Elves and Ogres, Oh My!

Hi,

Does anyone know where I can get my hands on the Ogre as Pc supplement?

Also, has an industrious person out there developed a load of elf specific careers?

Just wondering!

Nikoli

Ogre PC's, as described in the article you are referencing can be deeply unbalancing to a campaign. It falls on the shoulders of the GM to make the game socially uncomfortable enough to offset the HUGE combat bonuses granted them.

That said, I'm pretty sure I have the article saved on my PC at home. It's an interesting read actually. PM me an email to send it to and I'll try and ping it over to you this evening. Unfortunately, I don't have an online place to host it at the moment or I'd drop a link in here for you.

Ogres are pretty much a one trick pony, and it should definitely feel that way to a player. In my games, no one would even want to play one simply because they are so unwelcome in towns, cities, taverns, etc...and damn near everything except combat would pretty much exclude them.

Not to mention the willpower checks to make sure he doesn't try to eat one of the party member's horses while they are asleep...

You have been warned.

Sounds like fun xD, what are these elf specific careers you speak of?

Nikoli wrote:
Also, has an industrious person out there developed a load of elf specific careers?

I found an unofficial WFRP 1e article detailing the Laurelorn Elves on Mad Alfred's site, which contains many careers for Wood Elves.

Unfortunately, those Elven careers will need to be translated into 2e rules. Liber Fanatica (see Book I: Character Compendium), found on another unofficial site, contains a section for translating old into new, but it's not perfect.

I didn't play 1e, so I find it tricky to translate certain 1e elements (like magic, in particular) into 2e, as I don't have a good context for the old rules.

Anyone out there translate "Eldritch Watcher" (a Wood Elf version on the Journeyman Wizard career) into 2e rules? Or have a different Wood Elf-specific wizard career?

Edit: I embedded the URLs into the text, and specified title of LF Book I

Re balancing the 'bonus' of playing an Ogre.

If the GM (and players) just remembers that the Ogre is about 10 feet tall, I think thats drawback enough. If hes lucky hell fit in the stables, but probably will freak out the horses so he should get used to his own (custom made) tent at all times.

Starry Wisdom wrote:

Nikoli wrote:
Also, has an industrious person out there developed a load of elf specific careers?

I found an unofficial WFRP 1e article detailing the Laurelorn Elves on Mad Alfred's site, which contains many careers for Wood Elves. It can be found at:

Unfortunately, those Elven careers will need to be translated into 2e rules. Liber Fanatica (see Book I: Character Compendium), found on another unofficial site, contains a section for translating old into new, but it's not perfect.

I didn't play 1e, so I find it tricky to translate certain 1e elements (like magic, in particular) into 2e, as I don't have a good context for the old rules.

Anyone out there translate "Eldritch Watcher" (a Wood Elf version on the Journeyman Wizard career) into 2e rules? Or have a different Wood Elf-specific wizard career?

Edit: I embedded the URLs into the text, and specified title of LF Book I

Cheers!

I'll check it out! I just wish elves had more description in the game. I could usually get my head around dwarves, they seemed to be fleshed out somewhat, but elves are always ignored, even in the new edition. All this talk of elven magic and mystic attunement is just a smokescreen. They're humans with pointy ears.

I remember in an old Gods and Divinity supplement for 1st ed, the Old Faith was made into their religion, and they had a really interesting feel then...they started to come together. Much more should be made of the Woodelves Celtic feel beyond some excellent fantasy art in the Battle books. Now THAT is how WFRP should have been drawn, not the current art which is too kiddish. WFRP should detail their fay nature - wild, illusive, and dangerous. Their magics should be illusion, nature, and enchantment based...not just a carbon-copy of the humans. I also hate putting things outside the players hands, like the High Elven magic. To say it is beyond the scope of the game shows that the game modelling of the world falls short.

Rolemaster could model virtually anything. WFRP could too. I think if you really like your creation, then you should make it comprehensive. WFRP should have rules for battle magic and elven magic, and it may be incredible, but it should, for the sake of completeness even if beyond most characters, be detailed.

Maybe I'm just anal about such things.

Nikoli

P.S. I think Ogres could be dealt in a way similar to Robert Jordan's approach with his "Ogier". Namely, they are incredibly rare, but not unheard of, and maybe some Inns in the biggest cities are know to have an "Ogre Bed"...perhaps now used for storage. Afterall, how often does an Ogre come to stay? But they pay well!

Interesting how those elves and careers are given Irish names, such as Caraidh Cu for "Beastfriend of the Hound"!

Being Irish, I should make a brilliant Elf! All the roleplaying experience points go to me!

Nikoli

There is a pdf on Ogres I think SteveD did that has ogres Balanced fairly well, it also includes a couple of ogre centric careers. Im sure I have it here somewhere, if anyone is intrested I'll dig it up and put a link to it.

Loswaith wrote:
There is a pdf on Ogres I think SteveD did that has ogres Balanced fairly well, it also includes a couple of ogre centric careers. Im sure I have it here somewhere, if anyone is intrested I'll dig it up and put a link to it.

I did one here: http://www.steved.org/rp_rules.html

Somebody else - maybe Andy Law or Dan White? - did another, which was much prettier but covered the same kind of ground.

I like that, I may get some Ogre NPC's in my game...

http://web.archive.org/web/20060901052504/www.blackindustries.com/pdf/wfrp_oth_imperialogres.pdf

Nikoli wrote:
I just wish elves had more description in the game. I could usually get my head around dwarves, they seemed to be fleshed out somewhat, but elves are always ignored, even in the new edition. All this talk of elven magic and mystic attunement is just a smokescreen. They're humans with pointy ears.

I remember in an old Gods and Divinity supplement for 1st ed, the Old Faith was made into their religion, and they had a really interesting feel then...they started to come together. Much more should be made of the Woodelves Celtic feel beyond some excellent fantasy art in the Battle books. Now THAT is how WFRP should have been drawn, not the current art which is too kiddish. WFRP should detail their fay nature - wild, illusive, and dangerous. Their magics should be illusion, nature, and enchantment based...not just a carbon-copy of the humans. I also hate putting things outside the players hands, like the High Elven magic. To say it is beyond the scope of the game shows that the game modelling of the world falls short.

Rolemaster could model virtually anything. WFRP could too. I think if you really like your creation, then you should make it comprehensive. WFRP should have rules for battle magic and elven magic, and it may be incredible, but it should, for the sake of completeness even if beyond most characters, be detailed.

Maybe I'm just anal about such things.

Nikoli

I can't express enough how much I agree with this! Why no battle mage career? Why no high elven mage career? Couldn't they have used a page or two in RoS for this? It always seemed lazy to me. I buy supplements like that exactly for those kind of rules, so I don't have to make them up. Not a paragraph about how I should figure it out myself. And I also agree with the elves not being fleshed out nearly enough, and being nothing but humans with pointy ears. When I first got the 2nd edition books I looked for hours to find the rules on elven magic users, but the truth was that there were none. A new elven supplement would be most welcome I think!

And not to end my very first post on this forum with just a rant

let me tell you that I do like the new "strictly elven" careers like envoy and kithband warrior, and I am also a HUGE fan of the new magic system, being as unpredicatable and dangerous as they've currently made it. Just to name a few things!

Primarch Sigmar wrote:And not to end my very first post on this forum with just a rant let me tell you that I do like the new "strictly elven" careers like envoy and kithband warrior,

My (only) problem with those careers is that I can't see any reason at all why they aren't applicable to any of the other races. Envoy is just, well, an envoy, and Kithband Warrior would suit a Robin Hood-type character perfectly. For that matter, I can't see any good reason why other races shouldn't become Troll Slayers - a character could follow the career without the title, and with or without similar motivations, but there's nothing about the advances, skills and talents that says Dwarves only; it's just a career for a hard bastard with a death wish.

Cheers

Sparrow

I'd have to agree with the designers when they decided to not include high elf mages, in the sense as trained by the White Tower of Hoeth, for a few reasons. As the designers mentioned in RoS, 2 high elf mages swung the Great War against Chaos, can you imagine the sheer amount of power each one of them could wield? And to add that into a low fantasy setting where magic is scarce, and it's sort of ridiculous to conceive.

The other problem with the addition of such magic into the universe is that the age of such magic users and the amount of experience to get to that level needed is huge. Most of the High Elf wizards allowed out of the White Tower are millennia old.

That level of power would have to come with some dire consequences, otherwise it would be impossible to balance, and even if it did, the random nature of the magic system would make it impossible to balance anyways. Such spells at the High Magic level are able to take out entire regiments in Fantasy Battles, and they're drastically underpowered vs. the fluff.

If a mage at this level can kill dozens of soldiers as they're rushing at him, what's the likelihood of any character or anything for that matter at the level of WFRP to even threaten him.

It's just annoying they mention the high elf mages etc but theres no more information, an elf becomes a wizard lroa nd it says teh mage ahs completed his basic training? Why can't they persue it?

Upon becoming a Wizard Lord, he's gone as far as the human colleges can train him. If he wants to advance beyond the level of power thus attained, he will need to sail to Ulthuan and study at the White Tower, effectively removing him from the Old World and thus the scope of this game. Congratulations! Roll up a new character, you've just become an NPC. I'll try and be sure to write.

*Open filing cabinet *

Fair enough...umm....
come backs....umm....okay, Jon 1, me 0.

Muahaha!

Caution...this is Sparta!

Fine, kick me down a hole, then we wipe the slate clean...

Id still want to have rules for High Magic, even not going into great detail.

I mean, with only 20 spells per lore, how hard can it be to whip up a High Magic lore?

Even if its for NPC use only...

James Sparrow wrote:My (only) problem with those careers is that I can't see any reason at all why they aren't applicable to any of the other races. Envoy is just, well, an envoy, and Kithband Warrior would suit a Robin Hood-type character perfectly. For that matter, I can't see any good reason why other races shouldn't become Troll Slayers - a character could follow the career without the title, and with or without similar motivations, but there's nothing about the advances, skills and talents that says Dwarves only; it's just a career for a hard bastard with a death wish.

I understand what you are saying, but tend to disagree. Making, for example, a "generic" troll slayer would certainly seem possible, but it looks to me more like how D&D would approach it: group certain combat abilities and call it a class for everyone to use. However the strong side of WFRP is that it creates a certain feel to the material; you might even say some sort of (fantasy) cultural bond. A dwarven troll slayer is not merely a hard bastard with a death wish, he is a hard bastard with a death wish from the dwarven halls of the old world, with a bond to dwarven culture and a place in its society. Say troll slayer to an old worlder, and chances are he will have a particular view about them, which goes beyond them merely being hard bastards with a death wish. (sorry if I have oversimplified your example somewhat, but I'm just trying to make a point)
So too with elven envoys: it is not merely an envoy of some sort of group, it is an elven envoy send by his elders because they wish to gain a deeper understanding of human culture/politics/events, and having a far shorter lifespan than elves, human lifes tend to go too fast and confusing for the slower paced and longer lived elven culture.
In my opinion, a case like this can be made for each particular career geared to a certain race. The fluff it creates adds tremendously to the entire feel of the WFRP setting, and is exactly what makes it so distinct (and better) from systems like D&D.

Puddy wrote:I'd have to agree with the designers when they decided to not include high elf mages, in the sense as trained by the White Tower of Hoeth, for a few reasons. As the designers mentioned in RoS, 2 high elf mages swung the Great War against Chaos, can you imagine the sheer amount of power each one of them could wield? And to add that into a low fantasy setting where magic is scarce, and it's sort of ridiculous to conceive.
(...)
If a mage at this level can kill dozens of soldiers as they're rushing at him, what's the likelihood of any character or anything for that matter at the level of WFRP to even threaten him.

I must say that I do agree with your views on PCs using high magic (and PCs pursuing a career as high mage should definitely be shipped off for the next century to Ulthuan and automatically become NPCs). However, I would have liked to see some rules for battle mages, as they don't seem as powerful or uncommon as elven high mages. And some rules for NPC high elf mages would also have been great.

Jon Shai wrote:Upon becoming a Wizard Lord, he's gone as far as the human colleges can train him.

This comment raises another question for me. I assumed that the elves apprenticed with other elves outside of the imperial magical colleges, but have to choose a single color to study before being able to move on to high magic (after having advanced to wizard lord of course). You however seem to have interpreted the rules as elves apprenticing within the human colleges (or am I wrong about this?). Have I overlooked certain rules, or are we each merely giving our own interpretation?

Entirely my interpretation. As I understood it from RoS, Teclis came to the Empire to show them how to train their mages. Based on the CRB and SH the elves abandoned the Old World some time back, with only a few renegade bands staying behind because they could not bear to leave their new forest homes. In my mind, those who stayed behind were merely a shadow of the White Tower and the elves of Ulthuan, their greatest wizards having departed forever. Those who remain behind would need to go through a human college for their formal training, or a less structured but more leisurely pursuit of magical power through their elders within their own communities. Either course would not lead to High Magic.

My own personal interpretation is that each wind of magic is taught separately even in Ulthuan with elven wizards spending decades to master one color completely before moving on to the next. Essentially, while a human can only master a single wind in his lifetime, elves have no time constraints, and immense patience, and therefore they can afford to take the time to master each wind individually before ever attempting even the most basic combinations of winds. Masters using several winds or all of them in symphony would represent many hundreds of years of learning and mastery, in some cases dating back even to before their war with the dwarfs. I can't put my finger on anything in the fluff that explicitly states that or even implies it, but I have it in my head for some reason that that was the reason Teclis structured the colleges as he did, because he knew human minds and lives were simply too limited to ever handle more than the very basics of a single wind. Sort of like going to cavemen and teaching them how to make fire with two sticks while you know how to build a firearm. Sure, it's cool, but they simply couldn't begin to grasp the complexities of chemical processes, metallurgy, precision craftsmanship, and the dozens of other vital elements involved in creating them.

Even the elves who stayed behind, while they would have some concept of what they had given up, would not necessarily be able to reproduce it in the Loren Forest. If Ford closes down their plant in a small town tears down the plant and sends management somewhere else, everyone who lost their job would still know what they did, and have a fair degree of understanding of how things fit together. Still, I wouldn't want to be the guy that drove the first car they produced after building a car based on assembly line workers memories and guesswork after they re-built the facility from the ground up.

Based on my interpretation, I could probably be persuaded to let an elf of sufficient age take on a second wind of magic after fully mastering the first, but frankly, I've never had a campaign last long enough to worry about second or third generations for the rest of the adventuring party, and I'm not too keen on the idea of setting a new campaign thirty years after my previous one and making everyone but the elven mage roll up new characters just so he can start his 5th career in a new wind of magic. * Shudder *

I like the general idea, but I'd say that the elves don't go to college to learn the basics. They simply have a tutor who will teach them how to first flow their first wind. The first wind the student weild is the one who is the most appropriate to his character, and his master don't have any say in this.

But I don't think the High Mages really master a 2nd then a 3rd wind. I think the simple fact of becoming a 4th-level Wizard makes them ready to open themselves to the High Magic. It's a question of... perception, of capacity to be open to the magical art. A Wizard Lord is open ennough to become learning the High Magic.

SolkaTruesilver wrote:I like the general idea, but I'd say that the elves don't go to college to learn the basics. They simply have a tutor who will teach them how to first flow their first wind. The first wind the student weild is the one who is the most appropriate to his character, and his master don't have any say in this.

From the 'Apprentice Wizard' career (WFRP, p. 31): "Elves are naturally magical, and do not need to attend these human institutions*, learning from their own lore masters instead."

In other words: you're right!

*i.e. the Colleges of Magic.

SteveD wrote:
Somebody else - maybe Andy Law or Dan White? - did another, which was much prettier but covered the same kind of ground.

Yeah, it was Andy.