Until now I thought that the fatigue threshold of a character is simply his total encumbrance. But today I read the adventurers book page 76 once again and now I am confused. There is written that the encumbrance of weapons, armour, helms and shields determines a hero's fatigue threshold. And there is written that the encumbrance of a travelling gear is only taken into consideration, if you use the journey rules.

Does this mean that the fatigue rating is total encumbrance WITHOUT travelling gear? Does this make sense?

For evey fatigue (Travel) roll failed in Autumn / Winter a character gains 2 fatigue.
For evey fatigue (Travel) roll failed in Fall / Summer a character gains 1 fatigue.

I was confused about this at first too. Traveling gear doesn't really have encumbrance. You don't carry it in encounters. The only effect it has is to add 1 or 2 to your fatigue when you fail a travel test.

hmmm I could see adding the weight of the gear into encumbrance due to the wording of page 76.

"Winter traveling gear for one character has an encumberance of 2" seems to indicate that it does have weight for the character.

But then in looking at example character sheets in the AB none of those characters have traveling gear listed in their gear or a factor of 1 or 2 added to them.

It seems kind of odd that this would be free encumberance when you think about it though.

Its confusing (not really odd)

It has been clarified by Amado (Francesco approved). Travelling Gear is just the "mechanic" that determines the increase in Fatigue from failed Travel rolls.

Thank you guys for the answers. Then I did this wrong with my groups. We added the travel gear to the encumbrance until now.
I don't think that this rule is odd. It might feel odd at first for people which are used to "counting" things in their RPG's. But with TOR, we don't count arrows and coins and how many forks somebody has in his travel gear. And that's one of the things which I love about the game. And if you think about it from the movie perspective: Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are hunting Uruk Hais for many days, but do they have big bag packs? Does their travel gear hinder them when fighting? Does Legolas ever run out of arrows? Maybe he does, if the Loremaster tuns it into an element of his story. Otherwise he will not.

Sorry for the confusion! The wording for travelling gear is a carryover from an earlier iteration of the rules, where you actually added it to your Fatigue rating all the time.

Francesco

Ah, but think about it from the "book perspective": Aragorn makes it clear that they should only bring what they can carry and are sure to need. They're close to running out of supplies once they get to Fangorn. Legolas does indeed run out of arrows at Helm's Deep.

I also like the flexability of the TOR rules in terms of gear, however, the concept of universals has troubled me. The arrows analogy is a great example, & I'm glad that Stormcrow mentions Legolas at Helm's Deep.

For whatever it's worth, I'd recommend that you follow the rules until such time as you have a lengthy journey with multiple fatigue/travel hazard failures triggering multiple battles - a rarity but a possiblity. In this instance, it's probably not a bad idea to do some minimal bean counting in terms of the number of arrows.

In most games my group house rules that you're character runs out of ammo on a botch. We'll probably use that for this game. Any ranged combatant that fails a roll and gets an eye out sauron has used his last arrow.

Capt. Poe,

You make a great suggestion & I think I'm going to use this as you describe, plus possibly during other similar circumstances.

We don't want to lose the feel of TOR & Middle-earth by making this simply another RPG with endless rules & die-rolls, & resolving these types of situations into single rolls/botches works superbly to keep the epic flavor.

Mim,
I agree 100%. I am leaning more and more to keeping combat abstract and as streamlined as possible. I agree that walking down the path of rolemaster combat would be a shotgun to the face of this elegant unique system as it stands now.

Hey, that one caught me by surprise! I too have been making the players add at least one to their fatigue at all times for their travelling gear. I should have clicked when I noticed the online character sheet doesn't do that!

I must say, I like this idea as well using the Eye and a failed rolled to signal something. Anything that takes away number counting in detail works well with my LM style. And, their are better things to focus on the exact number of arrows in a quiver for example. I might suggest to my players that they need to weave into their player-heroes post combats actions, the intention to at least try and collect spent but reusable arrows. That is, if the circumstances permit such narrative detail.

Otherwise, they may find they used their last arrow on a successful roll that also included an Eye. Woops, cavalier attitudes usually lead to the worst timing for something to go wrong in my campaigns, especially when it is an attempt to take advantage of a rule.

Thanks Captian P. for voicing that in your post. This might be my first house rule...

Telcontar,

You succinctly summarize TOR with your choice of words: "elegant."

Exactly!