Sorry it's been taking a while to decide how to handle this next push. I think I'll be able to post something soon.
Ditto on evaluating the new Merchant.
Are you guys fine with a party of 4, or would you rather I recruit another?
I think 4 is a good number.
4 is ok... I think 5 is the magic number for pbp games however
We good?
Sorry for extra delays. I went on vacation and was hoping that I'd have free time somewhere to post. Predictably, it was harder instead.
OK, finally found the attention span to look at Valghaz's new character again.
First: a Merchant (Trader) is perfectly fine. I'll note that a Merchant career is shockingly more wealthy than the current party. I don't think that's really a problem though, since some of our characters look likely to move up to Silver soon-ish.
The campaign started with everyone having connections to a peddler outfit named Marven's Magnificent Curios and located in Grunberg. After helping to manage a disastrous infestation of snotlings in the wagon, Marven (whose real name is Hans Fermahn) invited his friends and recent saviors into a salvage venture, looking for the wreckage of the ship Earl of Harwich, lost in the rivers of the Reikland a few hundred years ago. It is believed that the ship was lost to a wrecker captain called the Redblade Lion.
Financing the venture is Lutz Fischbein, representing the Greater Reik Trading Company, which once owned the Earl of Harwich.
The first step of the journey was accomplished when our party travelled to Ubersreik to obtain the shipping records for the Earl of Harwich from a man named Timon Walbaum, who was on poor terms with the Greater Reik Trading Company. They found Timon's home infested with a cluster of zombies, one of which was the late Herr Walbaum. After dispatching the undead and locating the relevant shipping records, they are now making their way back go Grunberg.
The current party is:
Ludger - Stevedore
Magda - Physician
Axel - Witch
Sandra Abicht - priest of Ranald and an NPC meant to bolster the party for a time
----
The basic theme of the campaign thus far has been river-centric & less-than-legal. It will likely have some outdoors-y components although those haven't been widely explored yet.
The rest of the characters have been acquaintances or friends of Hans Fermahn, and that avenue is also open to you. How would you like your character to approach the campaign?
Witch... is an ugly term.
Ex farm hand... yes, that's the term, totally not a witch farmhand...
Also literacy is a bonus in this group
Do we have ideas for what Hans's Motivation and Ambitions might be yet?
Nice to see Hans getting rolled into the campaign. Might have had a more awkward approach the way I was thinking of doing it.
Motivation: To make money! Really, that is what he wants. Coin. Cold, hard, cash.
Ambition: To no longer have to work. He hates being a merchant. He doesn't have any trade skills, nor does he want to learn. He idealizes the independently wealthy, especially nobles, who can just relax and do what they want without worrying about where they will sleep and if they can afford to eat. He has seen how good life can be for the truly wealthy. Preferably to become wealthy enough to afford a title...for who lives better than those who can afford a title?
(note: I very much doubt that this is attainable, but it is what he wants)
Sounds an awful lot like what Lutz has too. Jealousy!
Motivation: that Motivation sounds like it will at least be clear when he achieves it. I'm thinking right now that in order to regain a Resolve, he'd need to get cash that can be expressed in the coinage of his Status tier. So while he's in Silver tier pennies will count, but only if he gets at least twelve. Does that sound fine?
That works as a Long Term Ambition. Sounds an awful lot like what Lutz has, too. Jealousy!
What about a Short Term Ambition?
Hope it clears up as expected! That sounds nasty.
Relaying some information here since there might be interest & at least Axel isn't in our other game:
Humble Bundle has a bundle for Warhammer Fantasy going right now.
--------
Separately, I've been switching back & forth between Pathfinder & WFRP a lot lately. The current Perception tests are a good reminder of how OP Fortune points are. Reroll resources like that are crazy rare in Pathfinder & I feel soooo vulnerable to a bad dice roll in that system aftr playing this one.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Without a doubt! Getting a 1/day Reroll in pathfinder as a dual cursed oracle is considered OP, and it comes with 2 curses!
On the flip side, WFRP is very unforgiving. Mutation and dying are much, much more prevalent than in Pathfinder. Also pathfinder makes skill optimization easier. At lvl1 having +7 perception isn’t that hard. In WFRP even with 10 skill points of perception, failing is still prettt likely.
A side note on the Humble Bundle. I'm currently trying to roll in two adventures with our current campaign, along with my own stuffs:
* If Looks Could Kill - this is in the Bundle
* Something Knocking - I don't think this is in the Bundle but I note it anyway
So those two adventures could be very spoilery.
Relaying some information here since there might be interest & at least Axel isn't in our other game:
Humble Bundle has a bundle for Warhammer Fantasy going right now.
--------
Separately, I've been switching back & forth between Pathfinder & WFRP a lot lately. The current Perception tests are a good reminder of how OP Fortune points are. Reroll resources like that are crazy rare in Pathfinder & I feel soooo vulnerable to a bad dice roll in that system aftr playing this one.
I’ve been considering only allowing a single Fortune point to be used for a failed test in the other campaign.
A note on Ludger's recommendation of a fully-assisted Intimidate test: at least 1 advance is required in order to assist a test.
If the party wants to treat Hans as fully involved, I have no gripe with that. It isn't obviously so from a story perspective though.
The innkeeper is currently on hand, standing by. If you want him to make himself scarce, say so.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! (belated)
Are you guys stuck/confused/bored with the current plot point? No one is saying anything.
It's also possible that this is post-holiday ennui. I hope everyone is doing well!
IC Hans only knows the group from drinking with them for a night and helping them catch a thief. He doesn't know why a thief might want to rob them, or where this is going. He is just listening to see if there is something profitable that would warrant his interest. As such, it doesn't feel right for him to jump in...
Are you guys stuck/confused/bored with the current plot point? No one is saying anything.
It's also possible that this is post-holiday ennui. I hope everyone is doing well!
It's been a bit insane here since Thanksgiving, I'll get something posted this weekend.
In case it isn't making sense to our players yet, the innkeeper's comments here are basically his opinion that this is corporate espionage, or whatever equivalent to that the Warhammer world would have.
Especially if it is on purpose, I like the notion that our brass-tier PCs are having a hard time getting their head around what that means.
I'll give a bit more time for Ludger and/or Magda to answer the question presented, but here is an outline of what I'd think Axel's 'going over' would entail:
* found Timon dead, including the zombies
* got the records
* something about the not-thief
With not very much detail about any of the points above.
'Going over' is slang for a beating... apologies
I wasn't sure, as English isn't my first langage, but I thought it meant a beating.
And my mind was very much on what I needed to write the next post. It all worked out.
Any chance of getting XP for completing the mission about the journals?
We're basically starting If Looks Could Kill right now, so it wouldn't be a bad time to award XP. I'd been mentally slotting it in to come with the xp for the published module.
We haven't done all that much since the last xp award but that doesn't mean we couldn't award what has been earned since then now. I'll review the thread & see if there are more xp-worthy events than I'd remembered.
XP Awards for returning to Grunberg:
25 xp for participation
5 xp for encounter with Ludger's father on the Ubersreik docks
20 xp for rescuing Yevengi from the crocodile & driving it off
10 xp for stopping the not-thief
total: 60 xp
Hans wasn't here for all of that, but they can have the full award.
*
In addition, it's the holiday season! So everyone can roll on the Talent chart again. This isn't a Fortune-capable roll. Some results might end up invalid if you already have Warrior Born or something like that, so you can roll again in such a case.
I'm also going to scratch Noble Blood off the list for this award, so a result of 51-52 can be rerolled.
Very Strong (Str40!)
Luck!
60 XP to spend..
Will use 50 XP (2*25) to rise Willpower from 45 to 47
60xp... nice.
Is the reroll replacing the previous one or a present to add to the character as it stands now?
Hardy
Toughness Bonus: You gain a permanent addition to your Wounds, equal to your Toughness Bonus. If your Toughness Bonus should increase, then the number of Wounds Hardy provides also increases.
Not gonna say no to that...
I love the slow slow burn that is Warhammer advancement, both kit and character wise... but at the same time, daaaaamn, it is strange compared to normal RPGs, where you start with most of your equipment.
The talent roll is a new talent.
Given the new arc, does resolve reset?
Fortune is the thing that resets per session & I'm choosing not to reset it here. As above, we really haven't done that much since the last Fortune reset at the end of the Swordfish House.
This does mean that the party is down a little Fortune going into If Looks Could Kill, but this scenario is also angled for new characters & the party has at least some xp under their belts. I don't remember seeing that much Fortune spent anyway. If I'm wrong & soneone is down a bunch let me know.
Just to give a complete answer, Resolve never resets the same way. You can recover a point of Resolve only by acting according to your character's Motivation. Your GM isn't tracking such Motivation-relevamt acts, but if you think you have done something worthy of a Resolve, let me know.
Very Strong - You gain a permanent +5 bonus to your starting Strength Characteristic (this does not count towards your Advances).
XP spend - 2 advances in melee (basic) (30 xp each)
Given all the time spent on boats etc, can I buy boat handling? It's outside of class scope buuuuut it fits the story line to date.
Yes. The relevant skill is Sail. Because it is not on your career list, that would cost you 20 xp instead of 10 per advance. Buying one advance has a good amount of utility though, depending on the rest of your progression.
Sail is a trained skill, meaning you can't do it at all without one advance. You also have to choose a Sail specialization and the obvious one for this campaign thus far would be Barge. If you want a different specialization though, you can look at the list on page 129.
The neat thing about getting a single advance in Sail is that even if you aren't on the type of ship you have advances in, you can still roll Sail (when you wouldn't be able to otherwise) because having an advance in Sail changes all the other Sail specializations into Basic skills instead of Trained. If you can Sail one thing, you can Sail anything (though you might not be good at it).
Sail is an Agility skill and Axel isn't especially good at Agility stuff. But he'd be able to attempt Tests at least, or assist someone better at the skill than he is. He'd also count as a trained sailor for the rules about that, if I could make any sense of them.
In theory you could buy advances in Sail for normal price when we get around to having Downtime. A Downtime segment is probably worth more than 10 xp though, so I wouldn't delay the purchase unless you think you'd want to buy more than one advance in Sail.
I'll buy an advance in sail then at 20xp, and thanks.
Saved up some xp and I’ll spend 20xp on sail as well. It seems like the kind of skill that a merchant should have, given how much the Empire relies on River traffic.
Happy New Year everyone!
Need to know whether you want to get closer to the drifting ship.
Happy new year! And let’s salvage it. Where’s the profit in letting the ship go to waste?
Most of you know from the other game, but Ludger's continued presence here is in question. Give me a bit to sort that out.