Tabletop Game / The Witcher Role Playing Game

Cover of the Core Rulebook

“People,” Geralt turned his head, “like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.”
— Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish

The Witcher Role-Playing Game is a pen-and-paper role-playing game developed by R. Talsorian Games based on CD PROJEKT RED's Witcher universe, written by Cody and Lisa Pondsmith. It was first announced on July 29, 2015 on the official Witcher forums and was announced to be originally published in mid 2016. However, it was delayed for a couple years and was released during Gen Con on August 2, 2018 and for multiple languages.

Much like other games produced by R. Talsorian Games, The Witcher Role-Playing Game uses a 1d10 system, with bonuses based on the player-characters Stat+Skill. It is a class-based system with each player choosing a particular profession with a special role to play.

Classes include: Bard, Craftsman, Criminal, Doctor, Mage, Man-At-Arms, Merchant, Priest, and Witcher.

Also notable is the creatively used Lifepath System, where characters have a choice to roll or select significant events that have occurred every 10 years of your character's life up to the time of play. Many of these randomly generated life events create either Fortune or Misfortune, Allies or Enemies, and tragic romances.

The world of the Witcher is a brutal and unforgiving one. Combat is fast and deadly, the nation is torn apart by war, every nation and race is in some form of conflict with every other nation and race, magic is chaos, and that's before you mention the monsters.

Anyone Can Die and All Deaths Final in the world of The Witcher.

Not to be confused with The Witcher: Game of Imagination

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Tropes related to the game include:

• Action Girl: While much of the setting is chauvinistic, there is nothing mechanically stopping a woman from becoming a killing machine. There are also example characters well known for being exceptionally dangerous combatants.
• Action Initiative: Decided with a roll of 1d10+Reflex.
• Adventure-Friendly World: The world of the continent is currently engulfed by a war between the Northern Kingdoms and the Nilfgaardian Empire. The entire continent is affected by this, even relatively peaceful regions. Villages have all their men and boys sent off to fight, nations are going bankrupt, people are starving, civil order and infrastructure are descending, the authorities that would normally handle problems such as monsters and brigands are too occupied - the perfect environment for a team of adventurers to make their fortune or die trying.
• All Deaths Final: Outside of returning as a Wraith, nobody comes back once they're gone.
• All Trolls Are Different: These ones are large, lumbering, dumb, and incredibly strong and durable. Rock Trolls are actually rather amiable, though are still dangerous if provoked. And it's sometimes hard to tell what might provoke them.
• An Arm and a Leg: Critical Injuries targeted toward the limbs have a chance to dismember them.
• Anti-Hoarding: All items have a weight. If you're carrying more inventory than your encumberance can handle, you'll be slowed to the point of uselessness. Getting a horse with saddlebags or a wagon can help lighten the load, but even then there's a limit, and you can't take those everywhere.
• Anti-Magic: Mages can learn Dispel, Witchers are able to become Heliotropes immune to magic, and anyone can carry around Dimiterium which is toxic to mages.
• Anyone Can Die: Combat in the Witcher is fast and lethal, with heavy emphasis on taking advantage of weaknesses and inflicting grievous wounds. It is easy for a few bad rolls to lead to a character's death, and it is possible to make no actual mistakes and still lose due to being outsmarted or overpowered.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. Armor is essential for surviving blows from even light weapons, being a flat reduction of all incoming damage. Light armor can turn deadly blows into survivable ones, heavy armor can turn an attack that would have one-shotted you into a No-Sell.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Some weapons and Profession Skills allow attackers to bypass some aspects of armor.
• Attack Failure Chance: Fumbling on a spellcasting roll (getting a 1 on a 1d10) causes Magic Misfire on the user. This ranges from doing mild damage to causing their focus to explode like a grenade and freezing them/stunning them/setting them on fire.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Armored opponents don't always have the same amount of armor everywhere, often having to mix and match armor sets due to circumstances or costs. Figuring out what body-party an enemy neglected to armor can make a fight significantly easier.
• Badass Normal: Of the many horrors in the world - monster-slaying mutants, wraiths, monsters, mages - a well made character with heavy investment in skills and equipment can rise above to be one of the strongest characters in the setting, able to go toe-to-toe with any of them. Alternatively...
• The Blacksmith: The Craftsman Profession is all about this, being able to create and enhance any piece of equipment the party gets. A particularly skilled craftsman can create weapons and armor that are far more effective than their listed values.
• Blessed with Suck: Mages are in a tough spot. In the Northern Kingdoms they're actively hunted by the Church of the Eternal Fire and subject to persecution by the masses. In Nilfgaard they are required to be shackled to the state and their movements heavily monitored. It's better in Skellige, but then they're still subject to being destroyed by their own powers if they don't manage their spellcasting responsibly. And all they get in return is the power to lay armies to waste and traverse the continent in a single bound.
• Brainwashed: Many creatures have access to things that would fall under this purview.
  • Mages have access to several spells that affect people's mental states, manipulating emotions and controlling actions.
  • The Witcher sign Axii allows them to use Spellcasting instead of Persuasion when trying to compel a person to do something.
• Bio-Augmentation: Witchers have been enhanced through a series of mutations known at the Trial of the Grasses, and are able to injest further mutations from monsters they kill for mild power-ups such as increased health, vigor, melee damage, or stats.
  • Mages are able to go further through Advanced Mutations, splicing monster genetics together to create stronger ones or injecting them into humanoids to give them monstrous abilities, at the risk of turning them feral.
• Cast from Hit Points: Mages who cast spells with a Stamina Cost higher than their Vigor stat take damage from the strain. Fumbling when casting a spell also damages the mage. It is easily possible for a mage to kill themselves trying to cast a spell that's above their means.
• Chainmail Bikini: Defied. Every art in the book that depicts women in armor is practical and functional.
• Charged Attack: Characters can choose between a Fast Attack (attacking twice) or a Strong Attack (attack that deals double damage). The latter is practically essential for breaking through heavy armor.
• Combat Pragmatism: The mechanics of the game heavily encourage taking every advantage that they can get. Flanking, tripping, traps, ambushes, attacking stunned enemies are the least of the dirty tricks that can be played. Game Masters are also encouraged to play their intelligent enemies like this.
• Common Tongue: There is a 'common' tongue that is used in the Northern Realms. However, ironically, it's actually a minority language. Skellige, Nilfgaard, and the non-human realms all use a regional variants of Elder Speach.
• Competitive Balance: Each role has a necessary part. While the Witcher is the strongest class, it is also Hated and Feared all over the continent and invites the wrath of passerbys. Mages are only mildly better in that they can hide their abilities. There are a lot of problems that violence won't solve (being the best swordswinger around won't help you get good prices at a market or keep you from being run out of town by superstitious peasants), necessitating a balanced party.
• Critical Failure: Rolling a 1 results in the character rolling again and subtracting their result by that number. For attacks and spells this goes even further, having an entire table for what horrible thing happens as a result. Spells can damage the mage or even explode, defenders can fall prone, attackers can accidently hurt their allies or themselves.
• Damage Reduction: Armor reduces all incoming physical damage by a flat amount equal to their Stopping Power.
• Damage Typing: All weapons deal either Bludgeoning, Slashing, or Piercing. All magic also contains an elemental type.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: No matter how powerful your character is, they're vulnerable to high numbers of enemies. Every attack has a chance of becoming a critical injury, and once you get hit once, it becomes a lot easier to get hit again.
• Developer's Foresight: All over the place with comments that talk directly to the Game Master about hypothetical scenarios and things the players might want to do that they should either prevent, encourage, or accept.
• Disc-One Nuke: Man-At-Arms start with the best equipment of any character profession. Alternatively, Witchers start with the highest stats.
• Druid: One variation of Priest is the druids that reside in Skellige.
• Elite Army: Nilfgaard is notable as having an exceptionally well-equipped and well-drilled standardized army that allows them to be a major threat against every northern kingdom combined.
• Emotion Suppression: Witchers start out with a -4 to their Empathy stat to simulate their dulled emotions.
• Experience Points: Improvement Points.
• Fantastic Racism: One of the rules of the setting is that it is everybody against everybody. There is a chart depicting how every race feels about every other race, which is also different based on what nation they're in.
• Fantasy Character Classes: 9 to choose from
  • Bards: Charismatic entertainers who can befriend anyone, inculcate themselves into societies and worm their way into their opponent’s minds.
  • Craftsman: Talented artisans who are skilled not only in crafting weapons and armor, but also craft alchemical concoctions and can make augmentations to weapons on the battlefield.
  • Criminal: Smooth operators who can crack any safe, take a man’s life with no witnesses and rally gangs around themselves.
  • Doctor: Calculating physicians who are trained in field surgery, allowing them to treat wounds with double the efficiency, or cause grevious wounds with their anatomical knowledge.
  • Mage: Scheming politicians and manipulators, removed from power and now using their often earth shaking power to escape persecution and get revenge
  • Man-At-Arms: Grizzled warriors with ages of combat experience who can calculate their opponent’s moves, take down targets from extreme range and unleash devastating attacks.
  • Merchant: Canny salesmen who know the power of coin. They can use their knowledge of product to find vulnerabilities in armor and track down cheap suppliers. When they need be they can acquire favors and allies to break the competition.
  • Priest: Men and women of the Gods who use ancient blood rituals to commune with nature, heal the sick, and injure or hunt down heathens and burn them with holy fire.
  • Witcher: Restricted to those with the proper mutations, Witchers are consummate monster hunters who dabble in mutagenic potions, simple field magic and incredibly deadly swordplay.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Some races and monsters, despite being humanoid, see no purpose behind clothes. The official art of the Alp (vampire) is of a naked women, though her figure and the blood makes it a mild case of Fan Disservice.
• Gaia's Vengeance: Dryads and Leshens consider any trespasses in their forests to be punishable by horrible death.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Witchers were made with this policy in mind, though Mages of a particular Mad Scientist disposition can use genetic splicing to mutate the abilities of monsters to create stronger specimens at the cost of possibly turning the subject feral.
• The Grotesque: Witchers, mutants, and sapient monsters are seen as this by human society at large.
• Hunter of Monsters: Witchers are bred and trained for this purpose alone, making them the best class for the job.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: There is a list of Relic Weapons that are basically weapons of legend, with lore and increased stats behind them. They're so powerful that the game recommends only giving them in preparation for ramping up the challenge.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: The highest possible bonus for archery is +25 (Dexterity 10 + Archery 10 + Elf Bonus 2 + Elven Zhefar w/ Weapon Accuracy 3). At that point, even on a fumble, you can hit most enemies.
  • A Man-at-Arms archer can take it even further beyond, with skills that allow firing two arrows at once, or firing up to 2x the weapon's actual range without a penalty (for a maximum of 700 meters. For comparison, in the real world the record for the furthest archery shot is 330m).
• Killer Rabbit: Drowners. One is no problem, but there's never just one. In swarms, they can easily overwhelm even a Witcher that's not cautious.
• Lighter and Softer: To the books and video game. While still keeping that dark Witcher theme, there's a lot more emphasis on teamwork and adventure, and Game Masters are repeatedly told by the book itself that games are supposed to be fun above all else.
• Made of Iron: Golems are, quite literally.
• Magic Misfire: Fumbling on a spellcasting roll has the spell backfire on the user. This ranges from doing mild damage to causing their focus to explode like a grenade.
• Magic Potion: Witcher Potions make their appearance, being able to boost a Witcher's already superhuman abilities, that are toxic for non-Witchers to drink. Though there have been some attempts to recreate these which has led to non-toxic but less effective variations.
• No-Sell: The highest standard armor can have an SP of 30, which shrugs off almost any damage off of light attacks. Master Craftsmen can boost this even higher.
• Official Game Variant: There are listed optional rules to make the setting either easier or harder, depending on the party. Including:
  • Allowing female Witchers.
  • Having monsters be vulnerable to either Meteorite or Silver rather than every monster being vulnerable to Silver.
  • Adding adrenaline as a system.
• Off with His Head!: A Deadly Critical Hit that happens to roll to hit the head will decapitate. This is a One-Hit Kill no matter what the target's health or armor, and is much more likely to happen when aimed for by a highly skilled swordsman.
• One-Gender Race: The Dryads employ an army entirely composed of naked Action Girl archers.
  • Optionally defied with Witchers, as the book states plainly that while there is nothing in canon depicting female Witchers, Game Masters are free to allow it if a player wants it.
• Plunder: One of the primary ways of acquiring new items is stealing it off the people you kill. Gear and tradeable goods are a common form of payment over actual money as well.
• Point Build System: There are 52 Skills to choose from, residing underneath 9 Stats. Not counting the 9 special Profession Skills that are unique to each Profession. Characters start with 44 Points to put into skills related to their profession, as well as Pick-Up Skills (equal to Intelligence + Reflex) that can be placed anywhere.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation:
  • Creatures that are genetically mutated take on attributes of the creature from whom their genes originate, both in terms of power and appearance.
  • Monsters capable of taking on a human disguise (such as vampires) take on a more monstrous form when unlocking their full abilities.
• Purposefully Overpowered: The book acknowledges that Witchers are a cut above all other classes in terms of combat proficiency and survivability, citing it as a case of Story And Game Play Integration
  Combat Section Introduction: You may be frustrated getting to this point if you’re not playing a witcher.
• Skill Tree: Each profession has a skill tree with 3 branches based on 3 different styles of play for that class, allowing more variety even among characters of the same profession.
• Stay in the Kitchen: A common stance to take in the Northern Realms, and still pretty prevalent in Nilfgaard. Skellige and the non-human realms tend to be more egalitarian though, and Dryads are a full-blown matriarchy.
• Telepathy: A spell allowing for both mental communication, and prying on people's thoughts.
• Teleporter Accident: A possibility with the Teleport spell. Rolling a fumble on the Spellcasting or failing to meet the check can cause the teleporter to end up miles off of their target.
• The Man Makes the Weapon: Because of the way Critical Hits works, a weapon is significantly more deadly in the hands of a skilled opponent, getting them more frequently and with more severity.
  • Critical injuries, and their severity, are based on how much you defeat your opponent's defense by. So a weak attacker that just barely beats the defense will deal the weapon's base damage, whereas a master swordsman that beats the defense by >15 will do the weapon's base damage and also cut off your head.
• Utility Party Member: Craftsman, Merchants, and Doctors. All of them serve vital functions for the party even without combat ability. Downplayed in that there's nothing stopping them from investing in some combat skills.
  • Craftsman: A must to craft and maintain armor and weapons. Also capable of improving equipment far above their standard variation.
  • Merchants: Pretty much required for acquiring new gear through purchases.
  • Doctors: The only class (aside from Mages using healing magic) capable of healing Critical Injuries.
• Verbal Judo: Witcher has an in-depth Verbal Combat system in which two or more people can try to bring the other around to their way of thinking by wearing down their resolve through an application of emphatic and aggressive "attacks."
• Weak, but Skilled: Characters with low Body/Will, but high Ref/Dex can play like this.
• When Trees Attack: When fighting a Leshen, it's more accurate to saying you're fighting the whole forest. Trees, plants, animals - everything becomes directed to kill you.