Fria Ligans forum

Hello, forum goers. I don't come here often, but in this case I'm not really trying to understand a rule so much as hear from people how it actually affects gameplay. So, I really want to get a game of TOR 2e going and I've been reading all the books - and I love this game so far. Fixes every issue (though they were few) I had with TOR 1e and the books may well be the most beautiful, most invitingly written RPG books I've ever read. Now, nothing, so far, has struck me as broken or janky or problematic or anything, but Hideous Toughness and Deathless did give me pause and make me go "hmmm..."

I used to play D&D 4e a lot, you see, and one major issue it had was HP bloat. Monsters had way too many HP, and too many ways to refill that HP, which was always frustrating when a damage sponge was whittled down only to then heal itself to full. I typically view monster healing abilities with suspicion, as my experience is that it deflates players and pads out fights. Usually. As written, this looks like it could cause the same issue. A boss creature with 50+ HP and a handful of hate suddenly takes two hours to kill. I know hate is also spent and lost through other means, but does it ever happen in play that a monster just seems to refuse to die to the point it's no longer dramatic but simply tedious? What is a good way to avoid this happening, if I even need to worry about it at all?

Thanks in advance for reading and anyone who answers.

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- Alongside endurance damage causing piercing blows, attacks themselves will still be generating piercing blows due to the Feat die (and potentially from success dice too, and using 6s to boost the Feat die roll). Even 3d is only 54% chance to pass against TN16 (a sword), which might be enhanced further by Fell, or the foe might be struck by an Axe with
- A Deathless foe can't keep going forever as Deathless costs hate (and can also be circumvented by the right Famous Weapon). Using Fire/Sunlight to drain hate faster can accelerate this process. Remember foes can only spend Hate equal to their might per round - if the PCs get lucky and manage two piercing blows (whether rolled or via endurance loss) that prompted failed protection tests then a Might 1 foe can't trigger Deathless twice.
- Hideous toughness foes only recover to half endurance rather than 100%. You could keep halving it each subsequent time if you really want to accelerate things.
- Players can look for ways to penalise the foe's Protection tests, often by making the foe Weary by reducing their Hate to 0. For example, trolls have the Dull-witted Fell Ability, so Riddle tests can reduce their hate. Weary foes count 1-3 results on success dice as 0, tanking their odds of passing protection tests. Some enchanted rewards (Gleam of Terror, Biting dart) and virtues (Gleam of Wrath) can help accelerate the help loss process! 3d and weary against TN 16 is only a 35% chance to pass instead of 54%.
- The Hound of Sauron doesn't have a weakness to reduce its Hate, but it only has 2d armour and low Endurance.
- TOR combat is generally a lot quicker than D&D, so things don't drag.
- PCs can improve their attacks via rewards (and enchanted rewards) that raise the injury TN or help them generate piercing blows more frequently.
- Various cultural virtues help PCs out here, by making protection tests ill favoured (Fierce Shot for a Barding, Splitting Blow for a Beorning) or reducing a foe's Hate (Gleam of Wrath for Elves).

Just to expound on a certain point, combat really shouldn't take hours to complete. D&D has a problem where making enemies tough largely means making them HP sponges. A lot of your choices in combat revolve around making it easier to hit, but ultimately means turns are being spent not directly contributing to taking out that HP sponge.

In TOR, there are two avenues to killing enemies - knocking out their Endurance, and Piercing Blows. It's also very quick to resolve, since there are few options (minimising decision paralysis) and fewer dice rolls. This makes combat pretty fast compared to D&D5e Yes, Hideous Toughness could theoretically result in dragged out fights, but I find that in reality, it does extend the fight...but merely into the "oh crap, it's still going!" zone, which is fun and evocative, rather than the dreaded "Oh for crying out loud, just stay down!" that 5e sometimes gets itself into.

Alright, thanks for the all the responses. From what all of you are saying, it sounds like these abilities are more for dramatic effect than truly making the monsters frustratingly unkillable. In fact it sounds like combat in general should never venture into the realm of overstaying its welcome, and if it does it's likely because either I as the LM, or my players, are not making wise or interesting tactical choices, which could have sped up the fight. If this occurs, the best option is probably to go back over combat options. This is mostly what I figured from a first read of the rules, but having only ever played 1e, and that not as much as I would have liked, it's good to hear from people with actual experience with the game.

Now if I could just get together a group. My previous groups (all D&D or Warhammer) are disbanded at the moment due to people moving away, and I only have one or two available players right now, one of whom doesn't want to play in Middle Earth (because "all the stories in ME have already been told"), and he looked at TOR's abstract combat and asked me where the battle grid was. Then referred to it as "like a boardgame" when I tried explaining. Pardon the mini rant. I really want to play this game.

I wouldn't say that it's necessarily someone's fault if it drags on too long. With Hideous Toughness, it's about rolls of the dice, and you can get unlucky. However, rounds are pretty swift in TOR, so turns come fast (one of the issues with D&D is that rounds are slow, so it takes ages to do anything and you get a lot of down time to get bored in), and that means creatures get a lot of opportunities to get killed.

Tonight we fought a creature which had the Deathless ability (similar to Hideous Toughness but costs Hate). With misses, its ability to cancel Wounds and restore Endurance, it was a long fight. However, turns came quickly and so no one got bored, instead everyone was engaged. It felt like a semi-invincible threat, rather than simply a HP sponge that just refused to die - especially as it had the capacity to Wound as well, so it's not like you can be complacent.

I can see where the concern comes from,.if you're just reading the rules. If we were playing D&D and a monster had a similar ability in that game...yeah, you'd probably be correct. However, combat is very fast (once your group gets used to it and not having to scour books on every turn) in TOR, and with the various mechanics (Like Wounds, Sunlight, etc), things stay meaningful, threatening and fast. Hideous Toughness does extend the fight substantially, but the game can handle it and keep things fun.

If you want to play, join the Discord: https://discord.com/invite/the-one-ring ... 4598545408 It has sections for finding games. I can't promise that you'll find one immediately, but it will up your chances!

Also, feel free to tell your friend there are plenty of stories to tell in Middle-Earth TOR isn't about Aragorn, Gandalf or Elrond, it's about semi-ordinary people who get called to adventure. Plenty of tales to tell of adventurers rambling the countryside and finding Wight's Barrows or worrying about Orcs causing mischief, rather than having to invade Mordor and scaling Orodruin.

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I also struggled with Hideous Toughness as a Loremaster. (In 1E I had a boss fight with an Oleg-Hai that took forever because of this). One thing I want to point out in case you missed it, is they Errata'd Intimidate Foe so it now can make enemies weary for all rolls for a round instead of just attacks, so if the players want a way to make the enemy weak against protection rolls (but it still has a bunch of hate) they can attempt an Awe check.