The Unluckiest Wizard Alive...

The BI playtest team are currently running through ‘Barony of the Damned: An adventure in Mousillon’

We’re running through the adventure to test how the plot flows, how the characters fare and so on. One of the curious side effects of play however (apart from all our blog posts) is how damned unlucky our Wizard character, Otto Embar of the Bright Order, has been.

For those not in the know, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay magic is very dangerous. Wizards roll to cast spells, and if they mess up- by rolling doubles, triples or quadruples- they invoke Tzeentch’s curse. Tzeentch’s curse can cause a variety of horrid effects- from shivers all the way up to sudden horrific death. To find out what foul side effect Tzeentch’s curse causes you roll on the ‘Chaos Manifestation’ tables.

Just about every time Otto has cast a spell, he’s invoked Tzeentch’s curse.

Here’s a break down:

Session 1:
Spell cast- Marsh Lights.
Tzeentch’s curse effect: Horripilation

Session 2:
Spells cast: Fireball, Drop
Tzeentch’s curse effect: Rupture! Mental Block

Session 3:
No spells cast- he daren’t!

Session 4:
Spells cast: Cauterise, Sleep, Sleep
Tzeentch’s curse effect: Trick of Fate, Daemonic contract

So, in the space of 5 days, Otto’s nose has ruptured, spurting blood everywhere, he’s lost the ability to do magic for a bit, his hair has stood on end and the first rune of a Daemonic contract signing his soul away to Chaos has burnt itself onto the flesh of his hand. Mal Green- who has been playing Otto is thoroughly freaked out. So much so that when he went to the Essen Game fair in Germany, he specifically bought some new, lucky dice to make his magic rolls. What happened as a result of this? Just look at session 4…

So tonight, as we’ve finally got our hands on the new magic supplement ‘Realms of Sorcery’ we’re going to add on some extra magic rules that cause permanent effects if you invoke Tzeentch’s curse.

More on that in our next playtest report!