WFRP using Elric! Rules or BRP

[Michael Stockin]

Hi.

So I have my original copy of WFRP and am playing a Warhammer campaign but I am using the Elric! system (which is essentially BRP).
However the Warhammer lore and Elric! lore are quite different, does BRP have stats for the typical Warhammer races?

 

[Questbird]

My group of Elric! players solved this problem by switching to WFRP when we played the Enemy Within campaign.

[Mugen]

12 hours ago, Michael Stockin said:

Hi.

So I have my original copy of WFRP and am playing a Warhammer campaign but I am using the Elric! system (which is essentially BRP).
However the Warhammer lore and Elric! lore are quite different, does BRP have stats for the typical Warhammer races?

 

You could use the RQ stats for halflings and dwarves.

However, RQ elves are different from WFRP elves.

[Michael Stockin]

6 minutes ago, Mugen said:

You could use the RQ stats for halflings and dwarves.

However, RQ elves are different from WFRP elves.

I guess these stats are only in the rulebook?
Any examples of what the dice rolls to create them are online?

 

 

[Michael Stockin]

Re-arrange that last sentence to make sense...

[Mugen]

13 minutes ago, Michael Stockin said:

I guess these stats are only in the rulebook?
Any examples of what the dice rolls to create them are online?

No, you can also find those in the Mongoose RuneQuest SRD (A.K.A. MRQ SRD), along with many other creatures stats.

[Michael Stockin]

4 minutes ago, Mugen said:

No, you can also find those in the Mongoose RuneQuest SRD (A.K.A. MRQ SRD), along with many other creatures stats.

I love you, thanks V much!!

[NickMiddleton]

12 hours ago, Michael Stockin said:

Hi.

So I have my original copy of WFRP and am playing a Warhammer campaign but I am using the Elric! system (which is essentially BRP).
However the Warhammer lore and Elric! lore are quite different, does BRP have stats for the typical Warhammer races?
 

You could pick up either of these:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/128323/Magic-World?cPath=74_5621

https://www.chaosium.com/basic-creatures-pdf/

They contain a bunch of monster / creature stats including stuff like more WFRP Elves and Dwarves. Magic World is also basically Elric! with a few tweaks, so highly compatible with the rule set you are using. And the PDF is $3 currently.

Basic Creatures is closer to RQ (it is a reworking of the RQ3 Creatures Book), so a bit less useful, and IIRC pretty much everything from it is in Magic World - but it is ALSO just a creatures.

[DreadDomain]

I feel Magic World is your easiest and cheapest option ($3):

Magic World - Chaosium | Basic Roleplaying | DriveThruRPG.com

Alternatively, you can go for the Big Gold Book and have the whole BRP toolkit ($22)

Basic Roleplaying - Chaosium | Basic Roleplaying | DriveThruRPG.com

Less focused to your needs but a lot of options in there (including fantasy races).

Good choice of system by the way. If you buy Magic World you will recognize the ruleset quite easily as it is a direct (small) evolution from Elric!/Stormbringer.

Edited June 8, 2021 by DreadDomain

[Michael Stockin]

6 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

I feel Magic World is your easiest and cheapest option ($3):

Magic World - Chaosium | Basic Roleplaying | DriveThruRPG.com

Alternatively, you can go for the Big Gold Book and have the whole BRP toolkit ($22)

Basic Roleplaying - Chaosium | Basic Roleplaying | DriveThruRPG.com

Less focused to your needs but a lot of options in there (including fantasy races).

Good choice of system by the way. I you buy Magic World you will recognize the ruleset quite easily as it is a direct (small) evolution from Elric!/Stormbringer.

Good shout, just bought it.
Yeah the system is very very similar, as is the artwork, stuff from Elric! and the older Stormbringer books too.

😄

 

[Michael Stockin]

Follow up question, I have ready made Warhammer races now.

But gunpowder weapons are a thing in warhammer, I recall a stormbringer supplement had rules for 6 shooter pistols, but where can I find rules for blackpowder weapons?


TIA

[KPhan2121]

5 hours ago, Michael Stockin said:

Follow up question, I have ready made Warhammer races now.

But gunpowder weapons are a thing in warhammer, I recall a stormbringer supplement had rules for 6 shooter pistols, but where can I find rules for blackpowder weapons?


TIA

BRP has rules for muzzle loaded firearms. You'll have to homebrew some of the fancier weapons.

[SDLeary]

10 hours ago, Michael Stockin said:

Follow up question, I have ready made Warhammer races now.

But gunpowder weapons are a thing in warhammer, I recall a stormbringer supplement had rules for 6 shooter pistols, but where can I find rules for blackpowder weapons?


TIA

You might want to pick up Renaissance or Clockwork and Chivalry as well for a similar era and for more option for black powder weapons. See the sub-forum on this site.

SDLeary

[Michael Stockin]

Cheers.

My mate bought it.
Follow up question.

I had a quick search of the forum but found nothing obvious.

Are there any rules anywhere that detail armour reduction values for gunpowder weapons?

Elric! armour is variable, such as leather stops d6 damage, mail stops d8+1, plates stops d10+2 etc, that sort of thing.
I have introduced firearms as is the Warhammer way but need to reflect (within reason) the fact they will punch through most medieval armour.
Are there any official rules for this anywhere?

[Lloyd Dupont]

there are some rule in the D100 family that give some weapon an armor piercing bonus .  Usually a small number that goes up to a max of 4 generally. And it allow the weapon to ignore some armor (up to that number)

[Michael Stockin]

I was home brewing something along those lines
Any idea what book those rules are in at all?

[NickMiddleton]

On 6/8/2021 at 10:32 AM, Michael Stockin said:

Follow up question, I have ready made Warhammer races now.

But gunpowder weapons are a thing in warhammer, I recall a stormbringer supplement had rules for 6 shooter pistols, but where can I find rules for blackpowder weapons?


TIA

There are some brief SB rules for fire arms in Rogue Mistress  which iirc cover both black powered and Maria’s six guns. Iirc there’s some stuff in the introduction and in one of the specific adventures (the “Albyon” one I think?)

[Barak Shathur]

On 6/7/2021 at 9:47 AM, Mugen said:

You could use the RQ stats for halflings and dwarves.

However, RQ elves are different from WFRP elves.

Standard RQ dwarves are much weaker than humans due to their low SIZ. When humans got their SIZ bumped from 3d6 to 2d6+6 (I think between 2nd and 3rd ed?) dwarves were left at 2d6 so in terms of calculating damage bonus they fell way behind. This does not reflect WFRP well, so I would bump dwarf SIZ to 1d6+6 (as more recent BRP iterations tend to do).

[Michael Stockin]

Yeah I looked at the stats from the PDF I purchased and in many cases just ignored them as thy don't fit WFRP that well.

😄 😄

 

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, Michael Stockin said:

Are there any rules anywhere that detail armour reduction values for gunpowder weapons?

You might not need them Early on, blackpowder weapons didn't penetrate armor as well as modern firearms do. Armorers would even "poof" thier weapons against firearms (and crossbows) by test firing a round at the armor and leaving the dent to show that the armor was, indeed, bulletproof. Such armor sold for a lot more, too. 

So if you wanted to you could just assume the same level of technology and go with the stats without any AP modfiers. It would probably make the most sense, too as once bullet start penetrating armor, armor starts to go out of use. 

If you want bullets to penetrate armor, I'd suggest just lowered the value of lower tech (or non "poofed") armor against firearms. In Elric! the easiest way to do this would probably be to lower the dice rolled.  For instance, Full Plate (with helm) protects for 1D10+2  (ave. 7.5) in Elric!, but you could lower the die from 1D10 to 1D6 or even !d4. Considering the damage rating of blackpower weapons, it won't take much of a reduction to get through the armor. 

 

Quote

Elric! armour is variable, such as leather stops d6 damage, mail stops d8+1, plates stops d10+2 etc, that sort of thing.I have introduced firearms as is the Warhammer way but need to reflect (within reason) the fact they will punch through most medieval armour.

I'd say just reduce the armor die by a couple of steps, depending on just how much protection you want the armor to provide, if any. You could always rule that the blackpowder weapons just bypass armor, but that might make them too good, and leave players wondering about wearing armor.

For instance,

if you reduce the dice by one step...Leather = 1d4, Mail = 1d6+1, and Plate = 1d8+2.

if you reduce the dice by two steps...Leather = 1d2, Mail = 1d4+1, and Plate = 1d6+2.

if you reduce the dice by three steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = 1d2+1, and Plate = 1d4+2. 

if you reduce the dice by four  steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = 1 point, and Plate = 1d2+2.

if you reduce the dice by five steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = no protection, and Plate = 2 points (or 1d3 if you prefer).

You can just slide up and down on the die size until you get the values that you like.

 

Quote

 

Are there any official rules for this anywhere?

Probably not. As I noted above, at the time plate armor was still in heavy use, firearms weren't always guaranteed to piece it. However, many version of BRP have an "impale" rule where some weapons do double damage on a very good hit. This is in addition to the critical hit rule. THat kind of leads to a lot of missile weapons getting past armor a lot of the time. 

Oops correction! The Basic Roleplaying BGB did have official rules: 

Primitive or Ancient armor only
offers 1/2 protection against high velocity
or energy weapons.

also

If armor value is being determined
randomly, you should roll for the
armor's protection, apply any modifiers,
then divide in half, rounding up.

Note the term high velocity. Weather or not you consider Blackpool weapons to be high velocity is the question. Historically they fired  large, relatively low velocity (for firearms) balls or bullets, which is why plate armor was actually effective against them.  Personally, I think I'd rather tweak the armor dice than divide the die rolls in half, too.

 

 

Perhaps the best thing for you to get, if you can find it would be the  Basic Roleplaying rulebook, usually referred to around here as the "Big Gold Book". The BGB is a collection of rules from various RPGs produced by the Chasoium over the years, all of which use the same underlying rule system. Pretty much any BRP based Roleplaying game (Elric!, Stormbringer, Magic World, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Elfquest, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld, Ringworld, etc.) is mostly compatible with other as at least 80% of the game system is the same for all those games. THe BGB collected a lot of that stuff into one book. It might be quite helpful for doing the stort of stuff you are doing, but it's out of print. 

There are also a lot of "D100:" based RPGs that aren't BRP, but still similar enough that you could take stuff from them, such as anything for RQ6/Mthras, OpenD100 or even BaSiC. 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Atgxtg

[Michael Stockin]

"If armor value is being determined
randomly, you should roll for the
armor's protection, apply any modifiers,
then divide in half, rounding up."

Sweet, that will do. 
Thanks everyone. 

[Mugen]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

There are also a lot of "D100:" based RPGs that aren't BRP, but still similar enough that you could take stuff from them, such as anything for RQ6/Mthras, OpenD100 or even BaSiC. 

With the caveat that damage values in (MRQ2)/RQ6/Mythras are significantly different from BRP.

[Atgxtg]

26 minutes ago, Mugen said:

With the caveat that damage values in (MRQ2)/RQ6/Mythras are significantly different from BRP.

Sometimes. I'd say the damage bonus is significantly different but most weapon damages are the same or similar. How much of obstacle that is is another matter. For the most part an experienced GM can look over the weapon tables, compare similar weapons, and get a rough idea of what the approximate damage would be in  Elric! Even if a GM just ported over the weapon stats directly the values wouldn't be too far off, as BRP and Mythas use similar hit points and armor values. I think most weapons are within a point or two, on average.

[Al.]

All of the following IMHO of course:

Ever since I was told that SIZ specifically determines mass in RQ I made Siz for Dwarfs 3d6 (I hate 2d6+6 for Siz and Int for humans with unreasoning and disproportionate passion, if you don't share that presumably you'd go for 2d6+6)

I think that the characteristic scores for Melniboneans in Elric! are a better fit for Old World Elves than those for RQ's 'mini-Ents'

(I also think that the rules for Ducks in RQ are a better fit for Old World Halflings than the RQ Halflings are)

 

The simplest rule for armour penetrating Firearms is BRP's rule that they halve the AP of non-ballistic armours

The oldest published rule for Firearms is that Muskets in RuneQuest Land of Ninja inflict 3d6 damage, which is a lot of damage but then Firearms do not benefit from a damage bonus

[Guest Vile Traveller]

On 6/11/2021 at 12:04 PM, Lloyd Dupont said:

there are some rule in the D100 family that give some weapon an armor piercing bonus .  Usually a small number that goes up to a max of 4 generally. And it allow the weapon to ignore some armor (up to that number)

On 6/11/2021 at 12:20 PM, Michael Stockin said:

I was home brewing something along those lines
Any idea what book those rules are in at all?

Not sure if these were what Lloyd was thinking of, but I developed penetration rules for advanced weaponry in my conversion of Striker! weapons for BRP. Soltakss included them in his Sci-fi SRD. I don't think there have ever been any Chaosium products with those rules.