Hello all ! it's a simple question, really...

I was wondering about the berserk cultural blessing. does it activate when you get Wounded (with a capital "W") or as soon as you're hit by any attack and lose stamina ?

Given the other typos and errors throughout the book, i'm really not sure about this one, since it changes everything about the blessing.

Thanks ! And thank you for that game, perhaps the only one that was able to make me accept a tactical approach towards battles (i'm more of a freestyle guy) because it remained very simple.

You have to actually take a wound. In our experience it's quite possibly the weakest of the cultural virtues, simply because wounds haven't been occurring that often (and they rarely happen at the beginning of a combat) and so it hasn't come into play very much. In our last session the Beorning was wounded by a fall right before combat, which basically screwed him out of his virtue. Over the course of the 4 or 5 sessions we've played, it's only come into play once.

yeah I agree.

The first time around with one player I made him activate it as soon as he lost a few stamina and it was very very powerful.

Then last week I had a different player, and treated it as needing a Wound, and it didn't come into play at all.

Wee,

maybe you can try a compromise: the Virtue is triggered when the Hero takes a Wound OR a Great/Exceptional blow.

That or an "eye" result from opponent, regardless whether the protection test is succeeded or not.

I like both of these. In any case, RAW the virtue triggers far too infrequently, and the "takes endurance damage" interpretation makes it far too powerful. I would definitely prefer a middle ground, and one of these two proposed house rules would probably be a good compromise (though it's hard to say which would strike the best balance, I'd be inclined to lean toward the Eye, with G/E successes likely being a bit too common).

In our game, on more than one occasion, the Beorning has gone into combat and pushed straight to the front, in the hopes of getting Wounded and going berserk.
It made for an interesting sort of strategy, as if he got hurt badly without being wounded, he was in trouble...

I suspect that the designers wanted to keep a Beorning's Berserk rage as a relatively uncommon event. Wouldn't it devalue the dramatic impact if it occurred all the time?

If the sagas are to be believed, Viking berserks would spend time before a battle chewing hypnotic fungus and getting themselves worked up for the coming fight. It wasn't simply a case of them pushing a button and suddenly going into an unbridled frenzy. The whole spectacle may even have been reserved for big battles, rather than the small scale skirmishes represented by most of the fights in TOR.

Berserkers also had a habit of going into battle stripped to the waist or even naked ('sky-clad' to import a wonderfully evocative Celtic expression). In game terms fighting unarmoured would increase the chances of being wounded and going berserk.

So if you want more berserk episodes lose the armour - it works both mechanically and thematically without having to change the core rules.

In my game the Beorning has failed to berserk over the course of the campaign so far.

I was thinking of allowing him to berserk if one of the Fellowship falls in combat (unconscious, dying or dead) or he takes a wound himself.

Not sure if that will be too common though, so I may try it out and adapt on the fly.

If it is too common, maybe only when the Fellowship Focus is wounded or knocked out, but as his focus is the halfling who snipes from the rear, that's not going to be often.

Sky-clad is actually a Hindu term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digambar

Ah, mea culpa! Thanks for the Wikipedia link.

In my defence I have only ever seen this expression used in connection with Celtic fanatics and Gaesatae who fought in battle naked.

It's obviously a widely held connection too if you do a quick Internet search. I think the modern popularity of the expression may come from the 2000AD character Slaine as it was used there to describe the practice of fighting au naturel, as it were.

For what it's worth, according to Wiki, the expression is also used by neo-pagans and Wiccans, so may not be exclusive to Hinduism.

Still think it's a fab expression, wherever it comes from!

BTW am I missing something or isn't the Cultural Blessing actually called "Furious"?

Presumably the designers didn't mean it as an all-out berserk rage given the careful choice of name.

Yes, it is furious...

As the original posting referred to it as Berserk, and so did everyone else, it made sense to use the term Berserk rather than potentially confuse by adding Furious to the mix.

But you're right, one of us should have made the correction at some point.

The beorning battle cry is, 'Don't make me angry! You won't like me when I'm angry!'

I love the Slaine comics and loved the roleplaying game by Mongoose Publishing as well. I don't know how well it caught on over the pond as it was overtly Celtic and OTT in tone. I know of several groups here who absolutely loved it. Ireland, eh?

Anyhow, I imagine that Hulk Hogan would make a fantastic Beorning.

No problem, I hope I didn't sound as if was scolding or being a prig. It is an great term and it would be interesting to do a cross cultural sky clad index. Hmmm...

I was able to play in a brief Slaine campaign. It was very over the the top but great fun. I don't think most Americans ever really caught on to it.

Sky clad is a wonderfully poetic term. I don't recommend it for adventuring garb though.

Not at all!

In fact I learnt a few things as a result