Why Warhammer 2nd Edition Sucks
A side note first: as my cousin pointed out to me when I told him I prefer bell curve, D20 and single die systems have more variability which should make for more cinematic scenes, overall, which is the game style I tend to prefer, and while I can logically see that, I’m not a fan of single dice rolls, maybe it’s just an unreasoning like/dislike. I have no particular problem with the D20 system mechanic ITSELF (roll D20, add attribute + skill or whatever, beat difficulty), it’s the other 280 pages in the first book, and all the accompanying books I take exception to.
But moving on to this surprising inventory:
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition (my own fantasy system of choice)
Character creation.
For a so-called “classless” game, there is a gob-load of “careers” to slog through. For new players, I can only imagine this would be overwhelming, as it still can be to me, and I’ve ran it a number of times. Say what I will about D&D, Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Wizard has a certain simplicity, and even the more current 10 or so class framework with Paladins and such is still a good mix of manageability and variety. Warhammer’s Rat-Catcher and Toll-Keeper, while surely historically accurate, are completely irrelevant and definitely not worthy of being actual significant player career choices, set apart by themselves. There should be maybe a Peasant class (which there is in a later bit) and sub-types given and broken down into things like this if a player wants, but it would still use the same template). This would severely curb the authors’ fetish for careerizing everything under the sun into an adventuring motif, and cut the career part of character creation in half, at LEAST. You could still buy a Small But Vicious Dog as a pet or a special ability or something.
Stats.
Oh boy, a max of 2D10 + 20 for all my stats if I’m a human. Out of 100. So up to 40%. So not quite half. Neat… You know, “gritty” is one thing, but incompetent is another. Combat is already still potentially deadly at any level of achievement, proficiency, experience or armament, so why give me less than a 50/50 shot to hit the broad side of a barn? And don’t say that the enemies and other citizens also have that, that doesn’t help, that just means EVERYBODY will be rolling dice a LOT and saying “Damn I missed AGAIN too, your turn”. I think this was a horrible, HORRIBLE mis-calculation and mistake on the part of the creators. It takes SO long to up stats significantly, and they’re split into either your main stats or your secondary stats. You also have to choose to do that instead of buy abilities.
Those secondary stats, which are the tens digit of your main stats (Toughness Bonus, which reduces damage, is taken from your Toughness) are also superflous. Just ALWAYS use the tens column and you won’t even have to have this on the sheet, just look half an inch up and see that your toughness is 32 and know your TB is 3. Presto! But no, you can increase these, which begs the question – what the f*k is Toughness for?!
Percentiles.
Yeah it’s 100% but I don’t like it. It’s not a roll and sum system, it’s not even a count successes. It’s roll two dice and read them, it’s essentially purely random, more random than random, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t, I’m not going to go into the math. It’s not bad, and if you have a 72% Weapon Skill, you’re still going to hit a lot of the time, but it feels so cold and spartan, there’s no dominance like 5D6 in Weapon Skill, where you just know you’re gonna roll a shitload at some point and be like “Oh yah, that’s 52, out of 19, suck it!” Their critical hit system is a mess, you reverse the dice for hit locations or use doubles or – it’s complicated and steps over its own feet and my group tends to use the old BRP system of 10 or less is a critical hit, or 10% of your skill is, depending which is better or more dramatic at the time and/or the old Warhammer every time you roll a 6 (well 10 now that is uses D10 for damage) it “explodes” and you roll an extra die – Ulric’s Fury I think it’s called now. But the system isn’t consistent, to make skill checks, you don’t roll percentile, it’s a roll and add skill bonus setup – way to keep a mechanic simple and intuitive for us, jerkwads.
About The Author
as far as character classes go, I personally liked the plethora of classes available. Sure, they were all powerless and weak but they had some skill set that was unique and a career *path* that would ensure you didn’t always end up just playing the same damn maxed class every time. The point being to allow you to ROLEPLAY different kinds of characters. Warhammer always seemed more geared to creating good roleplaying situations than a bunch of dice rolling (I hate that aspect of RPG and yet I know a lot of people who play that way). Some friends and I would even roleplay while camping without books or dice, just sitting around a fire in the dark making up stuff as we went, and it was just big fun. I’d say the same thing about Stats – a major theme in Warhammer (I think) was that your character was bloody weak, and it was a grim world. You were *going* to die, you just didn’t know how. Well, maybe it was never as fatalistic as Cthulhu but lets just say I think a character’s weaknesses were more important in having a good time playing Warhammer than their strengths.
Hey good to hear from you again!
Those are the typical “features” touted for Warhammer, and I don’t have any problem with them as general facets, but I personally don’t think they’re the great hallmarks they’re made out to be.
The game is made so you intentionally have not just mediocre characters, in a world where it is already fairly easy to be goozled in combat should you enter without advantage, but your general competence in it or anything is particularly sub-par, in the 30 range, starting out, meaning you’re going to fail at most things, whatever they are.
I simply don’t see this as a compelling advantage of a game – combat or skills where I keep rolling and never doing anything I try don’t really strike me as particularly addictive or intriguing – you mean my character can continually attempt to do things that may be vitally important to stay alive, and I have a 65-75% of failure on average? Give me that! No… wait…
They could easily have made combat deadly, and skill use and success passable as results, rather than impressive, without cripping starting characters’ proficiencies into Boringville, to me.