Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay- 4th Edition Review Pt1 – Character Creation

So, just as with the 1st and 2nd Edition, Section 1 is Character Creation.

The first change we see is the separation of Elves into Wood Elves and High Elves, giving a total of five player races over the earlier four. The Characteristics don’t differ when you  generate them, but they have different racial Talents. You also get a randomizer for race, with bonus starting XP if you accept the result (whereas previously, you just picked one).

The first significant change that jumps out at you, if you follow the creation steps in order, is that you determine your career before you determine your characteristics. This can be done randomly (with bonus XP if you accept the result) or choose one (for no bonus XP). This can be problematic, as it means you may end up in a career with a set of stats that simply do not support your profession. Earlier editions did this the other way around; you worked out what you were naturally good at, and then chose a career that made sense. The Bonus XP you get for accepting these potentially disparate matches may go some way to mitigate this, and there is plenty of roleplay opportunity to explain why you might be in a career you are not adept at. But while it may be frustrating to be in a warrior career with a shockingly bad Weapon Skill, there are now two ways to improve your fighting prowess.

Careers are now split into Classes again, just as they were in 1st Edition. This was an aspect that was dropped in 2nd Ed, and why it was brought back I couldn’t speculate. I will cover Careers more in a later article.

Characteristics

The Characteristics themselves are generated in the same time-old fashion they were in 1st and 2nd: 2D10 + X, depending on the characteristic and the race. Humans once again are adding 20 to everything, while the other races are better and worse in various ways to one another. Except Elves. Only three of their characteristics are +20: for everything else it’s +30 or 40, but they start with fewer Extra Points, and no Fate or Resilience.

You get ten characteristics to play with:

• Weapon Skill (WS)
• Ballistic Skill (BS)
• Strength (S)
• Toughness (T)
• Agility (Ag)
• Initiative (I)
• Dexterity (Dex)
• Intelligence (Int)
• Willpower (WP)
• Fellowship (Fel)

This is two more than 2nd Ed, with Initiative and Dexterity returning from 1st Ed, but two less than the original with Cool and Leadership staying in the grave (having been folded into Willpower and Fellowship respectively in 2nd Ed). We can see a new one, called Resilience, which is similar to Fate, but I will detail that at another time.

Fate (and Resilience) is no longer randomly determined – a departure from tradition – instead you get a number of Extra Points to allocate between the two.

The way wounds are determined has changed slightly, and is a combination of your Strength Bonus, Toughness Bonus and Willpower Bonus. Indeed, all the characteristics now get a Bonus number, that being the first digit of the relevant characteristic. This was a concept brought in with 2nd Edition with Strength and Toughness when they made all your characteristics out of 100, whereas in 1st both were single digits.

Significantly absent is the Attack characteristic: this was in both earlier editions but is noticeably lacking here. It means combat is getting a major change and, since all Combat checks are Opposed, it makes a certain amount of sense (see the Combat article).

There is also no Magic Characteristic since the Magic system has undergone a complete overhaul for the third time under the D100 system.

After generating your Characteristics, you get to pick your Racial Skills and Talents from a small pool, and in the case of Humans, rolling randomly on a table. This is essentially the same as the earlier iterations.

Personal Details

Starting equipment is determined by your Class and Career, and is for the most part fairly standard and unchanged. What follows is the standard personal detail stuff that was prevalent in 2nd Ed. Lots of questions on who and why your character is who they are, and the ‘Ten Questions’ that really help you dig into the personality of you character. Also returning are the personal appearance random tables (these have been in every edition, and are in my opinion, a waste of page space). Do you really need a table to tell you what colour your eyes and hair are?

Ambitions is a new mechanic designed for driving Roleplaying, with both Personal and Party Ambition in Long and Short term, and bonus XP for achieving them during a campaign. It might feel like you can skip over these, but they do have an important role to play later on. Unfortunately, the book does not provide any suggestions or inspiration on where to start. It is left entirely up to the player to conceive and implement with the GM.

Finally, you get to spend any bonus XP (you no longer get “starting” XP) you gained for accepting a random roll earlier, and right there is where you can see the system has taken a new approach to how Advancement works.

While 1st Ed characteristics were increased in lumps of ten, taken from the Advance Scheme in your career, and 2nd Ed continued that tradition but decreased the lumps to five, 4th increases them in single digits, with the cost increasing the more you take. The same applies to Skills. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t go into detail here, it just provides a table and you must read further before it makes any sense.

Overall, the process will be very familiar to any WFRP veteran, and should be straightforward for any new players so long as someone has read the entire book. If not, you will need to flick forward to see exactly how Advancement works so you understand how to spend that starting XP.