Review: Fourth Edition Rulebook (Part 3: Religion and Magic)

My epic review of the WFRP Corebook continues. Part 1 covered the basic system, skills and combat, while Part 2 covered careers and advancement. This third post covers religion and magic.

Also, please check out Part 1 for an explanation of what to expect and not to expect from this review!

Religion

Religion feels much the same as it was in 2nd edition, with the familiar pantheon of deities. Each deity gets a good full-page treatment (with a nice illustration of their portfolio, see examples below). I like that they’ve noted the differences between the Old Gods, or Northern Gods, dating back to the time of Sigmar (Taal, Rhya, Ulric, Manaan), compared to the more recent Classical Gods (or Southern Gods) imported from Tilea/Estalia (Verena, Shallya, Ranald, Myrmidia, Khaine), with Sigmar sitting aside from both groups. (Weirdly, they list Morr as an Old God, which I think it is an error, given that he’s Verena’s wife, Khaine’s brother, and father to Shallya and Myrmidia… maybe he’s supposed to be an Old God who was adopted into the Classical pantheon?)

Rhya, goddess of pumpkins

Verena, objectively the best deity

Once again non-human gods get short shrift; while the main Human pantheon get a full page each, the Dwarf/Elf/Halfling gods have to make do with two pages between them! However you do get more information than in previous editions, with a full four gods listed for Halflings, and a whole three-part pantheon for Elves, which are rather fascinating (while frustratingly brief!).

You also get told – which I don’t recall ever reading previously – that non-humans don’t have Priests in the same way as Humans.  Halflings don’t venerate their gods at all. Dwarfs seek to emulate their gods, and if you want to be a Dwarf priest, you’re instructed to choose an appropriate career (e.g. Slayer for Grimnir, Miner for Grungni, Artisan for Valaya). Elves do worship their gods, but don’t use the religious magic system (“Blessings” in WFRP 4 parlance). Instead they just use choose appropriate Colour Magic to represent their chosen deity (e.g. Kurnos the Hunter would get Amber Magic, Isha would get Jade). This is interesting – more than we’ve ever been told before – but again frustratingly scanty. For instance there’s a (proscribed) Elven deity of temptation and mental manipulation – what colour would a priest of this god choose? How about the god of the oceans (an obvious equivalent of Manaan or Stromfels) – there doesn’t seem to be an appropriate colour of magic for them.

Priestly spells

Priests essentially get Petty Magic and Arcane Magic, although for them its called Blessings and Miracles. These are much the same as in 2nd edition – Blessings are unexciting single-target buffs (+10 to one stat for 6 rounds; re-roll the next failed test; enemies have to make a WP to attack); in a neat touch, they don’t have any visible magical effect, so in-universe its not obvious whether they are actually having any effect. A priest gets access to six Blessings from a big list, depending on their deity (so most Blessings are shared between multiple deities, though there a few unique to a particular deity). Miracles are more flashy spells with a unique list for each deity. One big change from 2nd edition is that Priests get access to spells at the same rate as Wizards – i.e. Initiates get Blessings and Priests (i.e. the 2nd career level) get Miracles. I’m not sure I’m happy with this rate. Priests have two major advantages over Wizards – they are (generally) respected instead of reviled; and their miscast table is rather less dangerous. Also I feel like they’re more common than Wizards. I’m not keen on a situation where every lowly Initiate in the Empire can cast magic and the humble village Priest can manifest impressive Miracles.

What’s really odd is that as far as I can tell, a third or fourth level Priest has no inherent advantage over a second level Priest in casting spells (there’s just one talent at third level that gives +1 damage to Miracles, but that’s not particularly great, and only affects damaging spells). This seems very strange!

Probably not engaged in priestly activity. Copyright Cubicle 7

The basic mechanic for priestly magic is a Pray test, which is simply a regular skill check for the Pray skill (Fel-based). If you pass you cast successfully; for every 2 Success Levels you can make the spell more powerful (extra duration, range etc); if you Fumble (fail & roll doubles) you roll on the Wrath of the Gods table. Its nice and simple and (unlike 2nd edition’s mechanic) its based on the core mechanic. 

I’m not too wild about the Fumble = Wrath of Gods thing however. For an averagely skilled priest (Pray score 50) that means 1 in 20 prayers will trigger the Wrath of the Gods. Is that really desirable? That feels like too often. However I can understand the desire for some limiting mechanic to prevent priests just casting spells as often as they like. There’s an optional rule that a god might get annoyed if a priest spams the same spell in quick succession, so I wonder if it would have been more desirable to use that as a limiting mechanic (essentially turning priest spells into per-encounter abilities!). Perhaps you could say that only after (say) three Blessings and two Miracles does the Fumble = WotG mechanic kick in. I guess that feels like its moving in a very D&Desque direction.

One neat mechanic is that you accrue Sin Points as a result  of breaking your deity’s strictures (acting deceptively for a Priest of Ulric; dobbing in a thief as a Priest of Ranald etc). If your unit dice on a Pray test is equal to or less than your Sin Points, you roll on the Wrath of the Gods table, adding 10 for each Sin Point; you then lose a Sin point. I think this is a brilliant mechanic, and a much better use of the WotG table than the random fumble mechanic.

So what about the Miracles? I like them. They seem entirely composed of spells that genuinely fit the god in question – there’s no “generic attack spell” here. Each list seems to contain spells that feel highly appropriate for priests in their particular role – some of which will be useful to an adventurer, but some of which won’t.

What is surprising is that there are no spell levels at all. All Miracles cost the same amount of XP to learn, and are just as difficult to cast. I found this really surprising, but I think it works rather well. It serves to differentiate priestly Miracles from wizardly magic. Speaking of which…

Magic

For the first time, WFRP’s unified core mechanic now incorporates its magic system. Hurrah! Casting a spell uses the same percentile test system as doing anything else. You make a Language (Magick) test, and if you pass then you compare Success Levels to the spell’s casting number (with Petty Magic having 0); if you get enough SLs then you cast the spell. Rolling a double (whether you succeed or fail) causes a roll on the Minor Miscast table, which has some great results such as milk curdling or the next birth nearby being a mutant. Critical rolls (i.e. roll a double on a successful test, regardless of whether you got enough SLs to cast the spell) also net you a benefit such as the spell auto-casting, or being undispellable. This feels reasonably similar to 2nd edition – there’s still an unavoidable high chance of side effects with every spell – but actually fits with the rest of the mechanics. 

You can also overcasting spells: if you beat the target Casting Number then you can use the excess to apply a choice of different bonus effects to your spell. This is a nice idea in theory: gain a nice benefit if you beat a spell’s CN by a significant amount! But it has the unfortunate unintended effect of making powerful spells a bit pointless: why cast a really powerful spell which is hard to get off (and easy to fail) when you could instead cast something with a low CN which is much more achievable – but where if you roll well anyway, you get some cool bonuses?

The wheel of magic. Who’s that ugly chap in the middle? Copyright Cubicle 7

Wizards in WFRP also now feel like traditional wizards (which is in line with the lore). In other words, the best wizards are highly intelligent, and spend their time studying spells and using big old grimoires. While this might have been true in-lore before, WFRP 2nd edition’s mechanics didn’t actually show that. (The Intelligence characteristic was irrelevant for a wizard, and as soon as they learned the Arcane Lore talent they miraculously knew every spell in their chosen lore¹.) Now wizards learn new spells with XP (just like every other thing a character learns); in fact by doing this, they’re memorising spells from a grimoire, so there’s a neat rule that they can cast spells they haven’t learnt directly from a grimoire at double the normal casting number.

Willpower is still important, firstly because any variable in a spell (Duration, Range etc) is based on Willpower, and secondly because its what the Channelling skill is based off. Channelling gives you an extended test against the target SL of the spell you want to cast (extended tests being where you build up SLs over multiple rounds, if you recall). Once you hit the target SL, you don’t actually cast the spell – instead on the next round you make the regular Language (Magick) test but as if the spell had a Casting Number of zero. Like normal casting, rolling a Critical while Channelling forces a roll on the Minor Miscast table, and means you can cast the spell immediately; however a Fumble occurs on either a double or a units result of zero if you fail, and results in a roll on the Major Miscast Table (more serious results). This makes Channelling feel like a very poor choice: unless I’ve misunderstood, you’re usually going to take at least two rounds Channelling (since if you could accrue enough SLs in one round, you wouldn’t bother Channelling at all), with double the chance of a more serious Miscast – yikes!

However Channelling is also necessary, because most Arcane Lore spells have Casting Numbers of at least 3 – meaning a Wizard with a  Language (Magick) of 60 has only a 39% chance of successful casting them without Channelling. And 3 is a low CN – these are frequently 8 or even 12. I’m not sure of the percentages, but I guess if you have a Channelling skill of 60 as well, achieving 3 SLs would take about 2 rounds (e.g. if you roll a 51 and a 49, that’s 3 SLs), and then you have a 60% chance to cast the spell on the third round. And if you fluff that, all that Channelling was wasted! Its not as if these are hugely powerful spells either – ability to talk to beasts for an hour, cause Fear, entangle enemies. Flight is CN 8; a Fireball is CN 10!²

In terms of the spells, it works much like 2nd edition – a selection of Petty Magic spells, Arcane Magic (spells like Lesser Magic in 2nd edition, which anyone can learn), the eight colour Lores; then there’s also Hedge magic (which totally feels like Discworld witchcraft), Witch lore, Dark lore, Necromancy etc. Spells are all learned individually (even Petty magic). Arcane lores (which include standard bolt and blast attacks, flight, short-range teleport) manifest as if they were a Colour magic spell (e.g. a Celestial Wizard’s Bolt would be lighting, a Bright Wizard’s would be a firebolt). One nice feature of the Colour Magic is that every spell from a particular lore manifests a common effect: e.g. Bright spells all set targets ablaze; Celestial spells ignore armour and can arc to nearby targets; Gold spells cause additional damage to targets wearing metal armour; Jade spells can cure fatigue and bleeding. There are also other differentiators of the different Colour Lores. Some lores also get a bonus to Casting and Channelling from environmental conditions, e.g. being in a rual environment for Jade, having fires nearby for Bright. Lore of Shadow spells can be whispered, unlike all others. Amber Wizards can wear leather armour without penalty; Gold Wizards can wear metal armour without penalty. This is all lovely flavourful stuff!

Difficulty of casting aside (and that’s a pretty big aside!), I largely like the magic system. I like that you learn spells, and that wizards of the same Lore can now have substantially different spell lists. And I think the little mechanical effects to differentiate Colour Lores are really nice.

As a final note, I’m frustrated that the rulebook still includes next to no information about how Elf wizards work within the Empire! What we do get is:

• They’re not subject to licensing by the colleges of magic (but we don’t know how they are licensed)
• There are rules that they can study multiple types of Colour Magic, up to a number equal to WP Bonus. (There is a reference implying that High Elf wizards (at least), study every single colour of magic in succession, before being allowed to study High Magic.)
• Wood Elf wizards tend to study Jade or Amber magic. I think this makes sense: they can study any colour of magic, its just that given their connection to nature they tend towards these two lores.

Interim conclusion

Religion continues to be a crucial part of WFRP and its treatment in 4th Edition is basically great. I love that both magic systems are now based on the core mechanic rather than being a weird add-on system, and I’m pleased that miscasts are still a thing. I also love that wizards now feel like wizards from a mechanical standpoint – it was always one of my biggest criticisms of 2nd edition that the Intelligence statistic was largely pointless for spellcasting. And I think the chapter does a very nice job of differentiating the different Colour lore. Having said that I have definite concerns about how usable wizard magic is in play given the difficulty (and therefore time length involved) in casting just about any Colour magic spell.

Join me next time when I cover the additional systems of WFRP 4th edition and attempt to wrap up this mammoth review.

Buy the WFRP Fourth Edition rulebook from DriveThruRPG* (as a pdf) or from Cubicle 7 (as a print book).

*This is an affiliate link so I receive a small payment for purchases made using it. 

1. At least in the core rules… I know 2e’s Realms of Sorcery complicated things with three different spell lists for each colour. ↩︎
2. Its worth mentioning that updated rules for Channelling have been published in the Winds of Magic supplement – see my review ↩︎