RichKarp
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 22:41

The difference here to other systems is that climbing over the garden wall and scaling the black gate will be the exact same target number. Francesco has said that the number is balanced for campaign play, which is fine, but in almost any other game, as you get better at something you take on more difficult challenges. In this case, the system is expecting a session one character to take on a task that has the same difficulty as a character who has been played for 2 years. 90% of players won’t play for the 2 years, so it seems pretty mislead design to balance the game in its entirety to that small minority.
This is extremely well put and succinct. I had noticed this too, that tasks are individually challenging but two characters performing the same task are harder to compare with each other.

RE: Players rolling too much, I can see how this is a problem for particular groups. However I do think this is a rather odd remedy, and one that is likely to be exacerbated somewhat by providing players other creative avenues to scrounge up spare dice (Hope, useful items, etc)? I took his point, but I wasn’t sure how it actually related to how TNs are set now.
 
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Michele
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 22:47

In combat thats most new player weapon skills (2 on average). This whole thread is about the starting character experience, and feeling like you can't pass most of the skills you have due to a high TN really doesn't feel great at the table. In the playtest I did my players just found it kind of depressing and like, though they had options out of combat, in combat they were basically useless. They generally had betters or equal wits as strength, and the enemies were also missing them constantly too.

I had issues with combat as well during my playtests, but not as much with Skills rolls which were successful a good 75% of the times. As I said earlier in this topic, using the Forward Stance in combat is practically mandatory for beginner characters, letting them roll at least 3 dice on each attack, but that's a constraint I do not like much. Characters who are particulary weak and have a high Strength TN suffer a lot in the beginning, so having an entire party of low Strength characters is highly not recommended. Conversely, enemies should not miss that much as well if the characters use the Forward Stance, but I can see how a game where everyone has Weapon Proficiency rank 2 and despite this constantly fights in Defensive Stance could easily turn into a whiff fest not particularly interesting to play... my advice is to use very weak opponents in the first adventures, adversaries that can be killed in just one or two hits, until most of the player-heroes have at least rank 3 in their main Weapon Proficiency.

The difference here to other systems is that climbing over the garden wall and scaling the black gate will be the exact same target number. Francesco has said that the number is balanced for campaign play, which is fine, but in almost any other game, as you get better at something you take on more difficult challenges. In this case, the system is expecting a session one character to take on a task that has the same difficulty as a character who has been played for 2 years. 90% of players won’t play for the 2 years, so it seems pretty mislead design to balance the game in its entirety to that small minority.

Except that, as Francesco said, you don't roll to climb over the garden wall, and probably not even to climb a tree. You only roll for heroic challenges, and the difficulty of those kind of challenges is written on your character sheet and depends only on your innate abilities and your level of skill. It's an abstraction, but it works. Either you are good at doing something and you attempt it, or you don't (or roll at your own risk). If you want the character to take on more difficult challenges, then you can simply attempt actions with a higher Risk Level, described in the Loremaster's chapter. You may have the same chance of succeeding in an Athletics roll to climb a tall tree and to scale a mountain, but in the first case if you fail you'll only suffer some bruises, in the second you'll probably die from a 100-feet fall. So, as you improve your Athletics Skill, you'll also take on riskier endeavours more confidently, and that's how you really get better. The system is not expecting a session one character to take on a task that has the same difficulty as a character who has played for 2 years, simply because the latter will have a higher Skill rank, making the task in every respect easier.

It’s also possible for 5 dice to fail where a single feat die will pass, so if you can’t handle the possibility of a less experienced character showing a veteran up, I’m not sure ttrpgs in general should be your thing?

... what? :lol: That's... really not what I said. Of course the dice can have radically different outcomes regardless of the character's Skill level. What I'm saying is that you can't expect that Hope alone gives you reliable results when you're a total novice. It may help, giving you a better chance, but it cannot turn the tables just like that (and it couln't do so in 1ed, anyway). It's just a matter of perspective. If you have only 1 rank, you are just not good enough: you may try with a barely decent chance of success, but what you should do is just letting someone else in the Company do the task, maybe giving him support (and you can do that, since you have 1 rank).
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.
 
Mattcapiche
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 23:06

The difference here to other systems is that climbing over the garden wall and scaling the black gate will be the exact same target number. Francesco has said that the number is balanced for campaign play, which is fine, but in almost any other game, as you get better at something you take on more difficult challenges. In this case, the system is expecting a session one character to take on a task that has the same difficulty as a character who has been played for 2 years. 90% of players won’t play for the 2 years, so it seems pretty mislead design to balance the game in its entirety to that small minority.

Except that, as Francesco said, you don't roll to climb over the garden wall, and probably not even to climb a tree. You only roll for heroic challenges, and the difficulty of those kind of challenges is written on your character sheet and depends only on your innate abilities and your level of skill. It's an abstraction, but it works. Either you are good at doing something and you attempt it, or you don't (or roll at your own risk). If you want the character to take on more difficult challenges, then you can simply attempt actions with a higher Risk Level, described in the Loremaster's chapter. You may have the same chance of succeeding in an Athletics roll to climb a tall tree and to scale a mountain, but in the first case if you fail you'll only suffer some bruises, in the second you'll probably die from a 100-feet fall. So, as you improve your Athletics Skill, you'll also take on riskier endeavours more confidently, and that's how you really get better. The system is not expecting a session one character to take on a task that has the same difficulty as a character who has played for 2 years, simply because the latter will have a higher Skill rank, making the task in every respect easier.
So you’re saying that in an adventure as a hobbit burglar, you wouldn’t have your player roll to see if they were able to scale the wall to get out of farmer maggots crop, before he came along and spotted you? In the stakes of the character that would 100% fall under point 1- Danger in the “when to roll” section.

For the record, I actually like the idea that the skill rolls are being faced up against you challenging yourself, but it’s naive to think that the context of the challenge doesn’t effect how difficult that challenge is.

You also seem to be equating the difficulty of the task and your ability to carry it out. Those are different things. You don’t train with a sword to make combat easier, you train to make yourself better at it. Just because you are better at something doesn’t make it less difficult, it just makes you more likely to succeed at the thing. Trying to make these the same concept if far more than an abstraction, it’s a direct challenge to immersion. (It’s also worth considering that if rolling either 1 or 2 dice is pretty worthless, you’re having to invest 24 points into that skill to make rolling worthwhile. 8 sessions of play, which should be 4 adventures across 2 in game years is a lot to invest just to feel like there is any point in you even bothering to make a check.)

You are right about the consequence of failure being greater though. Falling from the Black Gate and falling from the garden wall will have difference consequences. In this case however, I feel that only amplifies the feel bad factor in any situation that your character finds themselves in over their heads. Now you have a harder task, that you are less capable to completing and with the potential for some extreme consequences. I can see why Frodo felt so hopeless.
 
Asgo
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 23:15

....
Except that, as Francesco said, you don't roll to climb over the garden wall, and probably not even to climb a tree. You only roll for heroic challenges, and the difficulty of those kind of challenges is written on your character sheet and depends only on your innate abilities and your level of skill. It's an abstraction, but it works. Either you are good at doing something and you attempt it, or you don't (or roll at your own risk). If you want the character to take on more difficult challenges, then you can simply attempt actions with a higher Risk Level, described in the Loremaster's chapter. ....
probably the least necessary change to take out task difficulty entirely, you can take the fear of math too far. :)
Luckily, it is probably also the easiest to bring back on your own, a simple +/- to the TN or requiring more successes to pass should do it. Depending on the amount it just opens up the decision to test from a simple binary "test or not test" to one with a slight range and will just influence how many skill test rolls you have encountering the same scene. It will help with groups who actually like rolling dice. ;)
 
Davi
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 23:40

Climbing the walls of a castle should be more difficult, due to being more flat and slippery, therefore granting -2dice, or -1. There is already a rule for making testes more difficult without changing the TN, why don't use?
 
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Michele
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 23:49

You also seem to be equating the difficulty of the task and your ability to carry it out. Those are different things. You don’t train with a sword to make combat easier, you train to make yourself better at it. Just because you are better at something doesn’t make it less difficult, it just makes you more likely to succeed at the thing. Trying to make these the same concept if far more than an abstraction, it’s a direct challenge to immersion. (It’s also worth considering that if rolling either 1 or 2 dice is pretty worthless, you’re having to invest 24 points into that skill to make rolling worthwhile. 8 sessions of play, which should be 4 adventures across 2 in game years is a lot to invest just to feel like there is any point in you even bothering to make a check.)

Everything you say is correct and very agreeable, but be aware that I'm not equating the difficulty of the task and my ability to carry it out as a real concept; I am simply accepting it as a game rule and a reasonable (at least for my style of play) level of abstraction. I fully understand how much resistance such a simplification may encounter, especially among hardcore role-players. But if you think about it, many narrative-centric games are even simpler than that, and their purpose is really to foster immersion, not to diminish it.

And in any case, there's always the possibility for the Loremaster to impose a 1d bonus/penalty to represent favorable/unfavorable circumstances, or even the inherent difficulty of the action, if really needed.
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.
 
RichKarp
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 23:57

I think we can at least all agree that whatever the difficulty of scaling that wall - whether in Mordor or Farmer Maggot’s garden - we can dramatically improve our chances by pulling out our trusty pipe and puffing away on Longbottom Leaf as we make the climb!
 
Mattcapiche
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Re: TNs for starting character

Mon 19 Jul 2021, 23:59

Climbing the walls of a castle should be more difficult, due to being more flat and slippery, therefore granting -2dice, or -1. There is already a rule for making testes more difficult without changing the TN, why don't use?
That works great with making something harder (even if it is actually making you less able, not making the task harder). Although, be careful as even a single die makes a huge percentage difference.

How would you justify this in the other direction? Obviously mechanically you can award a die, but what does that look like? Do you only do that if the player has a high TN, or for all of them?

The other concern I have with this is that you’ve just invested considerable time/experience in training those skills, only for them to be taken away. To echo the discussion up thread, if you’re going to end up with no bonus from your training, why wouldn’t you just max out on hope spends all the time?

That said, I can concede the fact that it might feel better in play than it sounds.
 
Mythicos
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Re: TNs for starting character

Tue 20 Jul 2021, 01:03

Spending hope to get to 3 dice on your starter character to still miss 50% of the time feels very not nice

Yes, but what did you expect from rolling a Skill with only 1 rank? If I'm a total novice but by spending Hope I could accomplish what a much more experienced character can do, than what's the point of getting better at things and not simply stacking as much Hope as possible?
The difference here to other systems is that climbing over the garden wall and scaling the black gate will be the exact same target number.

Wrong.

Climbing the garden wall requires no roll.

Scaling the Black Gate (*) will have a Foolish risk level (p. 131), require a skill endeavour (so no single roll) with a Daunting resistance (p. 131-132), probably with a short time limit (the damn gate is guarded, after all) and the skill roll will be ill-favoured,

So no, it's really not the same thing.

---

(*) That is, if the LM allowed it at all.
 
RichKarp
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Re: TNs for starting character

Tue 20 Jul 2021, 01:14

I don’t know, I think this is highly relative. We’re having this rules discussion completely out of context of a story. A character climbing a fence in a hurry seems infinitely more likely to happen in the course of normal play, and it would call for a roll if appropriately dangerous to that character. For a Hobbit trying to steal from Farmer Maggot, I don’t see why that would get ruled as too trivial for a roll.

The same character would likely be simply incapable of scaling the Morannon (at least for awhile, one would hope). But this idea that the rules are universally applicable isn’t right. Which is another reason why it has been correctly pointed out both that those rules are an abstraction; and that the new relativity of TNs to individuals makes it hard to say that any given Task X should always have a fixed TN. Like or dislike the new system, it is simply less precise than having set values that always apply across the board as in 1e.

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