Combat preview

Today Cubicle 7 dropped another "preview" of WFRPv4. This time the post talked about combat.

The roots to the new system is the combat system of WFRPv1 and WFRPv2. The stated goal has been to speed up combat by eliminating situations where nothing really happens in a combat round because of the low chances to hit.

There are a few nice morsels of information in the post.

Three characteristics are mentioned: Strength, Toughness and Initiative. Yes, that famous "Big I" makes a comeback! Hopefully it will be used more sparingly than in WFRPv1, where it ended up being used for just about anything that wasn't combat and became the most important of the characteristics. Strength and Toughness were in WFRPv2, but given the reintroduction of Initiative we might be looking at more influences from WFRPv1 than I expected.

As for combat the big new thing is Advantage. This can be earned during a battle and used to gain a +10% bonus on an attack test. Several points of advantage can be accumulated during a fight, and they dissipate when certain conditions are met. It seems be a more detailed take on "winning" in combat from WFRPv1. It'll be interesting to see how much "keeping track of fiddly bits" there is for the game master, but as the design goal has been to speed things up, I hope that's been taken care of.