In some fantastic news, it looks like FFG is running some WFRP 3e events at GenCon this year. Specifically, they have several tables of Shadows over Averheim, part 1 of the outstanding new The Enemy Within campaign. I highly encourage anyone interested in WFRP to sign up for these so we can show FFG that there is a community out there that enjoys WFRP 3e and wants to play!

If you check the Events Registration page on GenCon.com you will see that FFG is running multiple slots of two different adventures for Edge of the Empire. Looks like they are running:

Shadows of a Black Sun (the free RPG day adventure)

A Matter of Life and Death

Count me among those very happy to see this!

Are there any chaos spells that you can tempt him with?  Or spells from another order?  If the wrong book should fall into his hands....

I have created a 1st level Warrior Psyker to see how he plays and oh my God he was brokenly powerful !!! 

I kind of think that Psykers are unbalanced.

Can someone please explain me step by step how I use a Psychic Power because I think that I do something very wrong.

For example, what are the steps to use the Psychokinetic Impact in page 198? Or the power Shatter !

Is it considered an attack and if it hits the target loses his actions? What defence the target rolls and which penalties apply? The blinded and the fired Projectiles penalties together? Can the damage be increased by the roll of the Psychic Projection?

Also, if I roll a psychic Potential roll of 85 do I succeed a difficult level(120) in the effect area of the Psychic Power?I ask this weird question because the example in page 192 in the Use Of Psychic Powers confused me utterly!

Last,I made a Dark Paladin also and it seemed almost impossible to summon an entity of level 1 (I have summoning 75).Is summoning supposed to be that dificult? 

How can you choose an element for the elementalism option?Do creatures have an associated element?

So many questions! Please a brave soul just try to explain these to me!

AtoMaki said:

Don't get me wrong, with the Great Crusade I could actually think that Marines engage more in social stuff, similar to what some of the Post-Heresy Chapters do on their various homeworlds (governance, guidance, tutorship, ...). But I wouldn't assume that normal people have any place in that, not in this era. Besides, how many fans would play a Space Marine without wanting to experience their combat prowess? Isn't that their raison d'être, the most dominant factor in their representation, and the primary reason why they are so popular in the first place?

With OW, the structuring of the skills and talents is fitting to the theme, as I would not regard Medicae, Tech-Use or Survival as "pure" non-combat skills, but rather things that are useful or even necessary to supplement the battle experience. It's the same with Deathwatch, too. And I would expect the same from a Great Crusade RPG. Yet ... these are abilities that you could simply use a Marine for. In fact, I'd say it would be weird to have an Imperial Army medic tag along as a healer for a bunch of Astartes.

Dulahan said:

And in this case I'm not even talking about the artificially widened gap in FFG's games, but also that the Horus Heresy as a setting just does not have much to offer for normal people - not in the way it is presented in the novels, at least. What sort of normal human "support" classes would people be supposed to play? Remembrancers who get to make rolls on how good their songs about the actual heroes will be?

They may as well focus on the actual "stars" of that era entirely. The designers had their chance for mixed groups with equal usefulness in the past but opted against it - I suppose it may well be a matter of vision, but I just don't see what they could gain from shoehorning normal humans in a game whose narration has so far entirely ommitted them. It'd be kind of like making a Superman RPG where you can also play normal cops, firefighters and mailmen who get to do things alongside Clark Kent. It just doesn't seem very ... practical? 

But let's hear your ideas. How exactly would you design a Great Crusade RPG that doesn't feature Marines alone, yet is fun to play for everyone?

For a wizard/mentalist, it depends on wether the spell is created from Magic, or Psychic powers. If from magic, then he uses his magic projection for his defense roll, and this is only IF he has the spell already in place, or has the Zeon acculumated to cast at that time. If it is a Psychic shield, then he uses his Psychic projection for the defense. I do believe that a Psychic though can raise a shield at any time, if they have not already used all their potential during thier turn... in that regard the Psychic uses the amount of his potential that he wishes to use in the power, and rolls to see how powerful the shield is. From there the defense is the same.

Kharol said:

I reduce Logistics by 1 for lost/ruined equipment.

I figured out the weight of a standard kit (my group's excludes some extra stuff), making some assumptions for weights not given in the book, and it comes to 12.5 kg. The stuff can encumber you mightily. In fact one of my group currently has an AB of 1 because she refuses to drop it.

Halagar said:

Our game group has four players and a GM. In the words of one of our group, four seems to be the "sweet spot" for our team. With five the table seems to crowded for us. Three is a tad thin... It's nice to have four PCs because, well, once you get to combat it's lethal! :)

I think learning the game is more difficult for the GM rather than the players since there is a lot to juggle. So you may find it personally easier to game with three PCs initially. The players can share cards or take advantage of the resources offered by Emirikol and others. 

Enjoy! I love the system.

I also wouldn't be surprised if anti-vehicle weapons don't turn up until Age of Rebellion. It would make a certain kind of sense to cover as much as possible of the heavier military hardware in the game that deals specifically with galactic warfare.

No, not talking about FFG, but rather cheap books that might be of interest to Only War players and GMs. 

I found this one interesting and, history aside, the Landis brothers have an interesting view of Army camp life, that struck me as similar to the 'letters home' journal entries that FFG used in the core book.

http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Brigade-brigades-American-ebook/dp/B00CQZM4H4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369164132&sr=1-1

Hello.

I would bet that the beta rulebook didn't try to list all the weapons that will end up in the final core rulebook, rather, just enough for us to be able to test the system.

The final book's table of contents lists 50 pages for the Gear and equipment section. that is, twice as much as the beta. I'm sure the art and longer descriptions will take a lot of that space but I'd be really surprised if there wasn't a bunch of new weapons included.

If you need to stat these weapons ASAP, feel free to do so but I thought it was worth pointing out that Fantasy Flight might have already done the heavy lifting for you. We'll find out in a few weeks.

Or they could just make the game.  And ADMIT in the rules that there are different tiers of play, that regular humans are not meant to and will not be able to keep up with the Marines.

A slayer is a slayer and a sword master is an actual sword master, they don't grow that much in power. Wizards are like all wizards in the beginning not good for that much, bright wizards are good for more than most of the others, but still, it's an apprentice. Later on you will however discover that rank 2 or 3 or even 4 makes you extremely powerful, wings of asqy lets you fly various spells do A LOT of damage and remember that you can channel more power into them to do even more kaplewy, soon your bright wiz will leave them behind as you obliterate hordes of beastmen on your own (often in a single round).

Kharol said:

I dunno, we had may-many sessions that were completely devoid of combat. If the system and the setting supports and rewards non-violent solutions at least just as much as actual fights, then the PCs would lean towards those solutions better, because nobody likes to take Damage. 

OW is kinda' like a weirdo here, because some of its non-combat stuff is pretty much essential (Medicae, Tech-Use, Survival) while others are right at the very bottom of the trash bin (Fellowship and anything related to it). 

I think there is a desparate need of Friday and Saturday games of Star Wars, Rogue Trader and Warhammer FRPG. There is literally NOTHING and one 1 f-ing star wars game, that's just a sad showing and thank you FFG for convinving me you do not care. You just saved me $60+ for this game. However...I will still play it...but no money for you!

...you're boardgames are still sweet.

Andrew Tatro said:

In this case I think I would apply the vehicle armor (of the APC) as an additional armor for the occupants.

Would the Breach 1 of a missile be valid for the Blast 10 damage?

Side question: how much does a single missile cost? (Not the Tube, the Ammo)

Exactly my thoughts. Combat-focused Space Marines next to social-focused humans? In the midst of the Great Crusade?

I guess it might work if you specifically let each player roll up two characters, one for the battle and one for the social sessions. I know some groups have combined their Dark Heresy campaigns with the Deathwatch book in this fashion. But for a new release, what's the point? May as well limit it to those classes that actually get things done in that narrative.

If you intermix them, you will just end up with your game evening having "Marine phases" and "normal guy phases", kind of like in the older Shadowrun editions where the Matrix still was its own dimension and hacking basically meant the rest of the team could lean back, but probably even worse as it'd happen more often. And in Shadowrun at least the decker was still useful elsewhere.

No problem CyrusRangue! I appreciate your inclination to help!

Well, not being an expert in shipbuilding, I would probably go with a Battleship or Grand Cruiser hull, probably the first, so that it has three port and starboard slots. Each side would have a hanger, for the thunderhawks, a bombardment cannon (like the Stygies, might need a special rule for the placement), and a decent weapon, maybe lances, for hitting power. The prow could have missile tubes, since they can't port/starboard mount, either. I can see the drop pod bay, redundant void shields, and some impressive armor. A bridge that assists in repeling boarders (my Eternal Vigil Bridge), in planetary attacks (Invasion Bridge), or something, I don't know. A rule that makes assaulting aboard a battleship filled with Space Marines would round it out well. Maybe I'll actually stat something out later, in a couple of days.

Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of AT-STs when I typed that. Forgot that AT-PTs are actually fairly heavily armored (although looking at that writeup I almost wonder if that isn't too much armor for what it's supposed to represent). Still, you're going to mess up APCs and any smaller vehicles pretty handily.

Side thought: I would think that shooting something like a packed APC with a Blast 10 weapon would allow you to activate the Blast quality against the occupants.

Thanks for the correction Black-Fox, having gone back and reread the part about how the imbalance is created I agree that the reference to investing DP directly does just refer to buying the Magic Projection ability normally (as in not buying either Mystic Module). I didn't mean for my previous post to sound like offensive and defensive projection were bought seperately just that the imbalance was, which is not correct. Sorry for the confusion MoonShadow.

Andrew Tatro said:

Uhm... I don't think the AT-PT is the equivalent of a heavy tank, but still it has Armor 3, so... no damage with a Missile Tube.

No one's debating that. With a Missile Tube you're still probably dinging most low-scale vehicles (scout walkers, etc) for a point or two of damage and thus can rack up the crit. If you're shooting a Missile Tube at the Star Wars equivalent of a heavy tank (AT-AT/Sandcrawler, etc) you're wasting your time and that makes a certain amount of sense. These are vehicles that are designed to take a pounding from damage on their own scale, so attacking them with personal weapons doesn't make any sense.

Thanks again!

Everything was explained perfectly but can you please explain how a wizard or a mentalist use a shield in a fight ?

I recently got to play this game for the first time, at the Roleplayers Guild of Kansas City Game Day, and I thought I would give you my impressions.  I should say up front, that I have played two other FFG RPGs; Dark Heresy (love it) and Warhammer Fantasy RPG (hate it).  I would also like to state that I generally love the look and feel of most every product that FFG puts out.  The 40k line, in particular, I could almost buy for coffee table books alone, even without consideration for their value as an RPG system (which I feel is very high).  The books are just that beautiful.  Finally, I need to be completely forthcoming; I generally dislike dice pool systems and systems with unique dice.  I find them confusing in interpretation and clumsy in action resolution.  It's why I don't like World of Darkness Games, Shadow Run, WEG Star Wars (although I loved the writing and setting material for those products), and the afore mentioned WFRP 3rd edition.  I would also like to say, that I don't think there is any such thing as a good or bad game.  There are only games that you like, or don't like, and that is subjective to the individual. 

Now, having said that, what is my own subjective opinon of this game? (ALERT:  Adventure spoilers ahead.  Read at your own risk)

The game was ran by a GM who, I am told, has actually written material for every iteration of the Star Wars RPG (I don't remember his name; please forgive me- I'm terrible with names).  He produced several pre-generated characters for us to choose from.  We wound up with a wookie mercenary, a droid colonist, a twi-lek bounty hunter, and a human smuggler.  Since I like to play characters who are slick talking con-men, I chose the smuggler.  I thought all the pre-gens were interesting and the artwork and background for the characters was excellent, and strongly evoked the feel of the setting (that being the Fringe culture of Star Wars).The game also came with a cool map of the city, with a layout of the cantina, spaceport control and docking by on the other side.  We also got some spiffy cardboard counters to use for game tokens.  The artwork and overall quality on these were generally excellent.

The adventure was Escape from Mos Shutta.  The basic premise, is that we were a bunch of fringers on the run from the empire, who had recently gone to work for a local hutt lord, doing smuggling runs.  Unfortunately, we had recently botched a mission for him, and now he was looking to take the credit loss out of our hides.  That being the case, we had to find a ship to steal so we could blast off the planet and escape.

We started the game by heading to the local cantina to see if we could scare up some information.    While we were kicking back a few drinks and soaking up the atmosphere (one of the players cued up the cantina theme music from Episode IV on his smart phone), a bunch of the hutts Gamorrean thugs walked in, looking for us.  This is where I got my first taste of the dice resolution mechanics.

The GM had us all make rolls to try to look inconspicuous and blend in with the crowd.  We all succeeded, except for the droid, who was standing by the entryway to the cantina, where the gamorreans walked in.  The Droid decided to lob a stun grenade at the thugs, and succeeded magnificently, managing to knock all of them out.  I then attempted a deception roll, by commenting out loud that, "The clumsy gamorrean fools had dropped a stun grenade and knocked themselves out."  I also, succeeded admirably, and the bartender (who didn't like gamorreans and was amused by my quip), offered a bit of free information; a Trandoshan Bounty Hunter as docked nearby, with a vessel we could use to escape the planet.  However, there was a catch; it needed repairs before it could make the jump to hyperspace.

The GM for the game was very skilled at roleplaying the NPC's, describing the environment and encounter and at improvising responses to our actions.  However, he seemed to have about as much difficulty as the rest of us (all but one of whom had never played before, I believe) in interpereting and resolving the action dice.  While the encounter, as designed, was very good and captured the feel of the setting, the actual combat and skill checking proved to be disappointingly slow and complex.  The GM had warned us, prior to starting, that the dice rolling is a little confusing at first, but becomes easier with practice.  Since this was only the first encounter of the game, I didn't worry about it too much, and figured I would pick things up as we went.

From the cantina, we decided to go to the local junk shop to try to procure the needed part for the Trandoshans ship (which we had, of course, decided to steal at the earliest opportunity).  When we stepped outside, we discovered that the hutts goons were out in force, and that all traffice to and from the city had been shut down; the docking clamps on all the ships had been locked down from the spaceport security center.  We continued on to the junk shop, where we attempted to fast talk the shopkeeper into believing that we had come to pick up the part for the trandoshans ship (he only had one part of that type- and the trandoshan had already reserved it, but had not yet come to get it) and succeeded, then attempted to negotiate a lower price for the part, itself (we all failed on that one).  We managed to wrangle the part from the guy, after chucking and squinting at more handfuls of dice.  Action resolution wasn't any easier than the first time but, thankfully, there was little dice rolling necessary.  We gave the part to the wookie to carry, and moved on.

Next we travelled to the space port control center.  We had to figure out some way to get inside and unlock the docking clamps on the ship, so we could steal the thing and blast off planet.  At first, we tried to slice the lock on the rear entrance and sneak in the back, but we all failed miserably.  Then we tried to fast talk the security droids out front into believing we were a crew coming to do monthly maintenance.  This time, we succeeded.  Inside, we conned the space port operations chief and his peons into believing the Hutt lord had sent us personally to inspect the premises.  The GM managed the flow of the RP brilliantly but, once again, seemed to get hung up on dice action resolution (as did the rest of us).  At any rate, we managed to unlock the docking clamps without provoking suspicion and continued on to the landing bay where the trandoshans vessel was docked.

When we stepped back outside, we discovered a squad of imperial stormtroopers waiting for us.  Apparently, the hutt had ratted us out the Imps, he was that upset with us.  I suggested we try to hotwire a nearby landspeeder to make our escape, but everyone else thought it would be more prudent just to make a break for it on foot.  So, we made a run for it and, after some more dice checks (the slowness of which made the urgency of the scene somewhat less intense than it might have been- due to all the squinting and head scratching over resolving the dice rolls) we managed to slip away and make a run for the docking bay.

The next encounter was the most combat intensive of the game.  We shot it out with some security droids in front of the docking bay, forced our way into the place, locked the blast doors to delay the stormtroopers, and attempted to persuade the trandoshan to give us a lift off planet in return for the part he needed.  We failed at the last bit, and a firefight/slugfest ensued that was the longest combat encounter yet.  It was here that the special dice really proved to be an impediment to the action.  The trandoshan was also one tough nut to crack.  We shot the hell out of him and he didn't go down.  We chopped his arm off and he didn't go down.  We tried to grapple and subdue him and he resisted.  None of this (while enjoyable) was as fun or exciting as it should have been, due to clunky dice resolution, but we finally overcame the bugger when the wookie delivered a gruesome vibro-axe to the face.  We then blasted off planet, and tried to complete the repair, while shooting it out with a squadron of tie fighters.  Ship combat was interesting, with every character able to contribute in some fashion, with a special action related to space combat but, again, was bogged down by the numbers of dice and interpretation of the special symbols.  In the end, we managed to blast our way free and make the jump to hyperspace; HOORAY! (cue the star wars theme music).

After playing the game, here is my final evaluation:  The aesthetic appeal of the product is strong.  All components seem to be sturdy and attractive.  The art is excellent.  The writing is tight and provides the appropriate feel for the setting.  From a players perspective, with the GM doing most of the heavy lifting with dice resolution, I thought the game was fun, but not nearly as enjoyable as the D20 version of the game.  From the GM's perspective (which is the more relevant one, for me- as I prefer to be the GM to being the player), I find the special dice mechanics frustrating and to actively impede the flow of the action.  Given that, I will not be purchasing the game (or any other products in the series using the same dice mechanic), though I would consider playing in another game.

This is an accidental double-post of my first review, due to forum lag.  I tried to delete the topic, but couldn't figure out how.  My apologies.

There is also the basic action sheet that summarizes all the basic action cards on the support page for WFRP.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/wfrp/support/players-guide/wfrp-basic-action-reference.pdf

You may also wish to draw a stance meter or print one off from here:

This is probably a bit off-topic, but how often does equipment loss come up in your game, and how is it approached?  When my PCs are in the field, they tend to carry all of their equipment, so nothing can happen to it back at base.  While in combat, it doesn't seem like there's ever any benefit to dropping a piece of equipment; even if they did, they tend to win their battles and not need to retreat.  It's not like a failure on a test results in equipment destruction.

Andrew Tatro said:

From the Beta Update:

"A critical injury can only be triggered on a successful hit that deals damage.” 

So, if you don't do any damage, you can't activate a critical hit.

venkelos said:

It might also be worth noting that there's an Ork bike in the back of the Only War core that you could use as a baseline for other bike designs.