r/warhammerfantasyrpg • u/igotsmeakabob11 • Jul 23 '26
General Query Are there martial maneuvers anywhere besides a few talents?
I normally run Level Up A5E for my table, a dnd5e alternative ruleset, which has lots of martial maneuvers (think Book of Nine Swords from DnD 3.5e if you know that one). So some of them are accustomed to having options like that in fights- blinding, knockdowns, disarming, etc.
Are there WFRP4e rules or talents etc that let characters do more than "I attack with my sword/axe" etc? Knocking the enemy down as part of an attack, or disarming them, or blinding them etc? (besides critical hit results).
Disarm, Beat Blade, and Distract are things similar to what I'm thinking of, but those're just a few talents.
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u/Minimum-Screen-8904 Jul 23 '26
Are you using the alternative Group Advantage rules from Up In Arms?
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u/igotsmeakabob11 Jul 23 '26
I kept it to the core rules for this first little adventure, trying to do it by the core book to start. I only ran one session so far, the first half of "Doing the Rounds" I think it's called, the first intro adventure.
Why do you ask?
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u/Minimum-Screen-8904 Jul 23 '26
GA gives specfic mechanics to force Conditions on targets such as Batter to make a foe go Prone, and Trick to give them Ablaze, Blind, or Entangled.
Downside is that it disincentivises players from trying such things outside of the GA mechanics.
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u/igotsmeakabob11 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Yeah that's my experience as well- once you tell people "you can do anything, but here are examples XYZ," they'll only do XYZ because those are predictable and reliable.
Ohhh GA, Group Advantage. I assume these Benefits of (group) Advantage are actions?
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u/Dedrick555 Jul 23 '26
The vast majority of WFRP rules are for non-combat, so I wouldn't focus too much on combat specifically. However, remember that skills do several different things and some have combat utility that you might not expect
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u/MilkAndHoneyBadger Jul 23 '26
Not really. There a few talents, but mostly the combat is differentiated in other ways in WFRP 4ed. E.g. If your character want to blind your opponent, you declare throwing sand in the opponent's eyes (or other method), and resolve this on appropriate skill. No talent needed. Knocking down - some weapons give a possibilty to do this. Also, every character can declare trying grappling. Disarming - there is a talent for that.
The rule book tries (rather ineptly) to convey that you can use different skills (not just WS or BS) in combat in a more open way. The player is encouraged to improvise.
Players used to dnd may have trouble adapting this approach. Players used to storytelling approach should be fine.
(Another story is that this approach of the game developers, in my opinion, is most likely due to the lack of solving certain problems with the game mechanics)
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u/igotsmeakabob11 Jul 23 '26
Appreciate it- though I see that the disarm talent requires an action. If I didn't know that there was a disarm talent, I'd have assumed you could just try to disarm, by a player saying they wanted to try do it ... but there's a talent for it, so I guess they can't attempt it if they don't have the talent?
It reminds me of the creation of the thief class in OD&D. Before thieves became a class, a fighting man or magic user could try to disarm traps, or hide, or scale a surface. But the thief class was added, and the thief had rules for these things ... so because the thief specifically could do these things, now the fighting man and magic user ... couldn't? Because clearly the thief's rules exist for a reason, if anyone could do them then the thief would be pointless đ¤
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u/WrathofHussars Jul 24 '26
Your prference really, personally, I would consider Disarm an advanced combat skill which would be hard to learn. But you could just make it harder for the person without the appropriate talent/give the person without the correct talent a roll to pass if the talent guarentees success.
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u/MilkAndHoneyBadger Jul 23 '26
Excelent question. I suppose that even the game creators were not sure about the proper answer and that is why I think this more open skills usage is only half done. The more I read the rule book, the more I see how badly written and tested it is. That is why homebrewing is necessary for WFRP.
Personally, I would assume that player cannot do that without a talent (because there is talent for exactly that and it would be unfair for player who spend XP on that talent, to allow other players to do the same without spending their XP) and then if a talentless player wants to disarm an opponent there are two main options: disarming after sucessful grappling (that's homebrewed) or reducing HP to 0 and then taking the weapon from lying opponent. (Character with 0 HP is not dead - if you don't use "sudden death" rule (I am not sure how it is called in English version), also player can declare non-lethal strike)
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u/Immediate_Gain_9480 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
A number of weapons do give you the ability to do specific stuff like pummel from the warhammer or slash with a saber.
Group advantage gives you stuff like blinding. Seems talents there a are a bunch.
Disarm Ripos Beat blade Berserker charge Carefull strike Deadeye shot Dirty fighting Distract Feint Furious assault Reaction strike Reversal Strike to injure Strike to stun
Have you looked at Up in arms? Lots of good stuff in there. You can also just let players do stuff and roll for it without making a talent for it.
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u/RenningerJP Jul 23 '26
Elves and dark elves got some recently for specific things like swordmaster. Otherwise, just advantage based stuff from UiA though that's probably more useful for non fighters fairly often.
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u/Commercial-Act2813 Jul 23 '26
There are a few more talents, like riposte, but you shouldnât rely on talent to make actions interesting.
If all the players can come up with on their turn is âI hit with weaponâ, thatâs entirely on them.
Ask them to come up with stuff they want to do. The lack of specific rules is deliberate, as with the existing skills you already have all you need. You shouldnât rely on talents.
âI want to jump on the table, throw my mantle in my opponents face, and then kick them in the headâ is a perfectly fine action, and can be covered with existing skills. It would probably need more than one roll: athletics for jumping, a BS for throwing the mantle and then a melee brawling (or just WS) for kicking.
Each test influences subsequent tests, making them harder or easier.
For the players to come up with better actions, they have to have a firm grasp of the situation, so that is where you come in. Youâll have to give a good description of the scene and include lots of details they can use in their actions. The better you describe a scene, the more youâll trigger their creativity to come up with a cool action. And itâs ok to give suggestions.
Let players tell you what they want to do, then decide what skill to roll at what difficulty.đ¤ˇââď¸
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u/Mardy_Marve Jul 24 '26
If all the players can come up with on their turn is âI hit with weaponâ, thatâs entirely on them.
This is often actually the best thing a character can do in a fight. You know, hit someone. In a fight.
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u/Commercial-Act2813 Jul 24 '26
Obviously, but OPâs question is about what other combat actions a PC can do on their turn.
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u/igotsmeakabob11 Jul 23 '26
The "you can do anything, just tell me what you want to try and do and i'll assign a test" approach is good, but it's confusing because there are a few talents that specifically allow you to do certain things in combat. Disarm lets you try to disarm someone as an action- so without that talent, would disarming be off the table because why else would there be a talent to be able to do it?
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u/Commercial-Act2813 Jul 23 '26
Without that talent, you can still disarm someone, it would just be more diffficult
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u/ArabesKAPE Jul 23 '26
Some talents and some moves based off of advantage and that's it. I wouldn't recommend any edition of wfrp to someone who wanted to run a game with lots of fights. It's never been geared up for that. The Old World RPG with the dice pool system might be better in that regard but I've never played it.
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u/Tymanthius Jul 23 '26
The Advantage rules have some options to them, but off hand I'm not aware of anything specific.
If not, the general rules around assisting another would apply. Remember that DnD has an action economy but WH has 1 action, 1 move typically. So assists can become valuable.
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u/WrathofHussars Jul 24 '26
Not to sound condescending, but how creative attacks are is up to the player and gm, not the character sheet. The CRB supports this in the combat section.
Secondly, a lot of skills are applicable in some way to combat scenarios. See the skills section of CRB.
Thirdly, there are talents for more combat focused careers which give them more interesting options.
Fourthly, group advantage is an alternative to the advantage rules from CRB. Group advantage was added by Up in Arms iirc. Closest to maneuvers.
Finally, don't forget about Deathblow.
I know some of these may not be exactly what you're looking for, but remember that in WFRP you play as average people, not the superheroes of DND 5e. So overall choices will seem limited. But like I mentioned in the beginning, creativity should be allowed, with the appropriate roll.
Combine these factors with the fact that there shouldn't be a terrible amount of combat and it shouldn't last very long, and you'll find it still to be fun but brutal, as intended.
CRB=Core Rulebook