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Straight from the Horse’s Mouth “Before I launch into a description of what I've seen of second edition (and note that doesn't include the scenario or the world guide), I'd like to state my bias so you can filter it out. I love WFRP -- for its adventures and tone. I see the rules as a mish-mash, with good stuff like the careers system and percentile stats mixed up with an awkward magic system, a skill set that's a catch-all for all kind of abilities and elements like alignment that hark back to D&D more than I'd like. Now, on with the show.
CHARACTERS The Characteristics have changed for the better. Holdovers from the war game that hardly ever got used -- Leadership, I'm looking at you -- are gone. Most of the Characteristics are the same, WS and BS are still there and now every Characteristic you'll need to test on is percentile. Also, dwarfs and elves have been toned down and there's definitely a better balance between the races. Careers are still there (hallelujah!), but the selection process has changed. Career classes are gone (too D&D I guess) and instead there's one big table to roll on if you want a random basic career. It's suggested that you roll twice in case you get one you don't like and, as before, you can always just pick the one you want. The careers themselves are a mix of old and new -- don't worry, the Rat Catcher is still around and so is his small but vicious dog -- Agitator, Grave Robber, Pit Fighter, Protagonist, most of the old favourites are still here. The new careers include some for immigrants only, such as Norse Berserker and Kislevite Kossar, there are also Vagabonds, Zealots and others. Each career now has something to recommend it and skills are more plentiful all round. None of the careers seem useless. On the subject of skills, they've been split into skills and talents. Anything you test on is a skill; once again old favourites are still here like Blather, Consume Alcohol and Dodge Blow. There are separate categories for basic skills that anyone can attempt at a penalty even if they haven't paid the XP for them, and advanced skills that are only for professionals. Talents are those things that alter your Characteristics or abilities in other ways, such as Very Resilient and Strike Mighty Blow. Alignment is gone. On the whole I'm happy with the way characters are handled in WFRP2. Literacy is still uncommon, many people start out with jobs a sane person would hate and the balance has improved. I'll probably be choosing my own career, though. MOOD This is one of the most important elements of the game for me. Does WFRP2 get across the grim, blackly humorous tone of the game? The opening fiction is gritty and rough -- it's by Dan Abnett, and though I'm not a fan of most of his work, this is good stuff. The insanity rules reflect the mood better than ever; where before they read like something written with a Psych 101 textbook for reference, now they read like something an Old Worlder would write. Manic depression is called 'Wheel of Dread and Pleasure' and other insanities include 'Knives of Memory' and 'This Glorious Corruption'. The GM's chapter suggests the use of humour and contains this text: "There are worlds where courageous heroes who stand for all that is good and righteous watch over populaces of decent folk who seek to enrich their own lives and better those of the people around them. "This isn't one of those worlds." The mood gets two thumbs up from me. COMBAT The basics of combat are the same. Roll under WS to hit, reverse the numbers to determine hit location, roll for damage, add modifiers, repeat until Critical. The major change is that everything you can do in a round is now described as either a full action or a half-action. Full actions take up an entire round, half-actions obviously only take half a round. Moving is a half-action and so is a single attack, so a lot of rounds will involve the typical move and hack, just like first edition. If you have multiple attacks you now have to spend a full action to use them all. Using two attack half-actions in a row to get two chops when you only have one A listed in your Characteristics isn't allowed. This caused a lot of the discussion on the playtest forum -- it's either unintuitive and clumsy or simple and balancing depending on how you want to look at it. There are a variety of manoeuvres for combatants to try, all with action cost. Now you can feint, aim and making guarded attacks. Another change is that initiative is randomly rolled on the first turn of combat. The roll is only a d10 added to a percentile so it's still the character's speed that's important, rather than how well they roll; it just shakes things up and adds to the unpredictability of combat. MAGIC Magic has changed the most. Spell points are gone, replaced by Magic as a Characteristic like Move or Attacks. For each point of Magic wizards have they get a d10 to roll when casting, adding the total together to beat the chosen spell's target number. Optional things like spell components, the Winds of Magic and a skill called Channelling all influence the roll. Best of all, bad rolls can lead to Insanity Points or other disasters called Tzeentch's Curses -- we didn't see the final version, but what we did see was flavoursome and imaginative. Priests have a similar system, risking the Wrath of the Gods every time they cast a spell. Spells are organised using WFB's colour system as expected and rather than each spell costing XP to learn, an entire colour's worth of spells is learned at once. Priests have separate spell lists for each God. This achieves two things; it fixes the problem of spell casters advancing so slowly they never get anywhere and it allows for wizards to take risks in casting spells out of their league. A young wizard gets theoretical access to a whole lot of spells at once but doesn't have a high enough Magic Characteristic to cast the more powerful ones (you have to study, represented by moving through careers and increasing Magic, to do that). However, if our young wizard is in the right magic-soaked place, or the Winds of Magic are blowing right, he can try to cast spells that would normally be beyond him -- with Tzeentch's Curse waiting in the shadows to claim him. The idea of learning most of your spells at once (it's possible to learn spells outside your Colour College, but they have to be bought individually) is very unlike the old system, but the two advantages described above outweigh any initial trepidation. I wholeheartedly like the new magic system. Even though ranged attack spells are still called 'magic missiles'… MISCELLANEA I haven't even mentioned Fortune Points yet, or the fact that only d10s are used, or the only-the-essentials Bestiary, but this is so long that only the grognards will read it now. To conclude, I'm happy with what's been done to the first RPG I ever played; it's been dragged out of the 80s without losing what I see as its core. It's still a Grim World of Perilous Adventure and that's what matters to me."
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