At laat nights game the heroes were being pursued by 12 orcs. They managed to kill two with ranged while the heroes contined to avoid a head to head confrontatioon of the heroes with no ranged capability finally stood his ground to try to intimidate the final 10.

By the RAW the TN was a paltry 12 since the attribute rating of the standard orc was 2.

The player has two success dice and managed a 12 in total but got a greater success which removes 2 hate points. The orcs only have 2 hate points and Craven trait forcing them to flee upon being reduced to 0.

I saw nothing to dispute tha ALL enemies were effected. If so thats entirely powerful of an action. What if there were 20 orcs? What if there were 100? What if there was antire unit of1000 orcs (assuming no leader with a higher attribute.)

Has anyone else encountered such situations? Was this being handled correctly or did i miss something? How many enemies should be possibly affected by one elf?

My reading of the action is that the lost hate points are distributed amongst the monsters from the line:

"The Loremaster assigns the Hate point loss in any way he sees fits"

So if the player gets a great success, the monsters would lose two hate points - distributed between them (So enough for one Orc to flee).

Mark

I agree with your reading and that's how we've been playing it.

It also makes intimidating basically worthless.

Against scrubs, you're going to get one, maybe two...which you could simply kill.

Against major enemies, you'll put a tiny dent in their Hate pool, so it's likely better to just physically hurt/wound them.

As someone whose character is a master at intimidation...just stab the bad guy. It's terrible strategy to lower your TN to be hit just so you can make one scrub run away.

There does seem to be a fine point of balance here between the heroic, the silly spandex hero, and the laughably weak.

The mighty warrior faces down the oncoming Orc horde with a steely gaze and grim resolve. He sounds the Horn of Gondor, raises high his Elvish blade and... The hosts of Morder break and run from him? A couple of lesser snagas slink away from the back of the bunch while the rest gleefully charge? The orcs advance undaunted, their resolve barely weakend? The host pauses momentarily filled with dread and awe of the hero who stands before them?

The last option seems the most true to Tolkien. The others are either ridiculously over powered or so weak as to be effectively useless. Twenty orcs or eighteen doesn't strike me as a significant difference. One hero scaring away twenty orcs in a group doesn't make a lot of sense either. If you still face twenty orcs but a couple of them are a bit less enthusiastic you might have been better off using a bow or throwing spear to kill or wound a couple of them instead. Holding up the orcs while your companions have a chance to flee, take up a better combat stance, or give you time to make a properly heroic last stand of it seems better.

I think of the last stand of Boromir as an example, or even Gandalf facing the Balrog. They did not drive off the foe completely, but they did hold it up. The Witchking did similarly on the fields of Pelanor just before his unfortunate demise.

That is also my interpretation.

*Our GM has let us do this instead of the "two orcs in the back break and run" thing.

He's also had a band of 10 or so raiders flee once we told them who we were and what what would happen if they didn't.

So, I need to amend my statement. We haven't been playing RAW for intimidate, we've been ignoring the RAW for intimidate.

I don't want to seem like I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but all of the references to adversaries in those paragraphs are plural. Combat encounters generally have a limited number of opponents (<25-ish) so perhaps a per creature reference was inferred?

The possibility of opposing very large groups of opponents (like TfW's) might not have been considered.

And, as stated, this would represent Tolkien's heroic style.

I was wondering about how intimidate actually plays out in actual game situations. I agree with what Pathstrider reading of the rules.

Another thing to keep in mind is that orcs with commanding voice can give hate pts back to their fellows.

I don't know if it will ever play out like this but I quite like the idea of the whole fellowship striding forward and intimidating their adversaries and several orcs quailing in fear/on the cusp of fleeing, then a mighty orc captain steps forward and restores order. I just think it could be a cool scene.

The way that I see it is that intimidating a craven foe should be roughly equivalent to doing damage against, cause either way you're taking them out of the fight. Given that, I think the action is roughly right - it's actually a bit better against an Orc archer or soldier as you'd probably need two hits (or a great success) to take one out and intimidate raises the possibility of taking out more than one at a time. Since you have to take an forward stance, and risk losing hope, that sounds about right to me.

Against non-craven foes, it's less easy to compare but you get the chance to do several things that you can't just do by hitting them. Firstly, you potentially reduce the nasty abilities they can use against you from the Hate they could have spent. Secondly, you can make them weary which could be critical when fighting a monster with Great size where you need to get them to fail an armour check.

Mark

I see this as being how I would play it. Depending on the type of orc I can absolutely see 10 orcs fleeing from three or more heroes. Maybe even two or one, depending on the Intimidate roll.