OTHER CLASSES IN FIRSTHAMMER RPG

The first edition warhammer rules provide us with but 2 classes, Fighter and Wizard, and in many ways the Warhammer fantasy battle system has always been about those two classes and its variants.

In fact, the skill system of Firsthammer provides some additional flavours to both classes, as certain skills would make your character also a ranger (trapper, tracker, woodsman), bard (Actor, Minstral) or rogue (pickpocket, conman, transvestite).

The few related publications of WD and a few miniature boxed sets also provide us with the idea that a Wizard may be role-played as priest (Thistlewood Scenario, WD45) and Fighters as Thieves (Thistlewood, Dorian Redhorn & the Lizard King -lizardmen boxed set, Watch Out There's a Thief about -WD51). But aside from the “ Watch Out There's a Thief about” article, both the cleric class and thief class can be viewed as a role-played variant of the wizard and fighter class respectively.

In many ways, this is fine. It requires some creativity of the players and GM, but one can easily figure out that an Avarice aligned Fighter or Wizard with the Pickpocket and/or Conman skill(s) can be role-played as Rogue more than Fighter or Wizard, or a player may decide his Good Aligned Wizard is actually a priest of some religion, rather than a student of the arcane... But how would the Firsthammer skills come in to play for Clerics? Well, a wizard with the sailor skill might be a priest to a Sea God, a wizard with the Trader skill might have turned his back on his previous profession of greed to tend to the needs of the soul. Smart players and GM's can work something out.

In the 2^nd edition scenario pack Bloodbath at Orc's Drift, we are presented with another kind of thief-type character, the Half-Orc spy and also a (drunken) Druid.

Let's take a deeper look at how these other classes are handled in Oldhammer scenario's and articles.

WD 45: Thistlewood, Meet the Oldhammer Cleric and Warhammer's first Thief

Thistlewood is the first White Dwarf published scenario for Warhammer, and provides us with the First Cleric: Bishop Milendon, and the first Thief: Foro Malas (NPC).

Bishop Milendon is what one might call a 'themed character', a Mastery 4 wizard whose spells are chosen based on what the scenario designer found fitting for a cleric. Such as they are: Cure Light injury, Blessing, gift of tongues, flight, aura of mighty resistance, Telepathy, aura of steadfastness, hold door, mystic mists, aura of invisibility, banish undead, invisibility, inspiration and wall shaker. He has some religiously themed trappings in the form of a silver crucifix and the Mace of the White Lord (magic weapon, +2 to hit and kill) and has a heroic characteristics profile. A bad-ass character this, though he lacks armour (may be remedied by spells). Also, he is unaffected by Fear and Terror.

The Cleric as “themed wizard” has remained a staple for WFB scenario writers throughout editions to handle priests, and there are a few WD and Citadel Journal scenario's were Priests are featured as wizards using particular spells or lores. For example, the priest of Taal in the 5^th/6^th edition versions of the Maisontaal Abbey scenario is treated as Level 2 or 3 wizard with the Amber/Beast lore of magic. I think this is also influenced by 1^st edition WFRP, where most priests use, with some restrictions, the basic magic types, rather than having special priest spells although Druids get their own lore of Druidic magic.

So, being a Cleric in Firsthammer is an option for players, but mainly as character background and theme than a mechanical decision like in D&D.

Bishop Milendon is pursuing a thief named Foro Malas, who is in fact, a Fighter with Move 5 (rather than 4 as normal for humans), WS, BS and I of 8, 2 wounds and 1 attack. His equipment is a light crossbow and a curved dagger, nothing else. Also, no mention is made of any thieving skills, only that he managed to make off with a relic of the Bishop's temple.

In any case, one must house-rule firsthammer thievery anyway, so why not base it around initiative tests to accomplish certain tasks, or just have player ingenuity decide things with ad hoc GM rulings when special situations pop up?

Lizardmen Boxed set: Dorian Redhorn

Dorian Redhorn is another “themed” character, nothing in his characteristics clearly mark him out as thief (he's just a basic hero more or less), but his choice of magic items in the scenario he stars in have definitely a roguish, thieving-based theme.

WD51: Watch out, there's a Thief about, WFRP design notes

This article in WD 51 gives a set of tables and skills to generate Thieves in Warhammer games, pre-WFRP, and is in fact, presented as a sneak peek of the 'forthcoming WFRP rules'. The rules are said to have been play-tested, but I can't imagine them to be “balanced” for a role playing campaign as presented in Volume 3 of the white box. The reason I think so is because of the random characteristic bonuses granted to (starting) thieves of various kinds. Using these rules, it is entirely possible to start your thief character with Weapon Skill or Bow Skill 10!

The presented Thieves' Skills are well conceived though, and most of them were kept with little modification for the 1^st edition of WFRP, so if you're interested in the history of that system, WD51 is well worth checking out.

For 1sthammer role-play, the article is a mixed bag, the rules for generating thieves are not based on the character generation rules of 1^st edition and unbalanced when combined with the volume 3 system. However, the article does finally give detailed rules for the Pickpocket skill and offers some rules for actions that could come up in an adventure but are not covered in 1^st ed. Vol.3 and some new weapons. It's value to me thus lies in the rules provided for bluffing, blathering, grapnels, pistols, throwing knives, bombs, lock-picking, jumping, spotting (traps) and picking pockets.

Bloodbath at Orc's Drift: Lock-picking, sneak-attacking half orc spies ...and also: Druids

This scenario pack was written for 2^nd edition, but I include it here because it presents two interesting character classes not found elsewhere in WFB material: the Spy and the Druid.

The spy is a Half-orc with some characteristic advances, among others a +6 to initiative (Initiative 9)! Also he can pick the lock of his prison on a 3+ (d6) and back-stab an enemy on a 3+ (d6) as well. The back-stab allows the spy to strike a blow against an enemy he attacks in the rear without the enemy being able to strike back at the spy for that turn. Elegant way to handle that rule in a Warhammer battle if you ask me.

These special rules could be used in a rules-light RPG variant of WFB. I'd probably make it a variant on Wizard Levels: the spy starts with one level each in lock-pick and back-stab, succeeding in such actions when he rolls a 6 on a d6. Advancing the skills would give a +1 to the roll, up to a maximum ability of 3+ on a d6 (level 4). lock picking tools would give a +1 bonus to lock-picking, while lock quality should also modify the required score, though a 1 should always count as failed attempt.

As pickpocket is already a skill available to all characters, and 1^st edition characteristic advancement is generally uniform (though with wizards needing more XP to advance fighting stats), one only has to decide at which experience levels these two skills can be advanced. Alternatively, one might make an alternative advancement table for thieves that sets them apart from fighters. Maybe by offering advances to wounds and attacks at later levels than the fighter.

Bloodbath also gives us rules for a Druid, Snart, again a modified wizard, who may have some newly designed spells one would later find among the druid spells in WFRP. He is restricted in his magic and his spell allocation rules differ from the standard rules, giving him access to battle magic spells up to level 2 and elementalist spells up to level 4, though he may only have one spell of each lore per level available (so max. 6 spells in total). He may exchange elementalist spells for the special druid spells.

Snart is, as far as I know, the only Priest-type character in pre-6^th edition WFB to have actual special rules based on his profession, and it poses interesting idea's for having a Priest class in 2^nd/3d editon WFB role-playing scenario's.

Edition 3+ Specialist troops

In 3d edition, Warhammer had moved into wargaming territory by and large, relegating roleplaying adventures to its sister game WFRP. This edition did feature various specialist troop-types such as berserkers and foresters, but also assassins. Many specialist troops could be regarded as ranger variants (animal handlers, foresters, skirmishers, missile elites) or fighters (Berserkers, Flagellants, shock elites). The assassin rules basically give a character figure the ability to 'Hide in crowds' (i.e. a warhammer regiment) and perform a sneak attack. That's all there is to it. Would I try to RPG with the 3d edition rules, this would need some work, or should be substituted for the rules of Bloodbath's Half-orc Spy. Third edition does in some ways provide a class and level system with the elite-troops and hero levels rules, though does not provide campaign-play advice, though one might look to the later Realms of Chaos supplements for inspiration on XP rewards (favour points in RoC) and experience thresholds for advances. WH40K:RT is another source for a simple XP system. A player character could start as a +1 Shock Elite (fighter level 1) and progress through the Shock Elite upgrades to 5 hero and beyond with 25 hero as the final level.

Conclusion

So, thieves and clerics in WFB scenario's are more or less, characters with a particular background or theme, in rare cases provided with special rules (Bloodbath at Orc's Drift), defined rules for these character-types eventually appearing in WFRP, which, despite it's obvious links to the wargame, is quite a different rules system. What would you prefer in an Oldhammer role-play variant as I envision it? Background flavour and player preferences or actual (house) rules?

The WD51 rules for Thieves are in my eyes, unbalanced if combined with the roleplaying rules of 1^st. ed. Vol.3, though gives some good idea's on skill use and handling RPG actions such as jumping gaps and looking for traps.