Tabletop Game / Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

In the grim darkness of medieval Europe you will roll peasants and die of cholera. Have fun!

It is a dark time: far to the north, the gate of chaos has opened once more. Archaon, Lord of End Times, had waged his insane war on the civilized world, although he was beaten back at the last moment, Chaos is still prevalent throughout the land: Beasts ravage the countryside, Mutation and Insanity are rife. Heroes are needed, heroes who will beat back the darkness, heroes the like of which who have better things to do than to save inbred, misbegotten peasants like these.

So, you lot will have to do. May the lords of ruination spare your souls...

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a bleakly humorous Tabletop RPG set in the Dark Fantasy Crapsack World of Warhammer.

WFRP was originally published in 1986 as a single-volume rule-book, and numerous source and campaign volumes followed. Games Workshop's core business, however, is in the sale of miniatures and other battle-game periphera, and roleplaying publishing has never been as profitable. WFRP was passed around various publishing subsidiaries before being mothballed in 1992.

Independent publisher Hogshead obtained the rights to publish WFRP in 1995, though GW retained editorial control to ensure any original material remained true to their canon. Hogshead reverted the license to GW in 2002 when they came under new ownership, and in 2005 Games Workshop published a 2nd edition of the rules developed by outside developer Green Ronin. In 2009, after getting the license, Fantasy Flight Games — the publishers of Dark Heresy and the Rogue Trader RPG, which use variations in the 2nd edition rules — put out a somewhat controversial 3rd edition; support for that ended in 2014. In May 2017 it was announced that a 4th edition of the game would be released by Cubicle 7; the core rulebooks were released in June (PDF) and July (hardcover) of 2018. Cubicle 7 are also working on Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, a successor RPG set in the world of the Warhammer sequel, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar.

The original rulebook was often praised for its remarkably bug/exploit-free game engine. The game has been praised for its immersive realism, but equally criticized for forcing players to roleplay the boring periods between quests as well as the exciting adventures themselves.

Part Dungeons & Dragons, part Paranoia, part Call of Cthulhu, WFRP shares in its parent setting's bleakness. A solidly Grey vs Black setting, WFRP is uncompromising in its grimness; instead of simply choosing a race and a class, you are advised to roll a dice for a race and a "career," which include heroic backgrounds like rat catchers, rag pickers, thugs for hire and tax collectors. After all, life isn't fair, and in Warhammer, it's downright sadistic.

The setting itself is very cynical Dark Fantasy setup. The Old World is Europe in the throes of the Renaissance; new civilized cities have begun to rise, throwing up whole new criminal underworlds. Racketeers and drug lords abound, indeed the concept that things like alcohol and drugs can be addictive is yet to be thought of, new "civilized" physicians cut into patient's skulls looking for "unclean humours" that plague them. The insane are hounded, out of the fear that daemons have touched them.

This being Warhammer, they probably have. The forces of Chaos are readying their legions to finally take over the world, doom stalks the countryside. But doom has always stalked the countryside, the people of the Old World are fighting a losing battle to stop it from stalking their very homes; indeed many have given up and thrown in their lot with cults dedicated to chaos.

The world stands at the brink of annihilation. True, virtuous heroes are needed to turn back the tide of darkness.

Until such people can be found, your PCs will have to do...

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This tabletop RPG provides examples of:

NOTE: all the tropes of WFRP's parent setting, Warhammer, apply here as well.

Tropes #—A

• 13 Is Unlucky:
  • In one of the oldest official adventures, a ritual to open a demonic portal in the heart of the Empire is set in Warehouse number 13.
  • Thirteen is the sacred number of the Horned Rat, the Chaos god worshipped by the Skaven. Their society is ruled by the Council of Thirteen, comprising the twelve Lords of Decay and an empty seat for the Horned Rat himself.
  • One of the most dangerous manifestations of Tzeentch's Curse in the 2nd edition is to have a glyph etched into the caster's skin, and if he gets thirteen of these, one of the Ruinous Powers (probably Tzeentch) devours him.
• Absurd Phobia: The Irrational Phobia mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, causes its bearer to develop a crippling, irrational fear of some random thing — sample options include Elves, Dwarfs, Halflings, men, women, children, ham, and salt water.
• Acid Attack: The Spit Acid mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, allows its bearer to spit globs of clinging, caustic liquid up to ten yards away. It's one of the very few broadly beneficial mutations, as it provides a built-in weapon without mechanical handicaps while also being relatively easy to hide.
• Action Survivor: Careers range from gun-slinging highwaymen, assassins, wizards tapping into the forces of creation and plate-armoured knights, to farmers, taxmen, university students, common thieves, cooks, charcoal burners and grave robbers. Your enemies include (among other things) sanity-blasting daemons, perverse cults worshipping those daemons, flesh-eating beastmen, Magitek-armed Rat Men, and The Undead. If you don't start out as a combat- or magic-focused career, you are essentially this trope by default in the average campaign. Depending on how you roll during character creation, you might not even start with any armour nor a proper weapon. You'll probably die early unless you're really lucky and clever... but if you're not, at least it'll be hilarious.
• Actual Pacifist:
  • Pure examples are rare throughout the Old World, but followers of Rhya avoid taking life except in self-defense or for food, while those in the Cult of Shallya are forbidden to kill or harm any living being except the followers of Nurgle.
  • The gentle, philosophical half-cockroach Ludwig von Wittgenstein is a true example. If attacked, he doesn't fight back, defend himself, run away, or even beg for mercy; he just screams "Why do you do this? What harm have I done you?"
• The Alcoholic: Alcoholism is rife in the Old World, as might be expected in a setting where every sip of water could kill you, hope is rare, and life is nasty, brutish, short, cheap and difficult. The skill list even includes Consume Alcohol, and there is a good chance you will need to use it in any given session.
  • Halflings and Dwarfs are even heavier drinkers than Humans, and start with Consume Alcohol as a racial skill.
  • In various editions, characters who are traumatised have a chance to take to drinking to numb their pain: the "Terrible Thirstings", as it's known.
  • The The Enemy Within campaign features numerous alcoholic characters, including a pair of coachmen, an itinerant ex-Engineer, several dozen perpetually-drunken beggars and an entire village of Dwarfs. Most notable is Josef Quartjin, who drinks almost constantly, but this doesn't hinder him at all.
• Alien Catnip: Inverted. Elves use a plant found in the Laurelorn Forest as a refreshing tonic. All other species attempting to do the same will almost certainly collapse unconscious, and even if they don't, will feel extremely unwell.
• Alien Geometries: The capital city of Altdorf is slightly Bigger on the Inside and impossible to map, so people have to navigate by landmarks and instinct. The oddity comes from the Elven magic used to make space for the Colleges of Magic — not to clear space, to make space.
• Alluring Flowers: The Bird Flower is a plant native to the jungles of Lustria that produces large, very colorful flowers with a notably phallic style and a sweet-smelling nectar with an intoxicating taste. The plant normally uses its nectar's smell to attract birds, which its flowers then trap and eat, but it can also be ingested by humans as a drug that allows one to glimpse into the future at the cost of opening your mind to dangerous things in the immaterial world. A few such flowers were brought to the Empire by sailors and were afterwards cultivated for their nectar, leading to a spread in the drug's popularity, a string of disappearances, and eventually the banning of the plant's cultivation.
• All Swords Are the Same: A Zigzagged Trope. The majority of common one-handed weapons — regardless of whether they're swords, axes, maces or other diverse implements — are lumped together as "hand weapons" with no statistical differences whatsoever. In 2nd edition, two-handed weapons like greatswords and mauls are similarly blanketed as "great weapons". However, there are still numerous weapons that stand as their own, unique categories, such as rapiers, halberds, different types of bow and firearm, and so forth.
• Alternate Timeline: Many, if not all, of the RPG books lean on this. Your characters can cause major events from the main series to be averted, and the authors encourage you to do so, especially in the fourth edition. The second edition is also explicitly set in the aftermath of the Storm of Chaos; while the third and fourth edition are not, nor do they seem to follow the End Times despite taking a lot of lore from them.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • Subverted with the Norscans, a race of humans primarily associated with the forces of Chaos. While the tribes of Norsca's northern reaches (closer to the corrupting influence of the Chaos Wastes) are almost entirely villainous, the tribes closer to the south are mellow enough that honest trade with Kislev and Marienburg is frequent. In Marienburg especially, hiring rugged northmen as bodyguards is said to be rather fashionable among the upper classes, particularly with the noblewomen. However, it should be noted that Southern Norscans are still, well, Norscans, and therefore are still violent barbarians who revere the Chaos Gods. In 2nd edition, Norscans were fully playable as adventuring characters, initially represented by the "Norse Berserker" career in the core rulebook before gaining a unique racial template and career list in Tome of Corruption.
    • Double Subverted by other material from the setting that implied that the Norscans living or frequently trading with the Empire were either exiles or at least looked down upon in their societies, however. It is implied that when Archaon the Everchosen united the forces of Chaos and marched south, those less-evil tribes were the first victims.
  • Double Subverted by the Kurgan, who are essentially the Warhammer World's equivalent to Turko-Tatars. Much like the Norscans, they have a rich cultural and spiritual existence and see the Chaos Gods through nuanced, localised interpretations. Some Kurgan tribes are known to have links with the northernmost Kislevite people, and indeed, are related to them. Despite this, the text makes note that a Kurgan player character would normally never interact with the people of the South, except in combat or as part of a Master-Slave relationship.
  • Played straight by the Hung, a barbarian tribe of the Wastes who are said to be stupid, savage bastards even compared to the Norscans."Word of a Hung" is a northerner slang term for a promise that everyone knows will never be honoured. A Hung tribe might surround a village and demand all the village women be handed over to avoid the village being burned to the ground, and then the moment the women are in their arms, burn the village down anyway. Because they can.
  • Skaven in Children of the Horned Rat unabashedly embrace this trope, to the point where the book encourages the GM and the players to engage in petty infighting and power struggles. As the book explains, every skaven dreams of ruling over their fellows, regards everyone around them with paranoia or jealousy, and will always try to blame someone else when things go wrong.
• Ambadassador:
  • The Grey Guardians are sought as diplomats for their wisdom and tact, but their usual job is basically traveling wizard secret Hardboiled Detective or spies, with the grit and cunning that implies.
  • Ambassador is an advanced career in 2nd edition (originating from Realm of the Ice Queen), and its entries are mostly high-end careers such as captain, high priest, and wizard lord, which means they're already quite powerful characters before taking the job.
• Ancestor Veneration: Ancestor worship is common among many human communities as well, and provides rules for playing as one such worshipper that include bonuses when the character performs a feat their ancestors approve of and penalties such as a round of paralysis as an offended great-great-great-grandfather delivers a furious tirade against an especially disappointing performance. It's noted that dwarfs greatly approve of this practice, but sometimes wonder how the much more short-lived humans can even keep all their bygone ancestors straight.
• Animate Inanimate Matter: The mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption include ones that turn the mutant into living crystal or metal. The metal one in particular makes its bearer very strong and tough and confers immunity to fire and cold effects, at the cost of reducing dexterity and making them more vulnerable to electricity.
• Annoying Arrows:
  • This was a rather serious flaw in the first edition of the game. The problem was that, as the player characters advance, their melee attacks got more powerful and more accurate and their opponents got tougher. Their arrows, on the other hand, got more accurate but remained damage 3 no matter how good an archer the character was. Even worse, skilled melee fighters got multiple attacks each round, while ranged attackers could only get one tops (or even less if they used crossbows or firearms, which had longer reload times). So arrows were powerful against your average thug, goblin or newbie adventurer, but almost useless against a knight, chaos warrior or orc warlord. In addition to this, the higher your skill in either melee or shooting, the higher the chance of gaining an additional damage that with a bit of luck may still One-Hit Kill anything that is not immune to normal weapons. However, missile combat uses a Sudden Death Rule that is, as a rule of thumb, more deadly than normal Critical Hit rules.
  • In 4th Edition, bows scale in damage as your character's strength increases, while guns and crossbows do not. That said, the amount of strength needed for an average adventurer with a bow to match the most basic gun is extreme (strength bonus 6 or higher).
• Anomalous Art:
  • When studied, the painting "A Grim Feast" causes the viewers to slaughter his entire family. A legend tell Girardi del Vors murdered his wife and her two male lovers after he found them in his house then used their blood and fluids to make this painting before hanging himself.
  • "The Blessed Ones" painting causes any viewer to gain one Insanity point and, if one drop of blood falls on it, unleashes two Unholy Ones who try to trap the viewer in the painting forever.
• Anti-Villain: Karitamen the Death Scarab, the Big Bad of the 2nd edition adventure Lure of the Lich Lord. A sidebar called "Evil vs Undead" lampshades this, pointing out that he is ultimately a complex person with multiple motivations and virtues as well as vices, most of whom he would hold even if he wasn't a millennia-old Tomb King. The final encounter between Karitamen and the player characters is left up to the GM and can be solved nonviolently, with the book only pointing out that certain actions (like defacing his tomb or killing his best friend) will make him respond appropriately.
• Apothecary Alligator: In the 1st edition adventure, The Dying of the Light, the characters meet Dr Balthazar, a dwarf alchemist from the University of Nuln. The cart he is travelling in is loaded with the paraphernalia of his alchemical studies including a stuffed alligator.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix:
  • In 1^st edition, armor and shields "hinder conjurations and create magical disharmonies", increasing the Mana cost of spells proportionally to the weight of the armour and interfering with the spellcaster's mana recovery.
  • In 2nd edition onwards, armour and shields disrupt the Winds of Magic around the spellcaster, penalizing their spellcasting rolls and thereby increasing the chance that any given spell will fail. There are exceptions, like the 2e "Armoured Casting" Talent reducing the penalty.
  • In 4th edition, it is instead explained that wearing certain clothes attracts different Winds of Magic, while repelling the rest. Armor has an averse effect on spellcasting because wearing large amounts of metal disporportionately attracts Chamon, the Gold Wind. Leather armor, meanwhile, is infused with Ghur, the Amber Wind. Wizards who wield the Lore of Metal or Lore of Beasts are logically exempt from these penalties, since they're already using the right type of magic.
• Armour Is Useless: In 1^st Edition, chainmail or plate armour give 1 Armour Point, which stacks with Toughness (natural resilience) that ranges between 2 and 4 for an average human. This means that an average guy in plate armor is just as resilient as a tough warrior naked. Later editions hugely increase its value.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: With weapons and ammunition, this is variously known as the "armor-piercing" (2nd edition) or "penetrating" (4th edition) trait, which reduces the target's effective armor points when calculating damage. Many of the stronger attack spells across editions will specify that they ignore damage reduction from armor, physical toughness or both.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Herrimaults outlaw bands are made up of the criminals and assorted undesirables of Bretonnian society — runaway serfs, levy dodgers, poachers, Sweet Polly Olivers who were found out, disgraced nobles, failed rebels, and everyone else who got on the nobility's bad side, united in a quest to strike back against Bretonnia's stifling social order.
• Artifact of Doom: Magic items of Chaos are generally created from ghastly materials and/or empowered by terrible deeds, and have terrible side effects when used by anyone who hasn't already forfeited their soul to Chaos.
• Artificial Limbs: Combat, accident, and disease are all common causes of limb loss in this setting, and player characters are not exempt. Things like peg legs and hand-hooks are commonly available replacements, though a player character who has one installed to replace one that's lost does have to spend some experience practicing with it before they regain full functional use of that limb. For those characters who have a staggeringly improbable amount of money to spend, they can commission an "engineering marvel" which completely duplicates the function of a lost limb or eye.
• Asteroids Monster:
  • Pink Horrors of Tzeentch in Tome of Corruption roll a 1d10 upon being slain in combat. On a 1-5, they split into a pair of Blue Horrors, which are weaker and lack the spellcasting ability of their parent. On a 6-10, the Pink Horror simply explodes into a mutation-inducing cloud.
  • The Multiplication mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, gives its bearer the ability to split into a crowd of up to ten smaller duplicates, which then act and move independently for a number of turns before merging back together.
• Astrologer: Astronomy is an academic skill that can be used to read hints about the future. "Astrologer" is a career available to PCs and NPCs, but the most respected are the Celestial Wizards, who augment their studies with real precognitive magic.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Extreme gigantism is one of the most common mutations caused by Chaos on normal animals; while most cases aren't quite extreme enough for this trope (giant rats and spiders, for instance, are "only" the size of a wolf), others, like fen worms (common marsh snakes turned into 20- to 30-foot long monsters), certainly are.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In the 1st edition, it was almost impossible to use thrown bombs without catching yourself in the blast as the maximum throwing range was only a yard further than the damage radius. This was corrected in errata and later editions.
  • Most of the third-tier careers in 2nd edition — especially those that require full plate mail or, hell, anything costing over 100 Gold Coins as a trapping to enter. The highest level wizard career requires 6000 GC worth of grimoires to enter.
  • In Third Edition, Ulthuan Scale Armour qualifies: it looks really cool, but costs 1 more gold and provides 1 less armour then a breastplate, all for a negligible encumbrance reduction.
  • The Repeater Handgun and Repeater Pistol. They do very slightly less damage than a regular firearm, which is still huge compared to just about every other weapon, and have the great advantage of auto-reloading so the long reload time for most firearms isn't necessary, and finally, they look cool and steampunky. However, they're prohibitively expensive even for character who'd be able to afford a normal firearm and have a vastly increased risk of exploding in your hand.

Tropes B—C

• Back-Alley Doctor:
  • Ruprect Klotten is an above-board version, a barber-surgeon who became an embalmer because he didn't like dealing with live patients. To those who know to ask for his medical services, he's an unpleasant doctor, but a cheap and discreet one.
  • Bloody Maria from Tome of Corruption, a practitioner of Meat Grinder Surgery in Nuln's illegal "Night Market". Her speciality is amputating the unwanted deformations and extra body parts of Mutants.
• Badass Bookworm: Magister Oric of Wurtbad, author of Perilous Beasts: A Study of Creatures Fair and Foul, the in-universe equivalent of the Old World Bestiary splatbook for 2nd edition. In his efforts to get as much information for his bestiary as possible, he actually confronted pretty much every sentient creature in his list and spoke to them face to face. And what's more, in every case, he lived to tell the tale — by the time he published his book, he had been working on it for 50 years and only lost his hand in the process. Which, considering he went face to face with every notable creature haunting the Old World, is highly impressive. He even managed to diplomatically talk to beings like Daemons, Dragon Ogres, Chaos worshippers (including full-fledged champions), Skaven (a Clan Eshin "scholar" actually provides information on poisoning many of the creatures mentioned in the book) and Dark Elves. In fact, a note at the end indicates the book got banned because the editor thought he had just stolen some old elven bestiary text and made every encounter in it up, because even conceiving of the alternative — that he really did it all — would be heretical at best.
• Badass Normal: By default, pretty much any successful character you play (what few there are). None of the playable races are superhuman as a rule (Dwarfs are generally tougher than humans while being slower and Elves are generally quicker while being just as tough/fast, but both are still mostly within human limits; meanwhile Halflings are flat-out worse at everything) and you're extremely unlikely to roll a career that can use magic. You're even less likely to roll a career that can use magic to any combat-relevant degree, and the system provides for little to no use of magic-enhanced weaponry. Yet you will inevitably encounter enemies who are superhuman and do use magic. For example, the official starter campaign in Ashes of Middenheim expects your party to defeat, among many other foes: a rebellious Ghur wizard (backed by a pack of brainwashed predator animals), a ten-foot tall Minotaur (backed by a band of Gors), a Chaos Spawn, a Chaos sorcerer (backed by a few cultists), and a Bloodletter.
• Barbarian Hero: When using the Tome of Corruption sourcebook, and the 2nd Edition rules, a player can create a heroic character from the heavily muscled and fair-haired barbaric northern tribes of Norsca. While later lore in the main game made the Norscans almost totally tainted by Chaos, at the time the Tome was released the Norscans were more neutral, and could at times be heroic and friendly to other human nations. Even later lore will have very rare instances of neutral-to-friendly Norscan tribes to excuse playing as them.
• Barefoot Poverty: The 2nd Edition sourcebook Old World Armoury remarks that most Imperial peasants do without shoes, preferring to clothe the "important" parts of their body first, but this wasn't really reflected in the illustrations until 4th Edition.
• Battle Bolas: Bolas are specialist weapons, dealing minimal damage but rendering ensnared targets unable to take any action but try to escape. Most Careers that offer the necessary training either work with animals (like Horse Masters) or capture live humans (like Slavers and Witch Hunters).
• Being Evil Sucks: In 2nd Edition, it's entirely possible to play the ultimate Villain Protagonist and become a Warrior of Chaos or Chaos Sorcerer, climbing your way up the ranks with the goal of eventually becoming a Daemon Prince. Unfortunately the gods are extremely fickle, and when you get their attention they're just as likely to slap you with more debilitating mutations as they are to reward you with a cool daemonic weapon. If the Eye of the Gods finally deigns to judge your worth and you have more mutations than Gifts of Chaos at the time, you'll be deemed a failure and transformed into a Chaos Spawn. Even better, you can't leave these Chaos-related classes once you start them, and the descriptions of the classes indicate that as the player character climbs up the tree, they begin to slowly forget who they really are and why they started doing these horrible things. By the time the player reaches Exalted Champion of Chaos, the description plainly states that the character's original identity has withered away to nothing, and their behavior by this point is really just a combination of insanity, instinct and the dominating influence of their chosen deity.
• Beneath Notice:
  • The 4th Edition talent of that name makes people of a higher social status than you ignore your presence as long as you're not acting in a way that draws attention to yourself. Furthermore such characters will find you an unworthy opponent and refuse to use bonuses when attacking or wounding you.
  • This is part of why Halflings avoid the worst of the Fantastic Racism levelled at other peoples of the Old World: Simply put, nobody cares enough about Halflings to really "hate" them.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: The Scorpion Tail mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, causes the bearer to develop a long, armor-plated tail tipped with a hooked, poisonous stinger. The Spiked Tail mutation instead produces a reptilian tail ending in a spiked ball built for bashing blows. Mechanically speaking, these are strictly beneficial additions, as they give powerful weapons for no built-in downsides. Socially, however, they're a tiny bit of a handicap.
• Big Eater: Halflings need to eat twice as much as Humans, Elves, or Dwarfs, and will begin to starve otherwise. Ogres, if run as player characters, need to eat five times as much. This is base subsistence - both Halflings and Ogres want to eat more, even if they don't need to. This fuels both species' hyperactive metabolisms, which contributes to their resistance to Chaos.
• Black Comedy: A lot of it all around. For example, the Bestiary in Second Edition has a Skaven assassin as one of its regular "contributors", whose only comments on the monsters are the prescribed poisons used by his Clan Eshin for assassinating them. Including "arsenic" for his own species.
• Black Knight:
  • The Chaos Warrior career chain in the Second Edition WHFRP game was this at its purest. The second rank of it is even called a Chaos Knight.
  • Also from Second Edition, the Black Guard and Knight of the Raven careers serve as heroic examples. Both are black-armored knightly orders devoted to Morr, the god of death. The Black Guards are sentries who protect large cemeteries and temples of Morr from intruders who would defile the crypts and gravesites, such as tomb-robbers and necromancers. The Knights of the Raven belong to a militant sub-sect of the cult, and instead take the more proactive role of hunting down vampires and other undead monsters. Both groups specialize in ranged weaponry to counter the superior close-combat power of the undead, which most conventional knights would dismiss as a craven tactic.
• Black Magic: The Dark Lores, chiefly Chaos and Necromancy. Where the conventional arcane lores involve specializing in the powers of a particular Wind of Magic, such as aqshy or ulgu, Dark Lores utilize a discordant, haphazard mix of the Winds known formally as dhar. Dhar is inherently corrupt, and comes with a risk of developing a variety of Red Right Hands when misused, which inevitably drives most users insane. Practitioners of the Dark Lores are hunted down and killed wherever they are found, either by the witchhunters or the Colleges of Magic (who see the "black magisters" as a dire threat to both the world and the reputations of better wizards).
• The Blank: One of the Mutations that can be inflicted by Chaos exposure causes the person's facial features to crawl away, leaving them completely blank. They somehow retain their senses of sight, hearing, and smell, and lose the need to eat and drink, but are forever hungry and thirsty.
• Blob Monster:
  • Chaos slime is a substance resembling a runny, pink or blue liquid produced under somewhat unclear circumstances; it's generally assumed to be a residue left after a daemon is banished and/or to be produced by and eventually consume certain mutants. Regardless of origin, it's living and fairly aggressive, forming parts of itself into tendrils with which to lash at passing creatures.
  • Huge, mindless amoebae were a halfway-common monster in 1st Edition, then disappeared until resurfacing in the 4th Edition rewrite of The Enemy Within.
• Blood for Mortar: The Ritual "Father W'soran's Architect" creates a 50-foot stone tower to the spellcaster's specifications. Its ingredients include a Stone Troll's skull and a map of the tower drawn in a mason's blood.
• Bloody Murder:
  • "Burning Blood" from the Lore of Chaos. The caster spits blood which burns like acid, dealing a number of hits to a single target equal to the sorcerer's Magic stat.
  • "Shadowblood", a lesser magic spell in Night's Dark Masters, fires flaming blood from the caster's hands to strike a number of targets up to their Magic stat. If the caster damages themselves for 5 Wounds to draw additional blood, the maximum number of targets is doubled.
  • A mutation in the Tome of Corruption expansion can turn a character's blood into various things, including spiders, water, hundreds of seeing eyes, mud, ectoplasm and so on. The more useful ones include fire, acid, electricity and molten lead, which can seriously damage opponents who injure you in melee.
• Body Horror: Chaos corrupts; what drives the point home better than waking up one day with a face growing out of your armpit? When fighting in a Warpstone-tainted environment, don't breathe in. Some of the mutation results are downright disturbing, and nigh impossible to roleplay seriously:
  While you sleep, your genitals decide to leave you and run off north to the realm of Chaos, in their place you are granted a toothed orifice which stage whispers lewd suggestions at inappropriate moments.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: A quote in the section on folk worship in Archives of the Empire: Vol III is by a man arguing that, since gods depend on the worship of mortals, they should be humanity's servants rather than the other way around. Its attribution is to "Reichardt D’Auckignes, deceased (struck by lightning)".
• Boom in the Hand: A failed attack roll with an explosive weapon causes a follow-up roll to determine what happens to the explosive. There's a chance that the attacker is still holding it when it explodes.
• Born Unlucky: The Knights of the Everlasting Light, an order of templar knights dedicated to Verena, is cursed with supernaturally terrible luck after an atrocity they commited during the crusade against Araby, always culminating in an Undignified Death of some kind. Hilda van der Kratt, an example character from the order, "has been mistaken for a wanted criminal, has lost seven horses from misfired arrows, and has misplaced fourteen swords" since joining.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Knights of the Grail describes the Forest of Châlons as being the haunt of "Undead, Beastmen and Undead Beastmen".
• Breaking the Bonds: A creature caught in a lasso or other entangling weapon can attempt a Strength test to break free or an Agility test to wriggle out.
• Breath Weapon: The Breathe Fire mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, allows its bearer to spit or exhale flame. One level of it gives the ability to spit a single fireball for up to four yeards, two levels make the fireball explosive and double the range, and three replace it with a gout of fire.
• Brown Note Being: Creatures with the "Terrifying" talent inflict an Insanity Point on anyone who fails their Will Power test as they flee or cower helplessly. Examples include dragons, the most grotesque daemons and mutants, and the worst Supernatural Fear Inducers.
• The Bus Came Back: Gnomes originally appeared in the RPG's 1st edition, but were removed from it in 2nd and 3rd edition, as gnomes had likewise been removed from Warhammer starting from its 4th edition. Then the RPG's 4th edition brought the gnomes back, as a full playable race no less.
• Butt-Dialing Mordor: Since all magic originates from the Realm of Chaos, a number of Magic Misfires involve accidentally contacting or summoning daemons. One of the miscast results for divine magic in 2nd Edition forces the player to roll instead on the arcane major miscast table, as the priest's prayers are instead answered by other, darker gods.
• The Cameo: None other than Kerillian will appear to aid the party during a mutant ambush in "Death on the Reik". They will return to aid them in "The Horned Rat" and "Empire in Ruins", but not stick around for long.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • The main campaign of adventures published for the first edition, The Enemy Within, pretty clearly cannot have taken place as written in the world described by the second and third editions. In Empire in Flames, Emperor Karl Franz and Boris Todbringer are both murdered on separate occasions; Heinrich Todbringer becomes the new emperor, is revealed as the heir of Sigmar, and marries Emmanuelle von Liebewitz. None of this happened according to the second edition.
  • The second edition is set in the aftermath of the "Storm of Chaos" campaign for Warhammer's sixth edition (itself an example of this trope for Warhammer). According to lore snippets from Paths of the Damned, the Storm was ended at the Siege of Middenheim by Valten and Karl Franz catching Archaeon in a pincer movement and sending his armies fleeing, with no indication that the final events of the wargame Storm of Chaos took place either. On top of this, Third and Fourth edition has no indication of Storm ever having taken place, leaving it discontinued from both wargame and role-playing game.
• Canon Immigrant: One of the entries in Monuments of the Riekland mentions a plot by Sarthorael the Ever-watcher, a Lord of Change who originates from Total War: Warhammer.
• Camp Follower: The job is codified as a basic Career that offers training in a broad range of practical skills. Flavor Text describes them as a versatile, surprisingly well-organized group who do various odd jobs around the camp, as well as scavenging and offering "personal companionship".
• Chain Lethality Enabler: 4th Edition has an optional rule, "Deathblow", where a character who deals a One-Hit Kill in melee combat can step into their space and make a free follow-up attack against another enemy.
• Character Alignment: In-Universe. Only present in the First Edition of the game. While broadly similar to their D&D equivalents, there were some differences. The options were:
  • Chaotic: Basically inhuman evil. Someone who has literally shed their humanity in pursuit of other goals, be they magical power, physical power, eternal life, daemonhood, or just causing mayhem.
  • Evil: Nasty sorts fully prepared to throw others under the bus, use extreme torture etc., but still have human motivations, and don't cross into Omnicidal Maniac territory.
  • Neutral: Most "normal" people — albeit with some Deliberate Values Dissonance due to the setting. Mostly care about themselves, but usually willing to oppose extremes of cruelty etc.
  • Good: Altruistic and prefer justice over law, and generally don't believe in Pay Evil unto Evil.
  • Lawful: If you go too far down the Good is Not Nice road, you end up here. These people believe in structure, permanence and order above all else. They are sworn enemies of Chaos, and are willing to go to great lengths to oppose it, but will also scoff at Neutral or even Good characters for being "too soft" or "lacking self-control".
• Character Level: Instead of gaining levels of "wizard" or "warrior", characters instead start with a career and a set of skills from that career. They can then advance their skills and stats in a way restricted by their current career (for example, servants can increase their agility, but not their leadership). In 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition finishing a career (having completed all available advances for that career) let you switch to a new career, while in 4th edition careers have tiers (for example: The "soldier" career goes recruit -> soldier -> sergeant -> officer) where unlocking tiers gives you access to new advances (much like in Dark Heresy's first edition).
• Charm Person: In The Thousand Thrones, the plot revolves around a young boy named Karl, who was born as a mutant with an particularly potent example of this power. Anyone who hears his voice — even if its only a single unassuming word — needs to pass a difficult Will Power test or become instantly and fanatically loyal to him. Within a short span of time he gathers a veritable army of thralls, who hold him up as the true reincarnation of Sigmar. Karl himself isn't remotely evil, however; he's just a normal boy with a superpower he can't actually control, and his followers are clearly shown to be projecting their own hopes and dreams onto his presence.
• Cheap Gold Coins: Generally averted across editions. While most items are priced in gold crowns, their prices are generally single-digits. Following the wealth guidelines in 4th edition, an unskilled labourer would be able to buy a decent knife with a week's wages, while a hand weapon such as a sword or an axe is achievable for most middle class careers within a month or so.
• Chef of Iron: Second edition's "Realms of Sorcery" book gives us two spells in the Lore of Fire that lend themselves to magical cooking. Flashcook causes food to be instantly cooked to the caster's content or causes water to instantly boil. Taste of Fire turns food spicy enough to cause intestinal distress in those unaccustomed to it, grants alcoholic effects to non-alcoholic drinks, and makes already-alcoholic drinks more so. Given that the Lore of Fire is easily the most combat-focused lore in the game, any Bright Wizard who knows these two spells qualifies as this trope.
• Chest Monster: Shiners are a type of giant amoeba that inhabits damp, dark places such as ruins and spreads itself thin over objects, giving them a shiny, glittering appearance that makes them seem more interesting and valuable than they would otherwise be. When treasure hunters or tomb robbers try to grab a shiner's perch, its shoots gouts of acid at them.
• City of Adventure: The Fourth Edition starter set comes with a "Guide to Ubersreik" book, detailing that city in the southern Reikland, its surrounding territories, and containing plenty of adventure seeds for everything mentioned. Further books give Altdorf, capital of the empire and home of the imperial palace, and Middenheim, a city in the Grim Up North Middenland.
• Classical Cyclops: The 1st Edition core rulebook's description of Giants mentions that there are multiple kinds distinguished by unusual features, specifically naming the one-eyed Cyclops as an example. No other mention of such beings is made in later material, however.
• Cold-Blooded Whatever: Lakemen are a variant of Beastmen that resemble misshapen humanoid frogs, but also possess gills and crustacean pincers. Justified, as they're creatures of Chaos and Chaos habitually causes living things to develop drastic mutations with no regard for taxonomy or sense.
• Competitive Balance: Some careers are blatantly better than others, though at different roles, and there are usually mitigating factors somewhere down the line even for peasants and servants. For your average combat-centric campaign, however, getting about 3/4ths of the starting careers will shaft you. Even in 3rd or 4th Edition (which is a lot more player friendly) skills are extremely important, and getting a career that doesn't start with combat skills in a combat-heavy campaign means you probably won't live long enough to learn those skills... which you would have to spend more experience to get.
• Concentration-Bound Magic: Some spells require ongoing concentration instead of having a set duration. For example, "Reaping Scythe" allows a Will Power test each round to prolong it past its base duration, and "Throttling" consumes a half-action every round and precludes any other spellcasting.
• Conspicuous Consumption:
  • Bretonnians who are granted a special exemption from one of the country's reams of sumptuary laws tend to flaunt their privilege. Some lords even grant "rewards" that they expect the recipient to enjoy to embarrassing excess, like permitting a commoner to wear red clothes in the hope that he'll drape himself head to toe in crimson, or the right to wear a large bright green false nose.
  • Some careers require entrants to flaunt their means with expensive high-quality clothing, jewellery, and other trappings of wealth. A horse coper just needs a nice outfit to look legitimate, whereas a Noble Lord is expected to have at least a thousand gold crowns worth of superior clothes and jewels.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The first book of the 2nd edition Paths of the Damned campaign is set in Middenheim, and the lore given about the city makes numerous offhand references to the events of The Enemy Within, which transpired years ago in-universe. At one point, the players even encounter a leftover cell of the Purple Hand.
• Covered in Gunge: The nobles of the Reikland sometimes engage in a drinking contest called the "brandy bounce", which involves gulping down brandy and then vomiting it over commoners' heads.
• Crafted from Animals: Some Chaos weapons incorporate parts of magical beasts to convey related properties, such as a blade crafted from a Basilisk tail that can petrify creatures cut by it, or one quenched in minotaur blood to grant its bearer berserker rage.
• Crapsack World: But of course! Take all the worst aspects of Medieval European society: the paranoia, the bigotry, the fanatical religious devotion; add a generous helping of monstrous creatures, along with a dash of dangerous magic and corrupting evil, and you have the Old World! It's a world where people live under constant threat from demon-worshipping Vikings, insidious Chaos cultists, insane goat-headed savages who live in the woods, roving undead, inbred corpse-eaters, boorish orcs and goblins who slaughter people for fun, wildly breeding Skaven ratmen who will shank you in the dark and gnaw your bones... and of course, the Jerkass Gods who preside over the setting and are inevitably going to destroy the world eventually. And in the grand scheme of things, you barely amount to a mercenary goon or, at best, an Elite Mook. Forget about saving the world - It Is Beyond Saving. The best you could do is saving the village on yonder hill. Or if not the village, then just the girl. Or if not the girl, then just saving for your retirement.
  • Even by Warhammer standards, Sylvania is described as a nasty place to be. The woods are haunted by ghouls, specters and bloodthirsty monsters. The vampire nobility lord over (and prey on) a helpless populace who constantly live in fear, tending skinny pigs and meagre crops by day and hiding behind heavy oak doors with multiple bolts and incantations to all manner of gods by night. Being outside on a winter's night is said to be almost certain death, and summer is only a little safer. And then there's Mousillon, Sylvania's Bretonnian brother. It has all the nasty aspects of Sylvania, along with near-endless swamps, man-eating frogmen, and the Bretonnian class system. Notably, "Mousillonian Peasant" is the only background that doesn't have to explain how they ended up adventuring; if you were born in Mousillon and found any way out of that place, you grasped it with both hands and ran for the endzone, consequences be damned.
  • If your travels take you across the sea to the distant continent of Lustria, you'll have to contend with a steaming jungle that is completely at odds with warm-blooded life and might literally eat you alive. Tropical diseases, venomous snakes, poisonous (and sometimes carnivorous) flora, psychotic Lizardmen, bloodthirsty dinosaurs, undead pirates, roving fleets of xenophobic slaver elves who might drag you away to their homeland to face the life of a slave or worse...
• Critical Existence Failure: Averted — characters with no Wounds remaining aren't automatically killed or even necessarily inconvenienced (aside from being much slower to heal). However, every blow that deals more Wounds than a character has left to lose is a Critical Hit with effects from "lose half an action" to "die on the spot".
• Critical Failure:
  • 2nd edition had Magic Misfires occur during spell casting by rolling doubles on your spell die. Certain unstable weapons (usually firearms) can also jam or explode when rolling a 96-100 on your attack rolls.
  • In second edition, rolling snake-eyes while performing a casting roll not only causes the spell to fail outright, but forces the caster to make a willpower check or gain an insanity point as the misplaced energies slightly fry their brain. Since all the (ten-sided) dice rolled have to turn up 1 for this to happen, it is mainly a danger to low-level spellcasters (who can only roll one or two dice at a time).
  • Thrown explosives like bombs and incendiaries in second edition will scatter on a failed ballistics test, decided by a 1d10 roll — However, on a 1, the bomb turns out to be a dud, while on a 10 the bomb immediately explodes in the user's hands before it can be thrown. In addition, failing the ballistics check by 30 points or more means it simply drops at the user's own feet as they fumble with it.
  • In 4th edition, fumbles are the counterpart of critical hits and occur when you roll doubles but don't succeed on your test. Because combat rolls are opposed rolls, this means you can both fumble and win a round a combat at the same time as long as your opponent rolls even worse, leading to situations like your slayer beheading that enemy goblin but accidentally getting his axe stuck in his own leg (or in the back of the party elf) in the process.
• Critical Hit: In three general varieties:
  • "Ulric's Fury!" from 1st-3rd edition, in which you roll a natural 10 on a weapon's damage roll. If you succeed a Weapon Skill test, you get to roll another 1d10 and add the result to the first roll. If you roll another 10 after that, you get to roll another dice without a test, and another, and another... with some luck, Ulric's Fury can be a dramatic One-Hit Kill, wiping out a target's wounds and crossing directly into a huge Critical Hit Value.
  • There's also a page of critical hit effects once you deal damage beyond 0 wounds — and some fan-made expanded ones, including an epic 16+ page version written by a medical professional — with quite a few eye-watering effects that make Dark Heresy's tables look like a walk in the park by comparison. The First Edition's second-worst Critical Hit on the leg, for example, reads as follows:
    Your blow destroys your opponent's hip joint almost totally — the leg hangs limply, a mass of tattered and pulpy flesh with protruding fragments of bone. By chance, one of the bone splinters has severed a major artery, and after a fraction of a second your opponent collapses, with blood pouring out from the ruined hip. Death from shock and blood loss is almost instantaneous.
  • In 4th ed, critical hits happen when you succeed at a test in combat by rolling doubles (so 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, etc). When this happens you immediately inflict a critical wound on your opponent, no matter how injured or uninjured they may currently be. Critical hits can even occur while you're parrying an opponent's blow, making melee combat much more chaotic and deadly for both sides.
• Crystalline Creature: One possible Chaos Mutation transforms the victim's body into living crystal, which boosts their Toughness but halves their Hit Points. The crystal rots into worthless filth if separated from the main body.
• Cult:
  • The old world is polytheistic, all its major gods command a cult to do their bidding. And their bidding is often very bloody; gods in Warhammer are not moral pillars or Anthropomorphic Personifications but tyrannical masters who will strike you down if you don't give them their due. As such, most of the important people of the empire belong to (often rival) cults, who for all their mutual dislike, hate chaos, foreigners and elves more.
  • Chaos cults, dedicated to one of the four Chaos Gods, are a staple antagonist in WFRP, and 2nd edition's Tome of Corruption includes special careers to represent a cult magus and his inner circle. Outlawed non-Chaos cults also exist in the Empire, dedicated to obscure deities such as Ahalt the Drinker (a forgotten god of the hunt, and enemy of the cult of Taal and Rhya), Stromfels (god of the ocean's dangers and patron of pirates), Solden (god of tyranny) or Khaine (the Lord of Murder). There's also the Yellow Fang, a cult that worships the Horned Rat and plays Black Shirt for the Skaven Under-Empire.
• Cursed Item: Given that Chaos Is Evil, items of Chaos magic almost inevitably afflict their bearers with some terrible effect like madness, mutation, or a slow and awful death. Sometimes, favoured followers of the Chaos gods are exempt; sometimes not.

Tropes D—E

• Damage Reduction: Every ten full points of Toughness a character has contributes to a single-digit "toughness bonus", which in combat reduces incoming damage. Armor also reduces damage to individual body parts, and with a high enough combined value of toughness and armor, the player can No-Sell weaker attacks. However, certain damage types or spell effects can deal wounds that ignore armor, toughness or both.
• Dashing Hispanic: The Estalian Diestro career from the second edition of the game. Estalia is the setting's Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Spain and the Diestro is described as a master swordsman (or woman). Their beginning possessions include not simply a rapier, but a set of fine clothes and a bottle of cologne or perfume!
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • The main books tend to be very Empire-centric with only minor attention given to other groups (mostly in how they relate to the Empire), but there are dedicated sourcebooks for most of the other Old World nations, elaborating on their backgrounds and giving options for campaigns and characters. Most of these are from the 2nd edition or the very end of the 1st. They include Sold Down The River for Marienburg/Westerland, Stone and Steel for the Karaz Ankor Dwarfs, Knights of the Grail for Bretonnia, Children of the Horned Rat for the Skaven and their Under-Empire, Tome of Corruption for the Chaos tribes(Norscans, Beastmen, Kurgan, Daemons), Renegade Crowns for the Border Princes, Night's Dark Master for Sylvania and other Vampiric lands, and Realm of the Ice Queen for Kislev. Entities too small to get their own sourcebook tended to share one with other minor nations; the Eonir Wood Elves (particularly those of Laurelorn Forest) got their focus in Archives of the Empire, Vol. 1 (splitting the book with the halflings of Mootland, the Empire's Ogre population, and the Grey Dwarfs), while additional info on Tilea, Estalia, and Araby is relegated to WFRP Companion and, in Tilea's case, part of Up In Arms.
  • Yet, even here, the Empire got many of their own sourcebooks to focus on specific subsets in more detail. These include Sigmar's Heirs (sourcebook for the Empire in general), Terror in Talabheim (for Talabheim), Shades of Empire (for Imperial organizations), Up In Arms (almost entirely focused on Imperial military structure), and City of the White Wolf (for Middenheim).
• Deadpan Snarker: Never mind characters and NPCs, the manuals can get in on the snark. For instance, the sum total of the "roleplay hints" for Human characters:
  You should know how to play one of these.
• Death as Game Mechanic: Priests of Morr perform Doomings that foretell the circumstances of the recipient's death. If a Player Character receives a Dooming and later dies in a fashion that matches it, the player's next character starts with an XP bonus.
• Death Seeker: Yes, flagellants and Dwarf slayers are playable in all four editions, and yes, you are expected to act like it if you do. In 2nd edition, the "career choice" for a slayer went troll slayer -> giant slayer -> daemon slayer -> glorious death.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Quite a lot of it, especially in the Knights of the Grail supplement concerning the Kingdom of Bretonnia.
  • Sadly true to the medieval period, women in Bretonnia are forbidden from owning property or managing their own affairs. If you want to play as a female adventurer in Bretonnia, you might have to pretend to be a man. Even visiting women may prefer to pretend to be men to make things run more simply for the duration of their stays.
  • Xenophobia is seen as a virtue, and openly espousing tolerance is viewed with deep suspicion. Justified because the ever-present danger of Chaos keeps everyone on their toes. It's noted (particularly in later source books) that the large cities of the Reikland are the most cosmopolitan and tolerant places one's likely to find in the Empire, and the xenophobia gets worse the further out into the sticks one goes.
  • People with mental disorders are treated with revulsion and suspicion, tolerated only if their condition invokes either humour or pity. Many people believe that insanity is contagious and Witch Hunters have no tolerance for those with mental disorders and put most they encounter to the flame or sword — which is ironic as many of them suffer paranoid delusions so severe that they'd be institutionalized themselves if they lived in our world.
• Depending on the Writer: Enforced. The sourcebooks will flat-out tell you to modify existing lore to fit your personal tastes, as the franchise has no canon policy and is partially designed to encourage personalization (it helps that there are, officially, many different alternate continuities). One example is found in 2001's Realms of Sorcery:
  If you prefer to keep magic scarce and dangerous in your game, with the highest levels accessible only to non-player characters, then you should rule that there are only a few hundred people schooled in the nature of magic in the whole of the Empire, with the Colour Colleges in Altdorf having as few as twenty or thirty members each, and even hedge-wizards being difficult people to find. On the other hand, you may want to increase the amount of magic in your game: so each college has a population of masters and apprentices numbering in the hundreds... Might there be more unlicensed magicians than licensed ones - if not across the whole of the Old World, then at least in some parts of it? The answers to these questions will set the tone of your WFRP game, and may give you ideas for adventures as well.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Downplayed. 1^st and 2^nd Editions both have campaigns^note (Enemy Within and Paths of the Damned, respectively) with a weakened Greater Daemon at the endgame, which puts it in the realm of possibility for a party of powerful, veteran adventurers to defeat — probably at significant cost. Daemon Slayers also need to have killed a "daemon of note" to enter the career. Mostly, though, entities like Greater Daemons or Ancient Dragons are intended to be used for cutscenes, not as personal foes.
  The Greater Daemons of Chaos are living symbols of the futility of fighting Chaos. Their might is unmatched. Their threat is limitless. Each and every one of these foul beings have the power to bring low the greatest of mortal heroes.
• Discouraging Concealment: A spell in the Lore of Shadow causes an object to look either worthless or precious. In the former case, it looks like a rusted, rotten, or otherwise broken-down version of itself, though its actual functionality is unchanged.
• Dodge the Bullet: In 1st-3rd edition you were allowed to dodge, but not parry, any incoming ranged attacks. As of 4th edition this is no longer possible unless your opponent is at point blank range (usually within 5 squares or less).
• Doesn't Like Guns: Bretonnian Knights live by an all-encompassing code of chivalry that prevents them from using any ranged weapons, be they firearms, crossbows or even hand-drawn bows. This shows in how none of the knightly careers grant any proficiency in them. Though the knights are at least tactically savvy enough to allow their peasant retainers to use such cowardly and ignoble weapons to provide fire support. Elves as a rule also hold blackfire weapons in disdain, thinking them the domain of clueless children who lack the skill to use bows and magic (and to be honest, the elf-excliusive elven bow is among the best ranged weapons in the entire game). You can play as an elf character who uses a gun, just don't expect to meet any likeminded kin out there (and expect more than a few raised eyebrows).
• Doves Mean Peace: The goddess Shallya is associated with doves, and she is a benevolent Healer God who requires her followers to be Actual Pacifists (within reason, given the setting).
• Dramatic Spine Injury: A broken spine is the worst possible result of a Critical Hit to the body short of death — the target is helpless until they receive medical treatment and is at risk of permanent paralysis, Player Character and NPC alike.
• Druid:
  • Among the Colleges of Magic, you have the Jade and Amber orders. Jade wizards wield the Lore of Life, which is associated with plants, while Amber wizards wield the Lore of Beasts, which grants them control over animals and Voluntary Shapeshifting. Both groups largely eschew the urban lifestyle of most magisters and prefer to live out in the wilderness, and tend to dress much like stereotypical fantasy druids (with Jade wizards even carrying Druidic Sickles as a symbol of their order).
  • On the divine side, you have the cult of Taal and Rhya, joint deities of the natural world — Taal is god of the untamed wild, while Rhya is goddess of fertility and the harvest. Among the strictures of the cult are rejection of modern technology and industry, and instructions to live in harmony with nature, so their followers are most often woodsmen, hunters and farmers. The miracles used by their annointed priests, fittingly, are based around living off the land; Taal's miracles favor hunter/gatherer practices, while Rhya's miracles concern safety and fertility.
  • In 1^st Edition, Druids are the priests of the Old Faith, a nature-based religion that predates the gods. They worship in sacred groves and stone circles, gain spirit-animal Familiars, and wield Old Magic that manipulates the natural world. Later editions do away with them, giving their powers to other magical traditions and describing the Old Faith as having been subsumed into the cults of various nature gods.
• Dungeon-Based Economy: Second Edition features a campaign set in the fallen dwarfhold of Karak Azgal, an expy of Erebor that was laired by a dragon. The dragon is long gone, but the vast underground city is filled with monsters and dwarfen wealth, resulting in a Boom Town of opportunistic treasure hunters and adventurers known as Skalf's Hold (named for and founded by the dwarf hero who slew the dragon). The dwarfs maintain strict control over access to the underground; dungeon delvers are required to pay a toll to enter and a tax on any relics they find. Eventually a second, seedier boom town called Deadgate sprang up outside of Skalf's Hold, filled with merchants and diversions extracting coin from adventurers.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The original First Edition rulebook was released in 1986, when the setting had very little lore (the RPG in fact set a lot of it up); its identity would only really be established in the war game's 4th edition, from 1992 to 1996. Thus a few oddities pop up compared to later editions and post-4^th edition Warhammer Fantasy:
  • There's no mention of Daemons, instead featuring Demons; and all the gods have demon followers, not just the Chaos Gods (which yes means it is very possible to have Good and Lawful demons).
  • Sigmar is mentioned briefly as a regional "lesser deity" and protector of the Imperial Family, implying he is a rather minor god.
  • Some of the backgrounds for certain countries and regions have undergone major changes — e.g. Sylvania wasn't run by vampires, Bretonnia was known for its decadent nobility and had a technology level equivalent to the Empire, Albion was a civilized land, the Hobgoblins weren't allied with Chaos Dwarfs, etc.
  • The Fimir, a minor, rarely-mentioned race in the later editions of Warhammer, are featured prominently — they get a whole page of background plus a full-page illustration.
  • The sample PC used to explain various rules is called Clem Shirestock, while the premade human PC at the back of the book is called Mellory, and the halfling is Soho. All of these sound much more appropriate to a culture equivalent to Britain rather than the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, the elf is called Bianca, leaving Jodri the dwarf as the only one whose name actually fits the background.
  • Apart from the rulebook, the 1st edition adventure Dying of the Light deserves a special mention, since it features Fimir, the gods of Law, and even a Chaos sorcerer of Malal — despite GW apparently having lost the intellectual property rights to him!
  • 1st edition features half-orcs (and half-goblins, which are mechanically identical), who are largely hated by everyone and so usually become assassins and mercenaries. They haven't been seen in any edition since.
  • Gnomes originally appeared in 1st edition, where they were described as basically a smaller, more foul-tempered subrace of dwarfs, with White Dwarf adding a love of pranking others. They disappeared for 2nd and 3rd edition, but made an unexpected return with new lore in 4th edition.
• Earthy Barefoot Character: Jade Wizards go barefoot to better feel the flow of Ghyran, the Wind of Magic that deals with the earth and life.
• Eating Contest: A feature of the Halfling festival of Pie Week.
• Elemental Punch: The Lore of Chaos spell "Dark Hand of Destruction" charges up the sorcerer's hand with a nimbus of Black Magic, giving unarmed attacks Damage 7 (unarmed attacks usually have a -4 damage penalty) and the armor piercing quality (armor usually counts double against unarmed attacks), along with a +10 bonus to the user's Weapon Skill stat to make it easier to hit things.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Creature statblocks in the books generally serve as a baseline, and the game-master is free to modify them as they see fit. In 2nd edition, this comes in the form of "creature careers" — Brute, Sneak and Chief, with other books providing a few more — that can provide monsters with additional Skill Scores and Perks (though the GM can use regular careers if it makes sense), while in 4th edition the GM is given a list of optional traits that grant additional abilities or modifiers to different stats.
  • The Lore of Necromancy in 2nd edition has Spell of Awakening, which creates wights instead of common zombies and skeletons. Wights are strong and intelligent, but must be created from the remains of characters who held advanced careers in life.
• Enemy Mine: Bretonnian nobles are often at odds with the Herrimaults, forest-dwelling bandits who fight the nobility to help the peasants. The nobles and Herrimaults, however, will still join forces or at least cease hostilities to deal with the worshippers of Chaos — the Code of the Herrimaults has a special proviso allowing them to ally with tyrants in order to oppose the Ruinous Powers.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: The Healer God Shallya is a beloved pacifist who preaches compassion and mercy towards all living things... except followers of Nurgle the Plaguemaster, who are the sole exception to her cult's stricture against killing.
• Everybody Smokes: To advance past the first rank of the Stevedore career, a character has to acquire a pipe and tobacco.
• Evil Laugh: Though it's tongue-in-cheek and left to the Game Master's discretion, an evil laugh is listed as a prerequisite to enter the Vampire Count career, alongside other Card-Carrying Villain traits.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: The Dark Lores (Chaos and Necromancy) have a 10% risk of adding a Red Right Hand to your character's appearance or psyche whenever they trigger Tzeentch's Curse. Chaos in particular also deals in far more disfiguring mutations, though you don't necessarily have to be evil to be affected.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: While characters can suffer mutations from numerous sources, being actively aligned with Chaos is the easiest way to end up with hideous and logic-defying physical alterations. In 2nd Edition's Tome of Corruption especially, many of the "Gifts of Chaos" bestowed upon Chaos-worshipping PCs involve mutating the physical aspects of daemons (such as having your face replaced with that of a bloodletter). However, if you develop more mutations than your body can physically withstand, you'll degrade into a mindless Chaos Spawn, a freakish nightmare that can only barely be recognized as having once been human.
• Evil Overlord: In Second Edition, the Exalted Champion of Chaos, Cataclyst and Vampire Lord careers are essentially this, and the Vampire Lord has the required "trappings" to back it up:
  Army of the Undead, Ambition beyond Possibility, Control over the Fate of Kings and Empires, 2d10 Fanatical Devotees, Enormous Lair (Palace, Castle, Labyrinth, Stronghold, Tower, etc.), 3 Magical Items, Pride beyond Hubris, Wealth beyond Avarice.
• Evil Sorcerer: Practitioners of the dark lores tend to be this more often than not, as their use of Black Magic inevitably erodes their sanity (and there aren't very many sympathetic motivations for doing it in the first place). Unsanctioned witches are feared to evolve into this trope as their magical powers develop, since without proper training most spellcasters will draw randomly from the Winds of Magic, which is how the above Black Magic is created. In 2nd edition's Tome of Corruption, there's an entire five-step career chain to represent especially powerful evil sorcerers devoted to one of the Ruinous Powers.
  • Necrarch vampires (the Squishy Wizard bloodline) are expert Necromancers, with a fondness for lairing in secluded towers and performing nightmarish experiments or art projects.
• Evil Tainted the Place:
  • The Winds of Magic can be attracted by extensive use of certain kinds of magic in the mortal world, which means areas that were once the site of Chaotic rituals or the lairs of necromancers tend to have a persistent aura of dhar (Black Magic), which only makes these places more attractive to evil sorcerers.
  • Blight, a spell from the Lore of Nagash in second edition, allows a necromancer to suck the life and vitality out of a full square mile of landscape. Water becomes poisonous, plants wither, animals will instinctively avoid the place, and the region will quickly develop a reputation for being haunted. This lasts until a jade wizard comes along with the Cure Blight spell to purify the area.
  • Rebirth In Blood, a second edition Ritual Magic that can resurrect vampires, must be performed on "accursed land" where a great tragedy took place — This could be a battlefield that was witness to a brutal slaughter, a village where everyone died of plague or turned to cannibalism, or the ruined city of Mordheim.
• Exact Words: In the first edition Realms of Sorcery had Erik's Sword of Confusion:
  This was made for Erik the Drunkard, a notorious Norscan mercenary. While in his cups he foolishly commissioned a wizard to make him a sword that could "cut through things like butter." The wizard was as good as his word. Against normal targets, the sword has Damage -3, but it cuts through dairy products with the efficiency of a fine cheesewire. The wizard who made the sword was later found drowned in a vat of yoghurt.
• Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving: Some NPC stat blocks include useless joke skills, which usually tie into the character's personality but are unlikely ever to be rolled in gameplay. Standouts include "Whine", "Eat Spaghetti", and "Wear Clothes".
• Extreme Omnivore:
  • Trolls are perpetually hungry and so stupid that even if they're under attack they must make an Intelligence check every round or begin to eat the nearest thing, "even if it is made out of stone".
  • Ogres also suffer constant hunger, but to a lesser extent, and enjoy good food in vast quantities - but if good food isn't available, they'll eat and drink just about anything, including defeated enemies, oil, animal feed, vinegar, raw meat, horses, dogs, cats, snakes, off-head beer, and even things like straw and wood.
• Eye of Newt:
  • Each conventional spell can consume a specific material "ingredient", ranging from a common substance (e.g.: butter) to something rare and/or expensive (e.g.: a ruby). In 1^st edition, the ingredient is needed in order to cast the spell. In 2^nd, it grants a small bonus to the spellcasting dice roll and is optional (except for the Spirit magic of Hag Witches). In 4^th, it's optional and suppresses Magic Misfires.
  • Ritual Magic spells consume thematically linked ingredients that are almost invariably rare, expensive, bizarre, and/or a Sidequest in and of themselves to obtain. For example, the ritual to cause an earthquake requires a large diamond, a dragon's tooth, and a gong blessed by a dying priest.

Tropes F—G

• Familiar: Some spellcasters can bind an animal as a familiar or create their own through alchemy. Familiars can spend experience on their own "career" equivalent and can grant unique abilities to the spellcaster, such as a Psychic Link or an extra chance to avoid a Magic Misfire.
• Fantastical Social Services: The Series Mascot class of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is the humble rat-catcher (and their small, but vicious, dog). They keep the cities of the Empire clean of vermin, but their work in the sewers inevitably leads them to run into the skaven, a technologically sophisticated race of evil rat-men who dwell beneath the earth. Officially, the skaven do not exist, and anyone who attempts to blow the whistle is either ridiculed as a madman or assassinated. Rat-catchers who live long enough simply keep the truth to themselves, shouldering the thankless burden of being a de facto first line of defence against the menace of the Under-Empire.
• Fantastic Diet Requirement: The "Unnatural Appetite" Chaos mutation leaves the victim able to gain sustenance from only one thing. Options include grass, paint, and pets.
• Fantastic Drug: Street drugs in the Empire include Weirdroot, which has effects similar to marijuana (lowered cognition, increased creative thought and euphoria), Mandrake Root (effects analogous to opiates: euphoria and lethargy), Ranald's Delight (which seems to be based on cocaine or amphetamine, causing increased energy to the point of hyperactivity) and Spit (a hallucinogen, with the nasty hitch that the illusions it causes are completely indistinguishable from reality). There's also dreamwine, which is a dark red wine with heavy tones that makes drinkers have prophetic dreams, but will eventually make them travel to the warpstone contaminated vinyards dreamwine came from where they fall asleep and serve as fertilizer for the tainted grapes.
• Fantastic Racism: All over the place. Dwarfs despise all Elves (to the degree they gain the talent Animosity (Elves) in 4th edition), distrust Halflings and consider Humans fickle, High Elves look down on Dwarfs and Wood Elves and consider Humans useful but dangerous, Wood Elves look down on Dwarfs and High Elves (and Athel Loren and Laurelorn Wood Elves consider each other's approaches foolish) and consider Humans dangerous, Humans consider Elves odd outlanders, stereotype Dwarfs and Halflings, and that's not going into their plain old regular racism against Humans of other nations and cultures... The only playable race to largely avoid this (on both ends) are the Halflings, and that's mostly because they're unusually friendly and tolerant and everyone else considers them Beneath Notice. And anything that resembles a mutant deserves death by torture (emphasis on "resembles", if you're normal but really hoarking ugly don't be surprised if the locals try to draw and quarter you).
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Warhammer world is implied to be an alternate offshoot of our world where man holds a tenuous grip on the world at the best of times, roughly around the late 1400's.
  • The Empire is very strongly the Holy Roman Empire. Even within the Empire, there is the provinces: Reikland is Austria, Middenland is Prussia, Wissenland is Switzerland, Averland is Bohemia, Stirland is Hungary, Hochland is the Black Forest, and Sylvania is Wallachia if it actually really was run by vampires. This is also served with a side of influence from The British Empire — Nuln for example with its smoking skyline, advanced steampunk technology and steam-powered lifting bridge has a lot of Victorian London about it.
  • Bretonnia is a fusion of medieval France and England, with King Arthur... but wrong.
  • Kislev is a mix of Poland-Lithuania and medieval Russia. Estalia is Spain and Aragon, and Tilea is Renaissance Italy.
  • The Norscans are Vikings. Giant, Daemon-worshipping Vikings on crack.
  • Should your travels ever take you out that far, to the east there are the large and ancient human kingdoms of Ind, Cathay and Nippon (India, Imperial China and Japan). Separating the kingdoms of the east from those of the west are Ogres... Very big and very hungry Mongol Ogres. To the northwest of the Empire and Bretonnia is Albion, a mysterious island seeped in fog and cold rain, populated by ornery naked warriors and dancing druids. To the south are the Border Princes (a Balkan-like region with many small countries), the kingdom of Araby (a combination of "Arabian Nights" Days and the Ottoman Empire), and south beyond that is lifeless desert and unexplored jungle stretching for mile after mile. Across the ocean to the west of the Old World lies Ulthuan, the Atlantis-like home of the High Elves, and beyond it the two continents of the New World. The southern one, Lustria, is home to Mayincatec Lizard Folk and Amazons, while the frigid northern one is home to Dark Elves as well as Beastmen, Orcs and worse.
• Fantasy Gun Control:
  • Averted in the wider setting. Arquebuses, blunderbusses, pistols and even clockwork repeating rifles are widely used across the Empire as well as in Estalia, Tilea, Kislev and the Border Princes (but not Bretonnia, see below), and arguably guns are the big reason humankind is able to hold its own in a world not wholly theirs - as Magnus the Pious once said, "the Empire owes its existence to faith, steel and gunpowder". However, the better quality guns are really expensive and hard to come by, and affordable guns are not much better than bows and crossbows and often as dangerous to the users as to their intended targets. So they tend to be Awesome, but Impractical for player characters.
  • Played straighter by other races. Elves generally don't use guns out of a sense of racist arrogance against humans and dwarfs - although there is nothing stopping a more pragmatic elven Player Character from using one if they want. Beastmen make no use of guns, or indeed any ranged weapon more advanced than javelins and throwing axes because they consider all technology to be repulsive blasphemy. Orcs and goblins, similarly to the beastmen, are too primitive to develop and operate firearms and mostly too savage to want to fight at range anyway. And the undead, well, most of them are mindless shambling corpses, incorporeal spirits and feral monsters.
  • Fluff-wise, Bretonnia has it in an interesting way, because the old ban on crossbows technically doesn't forbid new black-powder weapons. Most people there consider the current interpretation (that guns are vaguely similar to and fill the same battlefield niche as crossbows, and therefore count as such) to be in the spirit of the law, but the fathers of the port of L'Anguille are actively lobbying for a stricter interpretation or outright amendment to the law, so they can upgrade the port's defenses with cannon. Note that Bretonnia's actual navy already employs cannons, because they technically don't operate on Bretonnian soil.
• Fast Tunneling: One spell in the Lore of Life (Earth Gate in 2nd edition, Earthpool in 4th) allows the caster to disappear into the ground and emerge some distance away. It can't be used to tunnel through solid stone, preventing its use in floored buildings and city streets, but it can be used to circumvent bodies of water by tunneling beneath them.
• Fate Worse than Death: There are quite a few, most involving Chaos.
  • Gain more mutations than your body can stand (or roll up a specific mutation) and you permanently devolve into a hideous, mindless nightmare of flesh called a Chaos Spawn. Have fun rolling up a new character while your party struggles to fight off what remains of your previous one.
  • There are several instances (such as a spectacularly bad bout of Tzeentch's Curse, reckless use of teleportation powers, or displeasing the Chaos Gods should you serve them) where a character is simply plucked from reality and tossed into the Realm of Chaos to be the plaything of daemons for eternity.
  • In The Dying of the Light, the Fimir have a magical testing ground where their warriors can prove they're worthy of being possessed by Daemons (they consider this an honour). The combat takes place on a plane of magical glass. Those who fall slip right through the glass and become trapped below ground like flies in amber. Not all of them are dead and it's implied they will remain alive, but trapped -- forever.
  • Another example from these adventures are Zahnarzt and Muuthauwg, two daemons of Khorne who rebelled against him, but failed. Khorne punished the former by annihilating its physical body, and the latter with a curse that would utterly destroy it should it kill a mortal, or even cause a mortal to be killed. Since Khorne's daemons live for blood and killing, these are indeed terrible punishments!
  • The titular villain from Castle Drachenfels has devised many different ways of keeping people alive, but tormented forever in his dungeons. One particularly cruel example is a courtesan whom Drachenfels transformed into an undead skeleton, but still believes she's a beautiful Femme Fatale.
  • In 2nd edition's Tome of Corruption, daemon weapons wielded by exalted champions of Chaos have an occupant which can spring loose upon the wielder's death, or if the wielder deliberately allows them to. Unfortunately, one of the randomly-rolled behaviors for the daemon has them express their "gratitude" by sealing the champion's soul into the weapon in their stead and taking the blade as their own.
• Father Neptune:
  • Priests of Manaan tend to be found on sailing ships or coastlines, in accordance with their god's strictures. The Lore of Manaan has many spells that specifically relate to life at sea, such as filling sails with wind to gain speed, or causing their foes to loose balance as if on the deck of a storm-wracked ship.
  • In 4th edition, the talent "Old Salt" marks a character as an experienced seaman, enabling them to ignore all negative check modifiers related to bad weather, rolling ship decks and similar things. Furthermore, the character counts as two crewmembers for the purpose of sailing a sea vessel with a minimal crew. "Waterman" is an identical talent for freshwater river barges.
• Fictional Constellations: The Empire distinguishes constellations such as the Big Cross and the Piper. Crosses over with Fictional Zodiac since many assign influence on these constellations based on the day of birth.
• Fiendish Fish:
  • Reik eels are immense eels found in the Reik river that can reach ten feet in length. They're carnivorous, but only attack humans when their elvers are threatened. As Reik eel elvers are considered a delicacy and subjected to a lively fishing trade, such attacks end up being extremely common and entirely capable of ending the lives of overconfident fishermen.
  • In Bretonnia, the river Sannez is home to a large population of carnivorous fish with a taste for human meat and a tendency to devour anyone who falls into the water. The local humans, for their own, have a taste for carnivorous fish meat, and have developed a habit of using their own hands as lures — it's a highly effective method, as it goes, as long as you can spare a finger or five.
• Fiery Redhead: Any Bright Wizard of seniority will have coppery or red hair, and will be well ready to set any problems alight.
• Flesh Golem: Greater Necromancy in 2nd edition's Night's Dark Masters can be used to cobble together undead monsters from the body parts of different creatures. The example given is an ogre corpse spliced with that of a Giant Spider.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: Shallyans provide conventional and magical medical care to the public, are well aware of the "nubile young priestess" stereotype, and therefore assign their oldest priestesses to suspected "dove fanciers". Canny adventurers sometimes fake this in hopes of getting the most senior healer.
• Foul Medicine: The Eye of Newt for a Hag Witch healing spell is a handful of fish guts; the spell only takes effect if the patient eats them and passes a Will Power test to keep them down.
• Frankenstein's Monster: Necromancers displeased by what can be done with unaltered human corpses occasionally stitch together and animate immense "Patchwork Men".
• Frog Men: Lakemen, a variant of Beastmen native to the lakes and rivers of the forests of southern Lyonesse, resemble misshapen humanoid frogs with pincers and gills in addition to whatever other individual mutations they may have. They're as evil and vicious as any other Beastman, and prefer to attack amphibiously. They sometimes travel up rivers for very long ways to attack unsuspecting villages.
• From Zero to Hero: Many of the starting careers are the dregs of society, but player characters who survive the Early Game Hell can rise to eminence — even a peasant farmer can become a powerful noble, a Wizard Lord, or a mighty champion.
• Gangbangers:
  • A player can be one, if they so choose. Careers such as Racketeer and Thug explicitly serve as muscle for criminal gangs.
  • Villains operating alone or wanting anonymity will regularly hire readily available thugs to beef up their combat strength, especially if an encounter is meant to be challenging but not lethal. If a town's too small to support a street gang, expect the local stevedores, being the brawniest men available, to be used as hired muscle by any such villains in the locality.
  • The 2nd Ed. sourcebook Shades of Empire has a chapter that goes into detail about various street gangs in Altdorf's port district, with particular focus on a trio of influential gangs referred to collectively as the "Dockers". As the name suggests, they originated from work gangs who formed fraternities and informal unions, and frequently get involved in bloody turf wars with each other.
• Giant Animal Worship: In The Old World Bestiary, certain tribes of swamp-dwelling goblins are said to worship hydras, giving them sacrifices and offerings to divert their wrath and appease their hunger. The WFRP Companion's bestiary entry on prometheans has flavor text from a witch hunter who broke up a small cult worshipping one of the immense crabs.
• Global Currency: Averted, in a deviation from typical Tabletop Games of this kind. Each nation (and the Elves and Dwarfs) have their own monetary unit, which have exchange rates (Halflings can't be bothered to mint their own coins when they could just use Imperial currency). Most adventures take place inside the Empire, however, where their currency is generally the only found legal tender.
• God Is Displeased: Priests with divine magic who seriously or consistently violate their god's precepts might lose access to their powers or risk divine vengeance whenever they try to invoke a miracle. At the most extreme, they might be called to face their god's judgement in person.
• Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: The Empire has this system of currency, albeit based on Old British Money: 12 copper pennies to the silver shilling, 20 silver shillings to the gold crown. Confusing as hell for anyone who grew up with decimalized money (basically everyone who isn't British or Irish and born before the mid-'60s).
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: The "dramatic injury" head injury result in 4th ed will leave your character with one of these: So impressive, in fact, that it makes social rolls more successful if the scar would be relevant to your attempt (like telling the story of how you got it, as an example).
• A Good Way to Die: Human characters in 4th ed all begin with the "Doomed!" talent, which must be filled in by the player during character creation with the way in which that character has been foreseen to die. If the character (somehow) manages to die in exactly that fashion, that player's next character gains half the dead character's totally accrued XP as a bonus upon creation.
• Gonk: Whereas most other games's art has very good-looking people, Warhammer is famous for averting that. That hunchbacked, grossly fat oaf with a lazy eye and hairy warts is not a mutant, that's a representation of the average Old Worlder. Even the elves aren't pretty in the first Warhammer editions — more scars and eye-patches than a pirate crew. Though there is some movement away from the "everyone is fugly" character depiction.
• Good Luck Charm: Genuine lucky charms are single-use items that let a character reroll a test or No-Sell one successful attack against them. The trick is in distinguishing the real thing from the fake trinkets.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: The three-part Paths of the Damned campaign in 2nd edition revolves around the players' efforts to find and destroy three Soul Jars containing the essence of a powerful Greater Daemon of Khorne.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Archaon the Everchosen is portrayed as this in second edition, which is nominally set in the immediate aftermath of the Storm of Chaos. Although his armies were routed at Middenheim, much of the Empire's northeast — particularly Ostland and Hochland — have been totally sacked by the armies of Chaos. Stragglers from Archaon's hordes infest the wilderness, while beastmen herds and Chaos cults galvanized by the recent warfare do everything they can to sabotage the reeling Empire and tip the scales back in Archaon's favor, contributing to the Adventure-Friendly World.
• The Greatest Story Never Told:
  • The Rat Catchers are the first line of defense against evil ratmen, the Skaven, who are plotting to conquer the world. They brave the medieval sewers, full of diseases and instant death, armed with little more than clubs and a small (but vicious) dog, all for below minimum wage. They've learnt long ago to not mention it to the people on the surface, on fear of ridicule. Most thankless job ever.
  • Used rather egregiously at the end of the second-edition campaign Terror in Talabheim: After leading a heroic resistance effort to liberate the city from the occupying Skaven, the player characters are quickly shooed out of town, and the leaders of the city work to cover up the entire conflict so life can go back to normal. A subversion is also present; unknown to everyone, a small commemorative statue depicting the party is erected deep within the local Temple to Myrmidia, with a plaque that simply reads "We remember".
• Green Thumb: The arcane Lore of Life, with a little bit of Dishing Out Dirt for variety. Jade Magic has a selection of spells that usually involve controlling plants or healing blight, and wizards steeped in it tend to be nature-loving Druids.
• Groin Attack:
  • You can't aim for the crotch for extra damage, but Critical Hits to the torso can result in low blows which stun the opponent, render them helpless, or stop them from taking any actions.
  • The 2nd edition Bretonnia sourcebook mentions the existence of Bretonnian Truffle Hounds, monstrous dogs that are experts on sniffing out truffles. If they eat any of the truffles they find, though, they become psychotically horny and territorial, immediately attacking anything nearby with a Y-chromosome (regardless of species) and... removing their ability to compete, shall we say? Bretonnian truffle hunters either wear metal plates over their nether regions and become very good at restraining their dogs quickly, or learn to get a day job as a falsetto singer.
  • One potential Critical Hit effect is that the target is struck in the groin and loses their next turn to the pain. Being a critical hit, the experience leaves them with an Insanity Point.
• The Grotesque: Long term contact with Chaos or Warpstone often induces mutations in player characters. Regardless of whether you choose to fight against or embrace the corruption eventually you will lose your mind. If you're playing Second Edition and you're a Norscan with a mutation, congratulations! You can start as a badass Chaos Marauder, and can later become a Warrior of Chaos! And it's all downhill from there.
• Guns Are Worthless: Zigzagged. Guns are extremely deadly if they hit, which reflects in their extremely high purchase price. Barring rolling up a soldier (for whom guns are common enough to be a starting option), your average PC will be lucky if he ever sees one. However, the operative words are if they hit. The Old World being the equivalent of 16th-century Europe, guns are not well noted for their accuracy or reliability (with the exception of Hochland Long Rifles, which are bloody expensive even for firearms). The exact stats vary depending on edition:
  • Guns in early editions were strong, but arguably not enough to compensate for their reload times (except the ones that could hit multiple targets with one shot, such as the Blunderbuss). The basic arquebus dealt 4 + d10 damage versus a longbow at 3 + d10 while having the Impact quality, meaning it could roll that d10 twice and pick the better result, in practice increasing its average roll from 5-6 to 8 - in net averaging 12 damage per round to the longbow's 8-9, resulting in 8 and 4-5 points of damage respectively being inflicted on the vast majority of targets.^note The probability that each die will not roll an 8, 9, or 10 is 7/10; so by the product rule (as the events are independent), the probability is (7/10) x (7/10)= 49/100 that both die roll 7 or less, and thus a 51/100 that at least one rolls an eight or higher. Nearly every entity in the game has a Toughness Bonus of 3 or 4 and an Armor Rating of 0 or 1 that is subtracted from base damage; thus most attacks will lose 4 points. It also gets a 20% chance to trigger the Ulric's Fury bonus (add another d10 damage) instead of the 10% of most weapons. Sound good? Well, not only is 8 damage not enough to one-shot most creatures (most humans, elves, skaven, beastmen, etc. are 10-11 Wounds), but the arquebus will only be able to get out 40% as many shots as a longbow (an arquebus takes two Full Actions to reload and one Half Action to fire, a total of 25 seconds, while a bow takes one Half Action each to load and loose, a total of 10 seconds). In a truly inexplicable choice, guns don't even even get the Armour Piercing quality, which their tabletop counterpart had.
  • The third and fourth editions buffed guns to more realistic levels. In the 4th an arquebus does 10 + Success Levels of damage and has the Damaging trait, which lets the player select between their units die and Success Levels for damage - meaning the average hit will deal 15-16 damage. Similar to the previous editions' Impact trait, their Impale trait also doubles the chance of a critical hit. In comparison a longbow does Strength Bonus (almost always 3 or 4) + 4 + Success Levels of damage, for an average damage of around 9.^note Success Levels equal the tens value of the relevant skill minus d100 (so for example, rolling a 30 with a Ballistic Skill of 40 would get you 40 - 30 = 10 = 1 Success Level). Since the vast majority of characters have a Ballistic Skill in the 30s or 40s, this puts the average Success Level count for a successful hit at 1-2. Against most targets, they will thus deal 12 and 5 damage respectively, enough for the former to one-shot most things while the latter would take three hits. Unlike bows, all guns also have the Penetrating quality (this game's version of Armour Piercing), which means that their attacks completely ignore light armor and get a +1 damage bonus against medium and heavy armor. Note that this still somewhat underplays firearms' power compared to Real Life for game balance purposes (a real 16th century arquebus packed about twenty times the kinetic energy of a longbow and could blast right through armor that'd render the wearer basically arrow-proof). They're nowhere near as expensive in the 4th edition either; now an arquebus just costs as much as a good crossbow, though you still don't want to waste valuable powder. They still take a long time to reload though.

Tropes H—I

• Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: The premise of the Ex-Convict basic career in 2nd edition's Career Compendium. The description points out that those who survive a sentence to one of the Old World's numerous prisons tend to come out as much harder criminals than they were previously, or are otherwise return to crime after finding their opportunities limited by their criminal past.
• Hammer of the Holy: Clergy of the Healer God Shallya are forbidden to kill and go without arms or armour other than a simple staff. That said, they can still become respectable fighters through the Priest career line, and that simple staff gives a bonus to whack enemies unconscious without inflicting Wounds.
• Harmless Villain: The Bone Men, despite the unsettling name, are a bunch of people who get together, write a list of fun things to do for the evening, and roll some dice to decide what they'll do for the night. The thing that makes them villains is that Tzeentch has decided to start manipulating the dice rolls for his own amusement. In theory, this could turn The Bone Men into an actual threat in time, but for now all Tzeentch can make them do is play an embarrasing prank on you at the worst possible moment, such as just before your evening with the noble you're trying to impress.
• A Head at Each End: Amphisbaenas are snakes native to the Lustrian jungles with an additional head in place of their tails. This is patently against basic biology even for the setting, and amphisbaenas are thus assumed to be touched by Chaos to some degree.
• Healing Hands: A specialty of the cult of Shallya, whose magic can cure wounds, poison, disease, and even insanity. Other arcane and divine spellcasters gain more limited healing options, depending on the edition and their specific type of magic, with the purifying magic of the Light Wizards coming closest.
• Healing Potion: 1^st Edition Potions of Healing are Magic Potions that restore wounds, cure poisons, and negate magical maladies. In subsequent editions, Healing Draughts only restore a limited number of wounds (and only work on lightly wounded creatures in 2^nd Edition), but can be brewed by any herbalist.
• Heavy Equipment Class: Dwarfs have double the carrying capacity of other races, plus a talent that negates the movement speed penalty of heavy armour, allowing them to wield plate armour and heavy weaponry that would weigh down almost anyone else.
• Hedge Mage: "Hedge witches" and "hedge wizards" is what the more scholarly and organized magisters of the Colleges of Magic term the loose collection of self-taught wise women, healers, herbalists, and magical dabblers who service the Empire's rural communities — the hedge wizards themselves prefer more grandiose titles like Healer or Wisdom that don't really reflect their actual skill. As a rule, hedge wizardry does include some legitimate magical knowledge, and its practitioners do provide useful services to their communities in the form of whatever collection of cures, exorcisms, and minor spellcraft they have knowledge of, but their practice also tends to be spotty and flawed and is prone to inviting Chaotic corruption due to lacking the organization, training, and discipline of the more formalized Colleges.
• He Knows Too Much:
  • Ratcatchers are noted to live dangerous lives in the Old World because the Skaven make it a priority to get rid of anyone who starts talking too loudly about the "bigger rats". Many ratcatchers actively suppress information on Skaven to avoid this.
  • The Black Chamber, the offical spy networks of the Empire, will kill their own spies if they learn more than they should. Retirement for lower ranked spies is much the same.
• Heroic Second Wind: In 4th Edition, if Resolve is spent to overcome the prone condition and stand back up, the character also regains a single wound.
• Heroic Spirit: The idea behind Resilience/Resolve in 4th edition — Where Fate and Fortune represent a character being special and lucky, Resilence and Resolve represent that character's personal drive and determination. Resolve points are spent to overcome Status Effects, ignore psychology like fear and terror, and fight through the negative effects of critical injury, while Resilience can be sacrificed to fight off mutation and automatically succeed stat tests no matter how unlikely.
• Hidden Badass: Any Grey Wizard who doesn't want to be known as such will instead easily appear as anyone else at all, and no one should want to be surveyed by one...
• Highly Specific Counterplay: In 2nd Edition, the Lore of Shallya boasts the miracle Purify, an uncharacteristically combat-oriented miracle that deals an Armor-Piercing Attack and can potentially stun its victim. The catch? It only works on targets aligned with Nurgle, dark god of plagues and Shallya's Arch-Enemy.
• Holding the Floor: The "Blather" skill allows characters to spout nonsense to distract onlookers, who are unable to act while they "wonder if you are drunk, crazy, or both".
• Horny Vikings: The Norscans, who are a race of superhuman Chaos Vikings, make an appearance as a playable race in the Tome of Corruption supplement in the 2nd edition, and as main antagonists in the Crimson Rain adventure for the third edition Liber Carnagia rulebook. In the latter, a Norse warband dedicated to Khorne and led by a Chaos Champion known as Olaf Warhound raid the Nordland city of Neues Emskrank in search of a daemon weapon of Khorne. Vignar, an Aesling Chaos Lord of Khorne present in the Thousand Thrones campaign supplement for the second edition of WHFRP, is an extreme example of this trope as well as the second most lethal enemy in the campaign, second only to the overall villain of that story.
• Hot Gypsy Woman: Young Strigany women are often depicted like this, and thought of as such in the Empire. As a result, their traditional dress is sometimes adopted by Imperial women who have the means to do so, such as by wearing brightly-coloured, heavily-patterned clothing, red headscarves and ostentatious jewellery, dying the hair black and wearing it loose, and affecting bare feet in the Imperial climate.
• Hot Witch: In 4th edition, the second level of the Witch career offers the "Attractive" talent (a talent that aids in Charm tests), suggesting this trope.
• The Highwayman: An advanced career in 2nd edition, highwaymen are flamboyant figures that regard themselves as being a cut above common outlaws. Their required trappings include nobleman's garb and a mask, and their advance scheme is built around becoming a charismatic, horse-riding gunslinger (with some fencing skills for good measure).
• Horse of a Different Color: In the second edition Bretonnia rulebook, Knights of the Grail, we are introduced to the Hagranyms; Chaos-spawned mutant horses used by the orcs of the Gray Mountains of Couronne in lieu of the traditional orcish riding pig. They are able to climb mountains as readily as any mountain goat, are voracious carnivores, and are far smarter than the orcs themselves; their "alliance" stems from the fact that the hagranyms are so vicious, sadistic and cruel that they think it's worthwhile feigning dumb so they can have the opportunity to maim, kill and eat creatures other than animals (or stray orcs). The native Couronnese haven't figured out that the hagranyms are both fully sapient and Always Chaotic Evil, leading to disastrous attempts to tame them.
• Honest Rolls Character: Mandated in early editions, which resulted in completely random character stats and careers. Some people made house-rules around this, while others found "making do" part of the charm. Fourth Edition doesn't strictly enforce this, giving other options for generating stats and choosing a career if a player has a specific character concept in mind, but it does encourage this by granting characters bonus starting experience points scaling with how much randomness their player was willing to accept in their creation.
• Humans Are Special: In the first edition, Humans get on average the most Fate Points (which represent a combination of luck and divine favour).
• Immortals Fear Death: In second edition, Vampires need to test for Insanity Point gain if they suffer damage from any of their many possible weaknesses, the most universal being fire, sunlight, silver and blessed weaponry.
• Impartial Purpose-Driven Faction: The Cult of Shallya are pacifistic healers who, unlike most other religious orders, refuse to become involved in politics. Their neutrality and their mandate to offer free healing and aid without judgement make them loved by almost everyone who isn't actively out to end the world.
• Improvised Weapon: These are traditionally lumped together in the same category, as was done with hand weapons. In early editions, picking up an improvised weapon was more or less pointless as they did the same damage as an unarmed attack, and the only benefit was that armour points weren't doubled against the attack. But double armour points didn't apply if you had the Street Fighting talent, which also increased unarmed damage — so effectively, with this talent, you'd do more damage by punching somebody in the face than by hitting them over the head with an iron bar. In 4th Edition, this is averted, both by intrinsic mechanics and by allowing things like crowbars and sickles to count as hand weapons, but there's also a talent which makes you more effective at knocking people out with improvised weapons.
• The Infested: The 2e Tome of Corruption offers mutations to this effect.
  • The Swarm of Flies mutation causes a swarm of horseflies — or cockroaches, beetles, termites, or whatever else — to decide that the mutant is a perfect host and make themselves at home in their nose and mouth, emerging in an angry, biting cloud if their new home is threatened. The insects themselves have human heads and hands, and weep piteously is separated from their home and swarm.
  • The Blood Substitution mutation grants various kinds of Alien Blood, including swarms of poisonous insects, burrowing leeches or worms, mice, and even birds. The infestation sprays onto attackers when the mutant is wounded.
• Innate Night Vision: Creatures with Night Vision can see clearly up to 30 yards in dark conditions, but not total darkness. Only humans lack it among the playable races: dwarves, elves, and halflings all have Night Vision, as do goblins and many other monsters.
• Interrogating the Dead: Priests of Morr can invoke a departed spirit and compel it to answer a few questions truthfully, though Morr strictly regulates the power. Wizards with the Lore of Death have more limited spells to that effect, but the dead are free to ignore or lie to them.
• Intoxication Mechanic: Characters have a Consume Alcohol skill for immoderate drinking. Failed skill rolls inflict worsening, wide-ranging skill penalties (including on Consume Alcohol tests, naturally), and ultimately end in randomized Alcohol-Induced Idiocy.
• Involuntary Dance: One Ritual can force the target to dance until they die from the strain. Worse, the curse spreads to anyone who sees the dancer, and all victims remain entirely aware of what's happening to them.

Tropes J—K

• Job System:
  • In 2nd edition, progression is tied to "careers"; themed packages of Skill Scores and Perks, which are purchased with Experience Points one at a time. Once you have everything in a given career, you may advance to a new career of your choice for a fee, effectively daisy-chaining jobs together to form your character's build. Every career comes with a list of items (called trappings) that must be acquired before adopting that career (if its your first career, you get this stuff as Starter Equipment). Every career also lists legal "entries" (careers you can use to enter this career) and "exits" (careers you can take once you've finished this one), and you can always double back and take an exit from an earlier stage in your character's history. "Basic" careers are smaller and can be adopted at any time (at double EXP cost, if its not already a valid exit in your history), while "advanced" careers are much larger and more expensive in terms of trappings.
  • 4th edition returns to this system, with some simplification. Careers (divided by socioeconomic class) are now linear tracks with four tiers each (representing a career soldier climbing up the ranks, for instance). Spending EXP to gain stat advancements, skills and talents unlocks the higher tiers at thresholds, providing more options and increasing the money you gain from doing your job during campaign downtime. You can change careers at any time to the bottom rung of any other career, provided you can gain the right trappings and get clearance from your gamemaster.
• Joke Item: Some NPCs have unique skills such as Sweep Corridors, Wave To Crowds, Walkabout or Spaghetti Eating.
• Just Like Robin Hood: The Herrimaults play this very straight, unusually for the setting. They're a loose-knit group of outlaws and runaway peasants forced to flee Bretonnian society for a variety of crimes and misdeeds (poaching, levy dodging, getting too close to a noble's horse, etcetera), with some disgraced nobles and Sweet Polly Olivers thrown in. They fight against Bretonnia's stifling caste system and oppressive nobility, live in hiding in the woods, and protect the peasantry from both the Beastmen and Orcs in the forests and the worst of the nobles' punishments; unsurprisingly, they're quite popular among the poor. The live by a very strict code requiring them to uphold chivalry and protect the helpless, and are very protective of their reputation — groups claiming their name do turn up with less than scrupulous intentions, but are very quickly targeted by the more genuine Herrimaults. Their name outright comes from a variety of hooded cloak they wear — like the real-life legend did — and they're also called Hoods, Hoodies, and Wood Hoods.
• Knight In Shining Armour: The Grail Knight career. Knight of a knightly order would also count, but the "shining armour" part may be seen as somewhat arguable.

Tropes L—M

• Language of Magic: A requirement for casting spells safely in 2nd edition is knowledge of an "arcane language". Books containing Ritual Magic require the user to understand a specific arcane language to decipher their meaning, but in general any arcane language can be used to cast any kind of spell.
• La Résistance: The Second Edition campaign Terror in Talabheim features a large-scale invasion and occupation of the city by a skaven army partway through the story. The player characters end up spending the rest of the campaign as part of an underground resistance movement against the ratmen.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: Well, a dagger, but the sentiment and end result are the same. In the introductory fluff piece for the second edition's Player Handbook, a Witch Hunter is having a conversation with an old friend, a Sigmar-Priest, and reveals he's discovered the priest is a Chaos cultist. Instead of going through the usual process of Burn the Witch!, he offers his old friend a chance to kill himself, which the final lines reveal he took.
• Lethal Joke Character: Halflings have miserable movement speed, penalties to Strength, Toughness and Weapon Skill, and the lowest amount of wounds amongst all the races. However, they are completely immune to mutations and can essentially juggle pieces of unrefined Warpstone without problems. They also have a surprising amount of warrior-able classes as possible starting careers. While one won't look as imposing as that Shieldbreaker or elven warrior, a halfling with an arquebus or a crossbow will pull their weight. This is reflected in the fluff too. The Moot sent a large contingent of Halfling scouts, skirmishers and couriers as their contribution to the war effort during the Storm of Chaos, and while many scoffed at first, a disproportionate number of them received commendations of some sort.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Downplayed from 2^nd Edition onwards. Magical Lores have top-tier gems, like powerful Herd Hitting Attacks (like a firestorm that lasts until everything within is dead), instant-death effects, and healing all of a character's physical and mental damage, that have greater potential than any close-combat fighter. However, most magic powers don't grow in potency, all of them threaten nasty Magic Misfires, and each spellcaster is limited in the breadth of spells they can learn, so mundane fighters and support characters remain competitive with them throughout the game.
• Liquid Courage: A mug of Bugman's Ale makes the drinker immune to Fear for up to 10 hours, but is so potent that it skips over the usual process of inebriation and straight to Alcohol-Induced Idiocy.
• Literal Change of Heart: A risky bit of Ritual Magic lets an alchemist transmute their heart to living gold, making them permanently immune to all emotional pain.
• Live-Action Escort Mission: The episodic scenario book The Dying of the Light turns into an escort mission — with a supernaturally annoying escortee — for most of its second half.
• Loan Shark: "I needed money for some new chainmail so that I could survive the run through Blackfire Pass, so I took a loan from Bruno Ballcrusher back in Marienburg. Orcs massacred the caravan and now I'm impotent and live in a cell with a pedophile, a serial rapist and an elf."
• Loony Laws: The Bretonnian sourcebook "Knights of the Grail" mentions that nobles have effectively unlimited authority in their dominions, the power can go straight to their heads, and result in some interesting laws on the books unless directly countermanded by order of the king. As an example, the book mentions how, due to a previous ruler, legally speaking, every male of a certain age in one province must shout "griffon fingers!" to the sky while saluting it on the evening of a full moon, though the nobility is sane enough to pretend the law doesn't exist.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • It's stated in the 2nd edition Bretonnia sourcebook Knights of the Grail that the merchants of Bretonnia rely heavily on exploiting a combination of this and Exact Words to get around the exploitative and antiquated legal system of their country. For example, by rule of law, peasants (which every merchant technically is, by Bretonnian definitions) are expected to pay a tithe of 9/10ths of everything they produce to their local lord... but the precise wording is "everything they make", as the law was drafted in a time when society consisted of warriors, craftsmen and subsistence farmers, who operated on a barter economy. As merchants don't actually make anything themselves, they technically don't have to pay any taxes (although in practice they pay bribes to keep the nobles following their logic; as most Bretonnian nobles have titles and lands, but no cash, they happily see things the merchants' way). The merchants are even known to use their influence to lobby for stricter, more literal interpretations of the ancient rulings precisely to keep exploiting their loopholes.
  • One prominent example of this is the importation of firearms. Whilst Bretonnian knights are forbidden the use of any ranged weapons, as they are considered unchivalrous, the only law on the books specifically against ranged weapons is explicitly against crossbows. As such, the merchants do a sporadic trade in firearms, although it's noted that some nobles find them a bit unsettling, for reasons that are obvious when you think about it. Meanwhile, the Bretonnian navy uses cannon indiscriminately, since they're never fighting on Bretonnian soil.
  • Another example (also exploited by merchants, who have the means to do so) is that Bretonnian laws forbid peasants from using stones to construct their houses... but bricks aren't made of stone (since they're more often molded clay). Likewise, the Duke of Parravon (a city which is built half above, half under a mountain) has argued that carving the moutain rock to make homes doesn't count since it is technically not "building" anything, and that the peasants homes are of such poor quality that it's akin to living in a cave for them anyways.
• Lord of the Ocean:
  • Manann, god of the ocean. A fickle and aloof deity, he is worshipped primarily to be appeased. His worshippers universally are sailors and those who live on the coast, and most of his miracles pertain to sailing, swimming or living off the ocean's bounty (with a bit of Making a Splash for good measure).
  • There's also the outlawed deity Stromfels, considered to be Manann's Evil Counterpart. Stromfels represents solely the dangers of the ocean, namely storms and aquatic predators (particularly sharks). Stromfels is mainly worshipped by pirates and wreckers (river pirates), and only in the pirate city of Sartosa is Stromfels worshipped openly.
• Losing the Team Spirit: Part of Skaven's communication is exuding scents. Unfortunately for their leaders since they're all a bunch of Dirty Cowards, Skaven are liable to all rout from the battlefield once enough of them begin secrete the Musk of Fear and cause the rest of them to be just as terrified.
• Lost Superweapon: In Monuments of the Reikland, the Hawk of Mackenstein, a strange statue found in the forests of Reikland, is in actuality the head decoration of a buried hierotitan named the Devoted of Ulatep, an immense humanoid statue carved in the likeness of Nehekaran gods, and a powerful weapon of the Tomb Kings. The Devoted of Ulatep was lost during an ill-fated campaign to the north, thwarted when the dwarfs of Karak Hirn engineered a collapse of the earth that entombed many similar Nehekaran constructs. Its 'pilot', a mummified priest embedded in its chest, is still active and dimly aware of the humans who have made the Hawk of Mackenstein a local landmark and good-luck token.
• Louis Cypher: The 2nd Edition vampire sourcebook mentions a historical vampire named Louis Cypher, who attempted to invade the elven homeland of Ulthuan and has not been heard from since.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: If you're "lucky" with mutations, you can gain a number of useful abilities. Poison secretion, shapeshifting, multiple limbs, weaponized extremities, the list goes on. Unfortunately, every single one of them is a death sentence if discovered, the majority of mutations are far less useful, and gaining too many of them at once will doom your character to become a feral Shapeshifter Mashup.
• Low Fantasy:
  • The bulk of campaigns will be focused on low-ranking adventurers fighting similarly low-ranking baddies, with an overall grounded, cynical, and gritty tone. Magic overall is either extremely rare (Arcane) or very weak and only good for cheap tricks or subtle enhancements (Petty), and is considered volatile and unwelcome by most people. Combat is dangerous and hyper-lethal, and even a high-level adventurer could fall prey to a Clanrat with a bad roll. Larger than life heroes steer well clear of an adventurer's typical stomping grounds, and though your party can be composed of heroes in their own right who can get along and be morally righteous and help a lot of people, in the overall context of the universe you'll usually amount to little more than an Elite Mook. It helps that the setting of the RPG series is the Old World, which is comparatively low-magic compared to the New World (particularly the Empire, which incidentally is the main setting).
  • A ground-level view of Warhammer shows that even the Arcane magic used by most wizards is pretty modest. In the second edition, some of the highest level spells are comparatively underwhelming charms like "Acceptance of Fate" (casting value of 14, takes 15 seconds) which simply removes fear of death from your party for 60 seconds, Curse (casting value of 12, takes 5 seconds) which makes everyone in a ten-yard area "sweat profusely and feel fatigued, as if they had been working all day under the hot sun", or Form of the Raging Bear (casting value of 21, takes 30 seconds) which transforms the wizard into a completely ordinary brown bear. Even a wizard specced for direct damage will on average by outperformed by a squad of guys with crossbows.^note For example, a Bright Wizard with a Magic Characteristic of 2 (about average) can attempt to cast Fireball twice per round, each cast potentially resulting in two fireballs, using 2d10 dice each time (45% chance on each roll that he'll hit the minimum casting value of 12). A fireball deals 3 + d10 damage, an average of 8.5. Thus per turn he'll average 8.5 x 2 x 0.45 x 2 = 15.3 damage, as magic missiles hit automatically. A crossbow deals 4 + d10 damage, can fire half an attack per round (it takes one round to fire and one round to reload), and in the hands of an average soldier with 35 Ballistic Skill who takes the aim action (+10%), has a 45% chance To Hit. Thus per turn the crossbowman will average 9.5 x 0.5 x 0.45 = 2.14 damage, meaning 7 would be needed to match the wizard. The crossbowmen can also do this from a longer range (60 vs 48 yards), and unlike the wizard can't accidentally blow themselves up. It's no wonder that all armies still fight primarily with polearms, hand weapons, and bows.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
  • Fate Points grant you a daily allotment of "fortune points", which can be used to re-roll your dice.
  • Creatures with the Hatred special rule are allowed rerolls in close combat with the object of their hate.
  • The Lore of the Heavens has several spells that bestow Fortune Points or grant the target a reroll while the spell is active. They're described in-universe as either manipulating the target's luck or granting foresight.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Shields are starting trappings for many melee-focused careers, granting benefits to parrying or opposing melee attacks in most editions. They can also be used to Shield Bash, but have low damage.
• Luring in Prey: Lurkerfish are anglerfish-like fish that live in shallow fresh and brackish water. They hunt by hiding in weeds and mud with their glowing lure sticking out, which they wave about to mesmerize prey into heading towards it. Their Lure of the Lurkerfish rule causes viewers unaware of their true nature who fail a willpower check to be unable to take any action other than walk towards the bobbing, glowing light.
• Made of Plasticine: Not as bad as Dark Heresy due to the lower power levels, but there is some nasty stuff on the critical hit tables with the highest level cleaving the offending body part right off/right in two.
• Magical Romani: Strigany Mystics roam the Empire in caravans, along with their family groups, and make a living telling fortunes and practicing witchcraft. They're also the descendants of an ancient civilization once ruled by the Strigoi vampires, and the mystics' traditions happen to include some genuine necromantic lore.
• Magical Star Symbols: Daemon Summoning Rituals use a star symbol inscribed on the ritual space to call up the creature and bar it from eating the summoner. First Edition uses a Hollywood Satanic pentagram, but later editions use the octagram of Chaos.
• Magic Fire:
  • The Lore of Light has a spell to enchant a fire so that everyone within its light automatically passes all Toughness tests to resist disease. The fire otherwise behaves normally and retains its magic as long as it's lit.
  • The Lore of Fire can render a small fire inextinguishable for up to a year, during which time it consumes no fuel but still burns. It also has a spell to render creatures Immune to Fire, which can only be overcome by fire created by similarly powerful magic.
  • 2nd edition's Lore of Tzeentch (a variant on the Lore of Chaos) from Tome of Corruption has multiple spells that involve fire with unusual effects, including "Flames of Fate" (flames that grant a vision of the future, granting a single free re-roll for a limited time), "Mindfire" (a fiery projectile that can inflict insanity points, or take them away in exchange for an Armor-Piercing Attack), and "Tzeentch's Fire Storm" (a conflageration of purple flame whose slain victims are burned to ashes, which then coalesce into hostile Pink Horrors).
• Magic Knight: Bright Wizards are trained to not only set the enemy's frontline aflame, but also to fight.
• Magic Misfire: As the Winds of Magic are drawn from the Realm of Chaos, strange and unpleasant things can happen to wizards who get careless about their spellcasting. Random phenomena can occur alongside the intended spell if the user draws too much power at once — they can can be as harmless as causing milk to curdle in your presence and your hair to stand on end, or as dire as unleashing arcs of lightning or summoning unbound daemons. In 2nd Edition, miscasts (called Tzeentch's Curse) are caused by rolling doubles or triples, while in 4th Edition they occur whenever a casting attempt scores a Critical Hit (and are accompanied by a boost to the spell's power).
  • Also from 2nd edition, rolling pure snake-eyes on any casting attempt cancels the spell and lightly fries the caster's brain with uncontrolled magic energy, putting them at risk of gaining an insanity point. This problem mainly plagues lower-level spellcasters, since they have fewer casting dice to roll.
• Magic Potion: Unlike non-magical "draughts", potions require the brewer to have magical potential and can achieve outright supernatural effects, like regrowing a lost limb. They're also more dangerous to make and can produce bizarre Magic Misfires as they age.
• The Magnificent Seven Samurai: A variation appears in the Lichemaster adventure. The players must rally the terrified inhabitants of a remote mountain valley to repel an invasion of undead. The catch is that the player characters aren't that much stronger than the peasants they're leading. Rather, their chances of success hinge on protecting a number of exceptional individuals living in the valley — such as experienced fighters, leaders, and healers — and persuading some of them not to quit when the going gets tough (each one requires a different approach).
• Making a Splash: The Divine Lore of Manann, Lord of the Ocean. The most straightforward example of the trope is the miracle "Water Blast", which damages and potentially knocks down targets with a torrent of saltwater projected from the priest's hands. There's also "Drowned Man's Face" from Tome of Salvation and the 4th edition core book, which magically fills a target's lungs with seawater.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Constant Drachenfels, an incredibly ancient and evil sorcerer, is the most prominent example. He uses it to hide his Nightmare Face.
• Mana: 1^st Edition spellcasters gain a pool of Magic Points from their career and level. Every spell has an MP cost to cast; MP can be regained through rest, meditation, and/or ritual observance, depending on the class. Later editions do away with this mechanic.
• Man-Eating Plant: Bloodsedges are a type of tree that feeds on living animals by grabbing them with its branches and holding them against its trunk, where powerful acids quickly turn it into fertilizer. A copse of these things can devour an entire war party passing through them.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: In a world where you expect half your siblings to die in childhood, if they're lucky or tough and don't, you can easily end up with half a dozen or more. Halflings prefer to live in huge extended family groups, and embody this trope as a result; four children would be considered quite a small family by their standards.
• Massive Race Selection: Zigzagged.
  • First Edition only officially allows players to play Humans (specifically residents of the Empire), High Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings. An article in White Dwarf #86 offered rules for gnomes. That said, fans did create their own rules for playing skaven, orc and goblin characters, and the Realms of Chaos duology, which were sourcebooks for both Warhammer Roleplay 1st edition and Warhammer Battles 3rd edition, do contain rules for playing Chaos Champions of Human, Beastman, Minotaur, Centaur or Dragon Ogre origin.
  • Second Edition's official race list is Humans (Imperial, Bretonnian, Norscan, Kislevite), High Elves, Dwarves and Halflings. The mechanics for generating Mutant, Beastman and Skaven NPC are close enough to be used to play characters of those races if the Games Master permits.
  • Fourth Edition has Humans (Imperial, Bretonnian, Norscan, Kislevite), High Elves, Wood Elves, Dwarves, Norse Dwarves, Halflings, Ogres, Gnomes, and Skinks.
• Mass Transformation:
  • Skaven poisoned the backwoods fief of Uesin's water sources with warpstone and attacked as the population began to mutate. An unusually level-headed local lord rallied the people, saved the fief, and took it off the map so it became a benign Monster Town.
  • One Black Magic Ritual transforms every human within a mile into berserk, rampaging Beastmen for 24 hours. Survivors are left with the memory of their actions and a heap of Insanity Points.
• Master Forger: The Forger career trains in a broad range of academic, social, and trade skills in order to create and pass all kinds of counterfeits, including cash, documents, and art. Flavor Text suggests that they're also the best people to hire to identify forgeries.
• Medieval European Fantasy: Partially. The Empire is mostly in the 16th century technology-wise, and new inventions like the printing press and gunpowder (as well as the magic used for Mundane Utility) has significantly changed a lot of things in its cities, but past the city walls the peasants and serfs still haven't benefited from much social change over the last few centuries. Played entirely straight by adventures set in Bretonnia, where an entrenched noble class actively works to keep the entire country in Medieval Stasis and Fantasy Gun Control is actively enforced on Bretonnian soil.
• Medieval Stasis: Bretonnia's sourcebook goes into a lot of things that have conspired to keep the country in effective technological and societal stasis since its founding several centuries ago — most of which boil down to "the nobles have all the power and they want to keep it that way". Add in the way the Cult of the Lady and reverence for Gilles le Breton and his Grail Companions actively encourage said noble class to recapture his glorious past and, well... it's also all but outright stated that their religion is all a big sham cooked up the neighbouring Wood Elves of Athel Loren so they can use the kingdom as a buffer state, and they suppress any industry the Bretonnians try to get going too.
• Medieval Universal Literacy: Averted. Being able to read and write is a skill independent of learning spoken languages, and only a relative handful of career paths (usually related to academia or nobility) allow new characters to be literate right out the starting gate.
• Mega-Microbes: Amoebae of considerable size live within the rivers and swamps of the Empire. They're entirely mindless, often mistaken for jellyfish — or, less charitably, for living vomit — and in most ways act like the regular microscopic kind. They usually stick to the water but will crawl onto land when hungry enough, and will attempt to engulf and digest whichever parts of a larger creature — like a human — they happen to be able to reach.
• Mental Shutdown: The Chaos mutation "Mindless" transforms the afflicted person's brain to warpstone and removes their intelligence score. They're reduced to an automaton that can do nothing but follow simple commands from spellcasters.
  Perhaps a new character is in order.
• Military Mage: Battle Wizards are described as very rare, and specialized full-time training is needed to master Battle Magic. The Realm of Sorcery sourcebook for the second edition states that, of the already extremely rare group who qualify as Wizard Magisters, "a scant few Wizards spend a portion of their training on assignment to an Imperial military"; and of that scant few, "among these talented Wizards there are a few with a steely nerve and unmatched talent which are selected and groomed to become Battle Wizards." Some of them are encountered as NPCs and they have stats consistent with the Master Wizard or Wizard Lord careers (e.g. Magic rating of 3 or 4). Predictably the vast bulk of magic users lack the talent or focus to become this. Starting playable mages represent either apprentices who may graduate to becoming Battle Wizards after finishing their career track and retiring, or those who explicitly never had the talent needed to make the cut to Battle Wizard in the first place; their starting Magic rating is always 1 and it takes a lot of time and effort (and a career advancement) to get to 2, and even more for 3. As such, player character wizards are never in danger of being drafted, because being player characters means they initially aren't powerful enough to serve as military mages. If a player character does manage to ascend to Master Wizard status, they have to take a sabbatical and then come with a roleplaying reason why they'd still be allowed to traipse around.
• The Minion Master: The Dark Lores of Chaos and Necromancy both feature spells that create minions for combat — Necromancy can reanimate corpses as zombies, while Chaos summons daemons. Generally, zombies are weak and mindless but can be mass-produced (a necromancer can reanimate and control one corpse for every point of Will Power he has, to the game's cap of 100), while daemons are much stronger but very risky (a wizard must not only succeed in casting the spell itself, but must also succeed a Will Power test or the daemon(s) will ignore the summoner and do whatever they want. This is never a good thing).
• Minmaxer's Delight:
  • From 2nd Edition:
    • The dwarf-exclusive Runebearer basic career in the is the sole career in the entire game that, RaW, allows you to take +1 Movement as a stat advance, while also giving the "Fleet-footed" talent for an additional +1 Movement, and the "Flee!" talent for a further +1 Movement when retreating from danger. Since dwarfs innately have the "Sturdy" talent, which allows them to ignore the Movement reduction of heavy armor, a dwarf character who incorporates Runebearer into their build can become a plate-armored warrior who runs as fast as an unarmoured elf.
    • The humble Dung Collector from Forges of Nuln is one of the most desirable basic careers for giving easy access to the "Fearless" talent, letting the player ignore normal fear checks and count terror checks as fear. It's not uncommon for munchkins to want to either start the game as a Dung Collector, or make a non-exit career switch just to grab the talent.
    • The Witch advanced career from Realms of Sorcery comes with the "Witchcraft" talent, which enables the player to learn (at double price) any individual spell from any arcane lore that has a casting number of 15 or less (approximately half the spells of each lore). While it does force the player to roll a chaos dice while casting, this weakness can be overcome by progressing to Apprentice Wizard and then Journeyman Wizard, to gain a Language of Magic and a proper arcane spell lore, while still retaining the ability to gain spells outside your chosen affinity.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: In 2nd edition, the halberd (itself a real life example of the trope) uniquely can count as either a "spear" (gaining the Fast quality) or a "great weapon" (gaining the Impact and Slow qualities) when performing a melee attack, at the user's discretion.
• Moby Schtick: A sample member of the Cult of Manann in Tome of Salvation is Captain Aber Walblatt, a templar of the Knights Mariner who has devoted himself to hunting a great red Chaos whale that destroyed a ship he previously served upon, swearing to never again set foot on dry land until the beast is finally dead (a quest that has taken close to a decade).
• Mole in Charge:
  • In Paths of the Damned, Claus Leibnitz, the deputy high priest of Ulric in Middenheim, is a key member of a Khorne-worshipping Chaos cult called the Crimson Skull, which has taken root among the Ar-Ulric's elite Teutogen Guards.
• Monty Haul: Averted, as almost all the magic items around are legendary relics like the Runefangs — items like these aren't going to be lying around in a dungeon or available in a shop. The exceptions to this are if you have a Dwarven rune priest that can make permanent runes in your party or if you're playing a Chaos Champion (which has its own complications). Additionally, there won't be heaps of gold and jewels to haul off; treasure is going to be taking that dead bandit's rusty sword and selling it for scrap metal. Good luck buying a gun or plate armour.
• Muggle Power: People's opinions on wizards tends to vary. At the very least, it is logical to fear the undeniable power of any wizard, the Logical Extreme more or less being the Witch Hunters' existence — In the eyes of the Church of Sigmar, arcane magic is considered abominable witchcraft, with only realpolitick keeping the peace between the two factions.
  • Light Wizards are, unusually, generally trusted for their lives of healing and banishment of evil, even by Witch Hunters.
  • Celestial Wizards' prophetic abilities are valued among nobles and military and they are usually wealthy for their service, although their predilection for potentially giving disturbing, truthful portents or turning up the moment someone needs help tends to mean people will probably be nervous around them.
  • Gold Wizards are known as aloof, ostentatious, self-absorbed egotists and this is pretty much entirely true. At least they do excellent research for the Empire's gunnery and artillery and can magically improve their allies' armor and weapons while weakening the enemies.
  • Jade Wizards' are distinct with their druidic garb and fairly-isolated hereditary caste, but their powers of health and literally Talking to Plants are highly valued to the Empire's armies.
  • Amber Wizards normally shaman hermits that keep utterly away from society's trappings (indeed, they commonly enjoy unsettling any city folk that come across them), prefer the company of wild animals, and even Imperial armies may be confounded by their refusal to consider anything resembling tactics for battle plans, but their magic's sheer power is highly effective in battle and they are totally committed to fighting Chaos and magical enemies such as Beastmen even for their normal, solitary lives.
  • Bright Wizards are Magic Knights that do not shy away from the frontlines of battle — indeed, much of a Bright Wizard's training once they've been declared sufficiently disciplined is practical combat drill — and all know of their use as mighty forces in times of war. However, their magic's unsubtle power of Stuff Blowing Up and its wizards being as tempestuous and aggressive as the flames they wield lead most to understandably fear them.
  • Grey Wizards are distrusted as a rule (although their Order's dedication to anti-corruption frankly means that any who have a reason to distrust them are untrustworthy themselves, and their illusion magic means it's simplistic for them to not be known to you as a Grey Wizard anyway...).
  • Amethyst Wizards are probably the most disliked of all, even by other wizards, with their morbid fixations leading them to eerily speaking very little (they even prefer to speak telepathically among each other) and looking barely any less lean and pale as the skeletons of the dead, but Dark Is Not Evil and Shyish's Magisters regard it their duty to undo the effects of necromancy, giving them warm relations with the Cult of Morr and the provinces neighboring Sylvania.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: Several careers allow characters to study the academic theory of magic or even learn a Language of Magic without necessarily being able to use magic themselves. A Language of Magic is necessary but not sufficient for spellcasting, and magic theory is neither.
• Multi-Melee Master: The Judicial Champion advanced career from 2nd edition. Judicial Champion has possession of, and proficiency with, at least six high-quality melee weapons as a prerequisite. This is because Judicial Champions are the representatives of the court in a Trial by Combat, and are expected to duel the defendant with the weapon of their opponent's choice.
• Multipurpose Tongue: The Piercing Tongue mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, turns its bearer's tongue into "a long, sinous, sharp monstrosity", which can be used to deal ranged attacks to up to four yards away.
• Mundane Utility: Despite the game being infamous for how unpredictable and potentially risky spellcasting can be, the 2nd edition sourcebook "Realms of Sorcery" features a number of spells that exist to do some fairly minor tricks, all things considered. Despite what you might think, these spells aren't inherently easier due to their utility focus — the spell "Taste of Fire" has a casting number of 9, which makes it harder to cast than the attack spell "Fires of U'zhul" (which requires a casting number of 6).
  • The Lore of Fire has the spells "Flashcook" (instantly cooks a meal or boils water) and "Taste of Fire" (spices up a meal or makes a drink strongly alcoholic).
  • The Lore of Heavens has the self-explanatory "Birdspeak" and "Polish, Clean and Gleam" which instantly and perfectly cleans any glass surface.
  • The Lore of Light has "Cleansing Glow", which instantly and perfectly cleans anything or anyone you touch.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: In 2e, your character's encumbrance value (a combination of weight and volume) is equal to their Strength plus their Toughness multiplied by ten, seemingly because becoming stronger and tougher makes you necessarily larger and more muscular.
• The Musketeer: Enforced by the rules. Depending on edition, handguns can take between one to several full rounds to reload, preventing the character from doing anything (including moving) in the meantime. As a result, gun-using characters without a death wish will want to carry a melee weapon as well, ditching the gun after one or two shots.
• Mutagenic Goo: Warpstone, the crystallized substance of Chaos, will force most living creatures to pass a mutation check upon contact.
• Mutants:
  • The presence of Moorcock-inspired Chaos mutants is a feature that set Warhammer apart from many other fantasy wargame/role-playing systems — and here, they're given all the gory detail they deserve. Being a mutant means everything from being a complete cripple, to merely being an ugly human, to becoming a freak powerful enough to put many X-Men to shame, and everything in between.
  • Players can develop mutations in a number of ways, such as if they tamper with magic, mishandle the local Green Rocks, or get slapped in the face with chaotic energies. Mutating too often and too quickly (or having one of your characteristics depleted to zero by penalty-inducing mutations) will cause you to spontaneously transform into a mindless Chaos Spawn. Furthermore, while some mutations have clear advantages, they're also very un-subtle, and the people of the Empire have learned to kill mutants on sight.
• Mystery Meat: The Halfling Clan Rumster is infamous for trading in dirt-cheap, bottom-quality foodstuffs of all kinds, but especially for its meat pies, which are rumoured to contain everything from vermin to unfortunate business rivals. Empire slang for food-borne diseases causing diarrhoea is "Rumster's Revenge".
• Mystical White Hair: Celestial Wizards and Light Wizards often have their hair turn pure white from exposure to their Wind of Magic as a minor Mark of the Supernatural.

Tropes N—O

• Nerf: Many high-level spells were taken directly from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle wargame, but drastically weakened by careless unit conversion. In WFB, a top-level combat spell is an equivalent of a cannon hit or arrow barrage at half a mile (one miniature represents 10 soldiers or so). In WFRP the same spell is roughly equivalent of a blunderbuss shot at 50 meters. Still useful, but nowhere near as impressive.
• Never Gets Drunk: Consume Alcohol is a Skill Score that can be trained like any other. A veteran drinker with a high enough Toughness score can likely knock back around twenty drinks in a row before they suffer any mechanical effect and has a decent chance of staying upright after thirty.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Lure of the Lich Lord module for 2nd edition concerns a small patch of the Border Princes fought over by three would-be kings, who fit these archetypes. Haflok is a templar of Sigmar and just wants to keep people safe from greenskins and chaos, becoming a ruler mostly by accident. Levellian is a self-interested control freak who wants to be king to satisfy his own ego and lust for power, and unwittingly has a chaos cultist as his main advisor. Finally, Fatandira is trying to establish enlightened rule in the Border Princes to prevent the prejudice that killed her parents from happening to anyone else, and is willing to be as pragmatic as necessary to serve those ends.
• Night of the Living Mooks: The bread and butter of the Dark Lore of Necromancy, granting the caster the ability to raise zombies, skeletons and occasionally wights as minions. An accomplished necromancer can also dominate (but not create) spectral undead like ghosts, banshees and wraiths. Finally, 2nd edition's Night's Dark Masters provides rules for "Greater Necromancy", allowing a necromancer to create even more advanced undead with the aid of warpstone, including Non-Human Undead and Flesh Golems.
• No Adequate Punishment: The Norscans punish unlawful killings with a fine of wergild. Every class of society incurs its own death-price, except for Seers and Vitki — it is completely forbidden by the Chaos Gods to do them harm, and only the wrath of the Gods settles the debt.
• Nobody Poops: Averted, pooping is an important part of the Dung Ages Old World. Whether it's being afflicted by the "Bloody Trots" from supernatural sources or just a bad pie, having Beastmen mark their territory or a Jade Wizard spell (there's a spell where they sustain themselves with magic — they don't need to breathe, drink or eat. But they do need to poop and it comes out a brilliant green). It can even affect combat, when a character (usually a wizard) loses bowel control and takes a penalty in the middle of battle.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The Realms of Sorcery books in 2nd ed describes wizard Player Characters as essentially washouts from the Imperial Colleges of magic; civilian wizards who, despite their skill at manipulating the Winds, can't make the cut to become Imperial Battle Mages. Similarly, elven wizards are little more than journeymen and apprentices. You can eventually level them up into proper wizard careers, if you don't die long enough before that.
• Non-Action Guy: The vast majority of all available careers are this, having little to no way to advance in weapon or ballistic skills or weapons training. Depending on your advanced career options you could eventually rectify this in 2nd and 3rd edition, provided you lived that long.
• Non-Health Damage: There are many ways for creatures to suffer temporary or permanent harm to their Characteristics:
  • Vampiric blood drinking reduces the victim's Strength by 1-10%, which recovers at 1% per hour.
  • Sufferers of the Green Pox lose 5% per day from all their main Characteristics. They recover when the disease ends, but suffer Stat Death if their Toughness falls to zero.
  • "Magic Destroyer" Chaos weapons can temporarily reduce their victims' Magic Characteristic by 1 with every hit, impeding their ability to cast spells.
  • Possible side effects of using Black Magic include permanent reductions in Strength or Toughness.
  • The Lore of the Heavens' most powerful Curse can permanently strip a Fate Point, which acts as a 1-Up or a renewable Luck Manipulation Mechanic.
• No-Sell: Possible when attacking all enemies and nigh-inevitable when attacking something like a dragon or greater daemon. For example in 2e the vast majority of weapons deal 3 + d10 damage or less, and each of the aforementioned creatures have a combined rating of 12 in Toughness Bonus and Armor Points that is flatly subtracted from said damage, meaning there's a 9/10 chance that standard attacks will do absolutely nothing to them. Stronger weapons like muskets might deal Scratch Damage to their pools of ~60 wounds due to being 4 + d10 and able to re-roll the d10 and pick the higher result. It takes artillery to really make them feel it.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Halfling agitator and Burgomeister Chard is often dismissed as a clown by both the people of Altdorf and players themselves because he's a Halfling. Active almost entirely in the suburb of Haffenstadt in Altdorf Chard riles up crowds with the dream of an independent and free enclave within Altdorf where non-Halflings aren't allowed with patently humorous cries of "Big-otry" while waving around food items and a very short sword. Chard is very astute however with a sharp tongue, and is the worst kind of debate partner who has zero interest in facts or objective reality unless it helps him in some way. What makes him truly dangerous however is when he makes the crowd so angry they start turning on any "Bigs" that happen to be nearby: there have already been a few race riots and near a hundred halflings are very much a force to be reckoned with, espically if the adventurers are in the way.
• Occult Detective: The secret day jobs of the Grey Wizards (or Grey Guardians). Their shadow magic primarily dealing with creating illusions gives them a slight bit of Magician Detective too, though the Grey Wizards are certainly not so showy as to regularly perform to an audience. Their vow of poverty, shabby Grey College and usual style of dress (when they want to let you see it) of voluminous robes & face-obscuring hats or hoods gives them some more similiarities to a Hardboiled Detective's trenchcoat and meagerly living as well. Their mandate is to root out corruption and the enemies of the Empire's ideals causes for strict rules that they must never attempt to strive for their own or a patron's profit and leaves them so divorced from political manoeuverings that the Order of Shadows has killed more of its own members for failing its zero-tolerance constraints and consider the potential that they must deal with the possibility of the Emperor himself falling to Chaos.
• Oddball in the Series: Unlike its traditional pen-and-paper RPG siblings, 2009's 3rd Edition takes a form reminiscent of a board/party game, with decks of cards, cardboard tokens and colorful custom dice. 4th Edition, nine years later, returned to the basic mechanics of 2nd Edition.
• Off with His Head!: The possible result of a Critical Hit.
  Your opponent's head flies off in a random direction, landing 2D6 feet away.
• Old Magic:
  • Runic Magic is an extremely ancient art practiced solely by the dwarves, and even they have only a few who've mastered it. Part of it is because many were lost in the destruction of the dwarf empire, another because they only pass down knowledge orally, but also because dwarves are very long-lived and dubious of the skill of anyone who hasn't been a runesmith for at least hundreds of years.
  • 1^st Edition has the Druidic magic of the Old Faith, a nature-based human religion that predates both the Colleges of Wizardry and the pantheons of the Old World. Later editions drop these mechanics and describe the Old Faith as having been subsumed into the cults of various nature gods.
  • The Hedgefolk from 2nd edition onwards are a secretive and persecuted faction of witches that safeguard primitive traditions of magic that pre-date the rise of Sigmar. The Lore of Hedgecraft generally takes the form of potion brewing, spirit-walking and other shamanistic practices.
• Onesie Armor: Zig-zagged. The game offers the choice of quick armor rules, where armor is full-body, and advanced armor rules, where characters can build a suit out of different pieces. Attacks do strike specific body parts, but under the quick armor rules, this mostly only determines potential Critical Hit effects.
• Orbiting Particle Shield:
  • The Lore of Light spell "Radiant Sentinel" creates a ball of light that floats around the spellcaster and can parry one extra melee weapon attack per round.
  • The Lore of Metal spell "Guard of Steel" creates a protective field of floating steel balls around the spellcaster, reducing the accuracy of all incoming attacks.
• Our Demons Are Different: Daemons are evil creatures native to the Realm of Chaos, where all magic originates. They have the "Daemonic" trait, which means all of their attacks count as magical and they themselves are incredibly resistant to harm — In 2nd edition, daemons are immune to poison and suffocation and count their toughness bonus as two points higher for the purpose of reducing damage from non-magical sources, while in 4th edition they get to roll a 1d10 and potentially No-Sell any damage they take. On the flip side, daemons are very unstable in the mortal world and have what amounts to a Morale Mechanic, with the risk of de-corporealizing if the battle turns against them.
  • Aside from the variety of common daemon types aligned to the different Chaos Gods, second edition's Tome of Corruption contains a system for randomly-generating unique daemons of the "least", "lesser" and "beast" varieties. You're encouraged to create daemons that are as strange and memorable as possible, with the aid of the book's d1000 mutation chart.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: The Centauroid mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, causes its bearer's legs to be replaced by the torso and limbs of a random animal, with an associated table providing ant, ass, bear, beetle, boar, centipede, cow, crocodile, elephant, frog, giraffe, horse, lion, lizard, rabbit, snake, spider, or wolf features as options.
• Our Elves Are Different: Elves are a playable race, divided into a number of distinct cultures, and generally portrayed as superior, but on the decline. In 2nd edition, all elf player characters are assumed to belong to the Eonir, the elves of Laurelorn Forest within the bounds of the northwestern Empire. Later editions grant access to the Eonir's cousins, the Asrai of Athel Loren, and the Asur (known to mankind as high elves/sea elves) of Ulthuan. The piratical Druchii (dark elves) of distant Naggaroth also appear as occasional antagonists.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: There are a few ways for the souls of the dead to linger as incorporeal spirits:
  • Ghosts are usually bound to their place of death by Unfinished Business. They're Supernatural Fear Inducers, but are usually benign and might cooperate with the living to be laid to rest.
  • Poltergeists enjoy playing tricks on the living with their telekinesis and fear-inducing touch, but are usually otherwise harmless.
  • Spectres are trapped in undeath by a curse or a broken vow, and wield sanity-damaging fear and deadly cold. They're Tortured Monsters driven "mad, evil, or both" by their existence, but might be lucid enough to work with the living in order to be put to rest.
  • Wraiths are malevolent, omnicidal entities that form when a Necromancer fails in their search for immortality. They have an aura of terror and can drain the life out of mortals with their touch or Sinister Scythe.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Gnomes appeared in the first edition of the game were they were described as a rare subspecies of Dwarf. They strongly resembled the D&D version, being nimble pranksters with a talent for illusions and some skill with engineering and smithing, but were also notoriously bad-tempered and vengeful to the point that even dwarfs considered them surly. They were never a prominent part of the setting, only being included as an optional PC race in a White Dwarf article (and the memorable Hercule Poirot parody NPC, Alphonse Hercules de Gascoigne, in the With a Little Help From My Friends adventure.) Gnomes were phased out entirely in later editions of the setting, though there have been fanmade rules to retro-fit gnomes for Second and Third Edition. They returned officially in 4th edition in the Hard Nights & Rough Days sourcebook, where they are described as a halfling-like race who have long been persecuted by Imperial witch hunters due to their innate affinity for Ulgu, which means that even non-wizard gnomes are able to use some illusion magic. They are characterized as very clannish, stubborn and surly, and mostly live in seclusion; if they do deign to travel in the Empire, they usually disguise themselves as halflings, which tends to require padded clothing (gnomes are naturally slender, compared to the chubby halflings) and, for males, shaving off their beards.
• Our Gryphons Are Different:
  • Griffons are beasts native to the high mountains of the Empire, and are regarded as something of a national mascot thanks to their high intelligence and regal bearing. The Emperor himself owns a particular griffon named Deathclaw, housed in the Imperial Zoo at Altdorf.
  • The horse-legged hippogriff variant (spelled as hippogryph) is also present, though they are far less beloved. Hippogryphs are psychotically belligerent creatures that kill everything they see without discrimination. They're also incredibly stupid (having an Intelligence score of 5 compared to the griffon's 20, making it one of the dumbest monsters in the game that isn't outright mindless), and are said to lack object permanence — If they can't see it, it's gone forever, so the easiest way to avoid them is to just find a good hiding spot.
• Our Imps Are Different: Imps are the most minor species of daemon, little more than motes of emotion and magical energy within their native Realm of Chaos. The exact form they take in the mortal world varies, but they're usually diminutive humanoids, and daemonologists like to use them as Familiars.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Regular mermaids resemble human or elven women with clawed hands and fish tails instead of legs, and can range from being supernaturally beautiful to twisted, monstrous and hag-like. Scholars believe them to be Chaos mutants who stabilized enough to breed true, while Kislevites call them rusalkis and believe them to be the ghosts of drowned women come to lure the unwary to watery graves. They live along rocky coasts and use hypnotic songs to lure ships onto reefs for the sheer hell of it, utilize little technology beyond crude stone tools, and worship Triton.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires in the Old World are powerful and intelligent undead split into five distinct bloodlines. Their powers are widely varied even between individuals, encompassing many classical vampire tropes such as Voluntary Shapeshifting and Hypnotic Eyes, and all of them are instinctive necromancers to some degree. They also share many classical vampire weaknesses, including sunlight, fire, silver, holy symbols, running water, and certain herbs (though not garlic, despite persistent rural folklore).
  • The Von Carsteins are the most infamous vampire clan, originating in the Empire's easternmost province of Sylvania. More than any other bloodline, they style themselves as aristocrats and nobles, ruling over terrified Sylvanian peasants with organized armies of the undead. They are the vampires best known to the people of the Empire at large, after their progenitor Vlad von Carstein and his family attempted to conquer the continent in the Vampire Wars.
  • The Lahmians are an all-female bloodline who, while aristocratic like the von Carsteins, prefer to manipulate humanity from the shadows rather than rule openly, relying on inhuman beauty and powers of mental domination to get their way.
  • The Blood Dragons were a celebrated knightly order of the Empire, before their progenitor hijacked the organization and transformed its members into vampires. Now, they are literal Blood Knights, dedicating their immortal lifespans to martial pursuits and Walking the Earth.
  • Necrarchs are reclusive Evil Sorcerers, twisted into gaunt, skeletal creatures by their abuse of Black Magic. Usually residing in remote Mage Towers, necrarchs tend to be either Mad Scientists or Mad Artists.
  • Strigoi are a once-proud bloodline which lost everything and degenerated into a clan of Feral Vampires, mutating wicked claws and muscled, leathery hides. They have an affinity with ghouls, and are often found commanding barbaric "courts" of the carrion-eaters, leading to their nickname of "ghoul kings".
  • Vargulfs, given a statblock in 4th edition, are vampires who have completely surrendered to their bloodlust and left their humanity behind, transforming into huge, animalistic monsters that resemble flightless vampire bats.
  • In 2nd edition's Night's Dark Masters, "independant" vampires can be created with their own grouping of powers, though they lack the extra talents offered to members the bloodlines. As they amass more of their blood gifts, an independant vampire soon becomes a malformed, disease-ridden freak even compared to the Strigoi, with a strong association with insectoid vermin.
• Our Witches Are Different:
  • Witches are humans who illegally study wizardry outside the Imperial Colleges, cobbling together spells that go beyond the minor magic of the Hedgefolk but fall far short of what a Magister can do. Though they don't necessarily practice Black Magic, many slip into it accidentally or go insane and embrace it.
  • The Ice Witches of Kislev practice a unique form of ice magic that draws on their country's ley lines. A prophecy foretells ruin if a man learns ice magic, so Kislevite men with magical potential are either killed by The Magocracy or smuggled out of the country to learn wizardry in the Empire.
  • Ungol Hag Witches are women who wield magic by commanding natural spirits though special ingredients rather than channel the Background Magic Field directly. They specialize in managing spirits, Curses, and healing, and are generally held to be Creepy Good, as contact with the otherworld prematurely ages them into twisted hags.
• Out-of-Turn Interaction:
  • By default, creatures with melee weapons get a free out-of-turn attack against an enemy who moves out of their melee range.
  • In 2^nd Edition, a character can spend a half-action to "delay", then cut in at any time before the beginning of their next turn to perform their second half-action.
• Oxymoronic Being: Necoho the Doubter is the Chaos God of Atheism. He works to undermine the faiths of other deities, demands nothing of those who choose to worship him anyway and gives them nothing in return.

Tropes P—Q

• Peeve Goblins: Jabberwocks, monstrous and rare Chaos creatures, are immortalized as a bogeyman among Imperial peasants and tend to be blamed for ills that strike without apparent cause — for instance, if a line of washing is blown over by the wind, it's said that the Jabberwock came and knocked it down.
• Perception Filter:
  • Priests of the Trickster God Ranald have a spell to make themselves completely unremarkable to onlookers except for two details of the priest's choosing (such as a flamboyant hat), which are the only things they'll be able to remember about the priest afterwards.
  • Shadow wizards have a spell to become so unnoticeable that people don't pay attention to their arrival, don't bother to approach or speak to them, don't remember them after they leave, and don't notice or care about the gaps in their own memories.
  • A mutant woman in Spires of Altdorf is afflicted with a perception filter that makes her both unremarkable and extremely forgettable, requiring the players to succeed willpower checks to simply register her presence. She uses this trait to serve as a spy and Cold Sniper for the mutant gang she runs with.
• Perpetual Poverty:
  • Made clear in the supplement Renegade Crowns (see Rags to Royalty) that even should the player characters put themselves in control of a "principality", they are still going to be scrabbling for every penny, since the land they control is an impoverished backwater out in the Badlands.
  • Enforced in Fourth Edition, where it's easy for any character to make a little money (with some classes making more than others) but very difficult for characters to keep money between adventures. Any money a character doesn't take time and effort between adventures to "bank" is automatically lost^note (and even banked money can be randomly lost, reflecting buried treasure being raided, a character's secure trunk being broken into, an investment not panning out, or any number of other literal misfortunes) by the start of the next adventure, with players encouraged to come up with a narrative justification for it. In this way, a financial reward is virtually always a good way to keep the party motivated to come back together for another adventure, while encouraging them to splurge their rewards quickly before others have a chance to relieve them of their accumulated coins.
• Pet the Dog:
  • 2nd Edition's Old World Bestiary includes a story about a human child meeting face to face with a Minotaur beastman, but instead of killing the kid, the Minotaur tells him to go back home and return when he's big enough to be a Worthy Opponent and a better meal. Given the standards of the Beastmen, who usually kill and eat humans on sight, this is downright charitable.
  • The same book's chapter on The Undead provides the tale of a scholar who traveled to distant Bel Aliad to find a cure for his dying wife, poisoned by a jealous rival. When his guide's greed for Nehekaran treasures gets them both captured and brought before the resident Tomb King, the mummified ruler listens to the scholar's story and spares his life (though the guide ends up executed). According to an undead priest who served as a translator for his master: "My lord commands me to tell you that he, too, loved once. He too would have travelled to the ends of the world to save his love. I am to show you the wisdom you seek."
  • Beastmen often adopt mutated infants found abandoned by their human parents in the wilderness. Known as "gaves", they're considered to be gifts from their gods; even if they have no horns, they aren't subject to the same stigmas reserved for ungors, brays and adult human mutants.
• Pike Peril: Stirpikes can reach twenty feet in length and are the largest freshwater predators in the Empire. They're highly aggressive, and will gladly devour anything that crosses their path.
• Pirate: A freshwater version is present as a career. Commonly known as "wreckers", they prey on the commercial travel of the Empire's sprawling river networks. They generally rely on traps and misdirection to run barges aground and loot their cargo, though bolder groups are known to attempt direct boardings to seize barges by force.
• Potion-Brewing Mechanic:
  • Non-magical "draughts" like Healing Potions can be made by any character with the Apothecary skill and its trade tools. No specific ingredients are required, only a skill test and a few hours of work.
  • Magic Potions require their creator to have both magical ability and an elaborate alchemy lab. Recipes are rare and precious, and each batch requires expensive ingredients that can only be harvested from specific environments. Moreover, failing the Intelligence test to create a batch always causes a Magic Misfire, and the potions themselves can cause other Magic Misfires if they spoil over time.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: In all editions of the Death on the Reik chapter of The Enemy Within, the PCs come across an eight-year-old girl named Liza Sauber who goes about barefoot. It's not Barefoot Poverty, as her employer-cum-guardian Elvyra Kleinestun is a well-off pharmacist, so the reasonable assumption is that she goes barefoot because she prefers to. It's not treated as a big deal in the narrative, despite the fact that the floor of the house she's encountered in is covered in broken glass.
• Prestige Class: Advanced careers in 1st-3rd editions require you to finish a basic career from a list of prerequisites before you can enter one.
• Primal Stance: The Hulking Brute mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, causes its bearer to become stooped and bent over, with a heavy brow ridge and long arms that drag on the ground as they walk.
• Projectile Spell: Spells like Fire Ball and Lightning Bolt are classified as "magic missiles". These require line of sight to their target and, depending on the edition and the particular spell, might need to be aimed like missile fire and/or strike a random part of the target's body like a physical attack.
• Prophet Eyes: Wizards of the Light Order often gain monochromatic white eyes from exposure to the White Wind of Magic, which represents Light, enlightenment, and purity. The change doesn't impede their vision.
• Pyromaniac: Any party member or NPC with the "Firebug" insanity, from 2nd edition, will need to pass will-power checks to resist an opportunity to start fires with whatever is on hand. Generally speaking, one of the more debilitating mental disorders.
• Quack Doctor: Good medical care is scarce, expensive, and often dangerous in the Old World, and any doctor has a chance to be a fraud or lunatic. They can stumble upon a real treatment, but it's equally likely that an apparently successful Heal skill test will fall apart after a few hours or days. Higher-paid doctors are actually more likely to be quacks — at least, until their first high-profile cock-up.

Tropes R—S

• Rags to Royalty:
  • First the good news: one of the supplements has a campaign allowing player characters to create (or more likely steal) a principality of their own! The bad news: said principality is in the monster/bandit/Chaos haunted Border Princes territory, will probably make Lancre look vast and wealthy in comparison and comes with a court full of people just itching to do to the player characters what they did to the last guy.
  • Some of the better advanced careers are pretty awesome as well; they won't give you royalty, but considering where you start, it's hardly a downturn. With luck, or lawyering the rules of first edition, you can work your way up to generals of mercenary armies, ship captains, and so on. You just will need a lot of it.
• Raised as the Opposite Gender: Marquis Frederic Desfleuve, ruler of Castle Desfleuve in Gisoreux. Her mother died giving birth to her, and her father was too heartbroken to ever remarry, so he raised her as a man. She's proven to be an extremely capable lord, and so far the only problem with it is that she doesn't have an heir, and can't exactly produce one without giving her secret away (something that would cause a ton of trouble, as women can't be knights, wear men's clothing, inherit land, etc.).
• Randomized Transformation: Chaos can inflict all kinds of permanent random Mutations, including adding or exchanging extremities (humanoid or not), becoming a Beast Man, losing all skin and flesh, growth, shrinking, becoming a Brown Note Being, and polka dots.
• Rapid Aging: Ungol Hag Witches' unique Spirit magic causes rapid aging as a Mark of the Supernatural. It's a combination of a cosmetic effect and actual physical degeneration and can be so extreme that the Hag's appearance becomes a Supernatural Fear Inducer. Luckily for them, their magic can also prolong their natural lifespan, perhaps indefinitely.
• Rash Promise: Every time a dwarf is slighted, insulted, wounded or killed, it gets written down in the ginormous Book of Grudges and used as a Pretext for War. Naturally, the avenging of a grudge incurs the loss of dwarven lives, which leads to further grudges, which... Unfortunately, what dwarves consider an insult is something even allies are often clueless about (one castle builder declared war on his human client because the barges of gold sent as payment were three pieces short, thought to be a deliberate insult).
• Reassigned to Antarctica: In The Enemy Within campaign, the adventurers at one point save the life of an Imperial Elector Count... and learn a lot of embarrassing secrets about his court. So as a "reward" they get sent to Kislev, to an area which is the fantasy equivalent of Siberia.
• Red Right Hand:
  • Disfiguring mutations are an obvious sign that someone is in league with the forces of Chaos, as the Ruinous Powers love to inflict them on worshippers as both rewards and punishments. Various Chaos-centric careers in 2nd edition's Tome of Corruption require at least one mutation before they can be entered, in addition to their conventional trappings.
  • The Dark Lores can inflict a milder form of this trope on their caster when mishandled, which can range from an Undeathly Pallor to a persistent stench. Those with magical senses can also see the miasma of dhar on a black magister by way of Aura Vision.
  • The Arcane and Divine lores invert this trope, as while their casters can develop physical aspects associated with their chosen deity/wind of magic, they usually serve to mark them out as being particularly powerful or blessed.
• Reduced Resource Cost: In 2nd edition, the inventor of a Ritual doesn't have to spend XP to learn it. Given the cost in time, effort, physical resources, and risk of personal harm to achieve such a feat, the gamebook acknowledges that it's a small mercy.
• Resource Reimbursement: The Hag Witch spell "Charmed" gives the target a 30% chance not to consume the Fortune Point when they spend one.
• Restoration of Sanity:
  • Priests of the Healer God Shallya have access to a spell that cures one form of madness in the target, though it's considerably harder than healing physical wounds.
  • Gold Wizards have a spell that can transmute an unstable mind into a stable one, removing a number of Insanity Points. However, if the wizard fails the Channeling test to cast it, it has the opposite effect.
  • Surgeons can operate on a person's brain in hopes of removing insanity points or even curing permanent madness. However, failure can cause anything from permanent intelligence loss to death.
  • Zig-zagged with the spell "Mindfire" in the Lore of Tzeentch: it inflicts insanity points if the target has none, but otherwise burns them away in an Armor-Piercing Attack.
• Resurrect the Wreck: One Ritual in 2^nd Edition lets a Necromancer raise a sunken wreck as a Ghost Ship. It's crewed by the undead remains of its old sailors and travels at an even speed regardless of local wind or weather.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Chaos cultists that suceed in the betrayal of towns soon realize that in the new Chaos society ushered in by their betrayal they are equipped with entirely the wrong tools to thrive. A cutting remark that undermines the authority of an empire noble won't work on a Norscan, and he will kill the cultist for his insolense which makes the Norscan go up in standing. Worse yet the Dark Gods are fickle and quickly withdraw their patronage and protection the moment cultists serve their purpose. The fate of a Cultist is to either be a slave to the more powerful Norscans, a beggar with no hope to survive for more than a week, or a sacrifice for a dark ritual. They will never see the power and presteige they were promised.
• Revive Kills Zombie: In 4th Edition, all Jade Magic spells have the secondary effect of infusing targets with pure life energy, causing living creatures to recover from any fatigue and bleeding Status Effects. Undead creatures instead suffer damage based on every ten points of the caster's willpower stat, bypassing armor and toughness.
• Rich Language, Poor Language:
  • The war-torn rural province of Ostland has a distinct local accent, featuring plenty of odd pauses and Kislevarin loan words, that's stereotypically associated with poverty elsewhere in the Empire.
  • The heartland province of Reikland has a local accent that's associated with wealth and power in-universe. Though the local peasants don't see much of either, well-off people often play it up with lessons in elocution.
• Ritual Magic: Present in Second Edition, ritual magic is a significant step above regular spellcasting but is significantly rarer, with every ritual inscribed in its own unique tome and needing to be committed to memory as a purchased talent. They're also more time-consuming, with even the shortest rituals requiring hours to perform. Rituals have esoteric, hard-to-come-by ingredients and special conditions that must be fulfilled, as well as harsh consequences should the ritual somehow fail (in most cases, applying the ritual's effect upon the caster instead of the intended target).
• Roleplaying Endgame: The Chaos Champion career line has a unique one: once they earn enough rewards from the Dark Gods for their distinguished service, they have a chance to be transformed into a Daemon Prince to serve eternally. The fledgling Daemon is usually called away to the Realms of Chaos, leaving the player to roll up a new character with a hefty starting bonus.
• Running Gag: Any references to Rat Catchers or the Rat Catcher career will always mention their most important trapping: a small (but vicious) dog. In second edition's Old World Armoury, a stat entry on common dogs specifically notes that rat catcher dogs have the "Warrior Born" talent (granting +5% to their Weapon Skill characteristic).
• The Rustler: Available as a career choice for characters in 1st edition, indicated to be the "two-bit" variety of thief who steals individual livestock for simple coin. In 2nd Edition, cattle rustlers from the Border Princes are said to the most common worshippers of a minor god named Gunndred, who is the patron of violent criminals and those who spread fear. Such rustlers are noted for being exceptionally cruel and spiteful individuals.
• Sacred Flames: The Sacred Flame of Ulric is believed to allow the city of Middenheim and its people to endure for long as the flame stays lit. According to one legend, when Magnus was being accused by the High Priest of Ulric of being a blasphemer, he willingly walked into the flames to prove Ulric's favor, and he didn't get burned.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training:
  • Troll Slayers in 1st and 2nd edition. Most combat-related careers usually have some non-combat related skills thrown in to showcase a diversified lifestyle when not fighting anything. Troll Slayers have three skills and three skills only: Dodge Blow (useful only in a fight), Intimidate (also useful in a fight) and Consume Alcohol (useful for giving you an excuse to start a fight). Justified, as the whole point of becoming a Slayer is to be a singleminded Death Seeker, put your prior life (and skills) behind you, and you can't leave the Slayer path once you start it.
  • Downplayed in 4th edition: Slayers start out with enough skills to know how to get around in the world as a half-mad Death Seeker, get very good in knowing the weaknesses and habitats of the monsters they regularly slay, and on reaching Dragon Slayer level have gotten enough grisly stories under their belt to know how to entertain others with them. Their Talent pool is still entirely geared towards combat.
• Sanity Meter: Just saw a particularly grisly murder scene? Turned out that filthy hobo that stole the countess' silverware was a Chaos mutant and just revealed it in front of you? Happen to be, or stand close to, a wizard (or an elf) for an extended period of time? It's Insanity Points time! Hope you like crippling alcoholism, mandrake addiction, kleptomania, delusions of grandeur or any other number of not-so-funny-anymore medieval mental illnesses, because you'll be stuck with it for the rest of your career.
• Schizo Tech:
  • Very much the case in the Empire. The general baseline is the 16th Century with some access to magical potions and Steampunk stuff like clockwork repeating firearms and mechanical prosthetic hands. Nuln on the other hand is positively Victorian, as a city of industrial smog, electric lighting and nobles strutting around on Mechanical Horses. Go out into the sticks and it becomes more like The Dung Ages. Over the border you have Bretonnia, which is High Medieval France with the slightest dash of magic and very much The Dung Ages by comparison.
  • The Wood Elves of Athel Loren have an iron age Celtic level of technology with no heavy industry to speak of, access to no weapons more advanced than iron swords and spears, a society organized into nomadic chiefdoms (named "kinbands"), very few permanent settlements outside of camps and hunting lodges built into the trees... and a deeply magical forest realm that fights for them and provides everything they need, giving them things like organically-grown carbon fiber longbows that are better than rifles, custom-fit barkskin armour, magical poisons, teleporters and legions of Treants to supplement their lightly-armed skirmisher troops. Compare and contrast with the Dwarfs, who have flintlock muskets, organ guns, flamethrowers, steam trains, ironclads, steam-powered helicopters... but for most Dwarfs, it gets no more advanced than chainmail, axes, war picks and crossbows (this is justified by their technological conservative streak - the advanced stuff is what they've had for millennia and they are loathe to try out any new technology that hasn't been "proven" by centuries of testing and fine tinkering).
• Science Wizard: The Imperial Colleges of Magic require their students to train in academic knowledge skills alongside their magical studies. Celestial Wizards and Gold Wizards are famed for being skilled astronomers and alchemists, respectively.
• Scratch Damage: In 4^th Edition, a successful attack deals a minimum one Wound even if Damage Reduction from the target's armour and Toughness score would reduce it to zero (unless the weapon has the "Undamaging" trait, which is only the case for very weak arms such as daggers). In earlier editions, the target can No-Sell those attacks.
• Screw You, Elves!: Particularly in the rural areas of the Empire, elves have basically the same social problems as wizards. Old World Armoury even mentions an "ear tax" levied on elves (basically, cough up a silver or else), although it's not always enforced.
• Series Mascot: As the quintessential "sucky job no-one would want" career that ironically lends itself to perilous adventure, the Rat Catcher class has appeared in every edition of the game, always accompanied by a small (but vicious) dog.
• Self-Deprecation: The Enemy Within campaign includes a story about a not-so-bright knight who charged a handgunners regiment shouting "Challenge! Challenge!" (and thus invoking the controversial rule from Warhammer Fantasy Battle). This being WFRP, he simply got mowed down by one salvo of gunfire.
• Shield Bash: Shields count as melee weapons, though not ideal ones — In most editions their damage potential is only on par with a dagger (in 4th, they're also incapable of dealing Scratch Damage), while attacking with an off-hand weapon (as shields are typically held) comes with a -20 penalty to hit unless the user has the Ambidextrous talent. That said, smacking somebody with a shield will still deal more damage than bare fists.
• Shout-Out: Quite a few...
  • One that comes to mind is from the adventure book The Dying of the Light, wherein a witch hunter's equipment includes a pair of scales and a duck.
  • Another example is from the supplement Warhammer City, where a there's a chaos cult called the Deviants and Decadents (D&D-ers), whose leader is called the Deviant Master (DM).
  • One for Warehouse 13: In one of the oldest official adventures, a ritual to open a demonic portal in the heart of the Empire is set in Warehouse number 13.
  • In 4th edition, the section for armour opens with a very poor choice of words on personal defence by a certain Corporal Nobbs.
  • The Fourth Edition "Guide to Ubersreik" has a group of out-of-town veteran Ratcatchers move into the city, buying up a dilapidated old inn house for a headquarters. They left the sign of the old inn up outside the door, with the inn's logo being a particularly "fat shark"^note (Fat Shark is the name of the Swedish video game studio who created The End Times: Vermintide and the illustration is a near-perfect match for their studio's logo) but drawing a rat in the shark's mouth on the painting.
• Signature Headgear: The Witch Hunters wear distinctive wide-brimmed hats when they want to be recognized. In fact, even seeing someone wearing that hat unexpectedly is enough to force a roll for Save versus Fear.
• The Six Stats: Included in the core Characteristics that are tied to specific Skill Scores and affect secondary abilities: Strength (encumbrance and melee damage), Toughness (Damage Reduction), Agility (Action Initiative in 2^nd Edition; named Dexterity in 1^e), Intelligence, Willpower (intuition and mental fortitude), and Fellowship (social skills). Characteristics also include Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, and other edition-specific additions. They're ranked from 1% to 100%, indicating the chance of succeeding on a challenge of average difficulty, with an average score of 30% for a human with no special training.
• Skill Scores and Perks:
  • Skill scores are ranked from 0 to 100 based on the character's attributes and special training. They include basic skills (e.g.: Gossip) that can be used without proficiency at a penalty and advanced skills (e.g.: Healing) that require the user to be trained, and are rolled for skill tests.
  • Talents are character features with a discrete, static benefit. This might be a numerical bonus to a skill or attribute, a new way of using a skill, or an entirely new ability or feature.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: As noted, cynical. Although not as cynical as say, 40K. The random rolls system will provide players with less of a party of adventurers than a band of ugly thugs. Combat is brutal and a high-risk affair, a misroll during spell casting may consign your soul to hell. Firearms (of the general arquebus variety) are similarly risky; a misfire can easily kill a low to medium level character. More likely, however, is a misfire that destroys the weapon and all its ammunition... and that is pretty likely, but you can still earn your happy ending. The world may be doomed, but the village behind yon hill can still be saved.
• Smithical Marriage: The classic adventure "A Rough Night at the Three Feathers" involves a couple checking into the inn under the name "Herr and Frau Johann Schmidt". They're actually a count's heir and the daughter of a wealthy family of boatbuilders carrying on an affair.
• Sniper Rifle: Hochland Long Rifles (more properly known as "Leon Todmeister's Fantabulously Far-reaching Harquebus of Unforeseeable and Unperceived Bereavement") are, effectively, the Old World equivalent. They even have telescopic sights. A skilled marksman could use one of these babies to shoot things that other PCs can barely see. But these exquisite rifles are hand-made by a family of gunsmiths in a forested province with jack for industry, so you would be supremely lucky to ever see one in most adventures, nevermind afford it. Steal one, and expect the owner to go to great lengths to get it back.
• Spell Blade:
  • "Radiant Weapon", from the Lore of Light in 2nd edtion's Realms of Sorcery, enchants a melee weapon with the power of Hysh, counting as a magical weapon and dealing +2 damage against daemons. Amusingly, it also causes the wielder to automatically fail all Concealment tests, implied to be because the weapon glows obnoxiously.
  • Numerous miracles involve granting magical properties and other bonuses to the weapons associated with various gods. These include "Dagger of Khaine", "Hammer of Sigmar", "Spear of Myrmidia" and "Sword of Truth" (for Verena).
  • "Flaming Sword of Rhuin" from the Lore of Fire is recontextualized from a summoned weapon to an enchantment in 4th edition, wreathing a sword in Magic Fire for Damage +6, the Impact quality, can the ability to set targets ablaze. However, if a user fumbles an attack with it and doesn't know the Lore of Fire, they get set on fire themselves.
  • "Enchant Weapon" from the Lore of Metal in 4th edition makes a chosen weapon magical, gives it a damage bonus equal to the caster's Will Power bonus, and gives it the Unbreakable quality. If the caster rolls degrees of success, they can add further qualities to the weapon or remove flaws.
• Spell Book: Wizards record their spells in grimoires in a Language of Magic and can use them as a reference to learn new magic, but generally don't need them on hand to cast spells they already know. Dark wizards do the same, though their books tend to be physically and mentally dangerous. In 4^th Edition, wizards can cast unfamiliar spells directly out of a grimoire, with greater difficulty. In all editions, grimoires are rare, hugely valuable, and strictly controlled.
• Spell Levels: 1^st Edition spells have a category and level (from Petty Magic to Level 4) that determines which type and level of spellcaster can access them. Later editions do away with spell levels in favor of gating them behind dice check difficulty. The "petty magic" rank was kept, however, to denote lists of basic, neutral spells that fresh caster characters begin with.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation:
  • "Reaping Scythe"/"Scythe of Shyish" from the Lore of Death summons a scythe of glimmering amethyst energy. In 2nd edition, it counts as a Damage 7 magical weapon with the Fast quality (10% harder to dodge or parry), and increases the user's Weapon Skill stat by 10 while held. In 4th, it's a magical polearm with damage equal to the caster's Will Power bonus plus 3, and negates Advantage against undead opponents.
  • "Flaming Sword of Rhuin" from the 2nd edition Lore of Fire summons a Flaming Sword. It's a Damage 4 magical weapon with the Impact quality, rolling twice for damage and using the better result. It also increases the wielder's Attack stat by 1 while held, allowing them to strike multiple times in one turn.
  • The Lore of Ice has "Frost Blade", which conjures a magical sword of solid ice. The caster can sustain the sword after the spell's duration with a Will Power test, and it immediately melts away if the caster lets go of it.
• Star Power: The Lore of Heavens, chiefly used by the Empire's "celestial wizards". It mainly concerns astrology and diviniation, but it can also manipulate the heavens to clear the sky or write coded messages using the stars. Its most famous spell, Comet of Casandora, calls down a devastating meteor to bombard the caster's enemies.
• Starter Equipment:
  • In 2nd Edition, every fresh player character recieves the same collection of basic items - a hand weapon, a dagger, common clothing (traditionally breeches, boots and a shirt), a cloak, the player's choice of a slingbag or backpack containing a blanket, a set of wooden cutlery and a wooden tankard, and a purse containing 2d10 gold coins. This comes in addition to the trappings of the player's first career, which encompasses many more diverse items or even additional starting funds.
  • In 4th Edition, the gear of new characters is determined by their class (Academics, Peasants, etc.), shared by all careers of that catagory. Courtier careers, for instance, begin the game with a dagger, fine clothing, and a pouch containing tweezers, an ear pick and a comb. As with 2nd Edition, this is then supplemented by the trappings of the player's first career. The player's starting wealth (which can be spent before play to buy additional gear) is determined by their career's initial economic status (gold, silver or copper), providing a variable number of that type of coin per status level.
• Stat Death: Creatures generally die if their Toughness score is reduced to zero, such as from disease or poison. Some supernatural attacks and maladies can kill their victims by draining other stats.
• Stock Medieval Meal: Typical poor peasant rations are rough bread and malodorous pottage, while common fare usually consists of ale, bread and cheese, and stew or pie. Or, as 2^nd Edition describes it:
  Loaf of Bread: The staple fare of the Old Worlder's diet.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Necoho, the Chaos God of Atheism from First Edition, is the only known power of Chaos who seems to actively not want people to worship him.
  Necoho requires nothing from his followers; indeed, it sometimes seems that he would rather not have any at all.
• Strong Family Resemblance: The evil von Wittgenstein clan all look like one another.
• Student Debt Plot: The journeyman wizard Janna Colburg is so desperate to pay off her debts to the College Of Magic that she's plotting to burgle a silver warehouse — never mind her total lack of non-academic life experience.
• Stupidity-Inducing Attack:
  • The 1^st Edition Battle Magic spell Steal Mind temporarily reduces its victims to a drooling vegetable capable of doing little more than gibbering and eating grass.
  • The 2nd edition Lore of Beasts spell Repugnant Transformation, if successful, partially devolves its victim into a more primitive and bestial form. The transformed character is forced to roll on a table every round to see what he'll do, such as picking his nose, defecating loudly, or screaming and running in a random direction. Unlike many spells, this one happens to be permenant unless somebody casts the spell a second time, or casts Dispel and succeeds a Channeling test by two degrees or more.
  • Also from 2nd edition, the spell Befuddle from Petty Magic (Chaos) causes its target to become drowsy and giggly for up to ten rounds, giving them a -20% malus to all skill and characteristic tests for the duration.
• Subsystem Damage: Attacks affect a specific body part,^note (on humanoids: left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg, body, or head) which is either determined randomly or targeted in exchange for an attack penalty. Body parts don't have their own Wounds but can suffer distinct effects from a Critical Hit, like disabling a sword arm, getting a Tap on the Head, reducing movement speed, or damaging a piece of armour.
• Summon Binding: Daemon summoning rituals normally let the summoner attempt to enslave the daemon through a contest of wills, and a properly inscribed ritual octagram contains the daemon and strengthens the binding. The key words are "normally" and "properly".
• Summon Magic:
  • The Lore of Chaos has "Summon Lesser Daemon" and "Summon Daemon Pack", which spawn a variable number of lesser daemons for a couple of minutes/combat rounds. However, the caster needs to then pass a Will Power check or the daemon(s) will be uncontrolled and hostile to everyone. Ritual Magic is available in Tome of Corruption to summon daemons on a longer-term basis, as well as access a wider variety of them.
  • The Lore of Daemonology in 4th edition focuses and expands on this, being equipped with spells for not only summoning daemons, but also containing them with Geometric Magic, draining them for a quick stat boost, and detecting daemons already manifested in the world.
• Superior Species: Elves have the highest ability score total (two positive modifiers, no negative), a base movement of 5 (about as fast as a horse), don't need to pay tuition fees as wizards, and their career list lacks many of the suckier choices like Peasant. They get shafted slightly on fate points and wounds, but not as badly as the halflings on the latter. Of course, getting those fat bonuses still only partially offsets the fact you have to play an elf in a setting where, in case it hasn't been made clear already, the majority of people are superstitious racists who take "Screw You, Elves" as something that should be done with any available chopping or bludgeoning implement and plenty of fire.
  • In second edition, the Wizard Lord career is described as the epitome of what a human spellcaster is capable of, and any wizard who reaches this level is among the most powerful and influential practitioners of magic in the Old World. For an elf who reaches this career, they are considered to have finished basic training by the standards of the elven loremasters.
  • In 4th edition elven wizards can specialize in multiple lores of magic as long as they have the willpower and have obtained mastery in all lores they currently have, while humans can only ever pick one. The elfbow is also the most powerful non-blackpowder weapon in the game, though unlike in 2nd edition there are no classes that start with one.
  • 4th edition does balance elves in one way roleplaying-wise, by forcing them to spend an endeavour staying in contact with their own people whenever you have downtime. This means elves aren't able to do as much outside of adventures as other players.
• Supernatural Suffocation:
  • One spell in the Lore of Shadow conjures up Tendrils of Darkness to strangle the target for as long as the spellcaster concentrates, first forcing them to try to resist the effect every turn, then starting to deal progressively greater damage after they succumb.
  • The Lore of Manann miracle "Drowned Man's Face" magically fills a target's lungs with seawater for its duration.
  • One of the potential effects of a catastrophic Magic Misfire is that the spellcaster is unable to breathe for one to ten minutes.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The bread and butter of Bretonnian society according to the 2nd edition supplement. Many of the chapters on the dukedoms mention a number of regional quirks, most of whom most definitively do not involve cleverly avoiding the iron-bound honour culture of Bretonnia through insinuation and double-speak.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Sadly true to the medieval period in real life, in Bretonnia women do not manage their own affairs or own property. So if you want to play a female character, you'll have to pretend to be a man. Fortunately for such women, Bretonnian culture is some combination of being so hidebound/polite that any woman pretending to be a man in Bretonnia automatically succeeds in doing so, no rolling for tests necessary. Apparently it's common enough that at least one Knight killed in battle per year in Bretonnia turns out to be a woman.

Tropes T—U

• Take That!: In first Edition, Bretonnia basically was "ze" Frenchjerklandia. Pre-Revolutionary Frenchjerklandia, to be precise. Also rotten to the bone.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: Bretonnian beer and ale, in stark contrast to their wine. It's mentioned that the quickest way to get ejected from any tavern, inn or ale-house in the Empire is to ask the landlord if his brewer's Bretonnian.
• Team Pet: Many Bretonnian mercenary bands are officially "shepherds" for legal reasons, and usually have a sheep as a mascot to provide the necessary legal figleaf.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks:
  • The Mass Teleportation Ritual "The Impossible March Of The Damned Soldier" requires multiple powerful mages, esoteric ingredients and a full night to cast, and exhausts everyone transported. Moreover, you cannot teleport to any location that could not be feasably reached by foot without obstruction, and any error on the casters' part strands some or all of the targets at a random location on the globe.
  • One lesser magic spell from the Tome of Corruption allows short-range teleportation... at the cost of a 10% chance per use of being lost forever to the Realm of Chaos.
• Terminal Transformation: Every creature has a secret limit on the number of Chaos Mutations it can gain before it degenerates into a mindless Chaos Spawn. If a Chaos Spawn gains a mutation that would transform it into a Chaos Spawn, it simply collapses into goo.
• Thieves' Cant: Thieves' Tongue is one of the "Secret Language" skills, allowing characters to add secret meaning to innocuous speech through "signifiers, body language, and/or code words".
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Clerics of Shallya must take a vow not to kill a living creature except in self-defense. This rule is waived in case of followers of Nurgle, god of disease and decay (it also only applies to living creatures, so "killing" daemons or the undead is fine). In the first edition, clerics were also forbidden to kill humans in any situation, even in self-defense (again with the exception of followers of Nurgle).
• Torches and Pitchforks: A very real threat to most adventurers. When your insanities grow too grotesque, when your mutations grow too hideous, or when the peasants find out that you have a wizard (or worse, an elf) in your party, the mob awaits!
• Total Party Kill: Very easy to achieve for a GM, without even trying, due to how incredibly lethal combat can be with just a few unlucky dice rolls. A few monsters — like Dragons and Greater Daemons — are basically only statted so a GM can use them to cause this. More of a background thing, really — Greater Daemons and old Dragons are easily the deadliest thing in the tabletop wargame, capable of taking down the best hero characters and wiping out entire regiments of soldiers. The power levels of WFRP characters are far lower than, say DnD ones; a plate-armored knight will be a difficult proposition for the highest-level characters, let alone a demigod of war.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Introduced in the 2nd Edition's Denizens of the Empire Supplementary text, Hansup the Ogre Watchman is, according to his description, "[...] too stupid to be tricked, cajoled or bargained with." It also states that he's so familiar with the town's law (having taught himself to read using the town's charter) that he immediately catches lawbreakers in his net to be sorted out by his boss should he witness them doing anything illegal.
  Methodical, implacable and scrupulously honest, Hansup is a rogue's worst nightmare.
• Tracking Spell: The spell "Finding Divination" reveals the direction to the target — either a specific item or the closest example of a generic item. It does not, however, reveal the distance to the the target or any barriers in between.
• Transformation Horror: Chaos mutations follow several aspects of the trope, particularly as described in Tome of Corruption which features a massive 1d1000 table of results:
  • Mutation Horror: When a character gains their first mutation, they'll potentially be subject to further mutation every time Morrsleib the Chaos Moon waxes full (an event that is entirely random), only "stabilizing" after they manage to resist one of these additional changes. Favored servants of the Dark Gods are likely to never stop mutating, as their masters inflict new transformations to reward or punish them.
  • Terminal Mutation: The Chaos Spawn mutation is a variant — Rather than killing the mutant, it instead turns them into an insane, feral Shapeshifter Mashup. Mutants can also succumb to spawn-dom by suffering more individual mutations than they can withstand, at which point they suddenly start mutating uncontrollably as their minds and bodies give out under the metaphysical strain. If a spawn's additional mutations somehow trigger the conditions of becoming chaos spawn a second time, the creature's body breaks down completely and dissolves into Mutagenic Goo.
  • Mix and Match Mutation: All mutations stack with each-other, which can quickly reach absurd levels — Nothing prevents an unlucky mutant from eventually becoming a three-armed slug man with inside-out skin and a flaming skull. Appropriately, mutants can gain the Frightening or Terrifying traits based on their accumulated deformities, thanks to the in-universe Body Horror.
• Turn-Based Combat: Similar to the war game, but with some modifications to account for the much smaller scale of combat. In 2e a turn lasts ten seconds, while in 4e it lasts five; in each edition five seconds is presumed to be enough to get off one standard attack (Warhammer Fantasy Battle's 5e and 6e core books state that turns in those games represent one hour mostly consisting of waiting - like in real war - and that an "attack" is presumed to represent a volley of such rather than literally one move).
• Turn Undead: Priests of Morr can gain a Divine Mark that makes their presence a Supernatural Fear Inducer to undead, who are normally immune.
• Undead Child: The necrarch vampire Madame Kalfon, from 2nd edition's Night's Dark Masters. After showing magical potential as an infant, her Bretonnian parents feared that she would be abducted by The Fair Folk, and so abandoned her in the Grey Mountains in the distant hope she would be taken in and hidden. While she was indeed found and raised by a band of mutants, who named her Heloise Kalfon, her magical potential soon came to the attention of a local necrarch who believed a twelve-year-old vampire thrall would be easier to control. He was proven wrong after he subjected Kalfon's surrogate family to horrible experiments, which led to the girl pushing him from the balcony of his tower to his demise by impalement and sunlight. Taking the title "Madame Kalfon" to sound more grown-up and intimidating, the child necrarch has taken her former master's tower for herself, teaching herself the art of necromancy and developing a talent at cobbling together Flesh Golems from different corpses and species. An adventure seed describes her tower as "a macabre place adorned with twisted corruptions bred from the diseased mind of a naughty child. Zombies shuffle about, dressed in party costumes, whilst toys fashioned from rotting flesh litter the floors."
• Undefeatable Little Village: The wetland village of Bylorhof in Sylvania. It is the centre of a cult dedicated to the local deity Bylorak, god of marshes. When the priests of the major gods fled the village during the rise of Vlad von Carstein, the single priest of Bylorak stayed behind and went underground, teaching a small congregation that was dismissed by their vampire overlords for worshipping the "god of the swamp behind the chicken pen." This changed after the return of Mannfred von Carstein generations later, who assigned the fief to a subordinate vampire count. Eager to prove himself, the vampire took on the little cult and failed in humiliating fashion, causing belief in Bylorak to skyrocket to the point where his symbols now count as genuinely holy for the purpose of repelling vampires. The priesthood of Bylorak now runs Bylorhof, building more temples in the name of the marsh god and petitioning the province of Stirland for formal citizenship to gain both protection and recognition.
• Undignified Death: Thanks to in-depth game rules that simulate disease in ways that RPGs usually overlook (to help fit the setting's The Dung Ages vibe), it's quite possible for a storied and heroic adventuring life to come to a truly miserable and disgusting end from simple medieval sickness. You can catch the Pox, get gangrene from an old infected battle wound, have your eyes rot out after being bitten on the face by a Nurglite zombie, or even just develop a bad case of the Galloping Trots from unwisely snacking down a "cook 'em fast, sell 'em cheap" Rumster's Special pie. Talk about a shitty way to go, eh?
• Unequal Rites:
  • The split between the various arcane and divine lores is the biggest one — despite working on similar basic principles and even using the same Arcane Language skill, they are mutually exclusive to one another. The Church of Sigmar in particular glorifies priests capable of casting miracles, while at the same time being vehemently opposed to "witchcraft" and only barely tolerating the Colleges of Magic. Meanwhile, thanks to their corrupting influence, the dark lores are condemned by both sides, and their practitioners are hunted down on principle.
  • Probably the worst sufferers of this trope in the Old World are the Hedgefolk, reclusive shamans and wisemen who maintain ancient, pre-Imperial traditions of magic. The rise of the Sigmarite faith led to the Hedgefolk being percecuted as witches and heretics, and their refusal to come out of hiding when Loremaster Teclis founded the Colleges of Magic also made them the target of magisters, who have a standing policy of rounding up magic-capable individuals for training. All of this has led to the Hedgefolk dwindling in number, and the "blessed few" vital to their culture are constantly at risk of being killed or abducted.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: The combat system in a nutshell.
  • Unlike, say, Dungeons & Dragons, even a high-level player or NPC will never be able to take on entire armies of lower-level enemies alone. A great hero is still just a man, without access to the ultra-rare unique gear that allows certain famous characters to occasionally do better (at most you'll have a lightly enchanted weapon or armor piece with slightly better than stock performance), and works within human limits regardless of how much they train and experience (and elves and dwarfs are not that far ahead). Even an experienced high-level adventurer can meet an untimely end by a lowly Skaven Clanrat shanking them with a good attack roll, and there's no way they are going to win a fight against thirty of them.
  • And many large monsters and more powerful opponents are downright impossible battles even for an experienced and well-equipped party. What, do you really think your motley crew of chainmail-clad sellswords are better than a Dragon Ogre Shaggoth?
  • Arcane magic is quite modest compared to the possible feats of Dungeons & Dragons characters. Compare and contrast: a high-level Wizard in D&D can cast spells like Invulnerability (become immune to all damage for 10 minutes), Time Stop (stop the flow of time for everyone but yourself for about 30 seconds), and Gate (open a portal allowing instantaneous travel to any point in the world or even across planes of reality); a high-level WFRP Wizard has heavy hitters like, erm... Curse (everyone in a 10 yard radius sweats profusely and feels fatigued as if they have been working under the hot sun all day) and Form of the Raging Bear (turns the caster into a perfectly ordinary brown bear for a minute or two). Even a mighty wizard can be easily outperformed by a squad of stout men armed with crossbows - why do you think all armies mostly still use mundane weapons like polearms and swords? And that's not even getting into how you can potentially be Dragged Off to Hell if you really screw up the casting.
  • The presence of diseases and health complications that other adventuring RPGs tend to gloss over. Getting a chunk bitten out of your body by a zombie is a big ouchie, but worse still those teeth are likely encrusted with filth and rotten flesh and can also give the wound a nasty infection, which has the potential to turn life-threatening if not properly treated.
• Unexpectedly Real Magic: In a story hook from Sigmar's Heirs, some children steal a bunch of notes from a scholar on a dare, and upon seeing it contains some weird funny notes and symbols, decide to "play magic" in the woods. Unfortunately, it's a summoning ritual for an ancient Chaos warrior that was buried alive beneath a circle of standing stones near the town.
• Unicorns Prefer Virgins: Unicorns are said in-universe to only suffer the pure to ride them, which many take to mean the virginal and chaste. However, there are also tales of unicorns bearing wounded noble knights to safety even that knight was very certainly not innocent. This is generally taken to mean that they prefer riders of strong moral character, but they're also notoriously choosy about such things — even the elves, who have a much closer relationship with unicorns than other races, only produce one or two maidens per generation who can ride the creatures.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • From 2nd edition, the Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer career chain. Inserted into Tome of Corruption as a placeholder for a sourcebook on the Dark Lands that never materialized, this four-step chain of careers suffers from an oversight that makes them impossible to complete past a certain point: A special rule causes the Chaos Dwarf variant race to suffer a loss of 1 Movement whenever they increase their Magic stat, as their bodies turn to stone from the feet upwards. If they fall to 0 Movement, they petrify completely and suffer Stat Death. Unfortunately, dwarfs as a whole only have 3 Movement to start with and methods of increasing it are exceedingly rare or determined by the Random Number God, which usually leaves a chaos dwarf spellcaster stuck at Magic 2 (the equivalent of a Journeyman Wizard) and unable to legally complete the third Chaos Dwarf Sorcerer career.
• Unknown Item Identification: In 2nd edition, magical items are usually artifacts with a history behind them, and their properties can be identified through the relevant Academic Knowledge skill (History, Magic, Theology, etc.).
• Unstoppable Mailman: The "Runebearer" career for dwarfs in second edition is intended to turn you into one of these. Runebearers carry messages between the major holds of the dwarf realm, and go alone into the tunnels of the Underway (which are partially collapsed and filled with skaven, night goblins, trolls and other nasties). Runebearers get pretty decent combat skills for a 'civilian' career, has several exit paths that are straight-up military careers, and are one of the only careers in the game that come with a guaranteed Movement increase.
• Unusual Euphemism: In large swathes of Bretonnia, "shepherd" means "mercenary". Nobles are expected to defend their own lands, and hiring mercenaries to do so would be dishonorable. However, shepherds by tradition have far more independence than other non-nobles and often go to strange places to find pastures for their flocks. This means that sometimes a very large group of heavily armed "shepherds" will head off towards a known beastman sighting with a bag of gold the lord "dropped" in their packs and a flock consisting of one sheep.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Frequent in the Imperial capital of Altdorf, where strange and exciting stuff happens on a day-to-day basis. Rogue wizards, foreigners, elves, dwarfs, daemons, plots to overthrow the Empire, the mere presence of the Colleges of Magic, and the fact that there's so much subtle magic in the environment that the city's already confusing layout doesn't entirely make sense at times. The locals have developed a famous habit of shrugging off even the most bizarre events as just another day in the capital. However, careful observers will note that Altdorfers are still freaked out by scary or dangerous things — its just considered rude to openly make a fuss.
• Utility Magic: Despite the supernatural and mundane hazards of magic, most spellcasters have a spell or two to make life easier in the premodern setting, be it a Pyromancer's trick to cook food instantly, a hedgefolk's charm to create pocket change, or a magical burglar alarm for your horse.

Tropes V—Z

• Vagina Dentata: One mutation causes your genitals to ditch you in your sleep and run off to the realm of Chaos. In their place, they leave you with "a toothed orifice which stage whispers lewd suggestions at inappropriate moments".
• Vampire Hunter: Present in 2nd edition as an advanced career, with trappings of blessed water and stakes. Most vampire hunters are self-made vigilantes who lack the backing of a larger organization, though the Cult of Morr employs many of them to combat the heresy of the living dead, and the most successful ones usually become specialized witch hunters. However, some vampire hunters end up consumed by the horror and paranoia of their work, and instead become unhinged, reclusive outlaws known as "Killers of the Dead" (another advanced career added in Night's Dark Masters). You need at least 5 insanity points to enter the Killer of the Dead career, and it offers no further career exits besides "an unpleasant, and likely messy, end."
• Vancian Magic: Magic comes packaged as spells with specific, largely inflexible effects, and spellcasters are limited to the spells they've learned through the Point Build System. However, for the most part,^note (1st Edition has Mana Points, and some unusual spellcasters in subsequent editions have restrictions on their abilities, like Hag Magic requiring an Eye of Newt to be consumed for each spell.) spellcasters can freely use all the spells they know with no advance preparation or limitation... aside from the chance of Magic Misfire in every casting attempt.
• Video-Game Lives: Fate points. Burn one and you get to survive, by some extraordinary quirk of fate, an event that otherwise would kill you. It is solely up to the gamemaster to hand them out, however, and they're encouraged to only do so after extraordinary accomplishments (like thwarting a greater daemon). The number of Fate Points a character has also determines how many times they can re-roll dice checks in a given session or twenty-four hour story period, making the player more beholden to the fickle Random Number God as they slowly approach their ultimate death.
• Villain Cred: The Old World Bestiary contains descriptions of major intelligent races and monsters found in the setting, accompanied by quotes from a variety of scholars, people with first-hand experience of them, and the beings themselves when they're intelligent. One recurring commentator is Rikkit'tik, a scholar from Clan Eshin, the Skaven clan specialized in assassinations, poisoning and general subterfuge. Most of his comments are terse instructions on how to dispatch the creature in question, but in the section on hobgoblins, a goblin breed notable for being a pack of treacherous, conniving sneaks who win their battles with poisoned knives in the dark, he says "I kind of like these green-things. They show... promise."
• Villainous Lineage: The evil von Wittgenstein family in The Enemy Within, among others.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • The First Edition technically had rules for Chaos Champions as player characters, though they did note that such campaigns will inevitably devolve into a series of battles as the Champion gradually loses his/her personality and becomes a pawn in the service of the Chaos god(s).
  • The First Edition also had extensive fan material designed for playing Skaven (The Book of the Rat by Garett Lepper) and Goblinoids (The WFRP Goblinoid Culture Project by Ian Ward).
  • In the Second Edition, with the right books, it's possible to play parties composed of beastmen, skaven, and norscans, or devote themselves to the Chaos Gods and enter careers for cult leaders, Chaos warriors and sorcerers.
• Virtuous Vegetarianism: Vegetarianism is optional but relatively common in the Cult of Shallya, a widely-beloved religious order of pacifistic healers. Some Shallyans go so far as to limit themselves to fruit and vegetables that can be harvested without harming the plant.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The speciality of the Lore of Beasts. In 2nd edition, there are several spells to take the form of bears, wolves, ravens and horses, while in 4th edition it's a single spell called "Beast Form" that lets you assume any animal shape.
• Voodoo Doll: "Curse of Crippling Pain" from the Lore of Witchcraft in 4th edition involves crafting one of these and then stabbing it to inflict various penalties on the target — Stabbing the arms and legs deadens those limbs to the point of uselessness, stabbing the body inflicts overwhelming pain to fatigue the target, and stabbing the head can stun them and potentially render them unconscious.
• Walking the Earth: The work of a Grey Wizard's sniffing out corruption or a Light Wizard's banishing Chaos or dark magic is never done, and they are frequently personally moving on to the next task.
• Wandering Wizard: When the classroom portion of an apprentice wizard's training is complete, they're turned loose to travel, seek out new magic, fight enemies of the Empire, and so on, so as to prove they have both the expertise and the maturity to become full Magisters. In Doylist terms, it also gives apprentice wizard Player Characters a reason to go on unsupervised adventures.
• War Refugees: The 2nd Edition "Storm of Chaos" invasion from the Grim Up North ravaged the nation of Kislev and the imperial province of Ostland, producing an influx of refugees into the neighbouring provinces that sometimes outnumbers the local populations. Some communities and leaders are much less sympathetic than others to the displaced.
• Warrior Monk: Easy to achieve as any religious career engaged in adventuring, though the Warrior Priest is the exact fit, typically serving in the military as army chaplains. Most warrior priests serve gods who glorify battle to begin with (namely Sigmar, Ulric and Myrmidia), but warrior priests dedicated to other gods are possible, with the obvious exception of Shallya.
• Warrior Undead: Wights are semi-intelligent undead found in ancient barrows, where the unique burial practices of their time partially preserved the spirits of warrior-kings and their honor guards. Since they're much better fighters than mindless zombies and skeletons, accomplished necromancers will often bind wights to serve as Elite Mooks. In 2nd Edition, the Spell of Awakening from the Lore of Necromancy can be used to create new wights, but it only works on the remains of characters who held advanced careers in life.
• Weapons Breaking Weapons: A weapon used to parry a critical hit has a 10% chance of being broken by the blow. Downplayed with defensive weapons like shields, which are only damaged.
• What a Drag: Noted as a form of punishment for criminals among the Cossack-esque Ungol peoples of northern Kislev, called "Horserunning". The distance and speed of the horse's run and the length of rope and where it is tied can be tailored to fit the severity of the crime. Tying the rope around the waist allows the criminal to run... mostly. Tying the hands leaves them more likely to fall forward if they don't watch their footing. Tying the feet is reserved for the worst cases and guarantees the victim will be dragged. Sometimes the horse is just driven into a gallop out into the oblast, leaving the criminal's ultimate fate in the hands of the gods.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • In several published adventures, the players are faced with a dilemma about what to do with non-hostile mutants. For example, Ludwig von Wittgenstein, nominal head of a noble family, lives in a castle run by his evil, insane necromancer daughter and supported by cruel, mutated guards, and he himself has mutated into a giant cockroach. However, he personally has no say in how things are done and is content to stay in his tower, playing an organ and with only cockroaches for company. Despite his mutation, he is a thoroughly polite and decent man — when the player characters arrive, he will welcome them and invite them for a chat about art and/or philosophy, offering them brandy and cigars.
  • Tome of Corruption points out that while many denizens of the Empire have little problem condemning mutants if they're someone they don't know (or like), attitudes change fairly quickly once they or their loved ones experience mutation themselves. Families that experience the birth of mutant children usually decide to either hide the baby or abandon them in the woods rather than kill them or consign them to Witch Hunters. Those who wholeheartedly supported euthanization of mutants suddenly become determined to avoid the pyre themselves. If a player gains a mutation, the GM is encouraged to play up the ensuing dilemmas and use them to emphasize just how insidious Chaos truly is.
• What the Hell, Player?: The rules for Poisoned Weapons take a moment to highlight how horrible it is to use the saliva of a rabid animal, both for the prolonged, torturous death it inflicts and for the risk of causing a rabies outbreak.
• When Trees Attack: Bloodsedges are a type of tree that feeds on living animals by grabbing them with its branches and holding them against its trunk, where powerful acids quickly turn it into fertilizer. A copse of these things can devour an entire war party passing through them, and the Wood Elves believe them to be holy protectors of the wild.
• White Magic:
  • For wizards, the white wind of Hysh is a colour of magic associated with light, protection and healing (and laser beams). There is also Qhaysh, or High Magic, a delicate weave of all eight winds of magic into a single lore. Qhaysh is not available for Player Characters, even elven ones, as the time needed to learn how to wield it is measured in centuries.
  • For priests, the Lore of Shallya is a purely defensive lore filled with spells for granting buffs, healing injuries and curing ailments. Its has a single offensive spell in 2nd Edition, but it only harms beings associated with Nurgle.
• Will-o'-the-Wisp:
  • The Marshlight creatures are ethereal undead that cannot physically harm their victims, instead they mesmerise them and lead them into danger. They are impossible to harm unless hit with a magical weapon which banishes them in a single hit.
  • The Marsh Lights petty spell allows a caster to create a number of lights within 100 yards of themselves and then send them off in any desired direction.
• With This Herring: Since nearly every aspect of character creation can be rolled for (necessarily in 2E, optionally but encouraged in 4E), you can wind up with the amusing story of a fisherman's wife, a doctor, a woodcutter, a flagellant and a halfling cook merrily getting together to reclaim a lost dwarfen stronghold from goblins and Skaven armed with nothing but basic hand weapons, daggers and sheer pluck.
  • This can also happen almost literally in Bretonnia, under rare circumstances. Under Bretonnian law, knights cannot receive corporal or capital punishment, but one found guilty of a criminal offense under noble jury can be sentenced to complete a borderline-impossible Redemption Quest. Like "Go to the Vaults and slay the Orc chieftain Balagran, bearing only a fruit knife and none of your armour maille."
• Wonder Twin Powers: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch in 2nd edition, despite being spellcasting monsters, have only a single point in their Magic stat naturally, limiting them to one casting dice (which locks off two of their three unique spells). However, groups of horrors pool their magic, increasing each member's Magic stat — a group of three-to-eight horrors each roll two dice, while a group of nine or more horrors each roll three dice (equivalent to a Master Wizard, the second highest wizard career in the game).
• Words Do Not Make The Magic: Knowledge of a Language of Magic is necessary but not sufficient to cast spells; a character also needs the ability to channel the Winds of Magic to power those spells.
• Worf Had the Flu: The Enemy Within (1st edition) and Paths of the Damned (2nd edition) campaigns end with the players tangling with (and possibly defeating) weakened Greater Daemons. Normally, these nightmares would be a Total Party Kill just waiting to happen, but in their reduced states they manage to be weak enough to serve as challenging boss battles.
• Wretched Hive: In 4th edition Altdorf, capital of the Empire, is explained in detail to be this. There are the shiny upper parts of the wealthy city, and with entrance so exclusive the adventurers are almost never going to go there unless they have an invitation or are doing something very illegal, but don't be fooled. Altdorf is riddled with foreign spies, criminals, secret societies and various scum that are both highborn villains and lowborn criminals. It's gotten so bad that Karl Franz no longer trusts the offical spy networks of the Black Chamber and has started to rely heavily on his own personal spy network. It's also worth nothing that of the thirty plus secret societies, spy networks, cults, and criminal organizations in Altdorf, only six are chaos cults.
• Wrestler of Beasts: The first White Wolf Cloak was created when an elderly High Priest of Ulric strangled one of the Dire Beasts barehanded in single combat to save his tribal chief's life. The feat imbued its hide with powerful defensive magic.
• Zombie Puke Attack: The Lore of Nurgle in 2nd and 4th edition features the spell "Stream of Corruption", in which the caster's maw distends horribly before vomiting up a spew of blood, maggots and other filth. On top of dealing damage, this spell can be used to inflict diseases on its victims. Plaguebearers of Nurgle, a species of daemon, can perform Stream of Corruption as an innate ability.

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