Hello again.

I would like to present my Free-Form System for The One Ring.

I did something similar as Dragon Age RPG came out and I wondered, to get to know a new system, strict corsetts suchs as classes, race-packages and the like are nice and simple, but given some experience, they become more of a restriction than helpful.

So I took to the time and calculated all cultures and backgrounds and callings and came to some nice conclusions:

CULTURE
29 Common Skill EXP
1 Favored Skill
10 Weapon Skill EXP
2 Specialty-Traits
1 Cultural Blessing
Access to specific cultural rewards/virtues
Specific Endurance/Hope (With Hope x2 => either 38 or 40 points)

BACKGROUND
14 Attribute Points
1 Favored Skill
2 Distinct Features

CALLING
2 Favored Skills
1 Specialty-Trait
1 Shadow-Weakness

CUSTOMIZATION
Favored Attributes (3/2/1)
10 Skill EXP
2+1 Valor/Wisdom


SUMMARY
1. Choose one Culture/Race
- get corresponding Cultural Blessing
- get access to corresponding Cultural Virtues/Rewards

2. Distribute 14 Attribute points (Body, Heart, Wits)
- assign Favored Attribute Bonuses (+3/+2/+1)

3. Distribute 47 EXP on Common Skills & Weapon Skills
- you automatically start with Dagger 1
- you may have 1 weapon group OR 1 favored weapon

4. Assign 4 Favored Common Skills

5. Choose 3 Specialty-Traits

6. Choose 2 Distinctive Features

7. Choose 1 Shadow Weakness

8. Distribute 39 Endurance/Hope points
- each point of Hope costs 2 points

9. Gain Valor 2 / Wisdom 1 OR Valor 1 / Wisdom 2
- Choose a starting Reward/Virtue

10. Choose Starting Equipment

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The only thing I could not really calculate where the Cultural Blessings. It is hard to tell if all of them are considered of equal power. If not however, the only thing that might balance them are the corresponding cultural rewards/virtues and/or the Endurance/Hope points.

I really would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks for reading and greetings from Germany!

-- DracoDruid

Greetings, Draco!

Looks like you did a lot of work figuring out the various amounts allocated to each! The only one of these I really allowed my players to do was the basic Attributes. I gave them the option - in cases where they had a score that was really low (2 or 3) - to move it up by 1, at the cost of lowering one of their other (high) values by 1 as well.

Surprisingly, not a single one of them took me up on it!

I'd personally be a little reluctant to swap around some of the stuff, especially Rewards and Virtues, but also some of the stuff with Skills, just because you can tell a lot of work and care went into the assignments based on the details of those Middle-earth cultures, to make them accurate as well as balanced.

I'd be concerned that one of my players might choose to "min/max" things and make a combat monster that didn't make much sense (just as an example). An Elf with no points in Song or Lore, for example, but who has maxed out Hunting and Battle.

And the Shadow-weaknesses are very directly tied to the various Callings, in a thematic way that fits very well when you take into account from the Tolkien books.

I think the designers really did a great job of balancing things the way they made them. By doing this, they help make it so that your Elven Slayer doesn't completely outclass your Hobbit Scholar, for instance. That's one of the things that could be a problem with the last Tolkien game I played (Decipher's CODA system). One munchkin friend made an Elf battlemech (he tried to carry around a massive pile of spears, leading to the rest of us joking that he had a shoulder-mounted missile defense system), and the rules did make the Elves massively better than the other races.

But the designers of TOR really carefully balanced things. I personally think it would work better (easier, too!) to stick more with the packages recommended, but then you could allow a little bit of wiggle-room/changes, using the numbers you've come up with. I could see that working well, while still allowing your group some flexibility.

It's your game, though, so whatever allows you and your group to have fun!

One thing I noticed is that you don't account for the fact that each culture has primary, secondary and tertiary attribute scores. Obviously if you want it completely freeform you can ignore this, it's your game, but they tie into what Majestic was saying about balance, as well as thematic aspects. The favoured attributes tend to tie to the specific culture and the way they live. Other than that, I'm very intrigued

I won't lie, I've been using a similar hack (well, actually, two) for a human-only, semi-historical setting, and another for a classless B/X system I've been cobbling together - I've simply found the flavor and, to a certain extent, the mechanics, of the TOR system to be too compelling not to port parts into practically all of my games since stumbling across it this past summer.

To the OP, I've been utilizing a similar char-gen system with selection of cultural blessing, calling (keeping the selection of 2 favored skills in this category), specialties, distinctive features, rewards, and virtues (as applicable) then, allowing free selection from the 6 racial skill packages BtB (not currently using Laketown - but, will be once I get that sucker!), and random (d6) roll for both Endurance and Hope. I feel like this gives plenty of flexibility while limiting any min/max abuses in a straight point-buy system.

In fact, practically every CG selection can be randomized (even with point-buy) to provide a fairly wide array of possibilities. I've been happy with it and outside of some of the math involved in porting to and from d12+nd6 and/or d20, I think I'm probably set with a home-brew system for a long while.