Jepp, it's me again.

Another design choice I was wondering about:

Why is Endurance not linked to Body instead of Heart, including recovery?

It makes more sense to me that a strong and healthy character (= high Body score) could:
1) fight longer (higher Endurance)
2) carry more without becoming exhausted (higher Endurance, thus it takes longer to drop to Fatigue Threshold)
3) recover from exhaustion and wounds (... self-explanatory)

With this it would be:
Body - Endurance
Heart - Hope
Wits - Parry


Thoughts?

I see Endurance being tied to Heart as being summoning the will to carry on, even when tired. It's not physical strength, it's mental.

Yeah sure, I DO understand the idea behind using Heart, BUT I wonder if Body wouldn't be the better fit.

Gamingly speaking, I don't think so.
Because then, Body would be a king attribute fot fighting (which, let's face it, is mechanically important in a game).
While in the rules, all the three attributes are useful (Body for the skill, Heart for the endurance and Wits for the parry).

I think it can be debatable, but the designers of ToR made a few choices whereas Heart is what makes you stronger in the end. I think it goes well with the Heart as the gift-of-man" theme. Dwarves may have a high base Endurance, but Men stand because of their high Heart ratings.

This reminds me of my boxing instructor who use to tell me that he wasn't so much looking for strength but someone with "du coeur au ventre" (heart in the belly), which in french means both "guts" and "determination".

I think this is also why Heal is a Heart skill, whereas most other games would have made it a Wits skill; its the empathy with your patient that will, in the end, make the difference between a fail check or a narrow success.

I think the point here (as with all of TOR) is that the rules support the themes of the setting. In fact they do it exceptionally well. I appreciate that on first glance this may make the game seem idiosyncratic and even arbitrary at times however once you starting playing you'll see how well it works in practice. I would be very wary about changing rules without having even played a game yet. It's an extremely elegant ruleset to my mind.

Well as I see it, the ability to keep standing and fighting due to a strong will is expressed by Hope!

A character with a high Body and low Heart would be tough and all (high Endurance, higher bonus when spending Hope on attacks), but wouldn't be able to use Hope that often.

On the other hand, a character with lower Body but high Heart, might be weaker under normal circumstances, but his will enables him to tap into his inner reserves more often.

------------

BTW:
Can I use Hope for more than just triggering an Attribute bonus during combat (or anywhere)?
e.g. weakening a blow or something like that?

But Hope doesn't refresh faster for characters with high Heart.
Your solution may be balanced in the beginning of a campain, but when Hope becomes low (and it becomes low, at least if they face challenging tasks), the character with high Body will have a significant advantage.

Heya DracoDruid!

(P.S. Could have we met over Paizo's Forum? Do you use the same avatar there?)

As others have mentioned; your game, your rules. But here's my 2 cents on the subject:

Body does not have to be all about strength and stamina. It can also mean physical appearance, eyesight, agility or even the sound of your voice. But most importantly, Attributes should not be seen as "how your are" but "what kind of resources your can draw in times of need". Body serves few purposes until you spend hope to invoke it as a bonus but as default, a high body score does not make you a better Athlete, singer or craftsman. So a hobbit isn't a character who isn't agile nor physically charming, its a character that doesn't rely on its agility or charm to make it succeed when he would have otherwise failed.

From that "resources that you can draw" principle, I find it easy to accept that Heart contributes to both Endurance and Hope. In a purely mechanical standpoint, I find it fitting that elves are not made the ultimate fighting machine because of high Body and Wits, and I like that Men (in which I include hobbits) have something that Elves and Dwarves have not (high Heart) and therefore a good contribution to their Endurance and Hope (unlike Dwarves who have high Endurance because their starting score is high).

Also, while I could see your point about will to keep standing and fighting represented through Hope, I find that Hope points are too precious of a resource (as they refresh really slow) to work that way in gameplay.

Could things have worked differently? I think so, but I find the current system thematically appropriate and mechanically satisfying. That being said, I have to say that it took me two or three games to "see the point" of some rules and mechanical choices that the designers made.

'findel

Heya to you too!
(Yes it's the me - What is your name over there? - Laurefindel?)

Oh well, you know. I don't really care that much about this topic to be honest.

But as a hobby game designer myself I can't help myself and always stumble upon design choices and ask myself: "Why did they chose to do it like this, and not like that?"
You know?

I just like messing with rules.
For me it's just as much part of this hobby as is the actual playing.

So, have fun you all and cheers!

Yes!

Oh I definitely understand that!