A Swift Change

In the core set for Warhammer 3rd, Giant Wolves have an ability called Swift. It made them just a little faster than humans with equivalent stats.

However, when Giant Wolves were reprinted in the compilation book Creature Guide and card product the Creature Vault a few years later, Swift was swapped out for Fast. No creatures in the Guide or Vault have Swift, but several new creatures in those products had the newer Fast ability. It's like they decided to eliminate Swift from the rules.

Then, four months after the Creature Guide and Vault were published, FFG released another book for Warhammer 3rd called Omens of War, which included stats for Riding Horses. Those stats gave the Horses the Swift ability. So, apparently, they decided Swift was okay after all. Or at least the right hand didn't know what the left hand had rewritten.

Personally, I'd rather use Swift than Fast, because it's so much more elegant. Let's contrast them. Fast is more complex and situational, but Swift is more reliable and easy to use.  Swift is more universally applicable, being better for short sprints (out to Medium range in one turn) as well as longer jogs (i.e.: running for multiple turns), but can't quite match the raw single-turn speed of Fast when chasing down a distant target.

Fast reduces the cost of moving between certain range bands (whereas the original Swift just gives you a single extra manoeuvre each turn).

I just realized yesterday (while typing up that Stuffed Crocodile card) that Fast functions differently depending on whether you're rushing to a target, or trying to escape from one. What frame of reference you're using completely changes the ability, and I'd never noticed that before.

If you're closing a gap, and you measure from the target, then Fast will help you right away. It saves you 1 manoeuvre when you start your movement by moving from Extreme to Long distance, and saves you a second manoeuvre when you close from Long to Medium. If you're trying to escape, and thus must measure from the starting point of your movement, then Fast doesn't help you until you've already made it to Medium range and are now expanding your lead out to Long range. If you go the entire distance (from Close to Extreme, or vice versa) it functions the same regardless of how you measure it. 

Here's a second example: if you're only willing to take a single fatigue for extra movement in a turn (which is fairly common, especially for non-Nemesis monsters), Fast helps immensely (effectively doubling your speed) if you measure from the end goal or target, but does absolutely nothing if you measure from your starting point.

That weird "depends on what you measure from" aspect of Fast is likely to cause confusion at the table, and won't necessarily play the same from one situation to the next. Normally, it's easier (and more logical) to measure from your starting position, but if you don't plan to cover it the whole distance in one turn, you'll need to measure from the target that you're not quite getting to, to see if your ranged attacks are possible. It's oddly gimmicky, and open to abuse (or at least debate), but measuring from the other side is actually a legitimate thing you sometimes have to do in the game.

What's more, I have no idea how Fast would interact with any of the chases or races that utilize a Progress Tracker in the various GM's books and adventures, and I ran two such encounters in my recent Warhammer campaign. Not that it'd be a hard thing to house-rule on the fly as needed, but it's a little annoying.

It'd also be tricky if you had a 3-party chase where the prey started Close range from one group but Medium range from their more distant allies. The runner takes 3 manoeuvres to move 5 units further away from one group but only 4 units further away from the other. Did the distance between the two groups of pursuers somehow magically expand? It needlessly complicates an already somewhat goofy abstract-movement system.




Swift's much simpler ability to always grant 1 extra manoeuvre per turn is much cleaner, and easier to apply to all situations (including most Progress Trackers). You don't have to double-count the range, and it's easy to adjudicate 3 party chases (I'm one extra unit further from everyone per turn, as intended).

Swift is very straight-forward, and I see no good reason to add extra complexity and fiddliness to chase scenes and fights if it's not a major improvement in some way.

I guess maybe FFG was trying to close a possible loophole where Swift technically allows you any manoeuvre, so being Swift would allow you to draw a weapon, reload a gun, or unlock a door, instead of just running. In most cases that's not going to be a problem, as wolves and horses rarely load guns or carry keys. The only place where it could get out of hand is if a large number of Swift NPCs used their extra manoeuvre to assist each other's actions. A few bonus white dice from an assist doesn't really bother me if it's modeling how their speed enables wolves to hunt as a pack more effectively, but I suppose it could get kinda crazy if you had an unusually large pack of non-henchmen Wolves.

Even if we assume the Swift loophole was a problem that needed fixing, I'd have preferred it if they'd just issued errata that Swift only creates movement manoeuvres. That would have been a really easy fix.


The other possible reason would have been if Swift is too powerful and needed to be better balanced, but I don't that's the case at all. Certainly not from the perspective of realism. If anything, it's way too easy for a human to outrun a horse in this system, regardless of whether that horse is Fast or Swift. Because Fatigue thresholds are Toughness based, Dwarves are actually the fastest PC race in the game. Fast (for the record) doesn't fix that, either. I ran a Wolf encounter with Fast in my recent campaign, and couldn't engineer a situation where Fast helped them at all. The fight started at Long and Medium range so it was no better than Swift, and when the wounded wolves tried to escape they couldn't spare the Fatigue to move enough to trigger it. Swift is just better in every way that matters.

Okay, enough aimless grousing about Fast and Swift, it's time to do something constructive about them:

There's a replacement in the form of a little Talent-sized card called Speedy. It can be used to simplify Fast creatures, and plug the loophole left open on Swift creatures.  Unfortunately, it's also a lot of text for such a simple little power.  GMs tend to have a ton of cards behind their screens in this game, and more text just means more precious seconds lost reconsidering your options in the middle of a fight. Probably, I'll just print and use the Swift card myself since it's less wordy, and I can trust myself not to gang up with dozens of wolves all at once for unfair advantage.

I mean, in the game. I go hunting with the pack all the time in real life, and that's just how me and my wolf-brothers roll. Grrr. Howl.

Running away with WFRP 3rd

In the FFG forums devoted to the 3rd Ed of Warhammer Fantasy RPG, people keep posting various house rules and special action cards for Running. They vary a bit in execution, but the goal is to allow player characters to move much faster, with no fatigue penalties, if you're doing nothing but move.

I've been managing to stay polite thus far, but it's not easy. I feel this whole notion is horribly misplaced, because WFRP 3rd already has the most generous running rules in gaming history, it just didn't specifically label them as "running", so people are too dense to figure it out. That's a little harsh, but pretty much spot-on.

---

How running works in WFRP 3rd:
The game allows you 1 action per round, plus 1 free "manoeuvre" per round, plus as many additional manoeuvres as you'd like at a cost of 1 fatigue each. Your attributes range from 1 to 6 (2 to 5 for starting characters), and you never want more fatigue than your lowest-rated physical attribute. So, most PCs don't want to take more than about 3 fatigue.

Instead of measuring things in feet, the game uses abstract range categories. If someone is within "Close" range, you can pay 1 manoeuvre to engage them in melee. If they're at "Medium" range, you can pay 1 manoeuvre to move to "Close" range from them. If they're at "Long" you can pay 2 manoeuvres to move to medium, then 1 more to move to close (and 1 more to engage them). The furthest possible range is Extreme, which takes 3 manoeuvres to reduce to Long. So, you could for 7 manoeuvres, run from Extreme to Long to Medium to Close, and then engage someone in melee combat. Doing this in a single round, you'd suffer 6 fatigue. If you wanted zero fatigue, it would take you 7 rounds, which is just too much for some folks, and thus the various house rules keep getting thrown around. I think they are being unreasonable.

Compared to WFRP 2nd Ed: To illustrate my point, let's explore how this system compares to it's previous incarnation. (My 2nd Ed is really rusty, so if anyone spots any mistakes, let me know).

In 2nd Ed, most humans have a Movement statistic of 4. This allows them to move 8 yards per combat round normally, or up to 24 yards in an all-out run where they're doing nothing else. Within that system, bows and firearms have a range of 48. So if you were attacked by someone with a bow at long range for their weapon, it would take two full rounds of just running to get within melee range. If you were taking a more cautious approach (not running or charging) it would take 6 rounds to reach them.

Now compare that to 3rd Ed WFRP, where the equivalent weapons (the shortbow and handgun) have range "Medium". Moving at a full run, you can get there in a single round, for 1 fatigue, and you still get to attack. (You spend your free manoeuvre to move from Medium to Close, and then pay a fatigue to engage them.) If you take a more cautious approach (no fatigue), you get there in just two rounds. So, characters in 3rd Ed are, by default, moving much faster than characters in previous editions.

Compared to D&D: Running the numbers, we'll again see that WFRP characters are by default moving really fast. In 3.5 D&D (likewise, my 3.5 is kinda rusty, so correct me if I'm wrong), a shortbow has a range increment of 60 feet, and it's maximum range is 600 feet. You won't often take shots at that kind of range because your odds of hitting at 10 increments are pretty dreadful, but a reasonably competent archer is likely to be willing to take shots out to four range increments, aka 240 feet. An unarmored human PC can walk 30 feet per round, or run 120 feet per round. So again, to travel from the likely archery range to melee range takes 2 rounds of full-out run, or more than 6 rounds of more reasonable exertion. And if you were taking fire from some hotshot archer who wanted to hope for natural twenties at the full 10-increment range of their shortbow, it would take you 5 rounds of full running to reach them.

---

What I conclude from all those comparisons is:

• a) WFRP 3rd Ed assumes your basic movement in combat is a hearty jog, not a calm walk.
  
• b) If you're taking one or more fatigue from movement maneouvres in WFRP, it represents a full-on run.
  
• c) WFRP 3rd, as written, is much kinder on the melee-only character than either 2nd Ed or D&D, at least in terms of them trying to get into range while taking fire.

So, given those conclusions, I see no need or reason to allow any better movement than the default manoeuvre rules in WFRP.

---

Taking it to Extremes: Just to make sure those conclusions hold up, I also ran the results on a longer-range weapon.

In WFRP 3rd Ed, a Hochland Long Rifle or a Longbow can hit to Extreme. It takes 7 manoeuvres to reach that distance. You can cover the whole distance in a single turn if 6 fatigue isn't enough to knock you out. Or you can cover the distance over 7 turns at a slow pace without fatigue.

In WFRP 2nd Ed, a Hochland Long Rifle has a range of 96. A typical Move 4 human can cover that ground in 4 turns of all-out full running. If they try this without running, it'll take them 12 turns to get there.

In 3.5 D&D, a composite longbow has a range increment of 110 feet, so from the point where they start having a better than 5% chance of hitting to when you reach melee is about 3 or 4 turns of all-out running. At a non-run pace you're looking at about 14 rounds of walking.

So, in terms of getting somewhere in a hurry, WFRP 3rd is being very generous to the guy who rushes into melee. He moves 3 or 4 times as fast as his equivalents in other games if he's willing to take a modest amount of fatigue. You may be able to shrug off all or some of the fatigue with the right Talents or Career Ability, and even if you don't, you still get an action on the turn(s) you run, unlike the other systems. If he's fatigue-averse and insists on "walking", he'll get to sword-swinging range in half the time that D&D allows.

If my players complain about there being no running option, I'm going to politely tell them that spending fatigue for extra manoeuvres is the running option, and that it's far more generous running rules than any non-supers game I know.

I suppose I could see room for some sort of enhanced move Action being added to the game, as in one you pay an Advancement to purchase. You'd have to be careful not to make it too good, though, or else it would become an automatic upgrade for all melee characters. As it is, various Talents and Career Abilities within the game make it very easy to build a character that can cover Extreme to Close range in 2 or 3 rounds without taking more than 2 fatigue, so I don't think there's much need for extra specialization options in running.

---

Portions of the above appeared in a slightly different form on the FFG forums, posted by me.

Steel Drivin' Man - Strength Knack

The name of this knack is derived from the tale of John Henry, Steel Drivin' Man, who raced the bosses' steam hammer and won. Despite the name, the knack is open to female characters as well as male, and no sexism is intended.

Steel Drivin' Man - Strength Knack - Prerequisite: Holy Rampage
Your strength is such that you may rip through walls and solid rock with your bare hands. By rolling Strength + Craft: Mining (or Science: Geology) vs the difficulties below, you may travel at 1/2 your Move rate through solid objects, walls, and debris. Burrowing is a 3 tick, DV-2, rolled action, similar to Dash except slower.

• Solid rock: 40
• Mortared Rock Walls: 30
• Brick Walls: 20
• Packed Earth: 10
• Loose Surface Soil: 5

(Should the GM need to improvise for a material, a good starting point is 3 time the objects soak, rounded up to the nearest multiple of 5).

Activating this power costs 1 Legend per die roll. You must roll once per minute, and roll again any time the substance being burrowed through switches to a denser / more resiliant (thus higher on the chart) material. Failure on a roll not only stops you from moving, it also causes 1 level of unsoakable bashing damage as you flail your hands too hard.

Your tunnels remain open and stable for a number of hours equal to your dots in Epic Strength, then slowly collapse and fill in. Poured concrete, support beams, or other methods may be later used to make the tunnels permanent. Possession of this knack in no way prevents you from digging a tunnel the good ol' fashioned way, with lots of backbreaking effort and a good stout shovel.

Overland and marathon rates in Scion

House rules to govern overland and marathon foot-speeds in Scion:

In an hour, a character who is jogging or walking briskly can cover a distance in miles equal to the lesser of their (Stamina) or (2 x (Dexterity)). That figure assumes overland / uneven ground.

You keep full speed for hours equal to your (0.5x(Stamina+Fortitude)), then speed goes down by 1 mph, and a further 1 mph per two additional hours until you get some sleep. If your Stamina is 1 and you have no Fortitude, you won't even get the first mile, because the rules for Fatigue will make you stop for a break after 30 minutes.

Therefore, a typical mortal with all Attributes at 2 covers just 2 miles in an hour. This matches Tommy Lee Jones assertion in The Fugitive, which is as close to real-world accuracy as I feel compelled to strive. The most infirm human moves 1/2 a mile and stops, but the best Athelete (5's in both Attributes) moves 5 miles per hour overland.


On a closed professional track or flat stretch of road it becomes easier to sustain running speed and thereby derive benefit from training. In that case, use the lesser of (Stamina + Fortitude) or (2 x (Dexterity + Athletics)) in miles per hour. This formula generates real-world marathon times.

In all the above cases, I'd allow Epic Attributes to count as though their automatic successes were extra dots of the Attribute. So, a Legend 4 Scion with maximum traits can move 9 miles in an hour over broken ground or 14 miles an hour marathoning. Also, as per page 129 of Scion: Hero, a character with Epic Stamina can keep up the overland or marathon pace for a number of consecutive DAYS equal to their Stamina+Fortitude.

Clock speed for short bursts are determined by your Move and Dash rates in combat. Each yard per tick works out to roughly 2 mph. So the slowest PC can hit 14mph for short stretches.

The math used to determine these formulas will be located in the comments on this post, where it can be found by those who are interested, but doesn't make the main post run interminably long.