RPG Design Patterns

Alignment, Attribute, Class Tree, Experience Points, Faction (Law vs. Chaos), Game Master, Generalized Contest, Gift, Hit Points, Random Attribute, Safety Valve, Skill

Warhammer has a Tolkienesque setting allowing players to choose from the standard fantasy races of “Man,” “Wood Elf,” “Dwarf,” and “Halfling.” Once this is done, the player selects an alignment for his character from the choices of “Chaotic,” “Evil,” “Neutral”, “Good”, and “Lawful”. In some places, the game text states that the alignment associated with a race must be taken by the player for his character. At other points, though, the text states that alignment is a choice. Due to these contradictory statements, there is these contradictory statements, there is little doubt that the majority of players end up choosing the alignment they want to play.

Once the race is chosen, a character’s 13 primary attribute values can be determined. The various attributes are: “Movement” (M), “Weapon Skill” (WS), “Ballistic Skill” (BS), “Strength” (S), “Toughness” (T), “Initiative” (I), “Attacks” (A), “Dexterity” (Dex), “Leadership” (Ld), “Intelligence” (Int), “Cool” (Cl), “Willpower” (WP), and “Fellowship” (Fel). Characters also have a “Wounds” (W) resource that acts as a form of hit points. The rules contain a table indicating what dice and formulas should be used for calculating the attributes. So, the Ballistic Skill of an Elf is “2d10+20” while the Strength of a Man is “d3+1”. Some attributes end up having values lying in the range of 2 to 50 while others range from 1 to 4. In fact, “Attacks,” an attribute indicating how many attacks a character gets in a round of combat, always starts at 1. There is no absolute uniformity of number range from one attribute to the next. However, many of them are used in contests by comparing the number to a roll of d100. Those that are used in this fashion fall into the 2 to 50 range initially.

Characters also have a resource knows as “Fate Points.” Fate Points follows the Safety Valve Design Pattern in preventing premature character death.

Once the attributes and Fate Points are determined, the player selects one of four “Career Classes” for his character from the following list: “Warrior,” “Ranger,” “Rogue,” and “Academics.” The “Career Class” is actually a class category, because each category is associated with a table that is used by the player to randomly determine his character’s “Career.” It is the randomly selected “Career” that actually follows the Class Design Pattern. The number of class possibilities is impressive. It includes entries as wide ranging as “Alchemist’s Apprentice,” “Beggar,” “Initiate,” “Mercenary,” “Rat Catcher,” and “Squire.” Each class gives a list of gifts (“Skills”) along with chances to obtain them, equipment, attribute adjustments that characters can earn as they progress in the career, and “Career Exits.” The career exits enable a character with a given class to advance to some other class. When he does, his loses his old career exits and gains a new set of career exits.

Warhammer “skills” actually fit this book’s definition of “gifts,” since no ranks are ever gained in them and they do not improve as play progresses. (The attributes on which they are based do improve, however.) Their list of gifts is quite lengthy. It includes options such as “Boat Building,” “Gamble,” “Mining,” “Night Vision,” and “Strike Mighty Blow.”

Contests are performed by first determining whether a character has the gifts necessary to attempt an action. If so, the player rolls d100 and compares the result to his character’s pertinent attribute. If the result is less than the attribute value, the task succeeds.

In combat, the pertinent attribute to use in attacking an opponent is “Weapon Skill.” If the hit succeeds, damage is determined by rolling a d6 and adding the aggressor’s Strength. The target’s Toughness attribute is then deducted from the result to give a damage amount. The hit location is then determined by reversing the numbers rolled on the d100 and performing a table lookup (i.e., an attack roll of 83 becomes a hit location of 38 on the table). The armor rating of the struck body part is subtracted from the damage to give a final damage total. This damage value is subtracted from the character’s hit points (“Wounds”).

If the d6 used in the damage roll results in a 6, the player has a chance for additional damage. To do so, he must roll another d100 and compare it to his “Weapon Skill” attribute. If the roll is once again less than this value, the player adds another d6 to his damage. If a 6 is rolled again on the d6, additional d6s are accumulated as long as 6s are rolled in an open-ended fashion.

Warhammer hit points work in an interesting way. When a character’s “Wounds” resource drops to zero, the character does not fall. Rather, he finally starts taking real wounds. That is, he starts accumulating “Critical Hits” that have serious consequences to the character’s health such as incapacitation or death. These are determined by cross indexing the inflicted damage with another percentile roll. This, along with the hit location, determines the actual wound delivered. Severed limbs, broken bones, and death are common results.

When opposing forces first meet, anyone unaware of the opposition is automatically surprised and cannot attack on their first round of combat. Otherwise, action order goes from the character with the highest “Initiative” attribute and proceeds sequentially on down to the character with the lowest Initiative value. So, initiative is purely Karma-based.

Warhammer rewards players by giving their characters experience points. Experience points are awarded for attaining an adventure’s goals and “good role-playing.” These points can be spent to buy new gifts and to raise attribute values. These are limited, however, to the “advance scheme” of the current class. Once the maximum advancement for an attribute has been attained in a class, the player cannot raise that attribute further until he progresses to the next class, which must be one of the available “career exits” listed in the class description. Any player wishing to have his character advance to another class must expend experience points to do so.