I'm reading and preparing to run my first session, and really missing the use of attributes. As I see it, there are two times they are used:

1. Spend a hope point

2. body added to damage for great and extraordinary success.


Now the hope economy is somewhere like 1-2 per session, a bit more if you're carefully playing to get confidence to reinforce your hope pool. Furthermore, not all of those 1-2 are going to go towards adding an attribute - they may go to a defensive maneuver, protection roll, etc.

So maybe you use an attribute once per session...maybe 2 or 3 times for body and some good combat rolls.

Did I miss something? Again, I'm still in the reading and preparing state.

Thanks,

Jeff

Parry is based on Wits. Heart determines Endurance and Hope, and recovery of Endurance.

Also Hope expenditure is significant. The bonus will turn most misses into success and you don't need to spend them unless it makes you succeed.

So yeah. They are really useful.

Here is the heart of what I REALLY love about this game.

Is Body Score of 5 really useful?

I say (and the game, I think, agrees) it's useful if the player WANTS it to be. And they show that by spending Hope to make it so.

Player Choice for the win!

If they choose to spend all their Resources (Hope) on other things... then, no... that Body score of 5 will just sit there.

/wolf

My players are at character creation at the moment (by email) and I've had to explain to some of them that the attributes are not really "balanced" in the sense of a point of Body being as useful as a point of Heart.

It's fine to have a high Body score if that reflects your concept, and for sure it will come in useful at times. But IMO Heart is much more important than the other two, with Wits slightly ahead of Body (because you get to use Parry more often than your Damage bonus).

I don't have a big problem with that, but sometimes it's not what people intuitively expect.

Thats interesting, because we had a trial run of the game with me as GM, and now one of my friends has taken up the reigns and is running his own campaign.

All three of us players have Wits as our best score

Wits has a very key passive use in determining your defence level, which also affects how aggressively you can perform in combat.

Heart is very passively important I agree, affecting your endurance level, your hope level and your recovery rate when unwounded, as well as being the score that affects Valour and Wisdom rolls.

Body affects your wound resistance when you invoke Hope, which can be pretty important, and passively affects combat damage rolls, but I would agree that the other 2 come out ahead in normal use.

I think what the OP tried to ask (I could be wrong) is:

What's the use of Attribute Scores in game?

All you guys are doing is telling how they contribute to secondary statistics, which is correct of course but they could have been set some other way and built up differently. As, for instance, their own Attributes or by spending Points on them directly. All a matter of game design.

So once you have your Secondaries (regardless of how they are calculated) you put them to one side.... and you have your Attributes.... and you start to play... Now what? How important are they really?

That was my understanding of the question... but maybe I went a little too deep in design thinking here.

/wolf

I guess its a useful, and easy method of indicating your strengths and weaknesses. Sure, you could have a pool of points to distribute to your secondary attributes, rather than have them based on Hearts, Body and Wits, but it also functions as a nice summary of your hero, at a glance. Also it helps balance heroes - the starting backgrounds are reasonably balanced, so characters dont have a huge Parry rating, and very high Endurance, say, which may be possible if you just increased secondary effects.
Also I guess its a narrative approach to character design - You character is sharp of Wits, and strong in body, but lacking heart, rather than having an awesome Parry, and impressive Damage bonus.
I also think that since npcs dont have Hope points, then Attributes really do set player characters out as heroes. Being able to pull victory from the jaws of defeat when you really need to, is the stuff of heroes, surely?

So why so stingy with Hope?

An average character starts the game with around 13-14 Hope (8-19), recovering on average 1 per game session. If you concentrate all your efforts on protecting your Fellowship Focus, not only will you be able to spend Hope for free, you will also, assuming these actions stop them from being harmed, also gain you an additional point of hope back per session.

I would also be inclined to award Hope, at certain points of an adventure, when the players are feeling suitably comfortable, and having had their spirits raised. I think although no mechanics are given, it does infer that during a Fellowship phase, when in a sanctuary, a player would recover from stress. I would be inclined to allow players to regain say 1-3 Hope each Fellowship Phase, based on the level of this spiritual recovery - if given the chance to meet a Patron, or say Gandalf, I think that would restore Hope in anyone! If you get desperate, you can always invest in the Confidence
Virtue, which increases your Hope by 2, and fully restores it.

I guess the rules have been set up so that heroes will eventually become distraught, miserable and despondent at some point, but through friendship, they have the chance to restore their faith and spirits. Thats pretty much the central premise of Lord of the Rings.

It's not a question of stingy - at the time I wrote it, I had not run the game and was going by the rules as written; there's no hope given in the fellowship phase, and honestly, since hope is so central to the game, I'm not sure I would run around tweaking this until I had played a lot.

Btw, thanks everyone. I realized later that the adventurers guide actually summarized the attributes quite effectively, but I appreciate the help. I was trying to get things organized in my head for a game.

After one night's play, the one thing that really stands out to me regarding attributes is body - it's just not a big deal. I'm thinking of using it in a simple way to (slightly) lower the encumbrance values of the larger bits of armor based on body...the idea being that a strong person can wear heavier armor more easily, all things considered.

-Jeff