WFRP 4 analysis

The enemy lurks in shadows
stein
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Aug 04, 2022 1:39 am

Are the houserules stilll up for grabs soewhere?
Graak
Posts: 53
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:50 pm

Wow, this thread is huge and is a gold mine of competent analysis and experinces about 4th edition.

The overall idea I maturated about people playing 4th edition is that bascally NO ONE is playing RAW and house-rule the very fondations of the rules or change it up to it be unrecognisable.

Is it a sign of how messy it is? If not, I wonder what else should be?

I initially started reading 4th edition but left it because the very reading was cumbersome (and I am well accustomed with heavy games), the very premise of contrapposed tests and its statistical side-effects made me nervous at the time.
Now, years have passed and playing Vermintide the desire to read about WFRP resurged, so I started roaming in threads about WFRP4th, both here and in RPG.net. What I read killed my desire to read any further since fundamentally confirmed all the bad feelings I had, the rational critiques I've moved and have read about it.

At this point, I'll stick with 2nd edition and wait for a next, more elegant and rational edition.

If there are any source books or adventures worth reading for the fluff and the story please point me towards them, I could consider reading those.
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Orin J.
Posts: 514
Joined: Wed Feb 06, 2019 10:39 pm

Graak wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 3:19 am Wow, this thread is huge and is a gold mine of competent analysis and experinces about 4th edition.

The overall idea I maturated about people playing 4th edition is that bascally NO ONE is playing RAW and house-rule the very fondations of the rules or change it up to it be unrecognisable.

Is it a sign of how messy it is? If not, I wonder what else should be?
To answer your question, (not that i think you wanted it answered) it's not that the system is messy- it's that the system has a couple underlying flaws and uses a big pile of superfluous modifier rules to try and bondo it over smoothly. RAW, the way contested rolling and advantage work make balance impossible and pushes the game inexoirably into brute force min-maxing while the open jobs system throws the narrative aspect of the older career sytem away to....make minmaxing easier. it's very much missing the appeal of the WFRP system's previous editions while trying to fix the problems, so it's understandable most people are making the effort to push the system into some sembelence of the older ideals.

it's honestly a more complex issue than i make it sound, but i dislike making multi-page dissertations grumbling.
Graak
Posts: 53
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:50 pm

Yes I am aware the original flaw that spelled doom to the solidity of the whole system was the statistic of opposed rolls used to force an output from every round of combat.

On the top of that there must be what you said: the attempts to "fix" it or smooth it, with other rules.

But also the mess they created by tying almost every rule of the system to those opposed rolls and advantages. Think of every talent/spell/whatever that directly depends on the result of those rolls.

So, there are probably layers of (failed) attempts to assert some control on opposed tests, but imho there is also a load of rules created by enthusiasts of that very opposed rolls rule, with evidently no idea of the consequences it would have on the games or no idea about statistic.
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