I can't complete figure out the way the advancement points works.

How many XP points you usually gives in each session? How many advancement points each player get at each session in average?

Can you use XP to level up common skills or you can only use advancement points?

Advancement points are used to raise common skills only.

Experience points are used to raise Wisdom/Valour and weapon skills only.

There is no average advancement points per session as these are player driven via their traits. The system has a in-built way of ensuring that this doesn't get abused by making each skill group only capable of earning three advancement points and the bar raises with each one. See page 30 of the Loremaster Book for more detail. If I had to take a guess I would assume that most players would earn around 3 or 4 Advancement points per session.

Experience points tend to average at around 2 per session. See page 17 of the Loremaster Book for more detail. You award 1 XP at the end of a session and a second XP if the PCs have made significant progress toward the completion of the chosen Company objective. At the end of a story, there is a further award at approximately 1 for every 2 sessions.

I have always thought that the cost to raise Valour,Wisdom and the weapon skills are a little too low.

I agree that the way it is as stated in the rules, weapon skills, valor and wisdom go up a bit fast for my liking. I also find that the common skills take a lot longer to increase because they cost a lot more advancement points and there are so many skills you would want to raise

Personally I do deviate from the rules.... give only 1 xp per session, my sessions are only about 3 hours on average anyway, Also I give maybe 2 at the end of a story, so on average I give about 1.3 with about 3 session per story on average.

I also find that I don't hand out enough advancement points because I'm too busy trying to tell a great story so at the end of the game I therefore have started to hand out extra advancement points at teh end of the session to the players that didn't remind me they deserved some so everyone gets on average about 3 or 4 advancement points every game. If I did it just based on what I granted during play I would be giving way too few, maybe 0 to 2 per game. One thing I find is some players harasss me for advancment points whenever they use a skill and other never ask for them, and being busy trying to put ona show and keep everyone entertained people miss out. It would take a long long time to raise a skill from 2 to 3 ranks in this way! I'll often base the number on how much common skills were utilized.

Same here. We play often, and I can see a time, in a few months, when some characters reach max Valour or max Wisdom. I don't really like the idea of characters hitting a ceiling. I would allow them to go higher than 6 in Valour/Wisdom, but what about the fear and corruption rolls?

Also, when I'm playing NPCs, I rarely give them 6 weapon dice. In "the Marsh Bell", I gave Balin 4 dice, and the players found him strong enough. Now, after only a few years of game time, they all have 4 dice, and enough XP to reach 5 if they want to, during the next fellowship phase. Maybe I'm giving them too much XP, but it seems a bit fast.

I also agree, and I'll give you my house-rules.

Weapon Skill 5 and 6 cannot be just "purchased".

-in order to reach weapon skill 5, I have ruled that you need to be spending your fellowship phase at a sanctuary suited to raise the weapon skill to 5. (Each sanctuary thus has different attributes and allows for different weapon skills to be raised. Example, Beorn's house has warriors that can help you reach Spears to 5. Woodmen Town has Axemen that can teach 5 in Axes, etc.)

-in order to reach weapon skill 6, I have ruled that you need to spend a fellowship phase meeting with a patron, who allows you to train with an appropriate grand-master of said weapon type. (Each patron thus is keyed to different attributes. For example, Glorfindel at Rivendell might be able to teach Swords to rank 6. Beorn might have a Thane who can teach Axes to 6, etc.)

This requires my players to plan out their fellowship phases and s, which I like (and I think they like it too. The "leveling" process then becomes a bit more...dare I say..strategic, which is a part of TOR that I LOVE!...you can't just "level up" in the middle of a dungeon.)

For Advancement Points, i too have found that AP's are not being requested at the right rate. So here is what I do: Players will underline their favored skill groups from their Calling. Any time they get an advancement point in a favored skill from their favored skill group, they get a bonus 1 "Generic" AP that they record on the back of their character sheet. This AP can be used in any common skill. It reflects the confidence and synergistic learning curve they get to take advantage of from being successful in a skill they are good at. (Kind of like if you get really good at Piano, it becomes easier to learn Sax)

I was just reading the rules today and I definitely skipped this one - and I wasn't using it in the previous games, so it seems my poor players are underexperienced . In which rulebook is it?

When it comes to raising combat skills, valour, and wisdom, it doesn't seem too easy for me - I play short campaigns, though, and I've never GMed one longer than 11 sessions. In The One Ring, it seems just enough time to develop a combat skill from 3 to 5. Still, I really like Rocmistro's rules of advancement, I think that they are great for the feel of the game.

Thanks Squid.

And there are a number of reasons I do this:

1. To encourage players to be more well-rounded than super-specialists. To me, Tolkien's heroes seemed to be more "generalists" than "specialists". Sure, there were instances of specialization; Gimli with his Axe and Legolas with Bow, but I think in general no one was the "Defender" or the "Attacker" to use 4th ed paradigms/roles that I shudder at. The Feat Die + Hope Points means that you can actually diversify your skill portfolio and have a lot of skills with only 1 or 2 ranks and still hope to be successful much of the time.

2. To give more structure to Patrons and Sanctuaries. A lot of new people on here have asked what the real benefit is of having a patron or being at a certain sanctuary. By giving "attributes" to those concepts, you can make them much more valuable. Not the players have a meta-motivation for doing Elrond's quest or whatever....to get weapon skill 6! I find RPGs work best when both Player and Character have motivation for doing something.

3. To give me something to do when I'm bored at work. When I work on home-brew rules, I feel like I'm constantly playing the game, even if only in my own head :-)

4. For AP's, because, as stated below, I feel the habits and paradigms of past RPG's have made it very difficult for my players to think in terms of *claiming* Advancement Points. They need a little booster. I also felt it's a shame that after character creation, the favoured skill groups that go along with your calling never get used. Speaking of that...and maybe I'll discuss this in another thread, do any of you feel there is no rhyme or reason why the favoured skill groups were picked for each calling as they are. Why does a Slayer have personality as favoured skill group?

To take Awe as favoured, probably .

To me, roles don't influence who the characters are very much. Races are much more important. Still, it does feel Tolkienian to me - like you mentioned, there aren't many specialists out there.

Page 17 of the LMB. Its bolded about half way down the left hand column and takes up the second half of that section.

To me a Slayer should be more about movement and survival.

Not sure what you mean by "Roles" but I think that "Calling" should have a much bigger impact than it does. After character creation, it accounts for very little.

Callings also come into play determining Shadow Weaknesses, which could come into play if the PCs start getting Shadow points.

So last Spring when I was running my full time TOR campaign, awarding Advancement Points was a topic of much discussion and confusion. I have kept a messageboard like this one for many years for my games, and therein, I have stored many discussions, rule-changes or clarifications, and of course, important info for players.

On this board I created and posted a "rule-of-thumb" 1-2-3 basics of what/how to earn Advancement Points and what (more) is required as you add a second and third point into the same skill group.

This has proven a helpful guideline since then. Take a gander if you want my input on the whole thing - so far it's helped us tremendously. YMMV.

http://z6.invisionfree.com/World_Of_Mydian...?showtopic=2218