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Phil
United States
Albuquerque
New Mexico
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Preparing To Play
The first step, because I’m running an adventure originally designed for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition (An Eye For An Eye, from the core rulebook) was to construct some NPCs to use. As I mentioned in the last session report, this really wasn’t too bad. That said, it still takes some work, which is the downside to playing in a setting that the book doesn’t support quite as well as a more traditional D&D background, for which many monsters are already constructed. So, I created a few different types of beastmen as well as stats for a few of the major NPCs.
I set the menace level to II, which is standard difficulty. In Fantasy Craft, the monsters are actually scaled in difficulty to the adventurers before play begins. This is a step that I’m not quite sure if I like or not. It basically flattens the power curve, so that the heroes won’t ever be completely impervious to any creature. The abilities, feats, etc, of the characters will outpace the monsters, but it’s not up to the level of D&D, where high level characters can mow through kobolds without a care in the world. Unfortunately, the cost of this is that it’s very helpful to stat out the specific bonuses for each monster/NPC before play. While there are charts, using them means doing an extra lookup during the game, which can slow things down.
I thought a little about doing complex skill challenges, which are sequences of related skill tests, but I didn’t see anywhere in the adventure to fit them in. I also had some trouble coming up with good XP rewards for objectives, and still need to fill that out.
Characters
As a reminder from last time, here are the protagonists.
Maximus played by JL (Human/Grizzled, Male, Class: Soldier, Specialty: Gladiator) - An ex-member of a travelling circus. Worked to entertain crowds by essentially working in local toughman contests, taking on all comers as a vicious brawler, as well as showman in fixed fights. Now retired, and looking for work in Ubersreik.
Celeste Abrioux played by SM (Human/Charismatic, Class: Courtier, Specialty: Aristocrat) - A Bretonnian heiress, Celeste is the WFRP equivalent of a debutante. Full of charm and elegance, but not so much experience.
Boris Muller played by BK (Human/Vigilant, Class: Scout, Specialty: Warden) - Boris was emplyed as a messanger for the von Saponatheim family from Bogenhafen. He is intimately familiar with the many highways and byways of the Reikland.
Ulfar Garrison played by JN (Human, Class: Sage, Specialty: Physician) - Ulfar is Celeste’s retainer, providing medical advice on the journey.
Travel To Grunewald Lodge (Combat!)
The hook for the adventure involved Celeste wanting to help out a minor noble, Lord Rickard Aschaffenberg, with some issues he was having with his newly acquired staff. Aschaffenberg inherited a lodge through marriage to another noble family (the von Bruners). Not only are the staff lazy and mostly worthless, but even more alarming, the lodge has been attacked by beastmen recently.
To open the adventure, we played through the travel to the lodge (with Vern Hendrick, Aschaffenberg’s right hand man), which included getting attacked by beastmen. This was a good chance to kick the tires on the Fantasy Craft combat system. I would say it went pretty well. I’m a long time D&D 3E veteran, and there were enough similarities that the general flow went quickly. However, I found it both quicker and more flavorful than the 3E combat system.
For instance, there are many options in combat, but they are all resolved fairly quickly with opposed skill checks. These options allow non-meat shield characters to still get involved in the melee. Ulfar was able to disarm one of the beastmen, which, in 3E can be very involved, but here went quickly with an opposed skill check. Not only that, but I rolled a 1 (error) by my big tough boss guy to oppose the disarm, so Ulfar used an action dice to activate an interesting result - disarming the weapon right into the hands of Maximus. There were also actions to distract and tire out opponents (mostly by Celeste, who was scared to get too close).
Investigating The Staff
An early order of business was investigating the staff of the lodge. The first stop was with the lord of the manor, Rickard Aschaffenberg. He filled the group in on the details, and they interviewed him briefly about the key members that were on staff. Rickard showed signs of the Schlaf poisoning, which mostly consist of a general lethargy. Rickard and Celeste tried to Impress each other, and both succeeded to a minor degree, so their dispositions went up to about +6 for each other. Clearly, there was some respect between the wealthy ruling class. Finally, Rickard asked what the group would like for dinner, and everyone chose the venison (which will be poisoned!) except for Celeste, who selected the goose.
At this point, I essentially went around the table a few times, and narrated what each character wanted to do. Boris and Maximus took the opportunity to investigate the perimeter of the lodge and somewhat beyond, looking for beastman footprints. BK rolled a natural 20 for the survival check, impressive! He then went on to cash in *all* of his action dice (3) to activate a super critical for the scene. So, I ruled that Boris and Maximus found an uninhabited beastmen camp, and were able to deduce how many beastmen were out in the woods (around 20) as well as the fact that they were planning an attack that night! Furthermore, Boris discerned that the group of beastmen probably came from the Oberschlect swamp, and took on a Subplot to find and investigate the group of beastmen at that location. Subplots are a cool way for players to essentially create adventure seeds that they want to flesh out.
Ulfar took this time to use a Medicine check to try to uncover the nature of Rickard’s malady. He also rolled very high (19) and had a high skill bonus as well as having studies in herbs. So, Ulfar was able to figure out that Rickard had in fact been poisoned by Schlaf.
Celeste found a servant girl, and tried to turn in the charm. She chose Hanna Dralst, who happened to be one of the many cultists joining forces with Gregor Piersson, the chief of staff, to release the demon trapped within the malevolant painting. Continuing the amazing rolling, SM rolled a 19 for the Impress skill check (with a bonus of +13!), while I rolled a 1. Coupled with an application of the Charm feat, Hanna was completely starstruck by Celeste, moving her Disposition all the way to +19, which is supportive. Hanna mostly relayed gossip about petty things unrelated to the cultists (being what Hanna is mostly concerned with). She did relay to Celeste all the people she felt were okay (who happen to be cultists). This was a situation I was concerned about in the last post, and I still feel sort of unresolved about it. Hanna may end up trying to persuade Celeste to come with her to a secret meeting with the other cultists (Hanna being naive and not thinking any of the others would harm Celeste).
Prepare The Defenses
For the final actions before the session ended, the group worked with some of the guards to set up defenses for a possible beastmen attack. This was mostly accomplished by a group Tactics skill check, which will be opposed to a group beastmen Tactics skill check. In constructing defenses, the group reinforced the main gate, and started a watch on the perimeter walls. Unfortunately, many of the guards have been poisoned, and they are not 100% effective as watchmen. The group also gave the guards different food that they had brought with them (which they don’t have much of), fearing that all the food at the lodge has been poisoned. One of the guards is a cultist, so he may relay this concern to other cultists, which will cause them to push forward the timetable to release the demon.
Boris and Maximus also discovered the missing hammer from the Forge (the mad Dwarf Korden’s hammer). Furthermore, they discovered the plants in the garden which were for making the Schlaf poison.
General Thoughts
This was a good first session with a new rules system. I enjoyed the combat - it was dynamic and fast paced, with many options for all characters outside of just whacking away with a melee weapon. The characters really had different contributions to make that felt diverse and interesting. So, I don’t have any complaints here.
I do still feel like the social system (with Dispositions) is interesting, but half-baked. It’s very possible for a social character to get many other characters to have very high dispositions toward them very quickly. This seems like it undermines the Contact rules, which allow characters to have close contacts, but at the cost of Reputation and Prizes (which are very hard to come by). It does state that Contacts will help for longer periods of time (an entire scene), but it feels off that someone would have a high Disposition (indicating a very close friendship), yet only help for one action a scene. I think I may have to make some tweaks here.
In general, I liked the set of skills. Knowledge, in particular, is handled much better than it was in 3E/Pathfinder. Getting rid of detailed skills for every branch of knowledge is a good idea - instead having general knowledge checks, with studies that can provide benefits. So, now characters don’t have to spend points in knowledge skills, which they usually didn’t anyway. I also think the craft checks are better.
However, I feel like the Blend/Sneak and Notice/Search checks are regressing back to things that were made better in later editions of the 3E model (like Pathfinder). Having entirely separate skills for essentially the same function, with the difference being active or passive seems like overkill. It seems cleaner to just have mechanisms for passive skill checks rather than construct entirely new skills. This needlessly divides skill points and can affect character niche protection.
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Phil
United States
Albuquerque
New Mexico
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cloudboy wrote:
Celeste found a servant girl, and tried to turn in the charm. She chose Hanna Dralst, who happened to be one of the many cultists joining forces with Gregor Piersson, the chief of staff, to release the demon trapped within the malevolant painting. Continuing the amazing rolling, SM rolled a 19 for the Impress skill check (with a bonus of +13!), while I rolled a 1. Coupled with an application of the Charm feat, Hanna was completely starstruck by Celeste, moving her Disposition all the way to +19, which is supportive. Hanna mostly relayed gossip about petty things unrelated to the cultists (being what Hanna is mostly concerned with). She did relay to Celeste all the people she felt were okay (who happen to be cultists). This was a situation I was concerned about in the last post, and I still feel sort of unresolved about it. Hanna may end up trying to persuade Celeste to come with her to a secret meeting with the other cultists (Hanna being naive and not thinking any of the others would harm Celeste).
Note - I made a mistake here. The Disposition of an NPC can only change one Attitude level per scene, so it wouldn't have rocketed up to Supportive. Rather, it would have been limited to Intrigued (at +6, somewhat interested in making an acquaintance).
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