool they want to use to cast a spell, just like in Aranai's system. That means wizards can pick a few dice or more dice, depending on how their risk/reward ratio is feeling that day.
Probably more as I work on this.
Well, here's another one.
Lately I've been hit with massive inspiration--I have no idea from where--to convert Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay into the Exalted-based system that I used to run Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom. WFRP (2e at least, haven't played any other editions) already has a perfectly fine system that I've used to run a year-long game of biweekly sessions, and I could just do that, but to be honest this is mostly to satisfy my urge to tinker. I have a half-dozen adaptations of this same system to other games--Dark Sun (maybe 33% done), that Wizards & Witchery post (maybe 10% done), Warcraft (maybe 20% done), Forgotten Realms (literally just started)--but the benefit of doing WFRP is that converting things is much easier than writing them from scratch.
Here's some mechanical notes about what I've done and planning to do:
I've finished the Characteristics, which I just took from WFRP 2e, dumping Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill--"skill" is right in the name--and keeping Strength, Agility, Toughness, Intelligence, Willpower, and Fellowship, and added Dexterity (fine motor skills, as opposed to Agility's gross motor skills) and Perception.
I finished the Skills, which involved a lot of consolidation. Swim and Scale Sheer Surface folded into Athletics, Consume Alcohol becomes part of Resilience, etc. But I kept Prepare Poison, Animal Training, Hypnotism, Ventriloquism, Shadowing, Lip Reading, and so some of the more esoteric skills. These are usually gated by the career system, which leads me into:
Speaking of careers, I'm teetering back and forth. On the one hand, the career system is iconic to WFRP and it's one of the things people most remember about the game. On the other hand, the system of aptitudes from Only War that allows focused characters but still some freedom is a really nice way of doing things as well. I could write up the basic careers as a "this is what you did before you started adventuring" character generation system and then allow people to develop however they like. That's what I did in the Warhammer game I ran last time and it worked extremely well. For a playtest, I'd only be writing up the basic careers anyway, so I'll try that and see how well it works.
I'm working on the Talents. Since I switched the system to a dice pool one, Characteristic + Skill, I didn't want Talents to add raw dice so I made them allow dice to explode--taking Talents makes 10s count as two successes in certain situations. According to this Anydice calculation, at 4 dice one Specialty die is equivalent to +1 success one third of the time, which is the same as an additional die when successes are 8-10 on a d10. And unlike additional dice, Specialty dice only get better as the size of the die pool increases, since the odds of rolling at least one 10 go up.
I'm not sure what to do about the combat system--namely, whether to keep it with WFRP's round by round system of Full Actions and Half Actions and so on, or to use Exalted's tick-based timing system. I'm leaning towards the latter, because there's a lot of discourse online about how Swift Attack (attack 2 or 3 times per round instead of once) is so good there's no reason not to use it every single chance it's available, but I would have to figure out how defenses work without clear round divisions since WFRP allows you to block once and parry once per round. I definitely don't have to have separate block and parry timers for every single combatant, but I also don't know if Exalted's system of defense pools slowly going down with every attack would work either, since Exalted by default assumes active defense against each incoming attack. On the other hand, a timing-based system would work very well with the magic system, which often featured spells that took "One Full Action and One Half Action" to cast, or something similar. It's much easier if a standard sword swing is "Speed 5" and then I can say that casting Fireball is "Speed 8."
One thing I definitely want to keep is the WFRP concept of a "Hand Weapon," where most weapons have basically the same stats and are distinguished by particular special features like Armor-Piercing, Fast, Experimental, Pummeling, and so on. It'll help prevent the "everyone gets a Grand Goremaul" problem.
Magic is half-done. I'm taking Aranai's Magic Overhaul (PDF warning) as the foundation and setting the Magic Requisite as the Successes needed to cast. I wasn't sure what to do about Tzeentch's Curse, but Exalted 3e actually gave me the inspiration I need--I can look for matched 1s. A single 1 might just give an eerie feeling, but two 1s cause a minor manifestion, three 1s cause a serious manifestion, etc. And then allow wizards to choose how much of their pool they want to use to cast a spell, just like in Aranai's system. That means wizards can pick a few dice or more dice, depending on how their risk/reward ratio is feeling that day.
Probably more as I work on this.
