Ease of maxing WS

The enemy lurks in shadows
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Hudd2
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat May 16, 2020 12:24 pm

I just wanted to check our group are doing this right...

One player rolled 38 to begin with for WS, and also rolled up the Warrior Born talent, to give him an effective WS of 43.

Being a gamey kinda chap, and realising that WS was a key stat after a few combats, he decided to maximise his XP spending in this area...

By adding 7 points of WS, and 20 points of Melee (basic) he now has WS 70 - leaving him more skilled than everything except a Daemon Prince in the Bestiary!

All from about 500 or so XP, gained in less than half a dozen adventuring sessions.

Have we done something wrong?
FasterThanJesus
Posts: 342
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2019 4:30 pm
Location: UK

By my reckoning, that should cost 600xp. Assuming all those advances are from adventuring and none are from the free advances at the start. He is now at the point where things start to get more expensive per level up. Another 5 in melee basic would cost nearly the same again.

This is more a problem with the bestiary because it does a poor job of adding skills to the monsters in there. They do a slightly better job in the printed supplements of incorporating skills into stat lines making for more realistic monsters/NPCs. This is something complained about here quite often.
adambeyoncelowe
Posts: 130
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 3:54 pm

Hudd2 wrote: Sat May 16, 2020 12:34 pm I just wanted to check our group are doing this right...

One player rolled 38 to begin with for WS, and also rolled up the Warrior Born talent, to give him an effective WS of 43.

Being a gamey kinda chap, and realising that WS was a key stat after a few combats, he decided to maximise his XP spending in this area...

By adding 7 points of WS, and 20 points of Melee (basic) he now has WS 70 - leaving him more skilled than everything except a Daemon Prince in the Bestiary!

All from about 500 or so XP, gained in less than half a dozen adventuring sessions.

Have we done something wrong?
The Bestiary is not in a plug-and-play format. Read the text at the top of p.311. You're supposed to add Creature Traits and/or Careers to make your monsters playable.

So that Vamp with WS 60? He should probably be at least WS 70, if not WS 90 by the time you make him ready for play. It's annoying that they did it this way, but it was apparently to save space.

Besides, a starting Melee of 70 isn't too OP. If you do it right, you can get +18 in Melee from the onset, depending on how you interpret the 'add 5 advances to 3 Skills and 3 advances to 3 Skills' bit.

See here for guidance on how to use the Bestiary: http://lawhammer.blogspot.com/2020/01/t ... s.html?m=1

Also: http://lawhammer.blogspot.com/2020/02/l ... s.html?m=1

With Melee 70, he'll still fail 30% of the time. And if he doesn't have Melee (Parry), he'll be at -20 for using a shield in his off-hand (essential, really, if he ever comes across ranged foes, which he should . . . a lot!).
Last edited by adambeyoncelowe on Thu May 21, 2020 12:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
SigmariteOrWrong
Posts: 44
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2020 5:55 am

My first PC had a WS of 39, adding WS +5 , add Melee (Basic) +5 for human, and +10 for Cavalry Career and she was damned good to start off her career, let alone adding stuff.

Possibly our most effective combatant was a Racketeer, hit harder with his fists than the rest of us with swords. He has better combat skills and intimidation up the wahzoo. Still, and arm crit reduced his skill by -20 and inhibited his effectiveness. Possibly the Duelist with a rapier was more dangerous, because of increased crit chance. What we found was Ranged Combat will level the PC pretty easily, and the critical hits from enemy parrys and attacks will also have an effect.

We had a halfing in a game I ran softening folk up with sling hits while his halfling buddy was cleaning up the wounded with an axe and lucky rolling. It all comes out in play.

Black powder we found useful against Skaven, as they turn tail and run when you drop a few of their number.

Of course, an NPC getting the jump on us with a pistol was reason to do what they said. Dangerous things, guns.
CapnZapp
Posts: 270
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2019 2:15 am
Location: Norsca

Nope - this game is simply not well thought through.
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