Fri 26 Aug 2022, 10:27
I sort of get this as a perceived difference in the feel of a combat, however, a couple of comments:
For early-in-the-career adventurers, I often feel the need to go Forward in order to have at least a good chance of hitting the opponent with the bonus +1d6. And the corollary of that of course, is the Adversary gains 1d6 as well, WITHOUT SPENDING HATE. It's a nice balance, going aggressive like this gets results but, to be honest, you need that high basic Parry to have even a fair hope of winning close combat. If you were almost always badly cut up by the first orc or goblin in a fight, how are you going to ever replicate Tolkiens heroes who are always fighting against bad odds? So maybe the Designers chose the base Parry scores for that reason.
Another way of looking at this, is the following:
the Adversary might not be so likely to land a blow on a player, but if they do it's likely to be with a high number on the FEAT die... and so the proportion of actual blows landed by adversaries are going to feel like many Wounding/ Protection rolls. As several have said (elsewhere) about TOR 1e and 2e, even a relatively weak foe can be deadly in this game. Overall, I don't see the need for upping the Combat skill values for these beast's. (In fact, I would like to see a few more with skill 2, to act as minions. )