House Tweaks & Optional Rules

TheBigBadWolf (Discord)
V 1.4.1

Current Optional Rules

Current House Tweaks

Races & Careers
Random Race
Racial Re-Balance
Fate & Fortune
Halfling Fear
Skill Advancement
Wizards
Magic Points
General Rules
Difficulty
Falling Damage
Bandaging Bleeding
Fumbles and Miscasts
Psychology
Insanity
Combat & Damage
Advantage
Damage
Dexterity in Combat
Criticals
Special Hits Effects
True Critical
Criticals and Armour
Conditions
Outnumbering, Flanking and Creature Size
Movement
Holding Actions
End of Round
Quadruped Hit Locations
Large Monsters & Stun
Equipment & Income
Crude Handweapons
Weapon Ranges
Armour Rebalance
Shields
Quarterstaffs
Weapon Reloading
Metacurrencies
No Ambition
Fate and Fortune
Resilience and Resolve

Under Consideration
 Current Optional Rules
Initiative
Is now variable. 1d10+Ini bonus at the start of combat. (Agi score breaks ties).
Reason: Static initiative is dull. Initiative is still only checked once, and rotated through.

Living Expenses & Income (notes)

● Remember that ‘Income’ (the downtime endeavour) is ‘after living’. I.e. as long as a
character is working, they survive in the world. The money they have as disposable income
after this is what they roll for.
● Downtime money is handled as an abstraction. At the table is where you count pennies.
● You must either be working, or spend half your status per day to cover costs.
● See: https://www.cubicle7games.com/wfrp-the-rulebook-is-a-treasure-chest-2/

Combining Skills (p.155)

Skills can be ‘combined’, which will require two skill checks, for a different outcome.

Psychology (p.43)
Strong feelings identified in backgrounds can be represented with Psychology conditions. E.g. love,
hatred, prejudice, camaraderie. Characters are encouraged to have one ‘positive’ and one ‘negative’
psychology condition.

Little Prayers (p.204)

Sometimes the gods answer prayers, though never in a way expected.

Getting Tired (p.168)

Gain 1 Fatigued Condition if you fail an Endurance Test after a number of Rounds of continued
exertion equal to your Toughness Bonus. Each SL extends how many rounds pass before you need
Test again.

Alternative Characteristics for Intimidate (p.124)

Characteristics beyond Strength can be used for Intimidate tests, as the GM determines.

Battle Tongue (p.124)

Players with Language (Battle Tongue) may communicate briefly with one another during combat
without penalty.

Shooting Into Melee (p.162)

Shooting into melee is at -20. If this would cause you to miss, you hit one of the Engaged
opponents instead. If you do not care who you hit, you may gain a bonus instead (e.g. +10, shooting
at a small group).

Crafting Guilds (p.292)

If a town or city contains a crafting guild, related goods of poor quality are rarely available.
 Current House Tweaks

Races & Careers

Random Race
No Elves for now. If you roll a 99 or 100 for random race, you choose Human, Dwarf or Halfling.

Racial Re-Balance

Dwarf Weapon Skill 2d10+20 Elf Weapon Skill 2d10+20

Dwarf Dexterity 2d10+20 Elf Initiative 2d10+30
Dwarf Willpower 2d10+30 Elf Intelligence 2d10+20
Elf Willpower 2d10+20

Reason: There’s no need to try to balance stats in WFRP to Warhammer Fantasy Battle. A +10 WS
difference is especially huge in this version of WFRP. Attempting to balance this with different
Fate/Resilience points (RAW) is not effective. Let’s rebalance stats to roughly how they were in WFRP 2e.

Fate & Fortune

Human Fate 2 Halfling Fate 2

Human Fortune 3 Halfling Fortune 3
Human Resolve 2 Halfling Resolve 2
Dwarf Fate 1 Elf Fate 1
Dwarf Fortune 2 Elf Fortune 2
Dwarf Resolve 3 Elf Resolve 2

Reason: Resilience does not exist and Fortune is divorced from Fate (see below). Still, even with the above
stat rebalance, Dwarfs and Elves remain powerful. Let’s try some rebalance here.

Halfling Fear
Halflings count as Medium sized for Fear purposes.
Note: This is now redundant, as we’re removing (automatic) Fear based on Size.

Reason: Halflings counting as Small for Fear (RAW) made them penalised/scared of everything human
sized. Not fun and a simple change. I’d still suggest this rule if you’re using Size-based Fear rules.

Skill Advancement
You can only advance Skills and Talents whilst actually practicing your Career. This can be in
downtime of course but you can't level up a Miner career whilst at sea for a month without good
reason. To support this I’ll be making other temporary career options more visible, that can then be
taken with the ‘Changing Career’ endeavour.
Wizards
Swap Melee (Polearm) with Melee (Brawling). Quarterstaffs are now a Basic weapon.

Once reaching the ‘Wizard’ rank they gain access to three more Skills and two Talents as
determined by their College. The Talents are available throughout the other Career Levels.

College Replacement Skills Extra Talents

Beasts Lore (Beasts), Outdoor Survival, Tracking Animal Affinity, Rover
Death Lore (Necromancy), Heal, Art (any one) Fearless (Undead), Frightening
Fire Trade (Smiths), Leadership, Endurance Impassioned Zeal,
Argumentative
Heavens Lore (Prophecy or Astronomy), Research, Super Numerate, Nose for
Navigation Trouble
Metals Lore (Chemistry), Trade (Alchemist), Evaluate Iron WIll, Savant (Lore)
Life Trade (Herbalist), Heal, Outdoor Survival Resistance (Disease), Seasoned
Traveler
Light Lore (demonology), Research, Entertain (Sing) Pure Soul, Public Speaker
Shadows Entertain (Acting), Secret Signs (Grey Order), Beneath Notice, Cat-tongued
Stealth (Urban)

Reason: This avoids the old halberd Wizard, gives them the chance to hit some touch attacks, and adds a
bit of flavour not represented from the different Colleges..

Currently discussing whether to use Arcane Careers from Russell Thurman & Sean Korzeniewski

Magic Points
Credit to CapnZapp.

Magic Points = Intelligence Bonus + Toughness Bonus + Will Power Bonus + Will Power Bonus.

Priests do not have Magic Points. Wizards, Hedge Wizards, Chaos Sorcerers, etc do.

When you're about to cast a spell (or channel), you may choose to spend up to your Will Power
Bonus number of Magic Points. Each will temporarily (for this casting only) lower the Casting
Number of the spell by one (to a minimum of zero).

Each casting of any spell costs a minimum of 1 MP, even spells with a CN of 0, even when you
decided not to spend any MPs. This applies as long as you have any MPs left. (There's no special
consequence of running out of MPs)

After resting during the night, make a Will Power Test. Sucess recovers all Magic Points, Failures
recovers Half. The difficulty is modified by how comfortable the rest was, from Very Easy (+30)
when resting comfortably (e.g. an Inn) with no interruptions to Challenging (+0) when typically
adventuring/camping to auto failure when very uncomfortable (e.g. perilously on a mountainside).
 General Rules

Difficulty
Difficulty Modifier
Very Easy +30
Easy +20
Average +10
Challenging 0
Difficult -10
Hard -20
Very Hard -30

Reason: When a starting stat/skill is ‘30’, this is at the low end of a possible percentile roll. Fine. The +20
modifier for Average was introduced to reduce whiff. At the same time a ‘30’ means the negative
modifiers can’t be high. That creates some of the inelegance of RAW. This also means when characters hit
70+ in a skill, it’s weighted the other way (with negative modifiers having little impact). Let’s just accept
some whiff early on and rebalance the positive modifiers to +10/+20/+30. This is still a 10% less-whiff
boost over 2e. Absolutely open to being convinced otherwise.

Falling Damage
Effective falling height is reduced by Agility Bonus.

Example: you have Agility 39. You fall four yards. You suffer 1d10 + (4-3)x3 Wounds. That is, 1d10+3
Wounds instead of 1d10+12 Wounds.

Reason: Via CapnZapp. Although probably realistic, the default falling height rules are extremely
punishing. And hey, it gives Agi something more to do.

Bandaging Bleeding
Bandages: A character unskilled in Heal can still attempt to use one (set of) Bandages to reduce
Bleeding. Spend your action to make a Dexterity Test. Success means Bleeding is reduced by 1. The
Bandages are used up.

The difficulty is Easy (+20) when bandaging someone else in relative safety. The difficulty is
Challenging (+0) in combat and/or if you attempt to bandage yourself.

Fumbles and Miscasts

I’ve reworked the 2e Miscast table at: Modified Fumbles and Miscasts table

Reason: Minor Miscasts should be flavour and annoying, not life-threatening. Major Miscasts should be
reactable to. The modified table adds a third table to handle the gruesome deaths, makes it less likely to
roll on the higher tables, and rebalances the more egregious and pointless stuff on the Minor and Major
tables. This probably means some changes are needed to a couple of Talents.
Psychology
Creatures do not cause Fear or Terror by size, instead they will be manually assigned Frightening or
Terrifying by the GM. The conditions have changed to reflect this.

(These conditions are on Condition Cards, not listed here. Ping me on Discord if you want a copy.)

Examples of Frightening Creatures: Lesser Daemons, Skeletons, Zombies, Giant Spiders, Trolls,
Rat Ogres
Examples of Terrifying Creatures: Dragons, Giants, Manticores, Wyverns

Insanity
We’ll be using 2e adapted Insanity Rules, as adapted by Yahuna on the Ratcatcher’s Guild Discord.

Critical Hits: One Insanity Point is gained each time the character reaches negative wounds (and
takes the corresponding Critical Hit).
Fear & Terror: Failing a Fear or Terror Test may incur in gaining Insanity Points. If you score a
Fumble or an Astounding Failure on a Fear Test, gain 1 Insanity Point. On a Terror Test, gain 2
Insanity Points if you score a Fumble or an Astounding Failure, or 1 Insanity Point if you score an
Impressive failure.
Other: At the GM discretion after experiencing some truly terrible event.

Once a character gains more points than his Willpower Bonus plus his Intelligence Bonus, he must
immediately make a Challenging (+0) Cool Test. If the test is successful, nothing happens, bur the
character's Insanity Point total remains the same and he must take the test again when he next
gains an additional Insanity Point. When a test is failed, the character develops a disorder, but loses
a number of Insanity Points equal to his Willpower Bonus.

When a character fails the rest described above, his mind has snapped and he becomes afflicted
with a disorder. The GM either chooses the disorder or rolls on the disorder table (WFRP 2e p.201).
 Combat & Damage

Advantage
1. Advantage is capped at Initiative Bonus.
2. Ranged and Magic Attacks do not gain Advantage.

Reason: Reduces the snowball effect considerably, but still represents the theme. If this is too much
book-keeping (still less than RAW) then we will switch to ‘you have it or you don’t’.

Damage
In Melee, the SL difference for contributing to melee damage is capped at SB:
https://www.windsofchaos.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=122&sid=3fdd8f5e372083d10484d6f1
e858b948
In Ranged, dodging an attack cannot result in taking extra damage.

Reason: Reducing swinginess, and providing a role for Strength.

Dexterity in Combat
You may use Dex instead of WS/BS for small, quick, concealable weapons: daggers, throwing
knives, darts, cudgels and short swords (the latter two counts as +3 "crude" hand weapons). You
may use:

A. … Dexterity in place of WS for Melee (Basic) skill tests with appropriate weapons (such as
the Knife)
B. … Dexterity in place of BS for Ranged (Throwing) skill tests with appropriate weapons.

For any other weapon, or other Melee or Ranged skill, you need WS/BS as normal.

Reason: Via CapnZapp. In this edition Agility was split into Ag, I and Dex, reducing the usefulness of any
one. Dex can become a dump stat and make careers without WS/BS advancements (very important in
WFRP 4e) overly weak. This allows you to advance Dex and still be ok in combat.

Criticals
Credit to CapnZapp on Winds of Chaos.

Criticals are separated into:

1. When you roll a double and succeed on your test you cause a ‘Spice’ effect as determined by
the Special Hits Table.
2. When you are on 0 Wounds, you suffer a ‘True Critical’, using the full critical table.

Special Hits Effects

1. When you roll a double in combat, and succeed on your Test, you inflict a Special Hit on your
opponent, regardless whether you win or lose the Test. Reverse the special hit roll to find out
the Hit Location of a Special Hit.
2. We're only generating special hits on active rolls. That is, when you roll a double on an
attack, not on a parry or dodge.
See the Special Hits Table.
True Critical
The range you roll (on the d100) table is determined by how much damage you take.

1. Below 10, each wound adds 10% to the top-end of the roll.
2. Above 10, each wound adds 10% to the bottom-end of the roll.
3. Ignore the Wound loss column - you're already at 0 Wounds remember. Going deeper below
zero is worse than merely going to -1 or -3.
4. If you reach -20 Wounds you are killed instantly and the Deathblow rule is activated.

For example, if an attack hits you for 10 Wounds when you’re at 2 Wounds, you would be taken to
‘-8’ and generate a random number from 01-80 for your Critical. If an attack instead took you to
‘-16’, the range to roll on is 61-00. Only when you're hit for exactly 10 wounds would you roll
01-100.

Criticals and Armour

● Each AP on location automatically reduces the crit result by -10%
● The armor is automatically damaged (AP reduced by 1)
● Shields take this damage/negation first.

Conditions
All conditions are replaced by the text on the condition cards used in game.

Outnumbering, Flanking and Creature Size

There is no ‘outnumbering’ bonus, instead it’s represented by Flanking (+20) and Surrounding
(+30) which purely depends on the number of adjacent allies.

Larger creatures require more allies adjacent to the enemy to gain Flanking and Surrounding.

Size Flanking (+20) Surrounding (+30)

(# allies required) (# allies required)
Average 2 3
Large 3 4
Enormous 4 6
Monstrous 6 9

Reason: In the RAW, flanking and outnumbering happen together most of the time and give big bonuses
very quickly. Large creatures were also very easy to get this bonus against. Both have these have been
adjusted.

Movement
You can Walk or Run in combat. Running gives a penalty to Stealth and may require Athletics
checks on difficult terrain to traverse safely.

Holding Actions
Much like D&D 3.5. You state what you are waiting for, then get an interrupt action if/when that
happens. If it doesn’t happen you lose the action.
End of Round
Replace all End of Round checks with at the End of Your Turn.

Quadruped Hit Locations

Use this table for creatures like Dire Wolves, Giant Rats, and Unicorns.
Roll Location
01-15 Head
16-60 Body
61-70 Right Front Leg
71-80 Left Front Leg
81-90 Right Rear Leg
91-00 Left Rear Leg

Large Monsters & Stun

Large Monsters have varying ranks of the ‘Iron Jaw’ talent.
Reason: Stunlocking monsters is a bit too easy.
 Equipment & Income

Crude Handweapons
A new weapon category containing simple clubs, short or dented swords, hand axes, ... or any less
good handweapon to this category: unwieldy, unbalanced, poorly maintained or simply worthless
handweapons.

Crude Handweapon
Price: 1/-
Damage: +SB+3

Reason: Via CapnZapp. This allows equipping rif-raff with handweapons without the party immediately
getting rich for defeating them. This also cuts back on the nonsense where starting characters
immediately raid the garden sheds or rob travellers for weapons when the players find out they can't
afford to buy any.

Weapon Ranges
● Long Rifle: 100->50
● Elf Bow: 150->75
● Longbow: 100->60
● Heavy Crossbow: 100->50
● Sling: 60->30
● Staff Sling: 100->50

Reminder:
● Short range = less than half published range (+10)
● Difficult = attacking beyond normal range, up to double range (-10)
● Very Hard = shooting at a target up to triple range (-30)

Reason: There’s a difference between ‘how far away could this weapon fire’ and ‘how far away could I hit
a single target I was aiming at’. LIkewise some weapons in the same category (e.g. longbow vs bow) do
certainly shoot further, but that doesn’t mean accuracy can be retained over that range.

Armour Rebalance
1. 1st layer of Armour is reduced by ‘Worn’ with encumbering, other layers are not.
2. Armour Points are automatically spent (reducing the total AP) to reduce a critical by 10%
before the roll.

Reason: With crits being less lethal, armour is less mandatory. This allows us to reduce the necessity of
armour a bit, allowing for different builds. It still reduces damage taken, but no longer auto-negates crits.

Shields
Shields offer no armour points. They still provide their parry bonus, and they can still be used to
negate a crit.
● Only undamaged shields can negate a crit
● You must always choose the shield first, before using armor to negate a crit

Reason: RAW shields are too good.

Quarterstaffs
Are now Basic weapons and used with Melee (Basic).
Reason: This allows us to swap out Melee (Polearm) with Melee (Brawling) for Wizards.

Weapon Reloading
● Crossbow Pistol has Reload 1.
● You cannot reload any weapon while Engaged.

Metacurrencies

No Ambition
There is no ‘Ambition’ (where players must continuously set goals). Instead characters will get
Endeavour XP at the end of an adventure, probably in the range of 100-250 (~50XP worth every
couple of sessions).

Reason: When you're chiefly playing premade scenarios there is little opportunity of meeting personal
goals. Let’s just give extra XP instead.

Fate and Fortune

● Fate Points are maximum 2. (and I still really don’t like Fate Points)
● Fortune Points are not tied to Fate Points and vary by race.
● Fortune points do not refresh ‘every session’ but roughly ‘every adventure’ or ‘every
downtime’. May loosen this depending on how players spend them.

Reason: Via CapnZapp. Fortune points do not need to be tied to race after racial rebalance. Not having
fortune points is not fun.

Resilience and Resolve

Resilience does not exist.

Resolve is restored rarely, approximately one point per adventure when something particularly
heroic (or in-line with character motivations) happens.

Reason: On removing Resilience, there’s already enough ways of modifying a roll, or ignoring it. On
Resolve, it needs to be a resource that can ‘save the day’, but not one that allows you to ignore all
Psychology effects of potentially an entire session.
 Under Consideration
More on Advantage
Options:
1. You either have advantage, or don’t, and it gives +20%.
2. You only gain Advantage on your turn.

Talents
Talents do not provide an SL Bonus to any Tests. Some Talents may no longer be worth purchasing
more than once. In some cases switching the Talent to ‘you may reverse the dice’ will probably
work.

Other GMs
See Roder’s House Rules at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hzg8L1JJD3H4XpNkvItHrCRp9Uo8bo0nSOtYyEmSleQ/edit#

Expanded Fatigue
Each time you fail an Exposure, Thirst, or Hunger Test, you suffer 1 Fatigue Condition.
If you ever have more Fatigue Conditions than your TB, you fall unconscious. If you don’t lose a
Fatigue Condition in less than TB hours, you die.

Magic Tweaks
Channelling uses your Move instead of your Action.
Channelling grants Bonus SLs to your next Casting Test, and you need not reduce the CN to 0.
If you stop channelling for one Round, you lose all SLs gathered.
No Overcasting (Also applies to Blessings and Miracles)

Melee Advantage
You lose one Advantage if not engaged at the end of your turn (or start of your turn, pick).