Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition Review

[Imperial Overlord]

A fourth edition of the venerable Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing Game has been released upon the world. The original is known for having great ideas and atmosphere for a grim and dirty fantasy game, but not so good game mechanics. Second edition updated the game for the changes in the world, tried to keep much of the same atmosphere, and improved the game mechanics. Third radically changed the game mechanics, going to a dice pool system with lots of counters and cards, high cost, and a relatively short run.

Then Games Workshop blew up the Warhammer World and unleashed the Age of Sigmar, to the horror of many long time Warhammer fans.

And now a fourth.

Just tell me if it's Good: It's good. I would definitely run and/or play it.

So, Age of Sigmar?: Absent. The game makes no mention of the End Times or the Age of Sigmar. It's as if it was all just a bad dream, which is as most of us would prefer it.

The Meat and the Bones

Size: Three hundred forty odd pages. It uses the space well, with my only size based complaint being the absence of any material on magic items.

Layout and Organization: Good. Layout is logical and there is an index. Space is well used.

Art: The 21st Century is good for RPG production standards. Glossy pages and full colour art abound. A lively and dangerous medieval world are depicted, with roughly equal representation between men and women. While most are white, which is appropriate for a game set in the Reikland, not all of them are. A sprinkling of elves, dwarves, and halflings reminds us this is a fantasy game. The cover art is a reference to the cover of the original Warhammer RPG, subbing in skaven and a rat ogre for greenskins and an ogre.

Content: The game starts with background fluff, moves on to character creation, and then to game mechanics, combat, game mastering, magic, gear, and monsters. Background material focuses on the Reikland rather than the Old World in general, which was initially disappointing to me but since we live in the age of multiple Warhammer wikis the decision to give in depth information on the Reikland rather than an overview of the Old World is perfectly reasonable. Disease, poison, madness and mutation are included because hey, this is Warhammer.

Game Mechanics: The game uses an attribute plus skill system, tested on percentage dice. The difference between the tens dice is used to measure the levels of success (so rolling 39 and needing a 51 or lower yields a +2). Opposed tests are common. Given the age of the game and the conservatism common among gamers, a percentile system was probably inevitable concession to the player base. Doubles that are successes are critical while doubles that are failures are fumbles.

Particularly the first edition, but also the second edition suffered from systems that produced high levels of failure, particularly for ordinary people doing jobs they were supposed to be competent at. For a fantasy game where you might be playing a poacher, stevedore, or a rat catcher it mattered. Fourth isn't quite as good at third at handling skill checks, but it is fairly good at it.

Character generation remains semi-randomized, with small experience point bribes to accept the randomness. Point buy and direct choice of careers is presented as options if the randomness doesn't work out so you're not forced to play anything you don't want to.

General Notes: The book is thorough and makes excellent use of space. The religion section, for example, not only includes game mechanics for blessing and miracles (aka priest spells) but the nature and restrictions of all the major human gods. It also touches on the minor deities of the Reikland as well as giving a good overview of nonhuman religious beliefs and practices. Similarly the bestiary while not including every damn murderous critter in Warhammer Fantasy, it has a broad selection that ranges from big rats and spiders to beastmen to trolls to dragon and a daemon prince. It also includes old favorites like fimir and the bog octopus.

Warhammer Edition Nerdery: A new stat called Resilience is introduced. It works in a similar manner to Fate points and applies to resisting corruption and psychological effects, as well as temporary overcoming injuries. Humans and Dwarves have more of it.

Careers are somewhat streamlined. Instead of having basic and advanced careers and the navigating between them, each career has 4 stages. Careers have been somewhat streamlined with Mercenary and Militiaman, for example, being folded in Soldier. Career switching is still a thing. Endeavours have been added as inbetween adventure activity. You get 1-3 of them, depending on downtime, and can be used to do things like gain income or learn skills and talents not on your career list.

Nitpickery and Criticism: There's a few minor errors in the Talents section where several Talents that can only be taken once being marked as ones that can be taken multiple times. There's a more serious issue with the wording of how critical hits where it doesn't make it clear that a critical hit also inflicts the effects of a regular hit. Other rules that interact with critical hits do make it clear that criticals also include the effects of a regular hit, but the wording of the critical hit rules needs to be redone. There's also an issue on the minor magickal mishap table where an effect that should inflict one bleeding condition is written as inflicting 1d10 bleeding effects.

Comparisons to Previous Editions: It's a further evolution of 2nd edition, with elements borrowed from 3rd as well as new material. There's a little clunkiness, but given the overall smoothness of system, this is a minor issue. It is not quite as good as 3rd edition at doing skill checks for ordinary people, but its fairly good at it. A significant amount of effort has been expended to develop the more mundane careers as well as the more traditional careers like knights and wizards. Careers are more flexible and less confining than in previous editions.

[madd0ct0r]

how does it compare to Zweihander?

[Imperial Overlord]

how does it compare to Zweihander?

Zweihander is basically fan modded WFRP 1st edition with the serial numbers filed off. I read it back when it was fan made PDFs floating around the internet so there maybe changes between what I read and the big book published in 2017. Mechanically speaking, 4th edition is better.

[Sea Skimmer]

Oh, Age of Sigmar is ignored? Thank god, the level of lets make it 40K that blatantly had going on was amazing... they would have gotten further just making a low tech world in the actual 40K setting!

I've learned of a comic/coffee shop that opened up near me a while ago now having an active wargaming group, I might try to see what they are up to. Not a fan of 40K on the table top, nothing modern really appeals tabletop to me ever, and my exposure to the original Warhammer Fantasy was back in the bad old days, but hell, I have some actual free time in life again. Wonder what these folks thing, I know at least some of them are warhammer fans.

[Imperial Overlord]

Oh, Age of Sigmar is ignored? Thank god, the level of lets make it 40K that blatantly had going on was amazing... they would have gotten further just making a low tech world in the actual 40K setting!

The established WFRP fan base is ground zero for Age of Sigmar hate. Love of the 1st edition survives not because the mechanics are good but because it did a great job of invoking a crap sack late medieval world that was touched with just enough magic that you knew your life could be a lot better and that there were scary bad things in the dark. Although every subsequent edition of the game has had to incorporate some of the high fantasy creep of Fantasy Battle, most have tried to ground themselves hard in the grim and gritty of the 1st edition.

The same company is supposedly doing a separate game set in the Age of Sigmar, but I haven't seen anything about it and I can't see it doing well.

[Sea Skimmer]

The established WFRP fan base is ground zero for Age of Sigmar hate. Love of the 1st edition survives not because the mechanics are good but because it did a great job of invoking a crap sack late medieval world that was touched with just enough magic that you knew your life could be a lot better and that there were scary bad things in the dark. Although every subsequent edition of the game has had to incorporate some of the high fantasy creep of Fantasy Battle, most have tried to ground themselves hard in the grim and gritty of the 1st edition.

Good! I've been playing a lot of Total War Warhammer 1/2 recently, and yeah, it really drives home just how much Warhammer is the real world turned up to win factor 11, though I'm a bit on the fence about how much I think the Orks were intended to equal the Muslim expansion, intentionally or unintentionally (it can just as well be seen as the barbarians of central asia or an abstract threat), nor do I really care in the end. But it's really damn good and compelling, stuff feels right. It lets me appreciate dark history while also being entertained by comically made up stuff.

The whole 40K setting meanwhile just lacks that kind of grounding completely, and has only seemingly gotten worse and worse as it moved away from its 'created in the 1980s' roots and tried to increase the Grimdark factor while employing creators who seem to have less and less sense of actual history, government and basic military concepts. A lot of original 40K vehicles were taken directly from real life, just made bigger or given extra guns, while now what do we get, even MORE ELITE MARINES. The more detail they throw at it the worse it gets. I was not surprised they tried to bring that to normal Warhammer, but god was it missing the point.

The same company is supposedly doing a separate game set in the Age of Sigmar, but I haven't seen anything about it and I can't see it doing well.

Well maybe they found enough new fans to justify that, but if they make an Age of Sigmar DLC for Total War it won't be on my list to buy.