I wanted to create a new blog entry to focus on the September Podcast because I feel that out of all the information, this podcast explains and clarifies things the most. The title of the podcast is simply “Combat System”. Short and sweet but to the point. There are three parts to the Warhammer Combat System: Actions, Tactics, and Morale. Starting off the explanation, Josh Drescher likens the system to a War Chariot. Action abilities are considered the fundamentals that make the ‘chariot’ or combat system work. On a War chariot you would have wheels, an axle, a platform, and an action; those are all action abilities. You can create your war chariot as fast and deadly, slow and armored, and your character or ‘chariot’ gets better upgrades to these fundamentals as he progresses.
Tactics are specific strategic improvements that enhance your basic ability. Tactics can be loaded and unloaded and in the Podcast they are likened to attaching spikes to your wheels in order to cross a frozen lake. Moving away from the metaphors Josh explains how the tactics are implemented into WAR. There are three categories of Tactics. Career, Renown, and Tome. Career Tactics are ones that improve your character in all aspects of gameplay. You may have guess it by now that Renown Tactics are ones that improve your RVR gameplay. Tome tactics are ones that increase your abilities in specific pve situation. You can have 4 career tactics, 2 renown, and 1 Tome tactic slotted at a time. The great thing about tactics is they can be loaded any time as long as you are not in combat. It’s like traits with unlimited respecs – which I think is cool! According to the Podcast you can have preset load-outs that can be switched quickly – add another cool!
Finally we come to Morale abilities. Action abilities are the fundamentals, Tactics are the upgrades, so what does that leave for Morale? According to the chariot metaphor it’s the cannon you strap on the back to blow your enemy to bloody hell and back. Morale abilities give powerful additional abilities that are only available during combat. As you fight enough (or stay in combat long enough) your morale slowly builds up. When you have enough morale you can start using these Morale abilities – the more morale, the better the ability you can use. Like Tactics there are three categories: Career, Archtype, and Racial. Career are specific to your, you guessed it, career (or class), Archtype are available to anyone in your archtype (dps, or healer, etc), and Racial are, duh, available to anyone in your same race. Morale abilties are slotted similar to Tactics but they only fit 1 specific slot and they come in multiple types of strength.
Careers obtain they action abilities at different intervals. In due time everyone will get all their career actions. Tactics and Morale are purchased with points that you acrue as your level up and progress your character. Here’s the only part where I think a “respec” would be handy. Purchasing these tactics and Morale abilities will be, in my opinion, the greatest way to customize your character to make him different from someone else. Will you spec offensively or defensively? You can’t buy every ability out there so you’re going to have to “spec” a certain way. Incomming min/maxer’s!
This podcast did a fantastic job and simplifying the entire system. I’ve learned a lot from this podcast and hopefully you all have too.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=LxIOVLbzrIU[/youtube]