I was really hyped.
Now, that me and my friends finished our first 4e campaign, I must say: I think this project was rushed. Some rules are just vague or not included at all which leads to annoying but necessary discussions while playing which is unfortunate. Also the golden rule "change or ignore elements if you don't like it" is... Well you can't do it in terms of combat. Combat is some kind of gear mechanism and if you remove one thing (ADVANTAGE), the whole system is unplayable. In the end, we spent hours to homebrew a combat system we could enjoy (a bit) but this new "critical wounds" and insanely high critical hit rate with criticals even when defending and stuff is just overkill. While combat takes an eternity, you still have limited options what you can do during combat. Our experience was: you either Attack (opponent tries to dodge or parry) or you go defensive stance. That's about it. Sometimes you are able to do a charge attack and in really rare cases you can activate frenzy or something but... Yeah.
Tldr: This new combat approach feels very complicated. While it sounds great on paper, it feels like a burden while playing.
The overall quality is really good though. The art is nice but a little bit too repetetive. Even though this review sounds really negative so far, there are still many elements that I love about the 4th edition. Those are:
- Dark deals (A really interesting and sometimes game changing mechanic)
- the career system (it is easy to create homebrews and add missing stuff)
- magic and everything that comes with magic (the lore specific effects are a great idea and work really well. There is a Lack of chaos magic though which is unfortunate)
- height and it's effect on combat
Conclusion:
If you are a hardcore fan of the 2nd edition, you might hate this system. While all of the mechanics SOUND great, they didn't really convice me in the end. Me and my group played this version for about 6 months, had a blast but we can't wait to go back to our favorite edition of WFRP. All the best to Cubicle 7. Love you guys and I really want to love the 4th edition but I can't :(
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