Edit!

This game is partly a D&D clone and it shows. Career Classes, Alignments, and a few other things are part of WFRP and can be excised if necessary, but I see more odious elements more deserving of editing. I suspect that few people make use of "The Random Treasure Table" or the "Wandering Creatures" section. What is redundant is the section on careers at the back of the book, career entries and exits should have been integrated into the career section and the space at the book turned over to some other use.

Templates

WFRP pioneered this idea, but didn't explore it to its fullest. Its time that WFRP more fully employed its own concepts to the fullest. The champion, minor and major heroes, and in particular the Vampire profile all created the possibility of profiles that could be stacked on top of existing profiles yet this was never fully realized: it could have been extended to skeletons, zombies, and other entities.

Magic Needs Fixing

The magic system needs to be reassessed. The grievances are many, but I'll touch upon a handful. Most egregious is the absurd experience points necessary for wizards, and in particular specialists, to advance up levels. The experience point costs therefore need to be adjusted.

The magic point test rules are quirky and unnecessary and add little to the feel of magic in WFRP. They also penalize the lower level wizards who are often quite underpowered.

Specialists should perhaps be removed, they are after all relics of earlier WFB systems where every wizard was able to at least call upon some battle magic. I think however that Wizard's Apprentices should be allowed to move into other level one careers without ever becoming Wizards.

Advance profile changes should be created, there is little reason for all the various wizards to have the same profiles.

Fix the Bloody Naked Dwarf

The breakdown in game mechanics is nowhere more important than in the relative dominance of the Toughness trait in the game. Through fate or design it is possible for player's to acquire Toughness scores that literally make the character well nigh invincible to nearly any harm, hence the term that has been coined for this phenomenon where Dwarfs wearing naught but their birthday suits are able to sustain more damage than heavily armored ogres, trolls, or even dragons.

Scale

The WFRP system relies partly upon a 1-10 scale that provides a pretty limited range. Thus bears are as strong and tough as many humans and dwarfs, a snotling as weak as an owl, and a 10 to 15 foot dragon turtle as strong as an orc (the same black orc is as strong as a troglodyte).

To address this issue WFRP needs to institute some sort of scale rule that allows larger creatures a small advantage of creatures with the same stats but less size.

Art

As much as I love a book's art, rarely do I think any element of a book requires full page art. You may disagree with me, but I think a half page piece or quarter page piece is a more efficient use of space and full-page pictures rarely have the detail necessary for that size an image.

Furthermore WFRP needs to distinguish itself as a separate entity of sorts - yes it is part of the Warhammer world but its time for all new art. By "new" I don't mean "new" to WFRP, but "new" and unique to all the WFRP line.

Conclusion

WFRP has aged and it shows. Sure it can still keep up with the pack, but I think WFRP should be defining trends and new approaches, not struggling to keep up! I'm not arguing for WFRP to be like other games, but for WFRP to take full advantage of some of the trends that it started, such as its attention to background, its flexibility for character development, and of course its atmosphere. All of these can be served by reexamining and redeveloping the game to fully attain the potential that it has defined for itself.

-- by Rev. Lepper