baldrick0712
Posts: 672
Joined: Fri 28 May 2021, 12:29

Re: TNs for starting character

Tue 20 Jul 2021, 08:57

Hopefully this hasn't been mentioned already (it's a long thread and I haven't read all of it). I think one way to approach this would be the following. 1) After the character creation session, the Loremaster takes copies of all the Player-hero sheets and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. 2) The Loremaster then tailors a fairly simple one or two session "training" adventure to the strengths of the Company, set during the Autumn. If combat will be a feature, the stats of the Loremaster characters can be reduced a bit for some concocted reason (they are drunk, sick or whatever) or a way of defeating the foe without direct confrontation will be provided. 3) At the conclusion of the first Adventure Phase, go immediately to a Yule Fellowship Phase as the first Fellowship Phase. This will give the Player-heroes extra Skill Points to level up their skills and the opportunity to acquire one of their Cultural Virtues.
 
Mythicos
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue 16 Jun 2020, 03:46

Re: TNs for starting character

Tue 20 Jul 2021, 14:21


Here’s another thing I don’t get - one of the big advantages of Attributes as TN is that players can supposedly more quickly report their success/failure without the LM managing it. But now the LM has to referee or at least note and answer rules questions should they arise on which bonus dice (Hope, Useful Items, etc) apply to the roll. It would seem to actually slow things down in practice as players exercise creativity to get their dice.

Very good point. Although I think that player-facing TNs will diminish the time lost on asking the LM for TNs (*), I fear that all the potential sources of bonus dice will require the LM to make multiple decisions for each Test, ultimately slowing down the process.

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(*) As LM, it seems sometimes that I had 2 kinds of players; one always asked me to tell them the TN ("I SAID IT'S 14 IF I DON'T SAY ANYTHING!!!") and the other trying to resolve a Test as fast as possible so I didn't have time to change the TN. Sigh. <LOL>
 
Davi
Posts: 78
Joined: Mon 15 Feb 2021, 04:16

Re: TNs for starting character

Tue 20 Jul 2021, 15:32

I play the Fantasy Flight Games RPGs, mainly the Warhammer 3e. In WFRP 3e as is in Genesys/StarWars difficulty and drawbacks, as advantages, and skill levels all add dice to the pool, so this change in TOR is very familiar to me.

Removing dice and adding dice becomes very second nature, and feels more rewarding and dangerous in my opinion. If you say the TN to climb is X, players will try to reach that TN, feels like a fixed number, in my experience when you say the difficulty is -1d due to being slippery, they might want to find for creative ways to remove that, and the story becomes more interesting, for exemple they might look for the eastern side of the castle where the sun shines brighter and the walls are dryer. Therefore not granting the -1d.

One nice thing is that from the probabilities, the Loremaster now know better that 3dice is around 50/50 4dice should be a easy task and 2dice difficult. If your players are all rolling 4 or more all the time, you know you must start increasing the challenge. I think it is more difficult to guess the chance of success once you start increasing dice and TN at the same time.
 
Mattcapiche
Topic Author
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:25

Re: TNs for starting character

Tue 20 Jul 2021, 18:48



Please try reading the whole conversation before being outright dismissive.

I'm sorry if I sounded dismissive, but what you wrote was factually wrong.



1) I’ve very easily provided a situation where climbing a wall would require a roll.
2) maybe they only want to get to a ledge on the gate.
3) the character clearly wouldn’t be able to get there anyway- it was a hyperbolic comparison to make a point. But thank you for pointing me to these extra mechanics.


I know you used a hyperbolic. But someone unfamiliar with the rules, only reading "All Tests are the same TN! Game broken!" (*) posts, might get the wrong idea, to say the least.

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(*) yes, I'm being hyperbolic here.
I disagree that it was factually wrong, but the situation can definitely be interpreted in different ways. I'll also join you in disuading anyone with no familiarity from taking any opinion on this forum as absolute fact.
 
Mattcapiche
Topic Author
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:25

Re: TNs for starting character

Tue 20 Jul 2021, 18:54

I play the Fantasy Flight Games RPGs, mainly the Warhammer 3e. In WFRP 3e as is in Genesys/StarWars difficulty and drawbacks, as advantages, and skill levels all add dice to the pool, so this change in TOR is very familiar to me.

Removing dice and adding dice becomes very second nature, and feels more rewarding and dangerous in my opinion. If you say the TN to climb is X, players will try to reach that TN, feels like a fixed number, in my experience when you say the difficulty is -1d due to being slippery, they might want to find for creative ways to remove that, and the story becomes more interesting, for exemple they might look for the eastern side of the castle where the sun shines brighter and the walls are dryer. Therefore not granting the -1d.

One nice thing is that from the probabilities, the Loremaster now know better that 3dice is around 50/50 4dice should be a easy task and 2dice difficult. If your players are all rolling 4 or more all the time, you know you must start increasing the challenge. I think it is more difficult to guess the chance of success once you start increasing dice and TN at the same time.
I think this is a good comparison, although we obviously have different opinions on its application. The way dice are added and removed in ffgSW is definitely reminiscent. I did also think that a similar approach would have been a good idea with the clear desire to avoid maths.

That said, the base difficulty in that system is still set by the GM, and there are mechanisms for increasing or reducing that difficulty directly. In this case, TOR is drastically different.
 
Elenath
Posts: 63
Joined: Sun 18 Jul 2021, 00:22

Re: TNs for starting character

Thu 22 Jul 2021, 04:50

In case you have not seen it, here is the thread where several different TN's were run through to get the percentage of each number of success dice.


viewtopic.php?f=129&t=8134&p=60894#p60894
 
gyrovague
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

Re: TNs for starting character

Thu 22 Jul 2021, 19:18

I've mostly been observing this topic and pondering the implications. Not sure I have a strong opinion one way or the other (shocking, right?)

It seems that the "problem" boils down to the difficulty of keeping the challenge tuned to the experience of the PCs. With skills going up over time, fixed TNs, and the only apparent knob at the LM's disposal being the relatively coarse (in the sense of non-granular, not ill-mannered) +/- d6's, it feels like there's a choice between too hard at low levels or too easy at high levels.

Assuming we end up using the rules as written, I would probably keep the following ideas in mind:
- Heroes are not meant to make a dice roll with every action. Early in the campaign it could be assumed that some of the challenges are easier, and don't even require a roll. When a roll is called for, it means that it's especially hard, and therefore having difficult TNs is fine. Or the LM says, "Yeah, but the guard is not paying attention, so take +1d." Or they can expend resources. Or they can have the party specialist handle it. Or they can just fail and make that part of the fun.
- At higher levels:
- there are fewer autosuccesses and more rolls are called for. And unlike at lower levels, when the LM modifies the dice pool it's more frequently to subtract dice.
- the players should get the pleasure of WTFPWNing some rolls every now and then. Nothing wrong with that.
- the heroes will presumably be wandering into more dangerous places, and can expect to be Weary/Wounded/Miserable more often

Anyway, that's my two cents. Unlike Hope Hill, upon which I fully intend to make my last stand and go down underneath a heap of corpses if necessary, I'm going to reserve judgment on this particular topic.
 
Dorjcal
Posts: 81
Joined: Sun 11 Jul 2021, 10:22

Re: TNs for starting character

Sat 24 Jul 2021, 10:44

To be honest, most people are way too much in their head before they even tried the system.
We play-tested the game this week and never felt the TN were to high. Once you experience all the mechanics as a whole and not isolated it flows smoothly and without issues
 
RichKarp
Posts: 120
Joined: Tue 29 Jun 2021, 19:37

Re: TNs for starting character

Sat 24 Jul 2021, 13:57

So I think it’s worth saying again that I don’t believe the game is somehow ruined or broken by this strange inversion of how TNs are set. This is a mechanic borrowed I think from Symbaroum, a game which looks really cool and, presumably, works perfectly.

My problem isn’t whether the system functions at all, it’s whether it does so in a way that really echoes the source material and provides the Loremaster with certain tools and options.

As I’ve said before, because balanced characters cannot truly excel in multiple cross-Attribute skills, certain character concepts are (slightly) disadvantaged by virtue of the way they are built. This does not mean that they are not viable at all, but they are somewhat less attractive because of the system. And unfortunately, I find that unnecessarily restrictive in terms of actualizing certain character concepts - an eloquent gentleman thief, a traveling bard/scholar, or an intimidating Huntsman - that can no longer attain the same level of consistent excellence across certain skill areas, even if those particular skills are essential to their profession. They have to accept some (admittedly, small) penalty in terms of higher TN as a game balance issue, something that wasn’t really a factor before because Attributes were only crucial for employing Hope to reverse failure, rather than on determining the threshold for success overall.

I also think the new TN system makes it harder to suspend disbelief because by preventing the Loremaster from employing secrecy for success threshold, it can potentially limit my choices. I cannot grant leniency without shattering the illusion that the player succeeded on their own; I cannot make things imperceptibly harder when they are trying to achieve an impact I think should be more difficult. By virtue of the new system, which also requires them to also invest Hope before a roll, they already know how hard a task is and must decide how best to marshal their dice to meet the task.

This is purely my opinion, but I’m just not a fan of the new system. Trust me I wish I thought the 2e system was superior, I want to love it. I just don’t for a bunch of reasons. Agree/don’t agree, it’s fine. Both rule sets are still there to be used and enjoyed. I don’t see an inherent thematic or practical advantage to the new way TNs are applied and I’m probably just not going to do it this way.
 
baldrick0712
Posts: 672
Joined: Fri 28 May 2021, 12:29

Re: TNs for starting character

Sat 24 Jul 2021, 15:14

I get the design reason for the change, i.e. to make Attributes affect every roll, not just when you spend Hope. I do wonder if it was the right decision though. I guess it's hard to improve on something that was very good to start with.

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