Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay stands for gritty grimdark goodness ⚒️ RPG Review & Mechanics

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) 4th edition is a tabletop RPG by Cubicle 7. It is a beautifully illustrated and design game for those searching for a darker, grittier alternative to D&D.
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🔥 Thanks to MooMan from the Rat Catcher’s Guild Discord server for helping me clear up some rules.
🔥 Special thanks to Cubicle 7 for providing the materials for review. I was not compensated in any way for this review and all opinions are exclusively my own.
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[@TheRobinholm]

+1 for that Jabberslythe sound!

[@DaveThaumavore]

Robin Holm Thank you! I had fun with that but I didn’t think anyone noticed.

[@pancakeonions]

@@DaveThaumavore Oh, we noticed. Very scary indeed. Can we record and reply it for our games? ;)

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@pancakeonions For sure!

[@hellsing507]

Just pointing out the only reason Humans are so widespread in the Empire is because Dwarves mostly stay in their mountain cities, Halflings are a minor race that latch onto human populations, and Elves are big isolationists.

[@yuvalgabay1023]

Warhammer:so we human just taken the place of dominant species because the other ones killed each other in wars 40k: so we did an epic level genocide

[@scelonferdi]

Ultimately a big part of it is that different species/peoples form separate nations or civilizations I'm Warhammer. So unlike in DnD Elder Scrolls or Witcher there's no big mixed society. It's not even like middle earth, where they are largely separated to, but form largely friendly blocks. That's ofc a result of the setting being made for a wargame where different races are different factions that all need to have reasons to fight each other.

[@amandag.6186]

​@@scelonferdi yeah, Dwarfs may want to battle an Empire army because, let's say, the elector count didn't pay the Dwarfs for building a fort or something like rhat

[@AEGISDEFENSE]

Also, Elves abandoned their colonies in the Old World due to conflict with the Dark Elves.

[@silurusdominus]

Possible explanation to 19:58: Rule book, page 234: "Chaos spells are those practiced by those who’ve lost their souls to Chaos." So in my opinion chaos spells doesnt give any corruption points, because they are used only by people, who already have fallen to chaos, they are corrupted 100%. They are chaos controlled npc-s, or pc-s who just lost to chaos, and they can cast chaos spells only because of this. I think pc-s which are not fallen to chaos and are still controlled by the players cant use them. So a player's character cannot use chaos spells until not fallen to chaos and slipped out of players controll by it (becoming a chaos controlled npc). Supplement: Rule book, Page 184: "Corruption Limits A soul can only withstand so much corruption before it collapses upon itself, leaving a mutated, gibbering mess. Should you survive long enough to gain more mutations than your Toughness Bonus, or more mental corruptions than your Willpower Bonus, you have fallen to Chaos, your soul completely lost to the uncaring Chaos Gods. At this point, it’s time to create a new character. Your current one is now damned, becoming an NPC controlled by the GM, meaning you may well see the wretched creature again…"

[@DaveThaumavore]

Cornelius Wells I totally accept that logic.

[@silurusdominus]

@@DaveThaumavore Thank you for your response! Best warhammer fantasy rpg 4th edition vid on youtube! I watched it several times :)

[@wicrosoft8091]

Players can cast chaos spells but you gain 1corruption point when learning each chaos spell

[@silurusdominus]

@@wicrosoft8091 Where is the rule behind this?

[@filip4767]

I wonder why you cannot become the chosen of one of the Chaos gods

[@dragonsnacksdan9063]

Man I LOVE how in depth you get on these reviews!! So informative!

[@NefariousKoel]

Great vid! I enjoy how detailed you are with these reviews. Thanks!

[@ElwoodShort]

This is going to be a perfect way to introduce my players to the system, you have done a great job of explains the major mechanics in sufficient detail, and summarised stuff such as religion and magic really well. Any new player watching this should have a good idea of how things work, and what options are available to them. [cubicle 7 are doing a good job producing support material for this as well, great quality adventure modules and campaign settings, some of it available free as downloads] WFRP was always my favourite fantasy game, great to see a revitalised edition, that truly captures the spirit of the original, whilst streamlining some of the mechanics.

[@babissarris5003]

Amazing videos!!!! Thank you very much! I haven t seen any other RPG reviews that are so exciting! Your channel deserves to grow! And it will!! Wish you the best!

[@Adamon82]

this is so great, thank you for the work you put into it. will start as a GM for the first time in this setting and you helped me a lot to understand the system.

[@Christophecj]

Probably the best RPG review and description I've ever watched on KZbin! I will defo use it to intrduce the game mechanics to my players. Thanks and congrats!

[@TheAardvark57]

Great introduction to the system. Thank you for making this!

[@antilogic01]

This is a tremendously informative video, thank you!

[@knight_lautrec_of_carim]

Very nice review, love the editing.

[@CarlosRodriguez-dd4sb]

Great overview of the game. Moo Man created a sanctioned module for Foundry VTT, so he is to be commended. I love this game, although it is crunchy compared to some simpler RPGs. Like you, I enjoy the careers - they offer a unique take and open up new areas for roleplay. Lastly, a kind word for Cubicle 7 - I'm impressed with their commitment to the players. I had to contact them a couple of times and they have always been extremely thoughtful and helpful. I highly recommend the game and setting.

[@markbrantingham3656]

Great review! Very helpful and well done video. Informative, concise and detailed.

[@CesarIsaacPerez]

Cool video. I'm really interested in playing but decided on ordering the started set first.

[@Mast3rmind24]

the music rocks, great video bro

[@OldPaw]

You killed it again, your video's make me want to play this game, wield your power wisely sir.

[@Pastromi93]

Your reviews are awesome! Would love to learn what books you use and how you play!

[@jameswight6259]

Fantastic review! Thanks. That combat system sounds like it would take a while to properly get the hang of at the table!

[@dnaseb9214]

None-humans are rare in the setting because you play in the Empire who is a human nation. And the none-humans are travelers from distant lands. Warhammer isnt like DnD, there is no melting pot of races, they all live in seperate kingdoms, often slaying without mercy if the others try to traspass (wood-elves).

[@Bigbabki]

>often slaying without mercy > gives one example Human ,Elf and Dwarves have a very common and quite okayish relationship in fantasy. In fact Dwarf and human have very close tie thanks to Sigmar and the sight of Dwarves in the empire is quite common (but they have a huge tendency to stick to their holds because dwarf) which is why I would bump up dwarf and halfing population in the rulebook personally, because the "halfling kingdom" the moot is in the middle of the empire, they have huge family (fast breeder) and do love to hang out with other races. Ogre are also """""friendly""""" ,as long as you can feed them, otherwise you might become the food. but they are nomadic and quite few and not present in the book. Elf (the not wood elves) are the ones who taught mortal magic but they also stick to their island, sees us as inferior and most of the one in the empire would be traveler or diplomat, there would be almost no elven settlement in the empire and this is why they have a low population But waay bigger than wood elves that are basically local racist ,like THE racist If you spot one in the empire, they are either here to murder someone that broke a twig in their forest a decade ago , or because they got banned from their forest

[@wylde_hunter]

One of my favourite roleplaying games of all time. The 4E combat is a bit clunky. I love playing characters such as Witchhunters and ratcatchers! The scenarios are well-written too.

[@Ptaku93]

so, so much crunch, it's unbelievable

[@darvidoba6702]

Great Video, but you missed the armour in the traits of the rat ogre :D. Dying is also likely because of bleeding or poison.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Thanks for the addendum!

[@dzable6585]

Any chance you plan to do a Zweihander video? I literally cannot find a Zweihander overview video that is close to the quality of your videos.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Azalin17 That’s because no one’s read the whole damn thing. lol. I might. It would take me 3x-4x more work. But I might.

[@itsatraplol]

Dave Thaumavore I would support this!

[@JayTheTapp]

​@@DaveThaumavore I support this, at least a basic overview of zwei and a comparison vs Warhammer.

[@ronnieoo1341]

Very nice vid, thanks

[@honeyiscool1045]

Excellent!

[@Eastcoastrios]

Great video, I wish I could find a group to help me learn how to play. I am so interested in this!

[@diamend85]

thanks for your great intro Videos

[@CassiusKarsa]

Very good job. Thank you.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Thank you!

[@nagashtheforsaken]

My favorite RPG! So well done. Not perfect, but very exciting.

[@jimpyre5038]

Nice work. Warhammer has some serious crunch....

[@MrTopHatZombie]

How does 4E compare to 2E? Which is better in most peoples opinion?

[@Blargaha]

.... Eh, it's not that humans have won out in the setting, it's that the core setting takes place in the human lands Nonhumans are the absolute majority in other parts of the world

[@AEGISDEFENSE]

I hate the class tree change from 2nd to 4th though.

[@daddystabz]

Have you ever looked at Zweihander Revised? It is this game's direct competition. I'm curious which you prefer.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Personally I think Zweihander is a hacky mess. But the person who created it is an aggressive promoter and has done a lot to see to that game’s success commercially.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Support the channel by joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/thaumavore Newsletter sign-up: bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter

[@theclash24]

Does it add mass battle system?

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@theclash24 Nope, at least not in the core book here. They might have covered it in some supplement.

[@horizonbrave1533]

Awesome video! I'm currently playing a play by post game of 4e...some of the rules are very vague, and overly complicated at times..things like shields, criticals, certain damage etc. can get crufty in certain fringe scenarios..but overall very very fun

[@DaveThaumavore]

Yeah, any game of this size is going to have some squishy spots. I do appreciate one passage in the book at the very beginning of the rules section that says to throw out ANY rule that gets in the way of fun. It's not like we need permission to do that, but it's cool that the authors acknowledged it. They even refer to it as the Golden Rule.

[@plissken2245]

I bought 4e and played just a few sessions but didn't like the new rules. Still have my 2e books!

[@diamend85]

ok not gonna GM that game.. thanks for the great review (still gonna keep asking for savage world and genesys)

[@andrewweber958]

I wish there was more materials for this setting.

[@yuvalgabay1023]

Should we tell him

[@dane3038]

How well could this system be used in a Hyboria setting? I was looking at Runequest but the system and world seem too strongly linked.

[@DaveThaumavore]

I feel like Hyboria is a bit of a more primitive setting that this one. But if your players aren't sticklers, you could get away with it.

[@ElwoodShort]

Get deluxe runequest if you can... you can use that to run almost anything that is fantasy, from bronze age feel to medieval. it is pretty flexible.

[@christopherrowley7506]

Mythras is a generic version of Runequest. it's pretty sweet I suggest checking it out

[@diamend85]

how would you rate legend by mongoose compared to warhammer?

[@baduizt]

Technically, you don't roll Damage. That threw me for a second. You roll to attack and just use those SLs. There isn't a second Damage roll.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Yep, I realized that by the time I got to my Soulbound review.

[@christopherrowley7506]

Looks cool. I hate the metacurrency though. That stuff is always so poorly implemented in real games. If it's the entire function of the game (like Fate Core) then it works out. But mixing hard crunch with meta crunch tends to kill the RP vibe, in my opinion. That's the only reason why I'm not sold on the Burning Wheel too

[@richardkocksworthy8423]

Halfl in ng gods?

[@godfreemorals]

I'll stick with Zweihänder, but good review!

[@christopherrowley7506]

Why? I'm trying to decide between the two

[@Sara3346]

Boo Skaven should be on the same level as humans on the table they are canonically even more numerous than humans :-/ Otherwise seems like a good start for rebooting this wonderful game though.

[@davewilson13]

Did you ever check out the 3rd edition? It was interesting.

[@DaveThaumavore]

David Wilson Everyone I talked to told me to avoid it. But I’m sure it had some merit. I should probably give it a read.

[@MrVarder]

Afaik Warhammer Fantasy RPG is about Sigmar's Empire. You know. A human kingdom. No shit humans are prevalent there. Pretty sure if the game was about Asur Empire, there'd be 90% high elves.

[@abstractbybrian]

Love the main rules but I have to say, it's really dark. Can some of that be taken out and not break the game?

[@DaveThaumavore]

JBL Creations Good question. I guess it depends on what you want to throw out.

[@1digesto]

Yes you can. Chaos and chaos mutations aren't built into character creation, and anyway including chaos in every single adventure gets very tedious. The level of 'darkness' is up to you, although in fairness most published adventures do tend toward the darkish side and involve chaos to some extent.

[@kerel995]

Brilliant video. Look no further.

[@kerel995]

Apparently there are 30 other reviewers on yt and they can not tackle 10% of what you explained here without 40 minutes of stuttered offtopic nonsense. Great quality video by knowledgeable, passionate, well researched and to the point content creator.

[@blinddog4288]

Great game story of Warhammer, but way too many rules and complicated !!!!

[@biblequotesdaily6618]

interesting how both chaos and the life lore are green..........

[@scelonferdi]

One thing I find weird, is that success levels are determined by difference in the 10s digits rather than full 10s (so 14 vs 24 would be one degree but 15 vs 24 wouldn't). This causes weird bumps in chance when passing a 9 during progression. Also not a fan of the magic system, as it doesn't really capture the spirit of the TT one . There are 3 important aspects of that I'd like to see: The limited amount of power in a given place at a given time (ambient energy pool shared by all wizards), the risk reward play of how much energy to draw and finally the strong focus and limited range of effects in each lore, arcane spells really mess with that. Not every wizard should be able to heal!

[@swashbukk]

I do not think 4e makes it grimdark for the players. There are too many talents which lets you switch dice results to avoid failures. It has very nice ideas about what your character does in downtime, but this system is far from being dangerous for the players who know how to create their character, imho.

[@richardextall2002]

I still have the first edition, but also have this edition. I love this game a lot, but from a players perspective, it's very grim with survivability chances that are very low. Playing a character with one leg, a missing eye and no fingers on one hand is not fun. Forcing maiming on characters may be realistic but it's not fun, which is the whole reason we play these games.

[@chezratte1357]

the chart where you roll about your characters race. It is not about dominion of the races, more where most of the things are happening and in the homes of the other races (maybe except for halfling and to a certain amount with dwarves) aren't really that welcoming to other races, especially elves. For example in Ulthuan, the home of the high elves, it would basically be 100% highelves (there might be a slight option to find wood elves or even rarer a human in that place, but you need a lot of explanation why. The Empire of the humans is right in the center of everything, so everyone has to travel through it.

[@martincampbell4211]

So one thing I never understood about the warhammer rpg is why civilian classes exist, if I'm playing this game I want to be a human footsoldier or merc. Why does the game start so low to the ground? Do you need to be a civilian and prestige up into a combat class?

[@1digesto]

In 1E, your starting class was whatever you were doing before turning to adventuring. Some of those were good 'adventuring' classes, but limited your ability to travel or otherwise do as you pleased - a pit-fighter, for example, would typically stay at one arena, paying off a debt, enslaved to a master, or working off a prison sentence (medieval community service lol). Ideally you would progress your character to an advanced (adventuring) class at creation. I believe the same principle has been retained in 4e. It was also an option for players who wanted to start from absolute scratch and play through every (major) moment in their characters lives. WFRP was also one of the very first games where players didn't have to play a "combat" class at all - one who was all about political/aristocratic intrigue, mercantile affairs and the like.

[@Docktavion]

It was a counter point to D&D and fantasy hero trope movies which had players being hero’s from the start (chosen of the gods, seventh son, etc) with over the top access to spells and combat classes etc. GW wanted to make it more grounded that any one can get wrapped up in the continuing eternal conflict of chaos’s expansion across the world, irregardless of where your from or what you used to do. Like magic in whfrp it’s always unpredictable and potential deadly to even the initiated unlike D&D which have magic users generally been the strongest party member (depending on build and spell choice)

[@Atom.Storm.]

They removed Movement, attacks, cool and leadership? What the fuck?

[@adzi6164]

they were artifacts from the wargame... Cool and Leadership as stats were already removed in the second edition. Meanwhile the Attacks stat worked kinda weird, as having more Attacks was way too powerful for a single stat advancement (even if it was greatly restricted by careers). And, in the 2nd edition, there was the problem of anyone being able to only defend against 2 hits max, regardless of stats, skills, gear or abilities(without soft-using Fate, at least) - a single Parry and a single Dodge (even in the 1st edition you could parry as many hits as you had Attacks) - which sounds realistic, until you have a fight between characters both having 3 or more Attacks.

[@alexfietta]

Honestly I find the art uninspiring. Is like they said to the illustrator: "Yeah, right put some scrolls, skulls, bones and junk on clothes and shit of some people from a renassance fair". It's like he never saw the classical illustration of second edition, or the army books of the wargame, which i find far superior.

[@giddi3968]

I respect your opinion but I think the art looks great

[@rpgchronicler]

Scrolls, skulls, bones and junk on clothes are also seen for humans in 40k as well.

[@Zalachean]

i was told 4e is shit.

[@psykodamperen]

I find fourth edition to be absolutely horrendous and not worth playing and I can't handle or inconsistencies

[@dangercat8919]

"They won out through brutality and dominion". You're role-playing in a human land... people didn't travel all that much. If you went to the elven forests, the chart would be reversed.

[@MetulManiac]

"This suggests humanity won out over the other races, probably through brutality and dominion" Yeah... you're projecting just a wee bit there mate. This isn't 40k. The Empire is a human empire, thus the vast majority of people within it are human. Elves and Dwarves are both dying races but more or less allies of the Empire. Most dwarves and elves don't want to live in the empire. It's shite. Standard of living is crap compared to their own nations. And halflings have never formally organized enough to have any serious sway in the empire. And gnomes don't even fucking exist in the proper lore. They're some obscure rpg thing I don't even know about them. The other good races would rather live anywhere other than the empire, but are more than happy for the humans to serve as the bulwark against chaos and fight their battles for them. The orcs and beastmen are vicious violent monsters so any brutality against them is justified. So yeah in the WFRP universe the only people that could really be considered dominated by the Empire is the halflings, and they'd have been eaten by orcs or worse if not for the empire anyway.

[@PeterKoperdan]

Great setting but horrible horrible rules 😵

[@guinotrool]

My god the system so boring. Sheet looks like calculator