Morning everyone !!

Every Monday we get new infos on the age of Sigmar RPG : Soulbound. last week we got a presentation on how test works : here and a week before that the presentation of the product here . Today we are looking at how opposed test works.

Opposed Test

In a ropeplaying game when two characters are in direct opposition, the GM will call for an Opposed Test. Combat, arm wrestlying, hide and seek are all opposed test.

The basic TN for an opposed test is 4 ( see test ). It's the difference with normal tests were TN reflect the difficulty of the task at hand. Here to goal is to roll more 4 than the opponent.

Example: Ahnika, a Witch Aelf of the Daughters of Khaine, is trying to escape an enraged Skaven Rat Ogor. She darts through the doorway of a crumbled warehouse in the Anvilgard docks and slams the door behind her, trying to hold it closed. The Rat Ogor roars and starts smashing its fists against the door, splintering the wood. The GM calls for an Opposed Test between Ahnika and the Rat Ogor to see if Ahnika can hold the door closed.

The GM decides that it is a DN 4 Body (Might) Opposed Test for both participants. Ahnika has Body 3 but is not Trained in the Might Skill, giving her a dice pool of just 3. The Rat Ogor has Body 5 and has one level of Trained in Might, giving it a dice pool of 6. Ahnika rolls a gets a result of 2, 4, and 5, giving her two successes (4 and 5). The GM rolls for the Rat Ogor and gets a result of 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 6, giving it four successes (4, 5, 6, and 6). The Rat Ogor wins the Opposed Test and smashes the warehouse door to pieces. Ahnika recoils from the splintering wood and starts running again.

If you are used to pen & paper rpg and ever played a "success based" game like shadowrun or any white wolf games (with d10) this is all very classical. The only surprise is the Tie Breaker, it say the defender win on a tie, i am not a big fan of this as it promote being passive and math vise the bonus is like +2dices on average.

Advantage and Disadvantage

To represent benefit and hindrance a side could have in an opposed test, Soulbound use Advantage and Disadvantage (note : Since DnD 5th this concept is super popular don't you think ?). Having advantage reduce test to 3 and having disadvantage increase tn to 5.

Example:Ahnika has managed to put some distance between her and the Rat Ogor, and quickly ducks into an alley to hide. The Rat Ogor catches up and starts sniffing around for the Witch Aelf. The GM calls for another Opposed Test.

For the Test, the GM decides that Ahnika must use Body (Stealth) and the Rat Ogor must use Mind (Awareness). Ahnika has Body 3 and is Trained in Stealth, giving her a dice pool of 4. The Rat Ogor only has Mind 1 but is Trained in Awareness, giving it a dice pool of just 2. Since the Opposed Test is taking place at night in the shadowy docks of Anvilgard, the GM declares that Ahnika has Advantage to hide and the Rat Ogor has Disadvantage to spot her. This means the DN for Ahnika is 3 and the DN for the Rat Ogor is 5.

Ahnika rolls and gets a result of 2, 3, 5, and 5, giving her three successes (3, 5, and 5). The GM rolls for the Rat Ogor and gets a 1 and a 4, meaning it has gotten no successes. The Rat Ogor stomps away and continues its search, while Ahnika breathes a sigh of relief.

At Gm discretion it's possible to increase or reduce Tn by 2 and affect one party or both of them.

I like this idea in modern game design were instead of counting each of the bonus/malus we have one big modifier. What i don't like is in conjunction with the Tie breaker rule : A player with disadvantage and the active role is very unlikely to succeed. Ex :with 9 dices (and that seem hard to get that many dices) trying to sneak past a guard with 4 dices in perceptions feel super hard. I know it's good that a game system encourage player seeking favorable situation but being a PC is also overcoming bad situation ^^

Group test

Group Tests are an excellent way to track success and failure as a group. Like Complex Tests from Part 1 , Group Tests require multiple successes. Unlike Complex Tests, they have a much higher threshold for success. The Age of Sigmar: Soulbound corebook will provide guidance on setting the DN and complexity for a Group Test, but on average the GM should assume two successes per participant. This means the typical DN for a Group Test for a party of four would be DN 4:8 (difficulty 4, requiring 8 successes total).

Nothing special here, normal group rolls

That's it for this week, we'll get more info on Soubound the Age of Sigmar Rpg next Monday(combat or magic would be awesome)

/Cheers.
bob.

source :https://www.cubicle7games.com/soulbound-how-tests-work-part-2

Hello everyone !!

Soulbound is the Age of Sigmar RPG (pen & paper) in preparation at cubicle7 in a recent post we looked at the archetype inside the core rulebook : here . Today let's check what the Test mechanism will be.

What are Test in Soulbound

Test will be the core mechanism of Soulbound, it will be used for combats, skills, roleplayings (?), explorations. For such a core mechanism I expect it to be well thought and polished!

Test in Soulbound will be resolved by rolling a pool of six-sided dice (d6s) and try to roll equal or greater than the Difficulty Number (DN). It's exactly like Warhammer 40 000, Age of Sigmar, or Shadowrun (ed 1 to 3) if we consider RPG.

Attributes in Soulbound

In Soulbound only 3 attributes, Body, Mind, Soul. Body will represent physical capacity of your character, Mind will be a mix of intelligence/perception/wits and Soul will be your willpower. Average joe in the Mortal Realm will be at 1 or 2.

When rolling for a test, your dice pool will equal the corresponding attributes. Ie: You want to do a test for running you will roll a number of dice equal to your Body.

Skills in Soulbound

Skills represent a level of training and expertise in a particular area, such as arcane lore, athletics, crafting, and combat.
Skills have 2 aspects: Trained and Focus, both can be LvL up.

Trained in a skill : Each level of training in that skill will grant one extra dice on your test roll.

Hello everyone !!

Age of Sigmar Rpg update :

Cubicle7 the group behind the Warhammer fantasy roleplay 4th edition updated their blog with new infos on their next product Soulbound an Age of Sigmar Rpg.

Soulbound Starter Set

The starter set for soulbound will have :

-Book 1 : An adventure book that will teach players and GMs how to play Soulbound
-Book 2 : City guide that will give more information on a brand new city in the realm of Aqshy
-Pre-generated Charaters,
-Player Handouts
-Reference Sheets
-Goodies (no details yet)

Starter set cover :

Charaters Archetypes

An Archetype defines the broad strokes of the character you play in the game. It may be your job, a calling, a military rank, or something a little more esoteric, but whatever it is it represents who you are when you first pick up the dice.

Sound a lot like a starting proffession mix background story and they have very cool Illustrations already:

We also think it’s important to focus on daily life and what it entails for the people who live there. This will give both players and GMs an idea of what it would be like to adventure in these lands, who they might meet, and the threats they might face. It provides a grounding for you to set your adventure in any Realm you choose.

I was hoping for something like this !! Let be honest one minutes, Age of Sigmar setting is great and the vastness of the Realms is good to create Races / Civilisations / Worlds for a miniatures wargame like Warhammer Age of Sigmar. But it lack the details and the common life we used to know about the old world. Off course the Old World was inspired by Europe and it was easy to relate.

I am really eager to read the descriptions of the different Realms and play this Age of sigmar Rpg

Next Monday C7 is explaining how Tests Work in Soulbound !!

/Cheers.
Bob.

Source : https://www.cubicle7games.com/age-of-sigmar-update/

Hello everyone !!

If you look at the Warhammer Fest Schedule there is a slot for Roleplaying Games and card games. I guess we are getting more information about the AOS rpg by C7. That mean C7 would do both AOS and WFRPG.

If we consider the silence of Ulysse america as a bad sign, maybe GW want to grant them Wh40k universe ?

Good points for C7 :

Uk Based.
Great success with WFRP.
Good rep
Good Knowledge of the D100 system
Would do all the Warhammer rpg.

What do you think ?

/Cheers.
Bob.

Hello everyone !!

10 days ago WFRPG 4th edition pdf was released in his final form by cubicle7. I was waiting it for a long time and i immediately bought it to find how they improved the venerable D100 system.

In all pen and paper RPG i had the chance to play over the years, WFRPG hold a special place in my heart. It was my first session of pen and paper rpg (28 years ago I think). I don't remember all the details but I was a troll-slayers with a big AXE !!

Before going into the details of the review i'd like to talk about what were the good and bad points of the WFRPG and what Cubicle7 promised us to fix !

WFRPG 1st and 2nd editions

Old versions of this game had 3 mains problems : D100 is binary or math intensive, combat stalemate , Characters balance.

1) D100.

Rolling D100 is linked to WFRPG and cubicle7 had promised to keep it. The benefit of this roll system are : simple and fast ! Rolling a D100 and checking success or failure is instant. The boon of the D100 system is also his flaw, it's a binary solution, Success or fail. If you want to have a graduation of success or failure, subtractions are involved, and it's a problem because spending the night doing two digits subtraction is boring and tiring. When I was running Dark Heresy, and Deathwatch the amount of math involved was heavy and straining.

2) Stalemate.

Another problem of the old editions was Stalemate. In WFRPG players often have 40 to 50 in combat skills resulting in lonnnnng series of missed or non effective blows. Cubicle7 promised to change this !

Ho god i remember this fight where me and a guard kept missing each other for rounds ^^

3) careers.

Career is more of a subjective impression, i love them but when during a campaign you need thousand of exp to get an extra +10 by changing class 5 times it get really old really fast.

Sure it bring a lot of diversity but the binary nature of the D100 system make it extremely punitive. If you don't get an early +20 ws/bs or those juicy +30/40 end game you loose a lot of fun in combat ^^.

Cubicle7 kept the careers but added Class group, and Career Rank and changed how exp is spent solving a lot of issues.

So in the end we needed : Non binary result with D100 but with simple math, a way of preventing long series of miss and more balance/fun on the careers.

The book

I have the digital version of the book so I can't comment on the print quality.

The pdf is 345 page long. It's a Rulebook and the focus is on the rules. there are less than 30 pages on the Reikland and a few fluff pages on gods and magic in their respective section. Also there is no introduction adventure at the end :(.

The lack of fluff is not really a problem as there are a lot of source already out and the fluff provided in the book is enough to start new players on WFRPG !

The Missing mission on the digital book is a bigger issue as it's always easier to grab the book/pdf and run the introductory adventure.

Other than this it's a very nice laid document with a lot of good arts !

The Review is going to be split in 2, the first part will be the technical review of the Rules change and one shorter about the my personal feeling after running a 2 sessions, adventures (Night of blood !)

WFRPG the rules Review

There is 3 importants evolution that I want to comment : Success Level, Advantage and Character balance.

Success Level

The 4th of WFRPG by cubicle still allow simple binary result but you can also do Dramatic skill test and Opposed Dramatic skill test for more fun interaction !

Dramatic skill test :

Simply knowing if you pass or fail is not always enough; sometimes, it is useful to know how well you succeed or how badly you fail a Test. This is especially the case when pitching your Skills against another (see Opposed Tests), which is often the case for magic and combat

Another reason for choosing a Dramatic Test is when the progress of the adventure could depend on the Test. Dramatic Tests provide outcomes rather than straight success or failure, which means that even if the test is ‘failed’ the adventure continues, albeit in a more challenging way than if you had achieved a success

Success Levels (shortened to SL) are used to describe the effectiveness of a Test. To determine the SL of a Test, subtract the 10s number of the rolled dice from the 10s number of the Skill being tested, including any modifiers . The higher the SL, the better the outcome; the lower it is, the worse things have gone.

So When rolling a D100, compare your roll vs your skill, you count Success Level (SL) by doing this math : First digit of your Skill score + modifier – First digit of your roll.

Example: Bob is careering across muddy fields atop his stallion, desperately fleeing the lands of a disgruntled noble when a wall blocks his passage. He decides to push his mount to jump, and the GM calls for a Dramatic Ride (Horse) test. Bob rolls 29 against his Ride (Horse) skill of 41. The 10s number of the Skill being tested is 4, and the 10s number rolled was 2, so the test succeeds with +2 SL (4–2=2) and he clears the wall with space to spare.

Even if we have a bit of math now it's really easy and 99% of time single digit subtractions.

Opposed test

The second sort of dice roll is opposed test, it's like a Dramatic skill test but you roll against someone. All close combat test are opposed test where you compare your success level with the Success level of the defender.

Example : Attacker have 4 success level vs 2 Success level for the defender, the attacker win by 2.

It's very interesting in combat because even if both fail there is a winner with more SL than the other (even if negative). So there is no stalemate with this rule and because everything escalate very quickly with the “Advantage“ mechanism there is no everlasting fight where everyone miss ^^

Advantage

Advantage represents your momentum in combat, and is gained when you outwit, defeat, or otherwise dominate your opponents.It is recorded with tokens — be these coins, cards, chits, counters,or specially designed Advantage tokens — or by a tally sheet on scrap paper.

Advantage is secured each time you win an Opposed Test in combat, you assess the battlefield using your Skills, or when your spirits are lifted. The following provides some examples of this, but is far from exhaustive, and the GM is encouraged to hand out Advantage tokens as suits the circumstances.

Each Advantage you secure adds +10 to any appropriate combat Test or Psychology Test (see Psychology on page 190). Thus, if
you have 5 Advantage tokens, you have an impressive +50 bonus to hit, defend, and resist the influence of others.

The great effect of this rule is, even if two low WS fighter are in combat something always happen. You gain advantage or hit or get hit it's very dramatic.

Note : This rule is hard to appreciate without playing, but I can assure you that combat in WFRPG never felt so much dynamic and interesting, no down time, nothing really complicated or tiring. Each attack is solved with 1 roll. During the first fight, the elven cavalryman got up to 11 advantages token (+110% bonus to all roll) cleaving the opposition.

Note 2 : If you take dmg or loose an opposed test your advantage are back to 0 !

Character balance

Character always concerned me in WFRPG because of binary aspect of D100. As a GM i don't like when one of the player have all his/her action depending on a 43% chance.

Character creation

I want to write a little about the process because during our test play we decided to follow Character creation rules to the letter and see what happen. I already played and run a lot of old WFRPG, game balance was never really attained or even desired^^. So when we discovered that character creation had random element we wanted to try to see what happen,

I'll cut the details but in the end after rolling character we had :

Gaheriet, elven cavalryman (with 65 starting ws)
Wilfrida, human reverwoman (Fisher/poacher)
Bronk, Human servant ^^

both Human had some bonus XP to spend and more fate and resilience point but will that be enough to balance with the super elven ?

Spoiler : after our first fight 3 PC vs 3 mutants and 2 gors we where convinced that the elven warrior was OP by a fair margin ! (Twist : We were wrong),

Fate and resilience

Your Fate represents your destiny, and is directly tied to your
Fortune, a measure of your luck. Your Resilience is your inner
strength, which is directly related to your Resolve, defining your
grit.

You have 2 main score : Fate and resilience and 2 secondary score that are Fortune and Resolve. Humans get 3 times more points than elf that only get 2 !

-Fate is still the same and work as extra life or get out of death situation.
-Fortune is a re-roll or a +1 success lvl (after roll) or getting initiative. You start each session with fortune = fate.

-Resilience : one time use like fate and allow to : Prevent mutation (lol) or auto win test with +1SL
-Resolve : it's super important, You start each session with Resolve = Resilience. You can use it to : Pass psychologie test, Remove condition, Ignore wound modifier.

Ps : You can regain Resolve during game with good roleplay and decision !

As I said earlier after the first fight we assumed that Elves were still bonker good and no amount of secondary stat would make any difference but we were wrong !! In an easy fight Fortune and Resolve don't matter much but when you are engaged with monsters and daemons or confronted by black magic and weird curse these reroll, initiative free pass and condition removal are incredibly strong !

I can pretty much say that at least human and elves are Balanced (so dwarf should be too)

Career

There is 63 Career with 4 lvl in each.

Here the 3 images of the 3 class they have rolled :

Each Career allow you to :
You can train 3 stats + 3 as you gain level in your career.
You can train any skill on your current or lower Career rank.
You can only train talent from your career rank.
The training cost is based on the number of time you already upgraded, you don't need to jump career to increase your max lvl like. So if your career allow ws upgrade you can spend Exp on it for as much time you want.

Even the lowly servant have some good options and with the new advantage mechanism everyone can shine in battle by setting up good situation to gain advantage. So I would say everyone get to shine !

WFRPG My impressions

Cubicle7 was nice enough to send me a test adventure, “Night of blood”. It's the adaptation of a very old scenario published in the WD.

While the group could be called the Super elf and his 2 lowly servants the adventure was fun and we had a very good time ! In the end everyone was useful and the new mechanism developed in the 4th really helped to balance PC.

1) The Character creation was a bit slow with lots of points to spend on different skills but at the same time it's a fun process.

2) This rules-set is the best ever made for WFRPG, the opposition test, the advantage, the fortune / resolve mechanism, the way magic is handled, the NPC. I loved all of it.

3) Advantage is really a great idea and change combat in a very unique way !

That's it for my WFRPG review ! (next is the Beast Battletome)

/Cheers.
Bob.

Hello everyone !!

ADB posted that he worked on the Wrath and Glory fluff. Interesting ! i guess it's going to be really Grim & Dark !

Then take a look at the last DEV Diaries. The devs are explaining how they are going to approach the really different power levels of the 40 setting.