I have been looking everywhere through the core books and can not seem to find a reference for how many Fellowship points you should start out with. Does anyone know where to find it or is it LM call?

I don't remember where it's stated, but it's one for every member of the group.

A shared pool of 1 point per character, plus another 1 for each Hobbit in the group. The pool refreshes each session (or at convenient break points in a long session). There's a section in the adventurers book describing the Fellowship pool, but can't give an exact reference atm.

All right thanks. I might give them an extra point or two because two of the players are new to RPGs and there are only three total players - meaning they will have to burn through some Hope during Fatigue tests because they will always have one position unoccupied.

The Relevant sections of the Adventurer's Book:

p62 for 'Hobbit-sense' Cultural Blessing

p81 for a company's starting Fellowship Rating

pp105-106 on Fellowship Points

Robin S

One thing that was unclear to me - if a new PC joins between Fellowship phases, can they join the Fellowship and add points to the pool, or does that only happen when the fellowship is formed? I've been assuming that they can join at any point, but it occurred to me that it might be intended to be the other way round.

I don't think it's explicit in the books. I add and remove as characters leave the fellowship. If the party splits for any length of time, then the pool would split also. This represents the members of the company helping each other out.

I have ruled it that the fellowship points generated are from who is present at the beginnig of the Session, including PCs who are run by the Loremaster as NPCs because the player could not make it.

So if you had 2 hobbits an elf and a dwarf session 1, that's 6 points.

Session 2, the elf player can't make it, but asks, don't play my PC, and one of the Hobbits doesn't make it, but doesn't care, then the group has 5 fellowship.