Post originally by Whymme at 2005-05-05 04:39:11
Converted from Phorums BB System

Funny - when I read the review, my reaction was the opposite; with the first half of the items, I just didn't understand why the new edition scored so much better all the time. Case in point: careers. I liked the non-political correctness of first edition, where some careers were more powerful than others. I also appreciated that there was a wider selection of non-combat careers in first edition.

Another case in point: the magic rules. Here's some text from a review I'm writing for Warpstone:

Chapter 7 deals with magic. Magic in version 1 was rather uninspired, very costly in terms of XP and generally considered one of the weak points of the game. It is clear that the designers wanted to change all that, and they succeeded. From what I have seen on the forums people are enthousiastic about the new system. However, I see a number of snags in there.

[explanation of the mechanics snipped]

I quite like the principle by which the use of magic is limited. This is not done by artificial means like magic points, ‘fire-and-forget’ mechanisms or anything like that. Instead, each use of magic is dangerous and characters risk gaining insanity points or triggering Tzeentch’ Curse. However, in practice I feel that it doesn’t work like that. Tzeentch’ Curse sounds dangerous, but only becomes so when triples or quadruples are rolled. The effects for doubles are more annoying than dangerous. Further, I liked the idea that the more dice you used, the more danger you ran, but the “all ones” fumble rule that was introduced negates that idea. If you roll many dice you run the risk of triggering Tzeentch’ Curse, if you roll few, you run the risk of gaining Insanity Points.

Another thing is that wizards of different colleges, and priests of different gods, tend to become rather stereotypical. Meet a wizard of the Bright College and it is easy to predict which spells he can cast – all wizards of that college get access to the same spells, because they have bought the same talents. According to the book, wizards of each college even change in appearance to become more like the stereotypical wizard of that college. This is a wonderful thing for a battle game, but in a roleplaying game stereotypical characters are rather boring.

A third problem is the use of the dice. The basic mechanism of WFRP is to roll a d100 under a characteristic or characteristic-derived target number. In combat you roll a d100 under WS or BS, and then a d10 to see the damage. When casting spells, however, the d100 roll is optional at best; instead you roll a number of d10 and add the results, trying to roll over a target number. During the playtest the designers explained that this was “because magic should not be boring and predictable.” If that was the design instructions, I don’t think that using a bell curve mechanic (which is much more predictable than a flat d100 roll) is the right way to accomplish that. Besides, according to this argument the designers consider normal task resolution and combat to be boring and predictable – if that is the case, I think that something has gone wrong with the design objectives.

Fourthly we have spell lists, with rigid and inflexible spells. These were much in vogue twenty years ago, but RPGs have developed since then and more interesting systems have appeared now. Moreover, the spells themselves are rather bland and uninteresting. There are several variations on basic forms, some spells are ludicrous or ineffective. The Ill Fortune spell (petty magic – hedge) is a minor curse which gives a -1 to -4 negative modifier to the target’s d100 rolls, which modifier is next to useless.

All in all, the concept of how magic should work in version two was very interesting. The way that it was actually worked out, however, could have been much better.

One last, small, miss concerns the lay-out. It would have been neat if all spells for a lore would have fit one page. In that case, a simple copying of one page per lore would give players all the spells of their mages at their fingertips.