There are no better or worse ideas, just different ones :) 

As to non-combat characters in combat. I think they should be at a severe disadvantage if they start stabbing or shooting. What helps a lot is killing any silly ideas of learning languages as a skill (I stole this one from someone else, but I forgot who) and just make all languages English (or in my groups case Dutch, but you get the point). That way a rogue can start distracting creatures with lies, or other more social manoeuvres. It also gives you a chance to have the players listen in on monsters griping about guarding doorways and the like. 

In the same spirit, and then I'm far enough off topic for one day :) My player's characters will never die unless the player wants it. They may get interesting scars, go utterly insane and mutate beyond recognition, but they will always come back up, cure and fight another day unless the player wants his character to retire. The reasons are many but in the most basic part. We did not as a group just spend months building up a character and getting to know him or her only to have him die without the right story elements in play. That is what standard NPC's and henchmen are for and with that I do manage to (barely) get back on topic as I now have a way to stop major NPC's/nemesis types from dying with a splay (the returning is never a problem, just give them a scar or some animated new limbs and return the creeps :)

I agree in general with the min/max issue of Warhammer 3 (it has difficult solution).

Regarding armours, we already started to discus this some time ago in another post. What worked for me was to increase armour encumbrance, and favour the gaining of fatigue when wearing armour, although I am still not happy with the rules I developed regarding this last point.

Cheers,

Yepes

There are quite a few tools available already to delay the players when they try to defeat the big bad. Using henchmen and rally steps to weaken the players and force them to use resources before the final fight is one good option. 

But when it comes to the final fight the GM can make the fight quite hard for the PC's already without using any house rules. As dvang mentioned, using Aggression dice to add misfortune to player attacks is an excellent way of making PCs miss (and is an official rule listed in the FAQ). That Trollslayer or Waywatcher won't do any damage at all if he misses. For example, a Troll slayer attacking a T:4, Soak:2, Def 2, WS trained target with an ACE budget of 6/4/2 and 18 wounds (a proper boss monster for a starting group I think). The Troll slayer has WS training (once), correct specialization, STR 5 and is one up in Reckless stance (first round of combat).

As a GM in this situation I know that my monster is in for a world of hurt if the slayer hits with 2 successes using his Double strike. I will then make my best effort to ensure that the player misses his first attack. I will use Parry and add 2 misfortune from the ACE pool. Resulting pool:

4 char, 1 reckless, 1 exp, 1 (specialization)+1 (fortune) fortune 

1 challenge, 7 misfortune (1 from action, 2 from defence, 2 from Parry and 2 from Aggression)

The mean rate of success is (using http://laakmann.free.fr/wfrp/): ~57% and 2 successes is around 30-40% (3 successes is at 21%, the web app does not give a number for 2). The Troll slayer will not be able to hit consistently. If the GM is really mean he will also introduce a rally step when the boss goes below a certain wound threshold. ACE resets at Rally step, so the boss will be hard to hit again.

That said, if you have a group where more than two of the characters are combat focused (and/or more than 3 players), you're going to have to change the encounters by quite a bit to get a proper challenge. A single monster will not be a good way to go in most cases, just due to the good old problem of action inbalance. A good read about how to do boss monsters properly can be found here: http://angrydm.com/2010/04/the-dd-boss-fight-part-1/ (for DnD, but design-wise I think it's spot on also for WFRP, even the act structure is used there).

AM_Odin, great that you got the fight to work!

It's interesting that you are "complaining" (in a loose sense) about both being able to do too much damage AND being able to resist too much damage.

If your boss is too "weak", straight off the card, for your buffed up group of PCs, then give that Rat Ogre boss platemail with 5 soak. Give him more Wounds. Give him a bigger A/C/E budget. Give him advanced Dodge/Parry/Block. Etc.

If your Boss/creatures are having trouble dealing damage to the group's Ironbreaker, give them beefier attack actions.  Trollfeller-strike. Double Attack. Etc. Give the boss a Greatweapon.  Make their weapon exceptional quality for the +1 fortune. Give them an extra training in WS.  Etc.

Or, just have the enemies ignore the Ironbreaker and attack the less armored PCs, as they realize the futility of trying to smack around the heavily armored dwarf.

Alternately, send a mob of gretchin/goblins/rats/etc against the ironbreaker instead of bigger guys. Each hit does a minimum of 1 Wound. So, attack the ironbreaker with 10 goblins/rats. Thats 10 wounds in a single turn (assuming you don't use henchmen rules for them), despite the gromril armor. 

Include/add some Orc archers with their own Rapid Fire, to shoot back at that Waywatcher.

As mentioned, the GM really needs to be aware of his group and how powerful in combat they are (or aren't).  If your group has some powerful combat PCs, you need to be prepared for them.

There really is no need to alter actual game rules to deal with these situations.

I solved my issue with my group one-shotting everything they came across very easily:

I killed the troll slayer.

Then I made them re-write their characters WITHOUT the twenty five point build.

Now they are, as they say in Brettonia "Dans le creek, sans le paddle".

Buff your bad guys, especially in terms of defences, in order to accomodate for larger and more powerful groups. Hero's call is great for this, since you have the enhance sheets. Let him take a little time to prepare something truly horrible, and make sure to have some minions to throw in to take the flak for him.

As I'm not that much into rules nowadays (and too lazy to read the whole thread anyway) I just would like to offer my thoughts here. Beast of Limfjord rpg presents an interesting option to fight the Big Bad. The big beast have different "locations" or "attack" to fight. For example to defeat dragon you could go straight for the head but the claws, flames, tails and body would present "enviromental hazards" along the way. Should you hack the claws of the task to kill the dragon would be simpler. Same style could be used with any opponent. The opposing wargor is too tough to defeat but if you manage to chop his limbs off the task would be simpler. etc.

Or you could go the way I went with a certain spider goddess:

I've run into this sort of problem way too many times.

Similarly, fights that drag on for far too long.

My solution?

I'll get a ton of FLAK for this, especially from the more "old-school" types among you. This solution is very Story-teller friendly, so if any of you worship RPG Pundit and his ilk, skip this post entirely.

Scrap Hit Points.

But don't let the players know that.

Essentially, I have monsters survive long enough to allow 2 things to happen:

1. The Monster gets to do something horrible and bad to the players;

2. the Players get to do something awesome and effective against the monster.

I make sure that when a monster first appears, it gets to succeed (or very nearly succeed) in at least ONE of it's special attacks. If it misses, I narrate the effects on the terrain or environment, so as to make the players go: "oh shit I'm glad we dodged THAT!"

It also avoids the whole tedium of that hero scoring an AMAZING COOL hit that sadly brings the monster down to only 1 or 2 HP, kind of robbing the hero of their victory.

It may even give a chance to the unfortunate players (with TERRIBLE luck with dice rolls) to contribute.

If you don't WANT your carefully crafted villain to die so quickly… then keep them alive a bit longer… or use a tracker to keep track of their life instead of hit points. Advance it depending on the circumstances.

Another option is to have your final encounter have 3 phases, just like a video game boss. Not necessarily SHAPE SHIFTING INTO GIANT FORM, but have the encounter set up in different phases triggered when the villain gets "killed" each time.

My stress at number crunching, keeping track of health levels and worrying about fights being too quick or too long quickly evaporated as soon as I did these things.

Don't worry, I agree with you, Necrozius.

I think that, essentially, ignoring or adjusting the 'boss' NPCs wounds is probably the easiest and best way to go.  Make sure you don't slight the players when they make a good hit … cause something to happen to the Boss. However, while the blow might have killed the Boss with his wounds on the card, you keep him alive for longer such that he can do something.

Remember, WFRP is about the story.

I hadn't really thought of it this way, but I think the comment about using a tracker for a BOSS is a great idea.  It would be easy to use a tracker, for example. 

Something like thus:

Each hit that does damage moves the tracker by one. Exceptionally powerful hits move it by two.  When the tracker reaches the end, the Boss dies, with perhaps one final dramatic action.  The more powerful the Boss, the more spaces you put on it. 6-12 spaces would probably be a typical range of spaces.

While I haven't used a tracker like this myself, I have had situations where the PCs roll very well and land several attacks before the Boss can do much of anything. However, the players don't know the # of wounds of the Boss. So, I describe the damage the boss takes, and describe how injured he is. However, I then keep the Boss alive for 1-2 more turns (despite technically having 0 wounds left) such that he can advance the story and increase the drama of the combat.

There is also the fantastic card call "Half Dead" try it on your bosses 

Another way I'm planning on using a Tracker to simulate a cinematic final boss fights:

The Sword Duel

Make a cross out of the track pieces.

The horizontal portion represents a "tug-of-war", representing each participant's successes and gaining the upper hand. As each side scores a "hit", they get to pull the tug of war toward their side (good guy = green, bad guy = red). Having the tracker in your side gives  you an advantage (fortune points, a bit of narrative control, etc..)

The vertical portion represents changes in location. After both players have each taken an action, move the tracker up. At certain key milestones, the terrain changes. This can represent the fight starting off in the main hall, then the duellists work their way up a staircase, then they're on a balcony, and then they end up on the roof, where the duel ends.

Basically, the duel only ends once the characters end up in the final "location".

All is going well for the hero if he/she is in the green at that point. If they're in the Red, this means that the villain has the upper hand: gloating over the good guy who;s been disarmed, is flat on his back etc…

At that point, I'd allow the hero to take on a permanent critical wound or something to do something awesome and heroic: like pull the villain over the roof's edge but they fall too, or lightning strikes them or whatever.

It could work really well either way.

The fight in Revenge of the Sith would have needed a cross tracker the size of a swimming pool, LOL.

Necrozius said:

I read a lot in these forums about cinematic this, cinematic that… In my opinion,in a similar way as a book is difficult to translate into a good movie, and never without changes; I think an RPG is not meant to emulate movies or pc games. It is more a game for the individual imagination of the players (and GM) and a game where they can act freely and their decision (good or bad) have a big impact.

Where is the problem if a PC shots at the bad guy in the middle of his stupid speech? When I watch a movie, I always wonder why they do not do it. A RPG gives the players this option, to do things differently, their own way. Why a fight has to end up yes or yes with the boss failing from the roof of a building like in many movies? Why it cannot end just because a player cuts the villian's head off with the swing of a big two handed axe?

I am not claiming that what for exemple Necrozius says is bad, if it is fun for you and your players, then it is perfect. It is more a reflexion that RPGs (and imagination) shouldn't be constrained by movies neither by computer games.

Cheers,

Yepes

Yepesnopes said:

Why when I read this, did I think of a loyal npc to the villian, dives into the path of the arrow, and takes one for the boss.

But I have had players I played with who just kill the villian without waiting for any communication, one time thats when they found out it was just a decoy. A thrall to his mistress. Too many villians geting killed before their evil speech was getting annoying, took ages writing thsoe speeches.

DurakBlackaxe said:

Then villians should spend less time writing speeches and more time creating cleaver plans…

I have used cunning in the appropriate situations to apply damage to one of my Leaders henchmen in this way, as a culture will throw himself in the way to save his master while he finishes the ritual to summon a daemon. It makes things more unpredictable for the PC's and forces them to get more creative then just point and shoot, as now the combat characters will seek to engage  the foe before they open fire tieing up as many henchmen as they can. It gives more purpose to the initiative tracker and fore thought….

Yepesnopes said:

Fair enough: but I believe that this is a very subjective topic.

In the end, it all boils down to choice in player group style. A good GM should open communication with the players about what style they wish to use.

My players prefer to experience dramatic scenes that emulate those from books, movies, comics and sometimes from video games that we like. We find RAW hit point tracking a bit tedious and often anti-climactic, resulting in things like random player death*, villains being killed too quickly, or HP sponge monsters which turn fights into overly long battles of attrition.

In short, we prefer the narrativist approach, rather than more traditional number crunching. WFRP 3's elegant solution to that are the Trackers. We love that tool and I try to introduce it as often as possible to keep the flow lively and… well… "cinematic".

Different styles, of course.

*- regarding random player death: some will argue that this sort of thing is SUPPOSED to happen in RPGs, even ones not as grimdark as WFRP or Dark Heresy. Not saying that is WRONG, it just isn't my group's style. See also: realism.