The Sage’s Answers, Part 13
The holiday weekend is over and we return to the grindstone with 10 more answered questions.
Just to remind everyone, 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 weekday or every other weekday, 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.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 247 – In the “Witcher Potions” Section and the lore it states that these potions are highly lethal for non-witchers, yet there are no rules for non-witchers consuming them, unless they are considered to have a maximum Toxicity of 0% or the rules for drinking Swallow from pg. 173 count for all potions.
Cody answers…
Hey, Tom! We’ll have to make a note in the Witcher Chapter. All potions are subject to the rules for drinking swallow on pg. 173. So, any time a non-witcher drinks a potion the must make an Endurance check or be poisoned. If they are poisoned, in addition to the potential problems that causes, the potion also has no effect.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 283 – How does a Wraith’s Shift ability work? Is it intended to function as an alternate defensive action such as parry or dodge (in which case, why doesn’t it have Spell Casting as a skill) or in a different way?
Cody answers…
The Wraith’s Shift ability is meant to function as an alternative defense. It looks like along the way the Spell Casting value of Wraiths got edited out. It should have a Spellcasting value of 6.
Tom Kant asks…
Pg. 293 – How is the Griffin’s Charge ability supposed to work? As an action, a move, instead of its normal turn or a reaction to someone moving more than 10m away? Also, does it have a maximum range? Another thing, how is the damage from the Flight ability calculated?
Cody answers…
The Griffin’s charge functions as the whole turn and it takes this action on its turn when a target moves more than 10m away. Its maximum range is the Griffin’s Run stat. You calculate falling damage as per ramming damage on pg.171. Divide the number of meters it fell by 2 and roll that many d6. Armor does soak this damage.
Kajtár Levente asks…
Can armor piercing level up? For a weapon with 2 rune slots if I insert a svarog rune I get armor piercing, that is clear. So if a weapon alredy has armor piercing some way, if another svarog is inserted it gives improved armor piercing? What if the weapon has this ability and I insert 2 svarog do I get improved armorpiercing and bonus dmg like in case with man-at-arms zweihand skill?
Cody answers…
Hey Kajtár! Armor piercing doesn’t stack. If you add a Svarog rune to a weapon it gains the armor piercing effect but. adding second Svarog rune doesn’t upgrade it to improved armor piercing.
Aapo Toivonen asks…
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 are used.
Cody answers…
Hey, Aapo! When making your character at the very start you are not subject to the I.P. rules but you are still subject to the difficult skill (2) modifier. Buying a skill is 1 point spent for 1 rank gained unless the skill is marked with a (2). In this case the skill is 2 points spent for 1 rank gained.
Aapo Toivonen asks…
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.
Cody answers…
This is an error. There is no section labeled “combat resolution”. Instead, go to Pg. 163 where it talks about the different attacks you can do and how to resolve combat.
Aapo Toivonen asks…
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?
Cody answers…
When you spend the amount listed under Cost on the various materials tables in the Crafting Components section starting on page 128, you are purchasing a single unit of the component. If you are foraging and you succeed at your check, you find the amount listed under the Quantity column. For example, if Brian the weaponsmith goes into town and wants to buy 6 units of timber, he’s going to pay 3 crowns per unit, for a total of 18 crowns. Its faster and he doesn’t have to worry about running into monsters, bandits, or worse out in the forest.
On the other hand, if he goes out into the wild and succeeds at a DC : 8 Wilderness Survival check, he can forage 2d6 units at no cost, except the time, labor involved, and risk of getting eaten by a monster. There’s also the risk he rolls low and finds less than the 6 units of timber he needs.
Amdor asks…
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).
Cody answers…
Hey Amdor! Nekker are not meant to be much of a threat. The greatest threat they can provide is to less armored players or by ganging up. If you get a large group of Nekkers ganging up on one person, that person can be taking defense penalties up to -4 or -5 on top of whatever they are taking as penalties for their armor. This means that the likelihood that the Nekkers score critical hits goes up. The troll that you may wind up fighting at the end of To All A Goodnight has 20 points of armor (which a 5d6 Kord will not penetrate on average), 80 health points, and a punch that deals 6d6 damage (which on average will penetrate a SP: 12 Brigandine). Keep in mind that every attack that penetrates your armor reduces your armor value by 1 (or more depending on the attack), meaning that your armor can be worn away. Also, keep in mind that damage to limbs is halved, and non-silver weapons are half as effective against monsters. Effectively, a Kord should only be throwing an average of 7 point of damage and there is a 60% chance that that damage will be halved again because of a limb strike.
Pankrakles asks…
With the craftsman Augmentation skill, can you apply more than one to the same weapon/armour? If so, can you apply the same one more than once? Is there a limit to the number of attempts you can make to apply an augmentation i.e if a craftsman tries to apply the Lighten Augmentation to a weapon and fails, can he try again? If not, can he try a different augmentation?
Cody answers…
Hey, Pankrakles! You cannot apply the same augmentation multiple time but you can apply multiple augmentations to the same weapon. There isn’t a max number of attempts you can make to augment a weapon.
Pankrakles asks…
And a second series of questions about the Mages Mutate ability. Firstly, can stat bonuses from mutagens raise a Stat above its limit i.e. if someone with a Reflex of 10 was Mutated with the Katakan Mutagen, would their Reflex be raised to 11? Can someone be Mutated more than once? If a mutation fails, can that person try to be mutated again (seeing as how they are now a mutant anyway, they dont have much to lose from the attempt except a death save)? If someone can be mutated again, can the same mutagen type be used? Also, if your party doesn’t have a witcher in it, how could the aquisition of mutagens happen? Would a mage with the mutate ability also know how to harvest mutagens from monster parts? Or would you have to find the knowledge from witchers, either by asking or finding scrolls with the instruction?
Cody answers…
Regarding the Mage’s Mutate ability: A stat can be raised above 10 by applying mutagens so you can mutate non-witchers to have a BODY or REFLEX above 10. You can be mutated more than once. We’ll make a note that you can be mutated twice (the same as Witchers applying mutagens). You can attempt mutation again but the mutagen that you used previously was used up so you need a new one. You can use the same mutagen type though. If you don’t have a witcher in your party a Mutagen could be found as part of a plot or perhaps the players could find a witcher and convince them to teach them how to isolate mutagens. Largely this is left up to the GM’s discretion.
We’ll be back tomorrow! In the meantime…
Keep your swords sharp!
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Hi, how does it work aard when it knocks somebody prone? Can a witcher kill the enemy prone instantly like in the video game?
If a target is prone, they suffer a -2 to their defense and attack checks. If they are completely immobile, the attacker gains a +4 to their attack check. In either case, there are no rules for instantly killing an enemy, though the GM might allow for it under certain circumstances.
I would suggest to add Prone to the combat effects table as it is similar to stun etc, but only mentioned in a side table, which makes it harder to see.
I’ll let the team know your idea!
Heya, Just read trough the answers and in the reply to Amdor (the one about high SP and Nekker) you mentioned a -4/-5 defense modifier. Is this something that is up to the GM, as it isn’t written anywhere in the book (as far as I know).
I’m going to pass your question on to Cody.
I could not find the -4/-5 modifier, but there is a +3 modifier for attacks that the player cannot see. So each Nekker that attacks from the sides or behind (I would assume about three should fit into that space given their size) gets a +3 on its attack.
Regarding foraging: is it possible to forage a region multiple times for the same ingredient or do you assume that one region is completely harvested after one foraging run? Personally, I would suggest a cumulative penalty of +2 for each subsequent search (as it gets harder to find something or the player has to look harder/in other parts of the region if nothing was found). What is your opinion? What about looking for different ingredients at the same time? Would you impose penalties for that as the player has to divide his attention?
I’ll pass those questions on to Cody.