Wrath & Glory Reading & Rules Outlines (No Character Creation)

The latest WH40k RPG, now managed by Ulisses Spiele (rest in pepperoni FFG 40k).

It's significantly different from the classic ones, moving from a d100 "roll-under" path-based system to a pool o' d6 threshold system, while opening up all sorts of character options by blending Archetypes, Races, and Keywords, notably used for dictating talent acquisition (no more paths, remember?)

You can be (for a very limited example) an Ork+Nob, an Aeldari+Corsair, an Adeptus Astartes+Scout, a Human+Scion, and a variety of other things. Plenty of human support, but Xenos are only present as Orks and Eldar (no Dark Eldar)

The Core System

1) You build a pool of d6s based on the applicable skill and its linked-attribute for the task
2) Add bonus dice from items, talents, whatever else
3) Determine the "Difficulty Number" - the amount of successes you need to pass the test, GM-dictated. The "Standard" is 3, where Routine is 1 and Challenging 5, scaling up to 11 for "Near Impossible"
4) Roll the dice. A 4-5 is a success, a 6 is 2 successes. 1-3s are discarded. If you meet or exceed the DN, you pass.

Simple enough - the fun part is where you use excess rolls of 6("Exalted Icons") to buy benefits, such as more info, better quality, or an increased speed. You might also buy Extra Damage Dice in combat, or gain up to 1 point of Glory. This process called "Shifting". Overall, it's like Degrees of Success from old, but with less division, and acts more as a per-test currency.

There are various options like "buying" success where you create your pool, divide in half, and that's the number of "Icons" (successes) you have, although that's capped based on your character's Tier, at 2xTier.

There's an extra die (or more?) added to every pool, as well - the "Wrath Dice." If it rolls a 6, you get a Critical Hit (in combat) and a point of Glory. If it's a 1, a complication is added. This die doesn't care what the end result is, so this can create non-binary check resolutions, where you might "succeed at cost", or "fail with a benefit" rather than merely pass/fail, beyond what buying benefits for a good success offer.

I find it a bit odd they go for "Icons" and "Exalted Icons" rather than a more normal "Success" and "Critical Success", but, hey, gotta get that theme, right?

An example of a dice roll from the Example-of-play comic

Dammit Jim, I'm a Player, not an Author & Failing Forward

If you're more of a binary success/failure kind of player, there's a heading that offers options to adjust all these rolls to be a simple pass/fail - no narrative complications from Wrath, and so forth. It does, however, empower the GM with more Ruin.

Meshing totally with this concept is the idea of "failing forward" which they discuss and as this is not an essay on GMing, briefly said: Failuring Forward is the idea that a failure does not (usually) end an action with a simple "no", but rather introduce consequences in itself - obviously some actions have built-in consequences for failure, but there might be better options. The example that were in the W&G preview where they rolled to find a hidden base in the snow storm, where a failure might have meant they found it, just not after possibly suffering some damage.

The question is changed from "Do they find it at all?" to "Do they find it in a safe and expedient timeframe?"

Characters (Lite)

Characters are made up of several components, and each component is bought with a pool of "Build Points".

1) Species
2) Archetype

4) Attributes

5) Skills

6) Talents

7) Wargear

8) Special Abilities 

9) A Background

The species offer mild bonuses - or in some cases (spacemarines) fairly large bonuses.

The archetypes dictate starting Tier (or more practically, the GM does and you choose the associated ones) might have a species restriction, a minimum attribute and skill, and will provide mild benefits & keywords, which are used as prerequisites for gear, talents, and special abilities.

Tiers are a rough equivalent of "Levels" in other RPGs - there are 5 of them, although only the first 4 are proper starting options.

Space Marines have a list of 9 Chapters they may select from, as a Species option, each with a benefit and a drawback (traditionally related to a "Tradition" they try to uphold).

For a more in-depth look at Character Generation, see this post.

Tempestus Scions are the best the Imperium has to offer.

Wrath and Glory

There are 2 "meta-resources" you have: the eponymous "Wrath" and "Glory."

Wrath is replenished per-session, resetting to 2 every time for each player character. It's used to re-roll failures, restore Shock, improve a "Defiance Check", or declare a minor narrative element (as permitted by the GM). It's also restored mid-session via roleplaying, objectives, and campaign cards, GM-permitting.
This is a fairly standard meta-resource, designed to offer some narrative control and RNG-mitigation options to the players, while incentivizing getting invested into the game's drama and moving it forward.

Glory, contrasted to Wrath's being a personal resource, is a group one. Its only sources of replenishment are via Shifting (again, once per test), or a 6 on a Wrath Die. Glory has a cap of the highest between 6 and the number of players+2: excess is lost.
It's used to add a die to a roll (although interestingly, only after Wrath-based bonuses have been used), and has a limit based on tier. It might also increase your damage in an attack, improve a Critical Effect, or Seize the Initiative in combat.

Ruin awaits, as well.

The GM possesses a resource known as "Ruin", which acts as a sort of "Wrath for GMs." It's gained via failed Corruption tests, failed Fear tests, and when the GM rolls a 6 on a Wrath die. It's used to activate Ruin abilities on NPCs, interrupt the PCs initiative order in combat, seize the initiative, re-roll failurs,, restore shock, and Soak wounds; essentially it does all that Glory and Wrath does for players, and more.

It's lost at the end of a session, is reset to the amount of players at the start of each one, and is capped at the number of players.

Yeah, but how Skilled of a Doctor Medicae are you?

As said before, the d100 system is out, the d6 pool is in.
So what does it look like to build this pool?

It's pretty simple: you have 7 different Attributes, and 18 different skills (boy, they've cut that list down a lot, huh?).
Theoretically your Attribute can scale up to 12 (or higher?) but at Tier 1 ("normal people"-tier), you're not going to be above 4, and even at the highest Tier of 5, which is essentially superhero level, you're capped at 10 (good luck with that cost, though).  There's a few options to select how your attributes are done - pre-set arrays, attribute "packages" (eg, five at rating 3, two at rating 2), or just the total cost for buying at a specific number.

Just one of the options for Attribute Selection.

Skills go up to 8, where 4 is the scale most professionals will be at for their livelihood, and 8 is maybe an ancient Eldar Warlock who has spent centuries studying their craft.

After that, figure out for a test what skill is necessary, then build a pool of the skill level + the attribute level. That means a solid professional will have a pool of 8 or so (4+4), while the average mook doing a thing he has no training in will be about a 2 or a 3 (from their attribute)

The attributes are Strength, Agility, Toughness, Intellect, Fellowship, Willpower, and Initiative.
These are all standard enough, although Initiative is the stand-out. It's made even more interesting how it's actually not used to determine Initiative in combat (usually)

Your options for skills are, in their full glory:
Athletics, Awareness, Ballistic Skill, Cunning, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Leadership, Medicae, Persuasion, Pilot, Psychic Mastery, Scholar, Stealth, Survival, Tech, Weapon Skill.

The "do anything with technology" Tech makes an appearance again, and 6 Social skills listed. Note that Cunning is not actually lying (that'd be Deception). It's more of savviness and making connections, tracking things down. Awareness vs Investigation provides "High-level detail vs more extensive investigation (!)" axis.

Where is the Glory without Combat?

Combat can be burdensome in its rule amount (it's a 40page chapter here, for the record), so we'll be "brief."*
*Haha, yeah right.

Initiative is back and forth with player, baddie, player, baddie, and so forth. Who acts when is entirely up to the acting side - you can have your Initiative-1 Admech Skitarius act before your Initiative-4 Space Marine if you so choose. It can be interrupted with "Seize the Initiative" via point expenditure, to temporarily delay handing initiative back to the other side. There is an optional rule for Random Initiative, that involves rolling Initiative, counting Icons, and going from there, with PCs winning ties, ties there being higher base initiative, and then simply choosing.

While Acting, you have 1 move and 1 action, as well as 2 simple actions and any number of free actions. You can try to do more actions, at a penalty, and still a cap of 3 actions per turn.

Movement is meters-based, with a Human speed being 6 and an Eldar 8. Interestingly, they suggest grids (if used) to represent 2 meters of distance (rounding up movement to nearest even)

Attacks are the relevant Attribute and Skill (interestingly, Melee is based on the Initiative attribute - and the only Skill based on it at all...), trying to beat the target's Defense. Given Defense is calculated as "Initiative-1", that likely won't be too high.

You can make "Interaction Attacks" with a variety of skills (Athletics, Deception, Intimidate, Persuasion, Tech) to impair an enemy, making them Hindered (+1 to victim's DN) or Vulnerable (-1 Defence). There's also a special rule to use Ballistics as an Interaction Attack as "Suppressing Fire." These seem quite potent, given the already apparently-low DNs and Defence stats.
This is, to me, an interesting way to set up a generic "support actions" attack-type, and even lets you use social skills in combat. Nicely done.

When making an Action, you have 13 Combat Options - Aiming, Called Shots, charging, grappling, Salvo Fire, Suppressive Fire, etc. Unfortunately, nothing increases your chance of Critical Hits - Called Shots merely increase the amount of damage you do via Extra Damage Dice (see below)

A Mild Note On Vehicles & Voidships

There are rules for Vehicles and Voidships, as well as using them in combat. They're not extensive (don't expect to easily port over much of the minutia of Rogue Trader, for example), but they seem serviceable for the moment, and don't look hard to homebrew for in the slightest.

Voidships (and vehicles) do get a Crit Hit chart for that explosive goodness.

Impairment and Damage

There are 14 Combat Effects (aka statuses, conditions) ranging from Bleeding, to Exhausted, Poisoned, and Terror. These can be cleared in-scene, or will auto-clear at the end of it (provided they don't kill you, first)

If you roll a 1 on the Wrath Die you'll suffer a Complication, of which there are 10. These might be "Out of Ammo" (lose a reload), "Weapon Malfunction" (have to fix it), "inconvenient target", or other such things.

Damage is largely static based on the weapon, being formatted as Damage+ED ("Extra Damage Dice" - roll em and any Icons are +1 damage) associated with the weapon, modified by a few things (such as Wrath and whatnot). Given that a simple Lasgun is 7+1ED and a "'Nids Go Home" Lascannon is 18+3ED, it seems like this damage is going to be fairly consistent, which I personally appreciate.

Once you've calculated your final damage, you compare it to the target's Resilience (which the game seems to write as "Resistance" in some areas, making Ctrl-Fing the .pdf inconsistent). There, it goes one of two ways
1) If your damage is equal to Resilience, you inflict 1d3 Shock.
2) If it exceeds it, inflict 1 Wound for every point over.
Note: your Resilience is calculated via your Toughness Attribute and Armour Rating, so that stays similar to previous 40kRPGs.

"Shock" is essentially a health bar for fatigue & determination - if it hits 0, you're Exhausted. Shock at that point turns into Mortal Wounds, which are Wounds that bypass normal defences to inflict auto damage. Scary. Shock is calculated as Willpower+Tier.

Losing all your Wounds will KO you, if it doesn't kill you outright. You suffer penalties the more wounded you are ("Lightly" and "Heavily"). Wounds is calculated as Toughness+Tier.

Given how low both those values are, and how much damage can do, armour appears to be very important, and a few bad rolls can and will down your character (although not necessarily kill.)

Both Shock and Wounds can be recovered via Medicae tests, although Wounds are "stickier" (being harder and slower to remove), and Shock can be restored via Wrath.

A mechanic called "Soaking" exists, to help mitigate Wound damage and turn it into Shock damage. Both PCs and NPCs can do it, although it costs Ruin for the NPCs.

Critical Hits

Essentially a selling point of 40k in general, here they're handled with 2 questions:
Did you successfully hit (not damage!) your target?
Did you roll a 6 on your Wrath die?
If both are yes, flip over that Wrath Deck (a deck of cards, ah, jeez.)*
*Stop making proprietary stuff for your games, thanks.

Luckily there's a nice chart, and here's part of it.

Aw, yeah, click me for the good stuff

Yes, Critical Hits are specific results achieved via a secondary die (that Wrath Die) - they're not "overkill damage" anymore. If you roll very well, this means you can Laspistol shot the full-armor Space Marine and blow his arm off with a "(66) Grisly Amputation", as their Effects happen regardless of their Resilience.

Weapons, Armour, and Tools

You've got an assortment of stuff here. 4 pages of ranged weapon tables, then several more with little pictures and descriptions of each, and similar for melee and armour.

Ork Tekknology included, weapons, armour, tools and cybernetics

Beyond weapons and armour, you've got an assortment of tools, cybernetics (with included rules on installing and removing them). Your gut can be augmented. You can be Darth Vader. You can have not-totally-creepy robot arms you control. You can swig some Ork Fightin' Juice and scream madly as you ignite guardsmen with your Burna applied directly to the forehead.

Why The Heck Everything Gotta Cost Money?

Money in this game uses the DH 2.0 and "newer" 40k RPG systems of abstracted wealth, in the form of Influence and Wealth. Influence is dictated by Fellowship (mostly), Wealth by Tier.

Influence is used for the Test to acquire any item, while Wealth can be permanently reduced to add an Icon to your Influence Test. An interesting aspect with Influence is while it's usually based on Fellowship, it's noted that if you possess the Adeptus Mechanicus keyword, then you use Intellect. Similarly, Orks care about Strength.

The Influence Test is a standard test, using the Influence Attribute, but can be modified by the Rarity of the item. Items are assigned a Rarity, but this itself can vary on location and available as the GM dictates.

In addition to Wealth and Influence, you have a more fluid resource known as "Assets" which are thematically just specifically valuable items, and can be spent as Wealth, 1:1, boosting Influence tests.

This interacts oddly with Wealth - Wealth is the abstract form of financial prowess, and to my understanding seems to be applicable to anybody, while Assets are a specific form of wealth. The book uses an example of "a handful of teef" for orks or for humans an "an ancient box reputed to contain a saint's finger bone". You might be able to use the teef with Orks for your test, but the humans won't care for it, and vice versa.

Adding on to that, Wealth can be +1'd via converting 3 Assets (at GM discretion), or is increased via any normal way of earning larger sums of money - jobs, mapping systems, rewards by powerful NPCs, etc. It is, however, capped at Tier+3.

You know this is the Psyker end goal 100% of the time.

Psykers

Psykers are some of my favorite stuff, but I was disappointed at how they were handled in Dark Heresy 2.0 - ripping off the Psyker powers from Only War left them a bit too focused on murder for my tastes, although it was an understandable balance adjustment. They seem better this time around.

Psykers draw from the warp in one of 3 ways - Bound, Unbound, or Transcendent, and each one is more potent and more dangerous than the last. This is simply done - Bound has 1 Wrath Die, Unbound gets another one, and Transcendent can add as many as you want up to the highest of your Tier or Rank Bonus. These are added to your Psyker Test to activate a power.

Transcendent is also liable to knock your Psyker out, giving them Shock Damage equal to the Wrath Dice they gained.

Considering Psyker use is nigh-heretical, Wrath Dice do not grant their normal benefit (IE no Crits, no Glory gain), but they do result in Complications - namely, Daemons Perils of the Warp. 

Oh, Perilous Warp, My Perilous Warp

Perils of the Warp is a d66 chart (or another deck of cards). If you roll a Complication on your Psyker Test, you get to roll on that. For every further Complication roll, you add 1 to the tens digit rolled (or, for cards, do awkward shuffling and deck separation)

We got stuff ranging from "being harassed by the hash slinging slasher" to "Oh god my poor ears, why are all the rodent dead", "No John. You are the daemons." culminating with "Who knew the Psyker's head was actually a disco laser show of death all along?"

The Powers

In summary: lodsepowers

Minor Psychic powers are back (15 of them), as well as the Disciplines of Biomancy (No Palpatine imitations, but you can become a ghost?), Divination, Pyromancy, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Maleificarum, Runes of Battle.

Those last two are specific to Chaos and Aeldari, respectively. Like the tabletop wargames, the Runes are 2 powers in one, although they cost a lot of points to buy.

Pocket flash bangs. What more do you need?

Power selection is limited by Tier, then limited to max amount of minors, discipline, and psychic powers.

There's no apparent need to go "up" the Discipline in a specific order, so if you just want "the best" power from a Discipline, you can buy it straight up.

I find this area to be a bit odd, and I might be missing a key note somewhere, but how you're expected to reach the Max Psychic Powers without hitting the other 2 Caps before Tier 4 is a mystery to me. Perhaps the "Discipline Powers" is per-discipline? All the "standard" Psyker archetypes start with a Smite power part of the "Universal Psychic Discipline" that doesn't count towards the limit.

As well as that, we're offered 'A psychic character may purchase up to 2 Minor Psychic Powers and (Tier–1, to a minimum of 1) Discipline Powers chosen from an appropriate psychic discipline" in the paragraph above the above picture, and in character generation rules, those first 2 columns are instead labeled starting caps. An example Sanctioned Psyker (Tier 2) ends up starting the game with Smite, 2 minors, and 1 Discipline, and it notes after creation she can only have up to 5 powers, unless the Tier increases.

The Bestiary

Enemies are one of four "Threat" types - Troops, Elites, Adversaries, or Monstrous Creatures.

Troops act as mobs, acting as one, Elites are significant individuals, and are equivalent to a hero in combat but aren't cool enough to have names, Adversaries possess names and personal ruin (a Ruin pool just for them), and Monstrous Creatures are...Monstrous Creatures. Like a Carnifex.

Threats are given a stat-block, a threat classification type per tier, and sometimes a "sub-type" for that threat, that modifiers some stats and gear, such as the "Veteran Trooper" subtype for the "Astra Militarum Trooper"-type threat.

A Chaos Cultist Leader Threat

The stat-blocks are nothing special - they're simpler than the d100 ones, largely because there is (not yet) a dozen special abilities, and they print the ability out for the threat.

The pre-made options take rom the Imperium, Chaos, Orks, Eldars, and a small mix of "Others", suchGenestealers, Clawed Fiends, and Gilead Night Scarabs. No, no Carnifex or 'gaunts of any kind.

Saying that, both the Ork and the Eldar sections are anemic, offering only 4 and 2 real options respectively. There's not even an Eldar Warlock or Dire Avenger. The Imperial and Chaos threat listings will serve as a decent base, as long as you go for nothing too off the wall.

For making your own "off-the-cuff" Threats you have essentially a table to go off, a suggestion to look at the derived attribute section for PCs. Beyond that, it's up to the GM.

Your "oh god the PCs are out of control" arrays

Given that the game does qualify what an attribute is roughly (EG a 4 is a "Professional"), and there is a decent smattering of special abilities on the pre-made threats, it shouldn't be too hard to make up your own monsters.

The Lazy End

The core rules seem to be fairly solid, though there is a bit of "bean counting" with the various meta-resources, although nothing too complicated and certainly not new to RPGs at this point. The smattering of optional rules throughout is encouraging to the game's apparent versatility, as I believe most of them would work well.

For replicating WH40KRPG rules, at the moment these largely cover an Only War or Dark Heresy experience, with a decent bit of Rogue Trader, Deathwatch and Black Crusade flair. I imagine those experiences will easily be improved with future dedicated expansion books.