Forum

I'm guessing they're starting characters (IE their stats obey the rules for creating characters without additional skill or adventure points having been spent)?

One of the issues is that TOR assumes a long-term campaign. A starting Company is built to be poor and likely to fail tasks to provide contrast with a veteran Company. That's fine with a campaign, but for a one-shot or an adventure for a Starter Set, it can get very frustrating and can feel a bit hopeless. They have to decide between being competent in combat (and spending 60% of your XP on that alone) and being pretty rubbish at skill checks or being competent at skill checks but being sidelined in combat.

In a campaign, that's fine because you gain SPs pretty quickly to rectify that (or can choose to buff combat Skills to remain relevant in combat), but in a one-shot or a taster...that can be problematic.

<post deleted>

Thanks HunterGreen, it's great to have hands-on experience alongside theory craft. Well done to your and your players, and glad the Hope spending carried the heroes through!

Captain Haddock, I think you're right to consider "Prepare Shot", but the elf only has Scan 1. They'd need to magical success the Scan check, at which point you can save a main action by just spending hope on the attack. Additionally, the maths often works out that attacking twice is better than prepare shot->shoot, particularly here where the character has a poor Scan. I think they could have gone with everyone having Combat Proficiency 3 instead, or perhaps giving the Hobbit Enhearten 3 for Rally Comrades.

Harlath, I agree that it's not ideal, I was just trying to think of what options they would have as written. You're probably right about the comparative statistical strengths of each approach as well. Assuming they use magical successes for Prepare Shot Scan rolls, and that the Loremaster counts this as one additional success, they will be rolling at least 4 Success dice for their attack roll (with a 1 in 6 chance of rolling 5 success dice). They only get to shoot every other round, but they also only need to spend a point of Hope every other round, and 4 or 5 Success Dice gives very good odds of getting a hit.

Their best option is probably to find an advantageous position that the Loremaster agrees will give them a bonus success dice for attacks. There is a suggestion for this in the finale. I wonder how the Elf handled things in HunterGreen's session?

<post deleted>

In principle I‘m not against it, that some heroes are better than others in fighting. But they need to fill some kind of role during a battle. And some players just want to smash some heads, instead of being the support for others.

I’ve spotted these issues:

• Fellowship Focus is missing from the character sheets, but mentioned in Rules page 6.

• Loremaster characters have Traits (a 1e term) instead of Distinctive Features.

Thanks HunterGreen, it's great to have hands-on experience alongside theory craft. Well done to your and your players, and glad the Hope spending carried the heroes through!

Captain Haddock, I think you're right to consider "Prepare Shot", but the elf only has Scan 1. They'd need to magical success the Scan check, at which point you can save a main action by just spending hope on the attack. Additionally, the maths often works out that attacking twice is better than prepare shot->shoot, particularly here where the character has a poor Scan. I think they could have gone with everyone having Combat Proficiency 3 instead, or perhaps giving the Hobbit Enhearten 3 for Rally Comrades.

...

It's very interesting to read your comments here, guys (Linklite, HunterGreen, Harlath, CaptHaddock, Sebastian). My players and I are currently gaming the story of the Over Hill and Under Hill starter set. Your comments are giving me some great ideas. They're very insightful comments for Loremaster (and players).

Thanks,
Arthur

Giving players option to use battle skill to get advantage is most likely the easiest option... Maybe LM could hint that it could be very, very useful!