Troll Slayers are arguably the most iconic character archetype to have sprung from the Warhammer world. With their bright orange beards and mohawks, two-handed axes, tattoos, and bare-chests, they’ve become a visual signifier for the entire Warhammer Fantasy milieu, and have spread, as Fyre Slayers, into the Age of Sigmar universe (caveat: I know next-to-nothing about AoS). They’ve even been immortalised in Lego as a collectible minifigure, under the copyright-avoiding moniker ‘Battle Dwarf’.
In fact, it was seeing that Lego ‘Battle Dwarf’ in 2017 that rekindled an interest in Warhammer that had lain dormant since about 1998, and now has me, at 44 years old, running a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign and a Blood Bowl league in what little spare time I have.
Because I loved Troll Slayers when I first discovered them, via WFRP back in about 1989, and there’s something about them that makes me still love them even now. The idea of a borderline berserk dwarf, driven by shame to atone through death in combat against a much stronger foe, appeals to adolescent boys. I can’t imagine why. Maybe it’s the Freudian drive to kill one’s father. Whatever it is, it’s not by mere coincidence that each of the four editions of WFRP have featured a Slayer on the cover.
But Slayers are problematic. There are probably more questions about Troll Slayers in the online WFRP groups I’m in (from both GMs and players) than about any other career. A lot of people see them as bloodthirsty loners, combat tanks with little or no roleplay potential, who drag the party into dangerous situations and contribute little in roleplay-heavy sessions (which, as everyone knows, are the best sessions; less dice-crunching and more imagination!). Nothing more than murderhobos or dumb-as-rocks barbarians.
Others think they’re far too prominent in the iconography given how rare they ought to be in the lore. Dwarfs aren’t super-common, never mind shame-filled dwarfs with mohawks and death wishes. I even saw someone do a forensic analysis of how many depictions of Slayers there were in the 4e rulebook (a lot; but they’re all the same Slayer, because most of the illustrations follow the same core characters, so there’s the same Witch Hunter and Wizard present a lot, too).
But those people who think Slayers are problematic are wrong. Because they’re just about the richest characters for players to delve into, if you’re willing to do the work.
One of the things that marks WFRP out from the likes of D&D is that you’re not a ‘hero’. Players adopt the character of a Rat Catcher, or an Artisan’s Apprentice, or a Servant: ordinary people plucked from mundane lives and thrust into perilous situations, rather than sorcerers and paladins on noble quests. Slayers play into this perfectly by running counter to the base instinct towards heroism of comparable characters. They don’t want to slay the dragon; they want to be slain by it. They’re the opposite of heroic.
What further marks a Slayer out from their adventuring colleagues is their backstory: most other characters will be human, and young, and at the start of their ‘story’. The Slayer, by necessity, has a backstory, a shame, that has caused them to take the Slayer oath, and it’s up to the Slayer player and the GM to make sure that this is represented in how the character is portrayed.
Because Slayers are not murderhobos or barbarians. They carry deep emotional scars and trauma. In fact, the dwarf species as a whole carries generational trauma; this is what ‘grudges’ are. Dwarfs are not warlike or violent creatures like orcs or ogres; they’ve been forced to defend their ancestral homes for thousands of years and that’s left scars on their collective psyche. They live long and remember longer, and they use storytelling as a living historiography; they’re loyal, driven by family (clan), they love to drink and talk and sing and tell tales. Slayer players can and should use all of this because they are still dwarfs. It’s not a mistake that ‘Entertain’ is in their 4th edition skills.
If there’s anything wrong with the Slayer career scheme in 4th edition WFRP (and 1st, to be fair), it’s the lack of skills from their previous life, because unlike every other career in the game there is always a significant ‘before’ for a Slayer. To some extent the species-specific starter skills and talents for dwarfs address this but it’s perhaps not quite enough. As a GM I’d be working with a Slayer PC pre-campaign to help them understand the mindset and dynamic of a Slayer, and maybe allow them to pick a couple of skills and perhaps a talent from another career to represent the vestiges of their former self that may still come out once in a while. I don’t think this would give them an unfair advantage, and it should help with their roleplay by giving them more context and tools.
It’s also important to remember that Slayers, despite their oath, don’t ‘want’ to die: they feel obliged to purge their shame by dying in combat against a worthy foe, which is very different. They didn’t choose to take this oath and walk out on their past life, their family, their home; they were compelled to do so by some terrible event (of which they will never speak, especially to a manling) that has caused them immense shame. There can and should be massive conflict in them, and fear of what lies ahead. They’re stoical, not insane, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t regret having taken the Slayer oath.
When we started our WFRP campaign just over three years ago I let the party choose between rolling their careers randomly, or choosing to be a Slayer or a Rat Catcher, which I consider to be the two most iconic careers of the setting, because I wanted us to embrace the clichés and the archetypes of Warhammer. Two chose randomness (a physician and an outlaw), and the other two acquiesced to my desires. We’re very lucky that our Slayer player is very good (the whole party is, to be fair, or we wouldn’t still be here three years later, eager for every session), and gets the dynamic of his character. He wrote up a backstory but never shared it with the other players or their characters, and occasionally lets things leak out; he seems to really dislike halflings for some reason, and has some kind of trade-based background. He is, clearly, a combat tank, but he brings an awful lot more tha that to the table. He’s also taken other careers mechanically when appropriate (we’re playing The Enemy Within, and he accepted Josef’s Boatman offer, for instance) while maintaining Slayer as his vocation, and I’ve allowed him to move freely back into the Slayer career path when it’s narratively suitable to do so.
His interactions with other dwarfs are necessarily strained at points (he is a massive signifier of shame and guilt to his entire species, and some dwarfs will, of course, find that very uncomfortable) and he’s used that well. At the end of every session (we play in short-ish, 2.5 hour bursts) I allow my players to each award one of the others 10 experience points for roleplaying, and our Slayer is a regular recipient of these. In fact, in our last session (which was largely combat-free), he received a full house, in that he gave his to someone else but all three other players gave theirs to him. Proof, if it were needed, that there’s no reason whatsoever for Slayers to be left behind in the roleplaying stakes.
Sick Mouthy 