• 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 26
 
gyrovague
Topic Author
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

The Problem With Hope

Wed 30 Jun 2021, 03:27

There are three possible scenarios when spending Hope in the new rules:
1. You would have succeeded anyway, without spending Hope
2. You fail by an amount that is within reach of Hope
3. You fail, by a margin large enough that Hope can’t make up the difference.

In two of the three scenarios you’ve “wasted” your Hope, in that there wasn’t even a possibility that it could have changed the outcome. Running some numbers on this (which I posted previously, and will post a more user-friendly version soon) we can see that the probability that a point of Hope turns a failure into a success varies with TN and skill, ranging from effectively zero to as high as about 28%, and as high as 52% if you are doing so while Inspired (and thus get 2 dice). These numbers also change if you are favoured or ill-favoured.

(Note: the current Hope mechanic can also give you extra Tengwars, which is awesome but its benefit is hard to quantify and not included in this analysis.)

Since it’s hard to optimize Hope expenditure for when you have the best odds (unless you keep large tables of values handy, and who wants to do that?) we can assume that on average it will provide a benefit somewhat less than those maximum %’s.

So right off the bat Hope is significantly weaker than it used to be. Maybe a fourth as good. To quantify it another way, the benefit is pretty similar to the benefit that you gain, on every single roll, for a favoured skill. Given that Hope and Shadow are kind of THE two big themes in the game, I think that dilution is unfortunate.

Furthermore, because you are just adding dice to the pool, there is less narrative impact, in several ways:
- There is no moment where you’re about to fail, but you decide to spend Hope and turn things around.
- Even if Hope does turn a failure into a success, it’s not obvious whether or not it mattered. You succeeded, but which dice were the Hope dice? (You could, of course, always use differently colored dice, and then count them up separately, but then when you wasted your Hope point (which will happen more often than not) that will be staring you in the face, too.)
- The general mechanic in the game for increasing/decreasing difficulty is to add or subtract dice from the dice pool. So Hope is now just yet another mechanic that does the same thing.

Of course, as expected, because Hope now has a greatly reduced effect, it is also dramatically easier to restore your Hope points, so that you can spend it much more frequently. Basically you can spend as many points as your Heart rating per adventure, and never start an adventure with less than a full Hope tank. (Plus a little more slack due to Fellowship pool.)

I’m actually ok with this. While I always liked the scarcity of Hope, I’ll agree that maybe it went too far.

However, there’s collateral damage. My prediction a few months ago was that because of this change, savvy players would rarely spend Hope on dice pools, and instead would save them for the cool, powerful effects that some Virtues and Rewards have. Scanning through the 2.0 PDF, it seems that the designers have countered this by removing those alternate uses of Hope. I found only two cultures that each have a Virtue that let you turn certain successes into a “magical result”. (Which, I will point out, is an “after the fact” expenditure of Hope that some posters seem to think is “immersion-breaking”.) Instead, there are lots of virtues that increase your Hope pool, further cheapening it.

That’s too bad. I liked that there were multiple, flavorful ways to spend Hope, other than just turning failed dice rolls into successes.

I did find one other use for Hope: if you want to assist a companion in a skill test, you can spend Hope to give them a bonus die. Not only is this the same uninspiring small-increase-to-odds as the base use, but it further reinforces the idea that Hope is just a generic mechanic. Why do you need to invoke “Hope”, one of the great themes of Middle Earth, in order to give a companion some advice, or lend a hand?

So Hope has gone from being a unique(ish), highly differentiating game mechanic to yet another relatively flavorless, expendable, easily-replenished resource, similar to what many RPGs have. Sort of like 5e's Inspiration.

D&D 5e’s “Inspiration” mechanic works, per RAW, similar to Hope: before rolling your d20, you can declare that you are going to spend Inspiration, and roll with advantage. Replenishment works a little differently, but if you put your mind to it it’s fairly easy to get. Easier than Hope via the new rules, anyway.

But my experience is that even though Inspiration is cheap, most players keep saving it for something more important than the current roll, and they eventually forget they have it. A frequent criticism of 5e is that nobody uses Inspiration, and I think this is a large part of the reason why.

(Not that Advantage itself is highly popular in D&D, but only when you don’t have to spend a resource to use it. Players love getting advantage situationally, and will go to great lengths to get it as often as possible….as long as it’s free.)

When Inspiration starts to get used is when you houserule that you can spend it after the roll. People start suddenly remembering...right after a failed roll...that they have the Inspiration box checked on their sheet. And when they realize that, they start using the rules (playing on your Flaws, Bonds, etc.) in order to get it.

It’s the same with abilities such as the Lucky feat, Bardic inspiration dice, and the ever-wonderful Portent: all of them are finite resources, but all get used after the roll, and all are highly popular and rarely forgotten.

It's worth observing that there's a trend in 3rd party 5e products to create additional uses for Inspiration. E.g., spend your Inspiration not to gain Advantage, but to trigger a class ability. The exact opposite direction 2.0 is headed. (And, ironically, in one case I know of those exact mechanics were designed by somebody now at Free League.)

So my takeaway is that when you have a mechanic that:
1. Can improve the odds of a dice roll
2. Is declared before the dice roll
3. Costs a resource
...players don’t use it.

But, when it's used after the roll, or it can be spent on other cool abilities, they do use it.

Anyway, that’s the end of my rant. I’m assuming I’m just beating my head against a wall, and nothing will change for release, so I’ll probably just have to houserule it. I’ll either just change it to after-the-roll, but otherwise leave it un-changed, or maybe change it so that instead of adding one or two dice you re-roll them. Some things I like about that option are:
1. You can still fail, even if you only missed by one
2. It's a different mechanic, not used anywhere else in TOR
3. It's evocative of "changing fate", moreso than adding dice.
However, while I will likely houserule away the Hope cost for assisting companions, I will probably not houserule alternate uses for Hope in Virtues and Rewards (and Enchantment Rewards on famous arms and armor)...doing so would require more changes than I want to make...and that absence makes me a bit of a sad panda.
Last edited by gyrovague on Wed 30 Jun 2021, 05:35, edited 1 time in total.
 
RichKarp
Posts: 120
Joined: Tue 29 Jun 2021, 19:37

Re: The Problem With Hope

Wed 30 Jun 2021, 05:07

I find these arguments persuasive. My from experience, players want to only spend finite resources where they know it will achieve the desired outcome, or at a time of absolutely dire need. A ~25% chance of success at best is a far cry from certainty. Even if it is easier to replenish, I find it likely most will be unwilling to risk the penalties of Miserable.

I’m also a little dismayed about the lack of “trigger” type abilities among the virtues. I like the changes to magical results, and I think the writers have done a fantastic job with the subtle low grade magic of Middle-earth in the supplements, but I do wonder about the point of making it more available. Was this just to make it more tactile by tying it to the dice? Thematically, we should be approaching a time of greater Shadow and of waning hope which seemed to fit better with the older Hope rules.

I’m also sort of wondering about the standard TNs and whether the overall difficulty of tasks has decreased on average, making Hope even less significant?
 
User avatar
jthurn
Posts: 169
Joined: Mon 01 Jun 2020, 17:58

Re: The Problem With Hope

Wed 30 Jun 2021, 07:26

I’m also sort of wondering about the standard TNs and whether the overall difficulty of tasks has decreased on average, making Hope even less significant?
I wonder that as well. So one thing's for sure: I'm going to target my players' weaknesses with greater precision. (And rancor, as needed).
 
User avatar
jthurn
Posts: 169
Joined: Mon 01 Jun 2020, 17:58

Re: The Problem With Hope

Wed 30 Jun 2021, 07:40

Anyway, that’s the end of my rant. I’m assuming I’m just beating my head against a wall, and nothing will change for release, so I’ll probably just have to houserule it. I’ll either just change it to after-the-roll, but otherwise leave it un-changed, or maybe change it so that instead of adding one or two dice you re-roll them. Some things I like about that option are:
1. You can still fail, even if you only missed by one
2. It's a different mechanic, not used anywhere else in TOR
3. It's evocative of "changing fate", moreso than adding dice.
However, while I will likely houserule away the Hope cost for assisting companions, I will probably not houserule alternate uses for Hope in Virtues and Rewards (and Enchantment Rewards on famous arms and armor)...doing so would require more changes than I want to make...and that absence makes me a bit of a sad panda.
Most interesting. Thank you for all your information and analysis. I really appreciate it. You're clearly a thoughtful, engaged person, and I've no doubt your players are grateful for you.

I asked one of my players about the pre- or post-roll hope usage and they surprised me by saying they like the idea of pre-roll because they're taking a chance twice. Once when they decide to use hope, and once when they roll the dice. The uncertainty of whether or not the hope actually worked appealed to them a lot. The example they brought up was their first character death. It was brutal, and it all came down to a choice and a dice roll. This player would have preferred to play that scenario again with pre-roll hope so that the choice would be in their hands, but fate wouldn't be. The last minute decision isn't as interesting as putting it all on the table for this player.

I should note that my players are all like this to one degree or another. None of them are power gamers, and none of them care about the math. They care about the feeling. I imagine I attract those types of players because I'm that type of GM. But I was still surprised that this player basically said "let the chips fall where they may".

No doubt I'll tweak Hope -- and enchanted items etc. -- with house rules (thanks for your ideas on that as well). I'm definitely wary of rules that streamline to the point of turning everything into a homogeneous paste, so I take your analysis regarding 5E as a good warning of how to do it the wrong way.
 
Summerhawk
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed 17 Jun 2020, 17:54

Re: The Problem With Hope

Wed 30 Jun 2021, 23:03

I had been pretty skeptical of all the argument against the new Hope rules. This is quite persuasive. I run a good bit of 5e and I allow inspiration to be used after the die roll and also allow other finite resources to be spent to gain advantage and my players love and use it far more than they did before, so my experience is similar to yours. Allowing an expenditure post-roll does seem like quite an easy tweak, even if nothing changes before the release, so thanks for that suggestion.
 
gyrovague
Topic Author
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

Re: The Problem With Hope

Thu 01 Jul 2021, 00:21

Thanks for the thoughtful responses.

UPDATE: I misunderstood how the Magical Result works. It is before the roll, and it gives you an auto-success, but you still get to roll the skill dice for Tengwars. So it's actually better than Hope 1.0, but only applicable to certain skills (which for Elves is all of them, all of the time.).

Now that's cool. But if I play an Elf I don't think I'll ever waste Hope on the default mechanic.
 
RichKarp
Posts: 120
Joined: Tue 29 Jun 2021, 19:37

Re: The Problem With Hope

Thu 01 Jul 2021, 02:06

Yes - the new rule for Magical Successes is actually brilliant. It seems Hope can now let you do a lot of things that were manifested differently before or were unclear in the rules, like helping a companion succeed on a roll or upgrading the success level. But none of it quite has the same impact as turning a failure into a success for me.

I get the sense that the new rules are supposed to make it versatile so that it’s less precious and easier to use, but I still think players will tend to hoard it to avoid becoming Miserable. Unclear to me whether that will be more or less pronounced than before, but it was quite an incentive to automatically succeed.
 
User avatar
jthurn
Posts: 169
Joined: Mon 01 Jun 2020, 17:58

Re: The Problem With Hope

Thu 01 Jul 2021, 02:31

I get the sense that the new rules are supposed to make it versatile so that it’s less precious and easier to use, but I still think players will tend to hoard it to avoid becoming Miserable. Unclear to me whether that will be more or less pronounced than before, but it was quite an incentive to automatically succeed.
For me it's always been a dance to try and come up with scenarios so intense that players loosen the grip on their Hope, and them always being s'damn clever in avoiding that. Trying to provide meaningful moments that demand Hope use for a desired outcome, but also make the players feel good about it, has made me a better GM. I think. Maybe. Either way, I'll need to invent other ways of doing it now.
 
User avatar
HunterGreen
Posts: 183
Joined: Fri 12 Jun 2020, 14:59

Re: The Problem With Hope

Thu 01 Jul 2021, 03:22

I have a feeling that seasoned 1e players will struggle more with 2e because of the ingrained habit of hanging onto Hope to save it for the moments of greatest impact, and newcomers to 2e will spend it like candy and do much better. It may take a while for us 1e folks to recalibrate appropriately.

The other part for me has always been a sense of 'the tragedy of the commons' -- in any group there seems to be one player who blows through Hope way more readily, and for much less important reasons (mostly "I just want to succeed!") than the others, and then because he always gets most of the Fellowship Pool, everyone else has to become even more stingy with theirs to make up for it. The pool was like 50% of your Hope recovery options in 1e, but in 2e it will be a much smaller portion, so maybe this factor will stop mattering.
TOR/AiME Discord: https://discord.me/theonering
Narvi, the TOR bot for Discord: https://bitbucket.org/HawthornThistleberry/narvi/
 
gyrovague
Topic Author
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

Re: The Problem With Hope

Thu 01 Jul 2021, 05:31

...in any group there seems to be one player who blows through Hope way more readily, and for much less important reasons (mostly "I just want to succeed!") than the others, and then because he always gets most of the Fellowship Pool, everyone else has to become even more stingy with theirs to make up for it.
So true!
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 26

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests