Perhaps one of the most important things that one needs to do with almost any role playing game system is to keep an accurate accounting of the character(s) that you are using. While I disdain the use of pre made character record sheets, the newest release of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game has a fantastic item in this respect. The product in question is the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Character Pack and when I first discovered that the game had been revamped by Black Industries a couple of months ago, I bought all the books that were at my local gaming store EXCEPT this item. That was a major oversight on my part.
I've been playing Warhammer since the late 80's and back then, the only character record sheets to be had were the sample sheets in the back of the massive and highly unorganized main book (see my review A Grim World of Perilous Adventure). Therefore, when I bought the new rules, I glanced at the character sheets pack and quickly forgot about them. After all, it was so much cheaper and easier to just use a file folder or sheet of paper to create a record sheet for this game.
Upon preparing for the first game with my newly found gaming group (who had been playing Star Wars and were giving resistance to trying "new" games) I discovered that I really DID need this product because the game has been changed dramatically. I'll speak more on these changes when Epinions has Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Core Rules Book added to the database.
What to Expect:
When you remove the shrink wrap from this item, you may find yourself cursing because the binder of the "book" just falls away. I know I was mentally cussing Black Industries for producing such a flimsy product that the cover came off with the plastic. Wait, hold on right there, that's supposed to do that. The colorful "cover" is just a wrap around the legal pad style bundle of about 100 character sheets.
On the inside of the "cover" is a collection of about 30 character pictures that those artistically inclined players can use as examples to create their own images from. These highly detailed drawings show the clothing styles and races of how they should look for this game.
Then you will find two things. The pad of character sheets (what you are buying this for) and a 16 page booklet with all kinds of neat stuff in it. More on the booklet later.
The Record Sheet:
The game of Warhammer has dozens, perhaps hundreds of character careers. One would think that having so many would make this product a collection of many different types of sheets (so as to give records for all the careers in the game) but there is really just a single format needed for every character in the game. Each sheet is double sided with the most important items on the front.
You have all the normal stuff for any game here. The personal details, stats, weapons, armor, experience and movement. Then you will find a couple of things I have never before seen on a character sheet: Player information, armor points with hit locations (a hold over from the original rules), and an Action Summary chart. That chart is worth the price of the record sheets by itself! It has listed every possible action that a character might want to attempt during combat and how much time (full round, half round) said action takes. This saves a ton of page turning in looking up rules (a problem the first release of the game had) because everything is defined right there on the sheet.
On the back side you will find a complete list of skills (your character won't have all of these) and the Advanced Skills (of which you will prolly have very few). In the old Warhammer, you either had a skill or you didn't and the chance of success was based on one of the 22 values in your character profile. The new game is similar in that you have it or not, but now you can improve the skill by up to 20% by spending experience points on it or training it a 2nd or 3rd time in later careers.
This game also has something new called Talents. These were also in the old version, but were treated as if they were just skills that you had to be born with. So you can list your talents here as well. Some talents can be "learned" as you move from one career to another and many skills are related to a talent, either gaining a bonus to the skill or giving a bonus to the talent.
The last thing on this side is a section for listing your trappings (items needed to do your career's actual job) and money.
The Booklet:
This is a super item it have. All the basics you need for creating a character are reprinted right here. All the tables that you have to consult when making your character are reprinted from the core rules book on the 1st two pages. Granted, the details aren't here, but one could pretty much make his entire character (minus the descriptions of what skills/talents do and what the advance scheme of the starting career is) from this alone.
That is followed by an expansive set of tables that will randomly generate names for each of the four races. A very handy thing for me because I have a terrible time coming up with good names for characters. As a Game Master, that's a bad thing. Then there is a small section dedicated to creating heraldry and area of origin for your characters.
Perhaps the best part of this booklet is the last tidbits. A summary of all the spells and combat actions. Here you will find a list of all the player spells (note the Dark Lore spells are generally not available to players, thus are not listed here) grouped by type (Petty Magic, Lesser Magic, Arcane Lores). Each spell is followed by its casting number (basically the initiative factor for the spell) and the length of time needed to complete the casting (half action to as much as 24 minutes!) There is also a Spell Grimoire that can be easily photocopied on the back page of the booklet for those characters that cast spells.
The combat actions listing is great. Every possible action you could possibly want to make during a fight is right here complete with a full description of what the action allows and how long it takes to complete. In the older game this was easy to determine; you could either attack or do something else. The new rules take into account that most people who fight for a living are somewhat trained, thus they can do more than just attack. All the details are listed on these two pages.
Overall, this is a good investment for those who intend play this game for a long period of time. Don't waste your money on this if you are just wanting to run a single character. The only real flaw that I can see in this product is the same one that Warhammer has always had with character sheets. Each time you change careers in the game, you will have to transfer the info to a new character sheet because there is only space for a single career advance scheme on them. This is the exact reason I ignored this product at first, however the new format of the game made my home made sheets obsolete and I didn't have time to redesign before the game. Still, I'm pretty happy with this and that is saying a lot.
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