The Sage’s Answers, Part 1
Hello and welcome to the first installment of The Sage’s Answer,s Part 1! As mentioned yesterday, here we’ll be answering questions players and GMs have asked about The Witcher TRPG with the goal of turning them into an errata and updating the book down the line.
Cody Pondsmith, our line developer, will be answering five to ten questions each time we post. We’re going to shoot for either every day or every other day, schedules allowing, and when there’s going to be longer breaks we’ll try our best to let you know in advance. We’ll be posting each The Sage’s Answers on our blog, our Facebook, and on the r/WitcherTRPG subreddit. On our blog, I’ll be tagging each entry with “sagesanswers” to make them easy to find.
And on we go!
Domenico Caputo asks…
Hello, I just bought the new witcher manual and I would need a clarification about the critical wound effects table (pag 158). What does the “Roll” column mean? After I hit a particular body part of a monster, and calculated how much I rolled over the monster’s defence, how can I determine the critical effect? I read in the combat example (page 172) that Johan rolled a d6. Why did he roll a d6 if in the critical effects table the roll numbers go from 2 to 12? Thanks in advance!
Cody answers…
Hey Domenico! One sidebar in the Critical Wounds section seems to have gone missing. There should be a note in there that when you aim and score a critical on the Torso or Head, you roll 1d6 to see which of the 2 possible criticals on that location you score.
1-4 is the lesser of the two criticals for that location. 5-6 is the greater.
In this case 1-4 is a Damage Eye critical and 5-6 would have been the Separated Spine critical. When aiming at a limb, the critical is automatically the single option available.
JasontheRand asks…
Page 172. Johan example: Something else wrong about that paragraph is that it says he got a deadly critical. His attack was only 15, and a stunned creatures DC is 10, so it would not have been a critical at all…
Cody answers…
Hey Jason! You are very correct! I had a bit of a mix up while writing that section. Johan’s attack roll should have been a 25.
Umbreto Cammarata asks…
Page 72/155 there are two different definitions about armor penetration : which is correct?
Cody answers…
Hey Umbreto! Page 155 has the correct information. Standard Armor Piercing negates Damage Resistance while Improved Armor Piercing also treats armor as ½ its current value.
PM Kevin C Livingston asks…
What scale are the grid maps for the sample adventure (1 square = 5′, 1 square = 1.5m, etc)? I didn’t see any but I could have missed it.
Cody answers…
Hey Kevin! The standard grid size for the Witcher PNP RPG is: 1 Square is equal to 2m.
Fabrizio Cannizzaro asks…
Fast Strike allows me to attack twice in one round without penalty. Dual wielding allows me to make a joint attack with 2 weapons I hold at the same time. The doubt is: Dual Wielding works in conjunction with a Fast Strike? Or they are mutually exclusive? In other words, can I attack 4 times with Dual Wielding+Fast Strike (obviously taking the +3 penality for all the 4 attacks)?
Cody answers…
Hey Fabrizio! Fast strike and Joint Attack are mutually exclusive. You could choose to use your one action to perform a Joint attack and then use an extra attack at a penalty -3 to make a fast strike.
That’s all the Sage has for us today. More answers soon! Thank you for your questions and your support of The Witcher TRPG and R. Talsorian Games!
Categories
What is “Magical Shield”? There is no such spell in the book.
Maybe sign Quen overpower a little. If witcher has max stats in Vigor it can block 7 attacks in single round!
Hello! Both your thoughts here are actually on the list of questions/clarifications for Cody to answer/make. You’re not alone in noticing these issues. Thanks for bringing them in and thanks for buying the game!
Hello,
I would like to start by saying that I love the book. Me and my group have read the book through and we are going to have our first session this weekend. I am pretty excited about this. I have followed different sources like this website and the DrivethruRPG sites comment section for questions and comments on the book. I also would like to report few questions or errors I have noticed in the book. I do not know if these are already posted so if there are duplicates I am sorry for the extra work.
My armor penetration question has already been answered but the same problem plagues the damage resistance rules. The rules found on pages 154 and 78 are slightly different. The calculation for the received damage is done in different order. This will make the target either take more or less damage depending on which page we use. Or are these rules meant to be two separate rules for humans and non-humans? If so then it should be made clear.
The page 168 mentions that self targeting spells have a casting DC. But only some of these spells actually have this DC mentioned, teleport being one example of this. Does this mean that spells like glamour can be cast without making a casting roll as there is no DC mentioned for these spells?
During character creation you get 44 points to use for raising your profession skills and after that you also get points to raise your pick up skills. I would like a clarification on the rules on how these points used. Are these points under the same rules as I.P points?
I.P rules state that getting a new skill to level 1 costs one point and if it is a skill with the (2) then it
costs 2 points for level 1. And after that it always costs as many I.P points to raise a level equal to the skills current level and in the case of a skill with the (2) it costs the skills level times 2.
How many points do I have to use to get, for example, alchemy skill to level 3 during character creation?
If during character creation you can raise skills without using the I.P rules then do they still use the (2) rule?
So I have 44 points for my profession skills and three cases in chracter creation regarding the cost:
– The points function just like I.P points. Raisin my alchemy to level three costs me 8 points. 2 for first level, 2 for the second level and 4 for third level.
– The points do not follow I.P rules but use the (2) rule. Then it would cost me 2 for first, 2 for second and 2 for third. Total would be 6 points.
– Last is that the points during character creation are use 1-to-1 basis. So 1 for first, 1 for second and 1 for third level. Totaling to 3 points.
Which of these is correct?
The combat rules refer to the staggered status more than once but the effect table lists this effect as stagger. Now this is not a big deal but when I first read the rules and then used my PDF readers search function to try and find explanation for staggered I did not get any results. Only after I found the effects table was I able to connect the fact that the rules use staggered and the table lists it as
stagger. I feel that the effect name on the effect table should be the same as it is in the actual rules.
The same type of problem with the combat resolution. On the page 151 there is a list of possible actions that you can take during your combat turn. The attack action directs you to see Combat resolution. I tried to find this part using the search function and by looking for it manually by reading the combat rules multiple times. Unless I messed up badly and just did not manage to find the
combat resolution part, I think it is missing from the book.
How long does the Witcher sign Quen last? It said the duration is until exhausted. So once cast Quen lasts forever? Or will the spell naturally end for examrle when the Witcher goes to sleep/meditates? Can I stack multiple casts of Quen? If Quen lasts forever and I can cast it multiple times then there is no stopping a Witcher who has a permanent Quen that has like 1000 charges on it. The Witcher just has to spend few stamina points every so often to increase his permanent Quen charges.
On the page 71 there is a list of recommended travelling gear for a character. This list also includes a waterskin but this item is not listed anywhere in the book. So there is no price, weight or description for this item.
When you buy components for crafting like Barley. What is the amount you pay for? Is the price listed for one unit or for whatever amount is listed in the quantity bracket ie. 1d10 units?
Good questions and good observations. Some have been noted before. Others are new. I’ve added them to the list Cody is using to write his Sage’s Answers. Thanks! And thanks for buying and playing the game! Please let us know how it goes.
The side bar “Difficult Skills” (p. 49) says that is 1 point per skill increase (2 for difficult skills) disregarding the current skill level. Thus, you should need 6 points to increase your alchemy skill to a value of 3 (2 points per increase), while it would only cost 3 point to get to a skill level of 3 for e.g. Brawling. It also says on that page that you have “44 points to split between them”, which sounds very much like you can simply distribute the points on talents. In contrasat, for raising a skill later on, it is explicitly stated that the skill level is considered (see p. 59).
So after today’s session we noticed bit of balance problems.
Let’s say we have Man-at-arms Tom.
Tom is able to get reliable armor 15 all over his body by stacking light and medium armors.
Tom decides to fight Nekkers and uses his unholy 5d6 (!) damage starting Kord.
Nekkers try their best but can’t dig though his armor with their 2d6 damage. Even if they roll max damage soldier just squishes them with his one handed starting sword which seems to be in most cases better than two handed witcher sword.
In general today’s session made us question balance of game. We played starting adventure provided in the book and it felt like a cakewalk when it came to fights. Armor can be easily made impregnable (even just Brigandine has 12 points of absorbtion),
Also reading FAQ
“Hey Fabrizio! Fast strike and Joint Attack are mutually exclusive. You could choose to use your one action to perform a Joint attack and then use an extra attack at a penalty -3 to make a fast strike.”
Doesn’t it make double wielding less reliable than slashing something twice with same or even potentially bigger weapon?
Thanks for your feedback and the question. I’m adding them to the list for Cody to look at.
gd