Matters of Rhya: Pregnancy and Childbirth in WFRP2ed

[PsyckoSama]

Right now I'm reworking an older set of rules I made for submission to the Strike to Stun archive. I know this has some good solid headed WFRP folks and I'd like to ask for help refining the rules, formatting tips, and thinking up a good forward with situations you can use these, besides the obvious dynastic issues and omni-present desire to torture your players and their characters.

Please help.

Rules are here:
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1ijalcZiuUTzSj_a25Q9G64x3jT31aWCbAUYmBOY80Ys&hl=en&authkey=CJXv8eoG#

[Tiggurix]

It's good that you think so well of us! I'm sure we will all do our best to help you!

Something I think you might change, which I haven't already mentioned, would be to make labour a little more punishing, especially if the mother in question is giving birth to twins! Perhaps a -10% penalty to toughness for each child beyond the first she's giving birth to?
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[AJSB]

Can't seem to access the document to comment on rules, so I'll proffer a suggestion for game use.

Tavelling across the countryside, you come across a woman in the last few days of her pregnancy. She begs the help of the PCs. Cue a variety of possible quests. Find appropriate herbs to aid with labour (encountering nasties on the way, natch). Potect her from the abusive father. Discover the true identity of the father and shame him into providing support. Council the woman on how to deal with her child, the result of rape during war. And so on and so forth. It would be a pretty flexible hook depending on your players' preferred styles of adventuring.
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[Vonbloodbath]

Also, this being Warhammer, if you were to go through the stuff Andrew mentioned, and then after everything the baby has a slight mutation. The mother wants to keep the child; how do the PC's react?
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[Tiggurix]

Good ideas, Andy and Andy!
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[PsyckoSama]

Can't access? What does it say. I can probably fix it... or well... better idea

http://forum.strike-to-stun.net/viewtopic.php?t=3549

Strike to Stun thread.

[Tiggurix]

Since I think that the females fertility should be separate from her Toughness, I've taken the liberty of coming with suggestions in regards to how to approach this.

Fertility
When creating the PC, the GM rolls for her Fertility attribute in secret. This is a separate, secret attribute which is used in reproduction, and very rarely anywhere else. Consult the PCs species and roll for stats.

Species:Dwarf Elf Halfling Human Ogre

Base number: 10 10 20 20 10

Number of dice: 3d10 3d10 4d10 3d10 4d10

The final stat is the one used to determine the chance of pregnancy at the end of each month. Note: When rolling for stats, if all the d10 come up with a '1', the PC will be completely barren.

Virility
This is separate, secret attribute for males. A highly virile male may increase the likelyhood of the women he slept with to be with child at the end of the month. Roll for the PC in secret during Character Creation to determine his virility.

Species: Dwarf Elf Halfling Human Ogre

Number of dice: 2d10 3d10 4d10 4d10 3d10

Divide the rolled number by 4, rounded down. This is the final Virility characteristic. A woman gains a bonus to conceive at the end of each month equal to the highest virility among the men she slept with. Note: As with females, if all the dice when rolling for stats comes up with a '1', the PC will be completely sterile and no female may conceive by having intercourse with him.

In addition, I suggest giving a -15% penalty to conceive for any female exclusively sleeping with males of other species. The child(ren) produced from such a situation will always be the species of the mother, though they will likely have some traits from the probable father.
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[PsyckoSama]

I have three probglems with that.

First, I dislike creating an arbitrary new stat to deal with fertility. Second, I designed the rules to take into account the possibility of multiple partners. Third, this isn't D&D. While some versions of first edition you do have half-breeds, its just not really WFRP style imho.

Though I like the idea of finding a pregnant woman on the road as mentioned above as a plot hook. It's flexible and interesting. Another possibility could be depending on the group she could try and attach herself to it. A pregnant camp follower is still a woman who knows very well how to survive on the road and keep a group well fed and comfortable. Maybe her "Husband" was killed in action and fearing the advances of one of the more brutal soldiers who always lusted after her left with nowhere else to go...

[Tiggurix]

[Andy]

Just as an aside, cross-breeds do not occur without significant magical interference in WFRP; or so BI made clear on many, many occassions. The different sentient species are simply too different from each other. Apes don't breed with Humans, after all, and it's not just because we don't share enough of the right parts.

To be a little more technical, there are two primary issue: pre-zygotic reproductive isolating mechanisms, and post-zygotic reproductive isolating mechanisms. Yes, I know, that's nonsense, so let me explain. There are a variety of factors that preclude two different species (and sometimes different races) from having sex, and there are a variety of factors that prevent children happening even if sex were to occur.

First, the pre- bit. Different types of animal look, feel, and smell different to each other -- so different, in fact, that the need to sexually reproduce with another species is almost always absent. I don't know about you, but apes, no matter how close to me genetically they may be, don't turn me on. It takes an extreme and unlikely preference for such an attraction to be possible. Welcome to what Elves think of Humans -- and if Elves aren't mating with us, there are no half-Human, half-Elf babies. Of course, in the Warhammer World with its prevalance of Old One created humanoid races, this is less of an issue (but still a significant issue), but there are more problems. The next pre- problem is incompatible genetalia -- and this one is far more of an issue that many expect. The bits may fit (and they will not even always do this), but they are likely to put the sperm and/or egg in the wrong place for anything to happen. This then leads on to the next significant issue: sperm motility. For all human sperm is designed to navigate a human woman's reproductive tract, it may not have the capabilities to get anywhere in the reproductive tract of a different species, which will include different shapes, viscosities, and other oddities. In short: different species rarely mate, and even if they are to so so, the chances of cross-fertilisation occuring are extraordinarily low.

However, assuming we get past all the pre- problems, we then have the post- problems, which are basically a long complicated list of reasons for why a hybrid fetus is unlikely to be able to grow to term, or be able to grow into a reproductive adult even if it were born. In short, a female is designed to bring a fetus of her species to term, not that of another species, and every species, in micro and macro ways, are different to each other. They may have all the same bits (or possibly not), but the bits work completely differently in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Thus, even if an egg were to be miraculously fertilised, the likelihood of miscarriage caused by genetic differences would be extremely high.

I.e.: it ain't happening.
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[Tiggurix]

Ah, I see that you have soundly trounced my argument. I can't help but be a little glad.

Though, to be fair, I always believed that humans were the original humanoid species, and that the Old Ones created the other species with basis in the humans which already existed on the planet when they arrived, and that's why the human race is so much more susceptible to the influence of Chaos. Assuming such origins, I thought it was fair to also assume that the human subspecies would be similar enough to reproduce with one another, though you're probably correct in that they're too different for such things to happen.
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[AJSB]

Well, I've had a look at the rules, and I'd be inclined to allow PCs to (explicitly) spend a fate point to result in a specific outcome. (e.g. Baby born safely, conceived, didn't conceive, didn't miscarry etc.)

That said, if I were running a WFRP campaign (and I'm not), then I would just cover all of this using Applied Handwavium. (This is person opinion here, GMing styles vary, obviously.) I'd take the view that any PC that wants to get pregnant is doing so for characterful reasons. If they want to explore the dichotamy of pregnant woman risking life and limb, then I'd let them get pregnant with no trouble, and maybe have them risk miscarriage if they dropped to 0 wounds. Even then though, I wouldn't force a result on them. (If they wanted to roll for it, fine. But if they wanted to either be fine or miscarry, then fine too.) If they just wanted to ensure dynastic succession during "down time" between adventures, no problems. (After all, a child is a great adventure hook. ) If I wanted to impress on them that "actions have consequences", I wouldn't roll for conception, I'd just have a character either fall pregnant or get a girl into trouble when the PC seduces an NPC. (Although I'd be MUCH more inclined to do that to a male PC, as pregnancy is such a significant life-changer for females.) If I were using the "meet a pregnant woman on the road" plot hook, I'd just have success/failure states based on PC actions. (Collect correct herbs, provide medical attention => baby is born healthy. Defend mother against assassins sent by baby's noble father => baby born safely.)

That's what I'd do, anyway. I can't help but think that pregnancy and children are such significant changing factors for PCs that they should be only introduced intentionally, either by GM plot or by PC choice.
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[Tiggurix]

That's a good point Andy! Such things should perhaps not be as liable to suffer from the vagaries of fortune. Anyway, I liked the Fate Point rule! One additional rule I'd suggest to implement would be that the moment a child is born from a woman with Fate Points, there's a 50% chance that the child is also marked for a greater destiny, and thus rolls on the Fate Point table for his/her species.
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[Andy]

Might I also suggest you don't call him Andy. He may explode. Or worse. I'm an Andy. As is t'other Andy. Andrew isn't...
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[Tiggurix]

Oh? Does he have issues with people calling him Andy?
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