Hi everyone, my first post, but been lurking for a while.

So I have run just a couple of skirmishes so far with my group, not any adventures. The dwarf was fully kitted out in a coat of mail and a leather/metal cap for our first combat (the foes we chose where Great Orcs, which was a BIG mistake, but never mind...) Anyway, it soon became clear that erosion of Endurance was the biggest threat to losing the fight, rather than taking Wounds, as Piercing Blows are somewhat uncommon. The dwarf rapidly became Weary and his effectiveness fell away sharply. So for the 2nd fight, he switched to leather and was a lot happier.

So my question is this: is this what those of you who have run the game for "real" found? Is the danger of sinking into exhaustion through Endurance loss so great that it outweighs the protection that heavy armour bestows against Wounding? What have your players decided to do in determining whether to go leather or chain?

Cheers,

Stu

I imagine that most PCs are happier in leather, right up until they get that first Wound. Then they would wish for Chain

There are many variables here. It will depend on what opponent you are up against, their number, the PCs parry value, their Fatigue, recovery time (Wounds recover very slowly and going into a combat with a Wound is not fun), opinion of Shadow points etc. Chain isnt always going to be the wrong choice but yeah, TOR is an unusual RPG in that heavy armour is not a no brainer. You need to consider all these others things when choosing armour, and leather may often be a better choice much as it is for a lot of the characters in the books.

One thing to note is that Wounds are serious busy and slow to go. Coming out of combat with one is a serious impediment. Endurance loss can be serious too but is recovered pretty quickly. Coming out of combat with low Endurance isn't a big issue. This only gets worse when yo add in a Shadow point or more for your fellow PCs when you get a Wound.

Convincing some of my players (luckily not all) that roleplaying games are not about fight after fight after fight is sometimes an uphill battle (pun intended). After 30+ years of RPGs, I have worked through my obsession with D&D-style combat-fests, and of late have been favouring more atmospheric games like the GUMSHOE-powered Trail of Cthulhu and Ashen Stars, where investigation and roleplaying come to the fore, with combat otfen being a dramatic conculsion to the game (in ToC, most often a fultile combat, but hey.) My players by and large have had serious issues with this approach to RPGing, craving as they do some good old meaty combat at least a couple of times in an adventure. And they just want to be heroes, not something you can often achieve when up against the Outer Gods. I am putting a lot of my hopes into The One Ring to provide me with the perfect mix of story, roleplaying and exciting combats to satisfy me in my storytelling mode AND my players in their desire to kill things. So i'm really glad that the game challenges some of the combat preconceptions of other systems, especially around the wisdom of undertaking long journeys bedecked in heavy metal armour. I'm doubly happy that the kill things and take their stuff aspect of other games is largely absent thanks to the setting and some really cool rules subssytems (Rewards and Virtues).

You are in luck though. TORs combat system is loads of fun, fast and interesting

Ha!

I love that armor has such an impact on endurance. It seems to help push the idea of day to day travel isn't done in heavy chain, but in some leather. And maybe some chain is available for the big fights that gets carried on a pony to keep the weight from being an issue.

It takes some adjustment for someone like me who comes from the D&D/Pathfinder background where my characters tend to seek out the best armor one can get. I like it!

I wouldn't put it that way myself lol, heavy armour makes no difference when travelling. It is when you are in the fight that heavy armour becomes the blessing and the curse.

A blessing due to the protection value, but the curse because the higher your armour protection, the less endurance damage you can take before you become weary. As soon as you are weary you fairly quickly find the combat effectivelness drops nicely.

There are ways around this; 1) find a middle ground armour, bear in mind your maximum endurance value and the rest of your wargear and find the one that gives the best protection while leaving at least a reasonable amount of free endurance to lose in combat without becoming weary too quickly. 2) Get the cunning make reward on a peice of equipment, this lowers the gears encumberance by 2. 3) Be a dwarf with as high a heart score as you can manage as dwarves remove their heart score (not favoured heart) from their total fatigue score.

E

I guess my thought was that failed fatigue checks simply during travel are apt to have greater effect if traveling in the heavier armors as your fatigue score will already start out markedly higher. Possibly putting you in a greater chance of entering an encounter already fatigued if the journey has been long or one of many fatigue checks along the way.

No, the fatigue you get for failed travel rolls does add to your total fatigue at the end of your journey and therefore adds to the fatigue from your wargear. But the wargear fatigue does not count for travel rolls themselves.

That said, there is nothing to say you couldn't house rule it if you prefered. For the most part I would be inclined to wait until you see how the game goes before house rules but if you are sure of what you want to do and the players have no problem with it then do what makes sense for your game.

E

I love the complexity this creates. Armour type, a shield or not, and which weapons becomes an interesting choice. For my first session we played the pregens, but looking forward to seeing what choices they make for our first proper game.

I think I might be confused on fatigue checks. Let me see if posting through it helps.

Using Beli the Dwarf who has a Fatigue of 20 (mattock at 3, short sword at 1 and coat of mail at 16, helm at 6 - but has Redoubtable which subtracts favoured Heart to final fatigue rating according the character sheet).

Beli needs to make a fatigue check in the summer and fails. So when the next episode begins he will have a fatigue of 21 and endurance of 31. Am I correct so far?

If Beli instead was wearing a leather corslet his fatigue would be 12 (mattock at 3, short sword at 1 and coat of mail at 8, helm at 6 - but has Redoubtable which subtracts favoured Heart to final fatigue rating according the character sheet).

Beli needs to make a fatigue check in the summer and fails. So when the next episode begins he will have a fatigue of 13 and endurance of 31. Am I still on the right track?

Totally agreed. I don't like to house rule anything until I understand the rules as written and have seen them in action.

That's how I interpretted the rules!

On an extended journey with multiple Travel checks, the Fatigue may build up, but it's not applied until the next (non-journey) phase.

In Autumn and Winter the Fatigue would increase by 2 instead of 1.

Ironwolf is bang on. You store your chain in your castle and pull it out for battle or when mounted. When travelling Leather is best unless you are a Dwarf or expecting trouble.

My players discovered that less armor is better. Until they encounter a powerful enemy with a greater chance of piercing them, they will probably continue to wear leather, as it allows for more Endurance loss before becoming Weary. It also allows for more treasure to be carried.

They also decided to not have certain weapons, even though they have the skill to use them. This lowered their Fatigue some.

The helm is a great option, as it only adds 6 Fatigue, but gives a +4 bonus to Parry. It can also be taken off to lower Fatigue by 3 if needed. With Cunning Make, the helm's Encumbrance is only 4 and with Close-fitting it adds another +1 to Parry. And these Rewards can be chosen multiple times each.

The game has been designed to improve the use of armor with experience (if Rewards are taken).

Thanks for your response, it is interesting to hear some actual play experience!

+4 to Protection, not Parry. It's actually an expensive option as Armour adds a d6 for 4 Fatigue. But you have more flexibility during combat.

It did me a great image of a warrior parrying blows with his head though

And remember that a d6 while weary has a 50% chance of being a zero, while a +4 is always a +4

You made me laugh Skywalker! I think one of my heroes may try it sometime

Yes, each time I said Parry, I meant Armour (the subject of the thread).

So, if the Encumbrance of a helm is 6, to me it is worth the +4 bonus to Armour protection against a wound. That's like having a guaranteed roll of 4 on a d6.

Then, subtract 2 from Encumbrance for each instance of Cunning Make, and add +1 more to Armour for each instance of Close-fitting.

It would only take spending 57 Experience Points (at least 29 sessions of adventuring) to acquire a helm that had an Encumbrance of 0 and a +6 bonus to Armour (the equivalent of a guaranteed 6 on a d6 for protection). When you're checking my math, I have assumed that Valor was chosen from the beginning and the player-hero had chosen Cunning Make or Close-fitting as a reward.

Question #1: Can an item drop below 0 in Encumbrance and become a magical item that lowers your Fatigue?

Question #2: Can you find an item that already has these special rewards attached, say from a hero that has died?

Although it would be funny, I suspect that you can't lower an item below 0, Edit I had said because you can only take cunning make once but having checked I find that you can do so three times. I still however believe that it wouldn't work that way lol. Besides you may as well put it on another piece of equipment.

That would be up to the Loremaster, it is a sticky one though. Technically they could gain another item which belonged to a deceased hero if they took reward and selected the item (if the item has more than one effect on it it might be worth more than one reward). I have seen a suggestion that you could provide these items without having them as a reward but they can be lost unlike rewards.

E

I agree with what's been said so far, as being the correct interpretation of the rules as written, and the interesting decision-making it presents to the Player-Heroes.

But the key item setting the tone of that Tolkien-feel we're wanting to recreate is the way none of the Fellowship of the Ring opted to wear armour whilst journeying except Gimli the Dwarf.* (Frodo's epic-quality mithril mailshirt dpesn't count, as it surely had even more than the three levels of 'cunning-make' allowed in TOR Set 1.)
They also do not wear leather armour for Journeying,** and nor did Thorin's Company in TH.
1. This does point to armour affecting the Fatigue accrued on a Journey.
2. It kinda points to even leather armour affecting the Fatigue accrued on a Journey.

I'm a bit concerned that the 6 pre-generated characters basically all wear Leather Corslets or more, pointing to the inevitability of combat and significant risk of Piercing blows that require Protection Rolls. I guess this is just a truism of most RPGing, and that we should conclude that the fact of the Fellowship's not wearing even leather just shows how awesome they are.
(But it looks to me like your Parry is fixed at character creation, so it's not like novice Player-Heroes start off relying on armour, but look forward to advancing until they can eventually trust to their greater skill instead...)

I'm tempted to build on TOR's excellent design philosophy here with house-rules to get even closer to the books... But I hardly think Francesco and co. didn't already try that. Maybe there aren't enough Endurance Points in play to allow room for this. Or maybe it was seen as more number-crunching than it was worth. I should play it straight before thinking about making changes.
But c'mon, playtesters, what does your experience of the gameplay give us to work with?


Though it's a film interpretation more than an original book thing, the way Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli armour up for the battle of Helm's Deep is a great moment. And TOR supports it perfectly with the way Player-Heroes are assumed to be able to get their hands on wargear as required without worrying over book-keeping costs.
So I like the idea that you don full armour for pitched battle, like Skywalker says for defending your castle, or like IronWolf's earlier suggestion that you put your armour on a pony while you're travelling, and don it when anticipating serious fighting. (Though you you wouldn't want some Hazard to result in that pony getting lost... )
And I like even more the fact that this may lead to some fights (e.g. from Hazards, or from devious adventure-design) being fought relatively unarmoured, and others in full wargear.

Cheers!
--Os.

* In addition to 'Redoubtable', Dwarves also get a good Travel rating, making them less prone to having Journeys add to their base Fatigue. But where you want a high Travel skill for the person acting as Guide in your Journeying Company, I'm not sure that the Dwarf should always be the guy.
** On a canon-reading note, Tolkien appears to use the word "armour" only for mail, and not to count people wearing only leather as "armoured".
We might therefore tenuously argue that any leather worn by the Fellowship didn't count as armour in his mind, and they might have had it without it meriting a specific mention in the text...

From the Adventurer's Book, p.136:

You can however select Cunning Make multiple times (maximum 3 qualities per piece of equipment) since it's not a unique Quality.

Amado.

Whoops! I should have been more careful in my reading before posting. I don't know what's happening with my brain lately. Amado, thanks for clearing this up. So, an item can only have three Qualities assigned to it and possibly a Cultural Reward.

To amend my calculations then, the best you could do is... a) Choose Cunning Make 3 times to reduce a helm's Encumbrance to 0, making it an object of worth. b) Choose Close-fitting 3 times, adding +3 to the helm's +4 Protection bonus, for a total of +7 Protection bonus against Piercing attacks. This would indeed be an object of worth!

You would accomplish either of these options by spending 16 Experience Points to raise your Valour to a rating of 4 (after having chosen Valour 2 at character creation). This would take a minimum of 8 gaming sessions.

Personally, I would probably take Cunning Make 2 times and Close-fitting once. This would give the helm 2 Encumbrance and a total of +5 Protection.

Question: If you reduce the Encumbrance of a helm by choosing Cunning Make, does the benefit of removing your helm in combat go away? Or can you lower your Fatigue by a lower amount than 3...say half of the helm's new Encumbrance (rounded up)?

And remember that a d6 while weary has a 50% chance of being a zero, while a +4 is always a +4


So even protections rolls are affected by being weary, right?

Emphasis mine. I don't really know how much clearer than that it can get.

Good question indeed!
Protection isn't just armour, as you can spend Hope to add your Body attribute bonus to the Protection roll.
I'd usually(?) interpret this as using the agility component of your Body for a 'semi-dodge': not moving enough to avoid the blow, but enough to take it on -- or deflect it off -- a properly-armoured portion of your body, or keeping any chinks in your armour out of harm's way.

That leaves it open enough to say that Weary defenders suffer. But it'd be good to have this confirmed. It gives Weary characters a strong reason to get right out of combat a.s.a.p.!

Cheers,
--Os.

Protection rolls ARE affected by weariness, exactly for the reasons listed by Osric.

Francesco