While I am waiting for the editor to send corrections and busy finishing up the Appendices, I thought I would share with all of you Parts 1 and 2 of a document I've been working on since July called, "The Loremaster's Guide to Mythic Battles." Eluadin from this forum contributed as a faithful partner for a good portion of Part 2, which is the heart of the document. I owe him my full gratitude.

The purpose of the guide is to assist Loremasters in presenting large scale engagements in one of two ways: by telling the story of the battle or siege in overview (narrative time mode) or in detail (episode mode).

The first half of the document (which I will link to) deals with the subject of mythic battles and how to present them in narrative time mode by using a new set of rules we call The Battle & Siege Resolution Rules.

Feel free to comment and pick apart what we've done. If any of you want to playtest our ideas, please feel free to do that as well. Even though we went through many revisions to get to this point, this is the first time we're sharing it with you and are open to making further edits based on solid feedback.

UPDATE 12.18.2012: The document is complete.

The Loremaster's Guide to Mythic Battles (Complete!)

As always, you can also link to my TOR resources from my signature.

This post has been edited by JamesRBrown on Dec 20 2012, 12:28 PM

This looks really good. I haven't read through it yet, but based on the production values alone I have to give you two thumbs up!

Oh, ancient style warfare and siege my primary area of interest in military history. Did not have the time to go through the document in detail, but from a quick look I have to say...impressive! I'll read it tomorrow when I have more time.

This work is really cool, thanks guys.

Guys, I read your rules in one breath... you did a fantastic job! I think you really captured the spirit of the novels AND of the game as we wrote it. I always loved the battle resolution rules of games like Pendragon, but yours seem to work better at first glance, both as game mechanics and as a 'simulation' of the sources. I really want to test them asap - the only areas that are a bit unclear to me right now are how Command objectives and Commanders are meant to work. Probably objectives need to be spelt out more precisely, and to be integrated more tightly in the mechanics. But I really love everything I see... thank you very much for this!

Francesco

Francesco, thank you for the incredible words of affirmation. They mean a great deal to me and I know that Eluadin would especially appreciate them. Although I did the actual writing for this piece, he pushed me and challenged me during all of our phone conversations and emails to make sure every mechanic and term was consistent with Tolkien and TOR. It was a challenge, but you seem to think we've accomplished that task and I'm grateful.

It wasn't easy to pull off a collaborative piece. For one, Eluadin lives in Georgia (USA) and I live in Arizona (USA). We are also very different in rhythm and pace. If I dare make the comparison, I would say he is very much like Tolkien while I am more like C.S. Lewis. (This is also true of our faith). I have not heard from him in over a month now, however, and I am worried. I see our meeting in "providential light," as he once put it, and I desperately hope to hear from him soon.

In the meantime, I am carrying forward with our plan for this document, which was to offer it up for comments and playtesting before final edits and tweaks.

About Command Objectives and Commanders... Both of these items are tied together and they are both meant mainly as narrative devices. Command Objectives are basically a narration of the goals and tactics of the Free Peoples. Obviously the goal in a battle is to route the enemy, but objectives are the steps in that process.

These steps can be narrated by the Loremaster (if the commander of the Free Peoples is a Loremaster character) or one of the player-heroes (if a companion is a commander). The best way to do this is with a pre-battle speech. During an assault wave, the Free Peoples may accomplish an objective or two, which will be completely narrative in nature. The full story can be told or left in the abstract by simply saying objectives have been accomplished.

Beyond assigning areas of engagement and stating command objectives, Commanders can affect the outcomes of an assault wave in three ways, as described in the rules. They can Inspire their troops, Awe their enemies, or focus on Battle to help their troops endure.

Once I finish Part 4: Appendix B: Siege of the Goblin City, everyone should have an example of how the Battle & Siege Resolution Rules flow together.

Francesco, I think what you are saying is to clarify Command Objectives a little better? Perhaps reword the section and add an example in the text? I would like to hear your expanded thoughts about integrating the Command Objectives more tightly with the mechanics.

First off, James & Eluadin, this is really well written, well done.

I love the way you've tied thing to existing rules, rather than coming up with a load of new rules.

I agree that the command objectives part could be expanded and clarified a little, perhaps give a list of examples, eg:

Take a certain hill
Reach a river
Rescue hostages

etc

Just to give folk an idea of what you mean (I assume that part two will also have examples, but having a table nearby might be worth considering).

In regards to Battle Hazards, perhaps Secret Strike should be able to effect In Reserve and Rearguard Or maybe have another Battle Hazard that reflects an attack from behind (not sure what to call it).

Another idea for a Battle Hazard is Command Confusion (or some such) where the companions have to use skills - Inspire, Awe or some other creative use of Athletics or Craft etc to refocus their allies.


I could tell just by skim reading the pdf that this was going to be good, reading it fully I think your work is good enough to be an official supplement.

Can't wait to read the second part.

To Kaltharion, Beran, Khamul, and Poosticks7, thanks for the comments. I appreciate the feedback!

If you think of anything else (especially things that aren't clear), please let me know. Also, if you get a chance to playtest the Battle & Siege Resolution Rules, I would like to hear the results. I want to know things like, how did the Relative Strength of Numbers Table work for you? Were the Damage amounts too little, too much? Are areas of engagement clear? Were you able to use commanders effectively? Did you play a Last Stand episode?

As soon as I finish the appendices, I will post the last half of the document.

I just finished reading this, and it's brilliant. I especially love how you've given a clear use for Standing, as my players have ignored it deeming it 'unimportant'

Thank you!

Looks good to me but could you had the adapting it to the battles in the sourcebooks.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to ask or say here. Could you rephrase that for me?

In a week or so, I should have the rest of the document available. I added a couple more Appendix items and am putting the final touches on the Siege of the Goblin City. I am still waiting on the editor as well.

UPDATE: I did hear from Eluadin last week briefly. He's okay and I am relieved. He's just been terribly under the weather.

JamesRBrown,

Had a chance to read your supplement last evening -

All I can say is that I'm quite impressed. You not only laid a solid foundation in the first several pages for why and how, and stayed very true to the source material and Tolkien's worldview (and therefore, TOR itself!), but you set up a scenario for a group to create truly memorable stories.

I never thought much about how role playing can be a part of what Tolkien calls sub-creation, but I am happy to realize this, and especially to participate in a setting that calls for the defeat of evil, or puts the pcs through a struggle of hope vs despair, of corruption vs heroism.

Heroism isn't about being invincible in battle (aka 4th ed DnD), but about knowing your pc or group of pcs are very likely to die going into a battle, and going into battle anyway. There is so much pc self-preservation built into in games now . . . I love how truly dangerous and foreboding (because it is in line with Tolkien!) this battle system is.

These aren't the rules for the lighthearted. The choice to go into battle should not be an easy one for players - there should be a real cost involved.

Well done!
I hope our group can someday (soon) use this!

Wow! The rules are quite impressive.

Thank you for sharing.

ATTENTION everybody! I am pleased to announce that I have finished the document. There is still some editing to be done, but all four parts are now complete.

I made some slight changes to the Assault Wave Table and I changed 'The Rule of Three' to 'The Rule of Two.' I also clarified the 'Commanders' section by renaming it 'Player-hero Commanders.' I added a few more Appendix items, including one for Command objectives.

I am still wide open for comments. After you read through 'Siege of the Goblin City,' I would really like to know how it helped you to understand the flow of the Battle & Siege Resolution Rules.

Thank you all for your wonderful remarks! I really appreciate them.

The Loremaster's Guide to Mythic Battles

Oh, yes, WARNING PLAYERS: Don't read Part 3: Episode Mode especially. That is for Loremaster's only!!! There are some spoilers about the key battles from Words of the Wise and Tales from Wilderland and how to use them as models.

This post has been edited by JamesRBrown on Dec 19 2012, 06:18 AM

Good stuff James.

The Battle Models in Part 3 should certainly prove useful for constructing my own battles. It made me wonder if we (the community) could come up with some suggestions for the positive effects & negative events lists that maybe you could add to your document.

I enjoyed reading part 4 and it helped me understand the flow of events and how the rules work for a battle.

One comment I will make is that Player 3 was a bit of a wuss wasn't he.

I think you and Eludadin have done a great job and should be proud of yourselves.

About Player 3 (Dwanin), yah. He was kind of a wuss for a Dwarf. I didn't really use him for much, other than making that wall at the foot of the stairs. I was trying to focus on writing an example of the game rules. Maybe I missed an opportunity to have him re-deploy to The Main Assault and lead a Last Stand episode where he chased down and slaughtered the remaining goblins. Berangar would have passed out or been killed and so would have Ander. They were already Weary and would have had to face 3 Orc Soldiers each. I guess they could have stayed in Defensive stance and took their chances. Hmmm... There's always editing, you never know.

Thanks for the feedback and the nice comments.

@JRB, couple of questions (and, apologies if these have already been covered elsewhere in this thread - read through this for the first time this morning and haven't picked through all the commentary. Also, I quickly scanned the document itself, looking for the highlights so, clearly, possible that I missed something):

1.) Concerning the Assault Wave die roll, what was the mechanical reason you decided to go with a linear, single die probability vs. a more bell-shaped 2d6 or d12+nd6 (based, perhaps, on the lead commander's Battle skill, as an example)?

The reason I ask, is that a single, unmodified d12 seems pretty swingy (which, may be the intent) but, doesn't seem to take into account any relevant strategic capabilities of the commander or army. I realize you've weighted your table in favor of the Free Peoples (~60% of outcomes are either neutral or positive to PCs, although, one might argue that neutral favors no one, ha!)

2.) Would you consider adding a bonus to the assault wave roll, similar to a Battle skill test before melee combat? Obviously, LMs can add whatever modifiers they like to affect the outcome but, a roll here seems in line with RAW.


Overall, I like the system and it's great to have a supplement fleshed-out, rather than having to cobble something on the fly (thanks to you for having put in the man-hours to create).

One point of feedback I'd provide is to, perhaps, move Appendix B forward (although, then it wouldn't be an appendix, would it?!), then follow it up with your text. It's not that I have a problem with the explanatory text, it's simply, never underestimate the power of a simple list.

... This looks excellent. Do you have a word document version of it by any chance so its more purint friendly as I can't seem to copy and paste the text from the pdf?

Wow! An amazing job, James and Eludadin!

You can tell the care and love you both put into this. It even has a back cover, quotes at the start of sections, the little scroll-like blurbs on the pages, etc. Kudos on making something that looks like it came from a professional company like Cubicle 7!

Haven't got a chance to read through it yet (I read all the comments before and didn't get what people meant when they posted that they had just "skimmed" it, but once you see how big this document is, you can get why most did this!), but from what I've seen you knocked it out of the park!

We did a seige once in our last campaign, and it is a challenging part of any story. You want it to be tension-filled and dramatic, be winnable, but also to be dangerous and have the possibility of real death for those involved. Looks like you guys incorporated all of that.

Thanks so much for sharing this with the community!

The thought behind the mechanics of the Assault Wave roll was to simply mirror the way the Allies in Battle table works found in Tales from Wilderland. However, I would agree that perhaps the fate of the Free Peoples overall seems too important to be left to chance. An Heroic Action or an appropriate roll by the Commander seems very reasonable for influencing the Assault Wave roll. Something on the lines of allowing two rolls and keeping the better result, etc.

Another thing to consider...

In this system, the Loremaster has the ability to control through narration when the Shadow forces retreat. Maybe he can pre-determine that a battle will only last a certain number of assault waves before the Shadow gives up. All the player-heroes would need to do, in this case, is persevere before the dawn.

Or, if after a certain number of assault waves, there is no victory or defeat for the Free Peoples, a Last Stand episode can decide everything! Maybe this episode is where the heroes meet the Chieftain of the Shadow forces. If they defeat him, the rest of his army flees the field.

This seems really good for the most part, but I've noticed what is, to me, a fatal flaw. If I'm reading this right, while the PCs can take a number of actions which sound important, the best possible outcome of player actions taken is to simply prevent the Enemy from advancing on the strength of numbers table (which will happen on occasion during certain hazards), which is the only thing that ultimately has any bearing on who wins the battle. So in truth, aside from the mostly selfish motivation of wanting more fame and fortune, there's basically no reason for the PCs to actually fight the battle, since they are utterly incapable of advancing that track towards the victory of the Free Peoples. Even if every single one of them is a commander. This seems wrong.

Some way of influencing how the Assault Wave roll turns out seems critical before this can be considered complete, especially if one or more companions is a commander.

Thank you so much for this wonderful addition to TOR! I am looking forward to using it during my upcoming game.

If I may, I have an addition I would like to see. They are not problems, nor necessary to the supplement. However, they would increase its usefulness. The first is a system for travelling with an army. In my game, the PCs were able to recruit a small army to help them steal the treasure of a spider-witch. However, getting that army to the spider den through the dense forest of Mirkwood should prove to be an adventure in and of itself. I think that having rules to simulate the complex task of feeding and moving an army could create situations just as much fun as the actual battle, while giving a great feel for LOTR that TOR does so well already.

Again, thank you for all of the hard work that went into this brilliant rules set!

@JRB -

Thanks for the inisght - I'll look up the relevant section in TfW (Of Leaves and Stewed Hobbits?).

For my purposes, I think I would like to allow a Commander to roll a Battle test to apply a bonus if possible to the Assault Wave roll. And, your point regarding LM control is, obviously, valid. I'm a little less "narrative," favoring a bit more crunch in the system - mainly, because I don't necessarily trust myself to be impartial (in a good way!) and I REALLY don't like railroading, even if that means an untimely defeat which then wrecks my story plans. What's the phrase - a good LM plan never survives first contact with the players?!

An addition, what I think would also be interesting to see is macro (i.e. army and/or unit level) use of tactical combat strategies (e.g. Intimidate Foe, Protect Companion, etc.). Clearly, this would introduce the need for "army" battle stances, add a bit of fiddly-ness, and, perhaps, pull the LM a little too far into the battle (in the case where the LM is, in essence, playing the role of commander). Clearly, one would want to be careful in this regard as you could easily overcomplicate your system, weighting it too far in the direction of simulation.


@Chamomile - If I'm understanding JRB's comments to my questions, I think (if I may speak for him, ha!) he intended the battles to be integrated as more of a plot point (i.e. advancing the LM story) rather than, say, an Encounter wrapped in a battle format (could be wrong here and only JRB and Eluadin can answer that with any degree of certainty). However, it seems pretty clear from his responses (below) and, from the example provided in Appendix E, that the rules really are an LM device to assist in narration rather than a full extension of RAW. With that in mind, I would think ultimate outcome is somewhat pre-determined, i.e. PC influence is, therefore, somewhat circumscribed by the story.

An example, perhaps, of what I mean - think of the Battle of the Hornburg. Tolkien, obviously, already knew the Free Peoples would win the day (night?), so Aragorn and Gimli's sortie in defense of the gate, while sounding impressive (and, could be argued was important in the holding action which, ultimately, allowed Gandalf, Erkenbrand, and the Huorns to arrive) but, was not the deciding factor in the fight. The deciding factor was all Tolkien.


@gorgonshead - I think if you want that level of crunchiness, as a suggestion, you could stat out your army (like you would a PC or an NPC) with an Endurance and Fatigue (or, perhaps, several for the various units within the army itself and weighted averaged for a roll-up of the whole). You could then allow the Commander to roll against his Lore and Travel skills in order to determine Fatigue and/or Travel hazards. You would also want to take into consideration what time of year the action takes place and develop a travel "speed" to determine overall number of requisite skill rolls.

The system as written doesn't actually give full control to the GM, though (except in that, as with every system ever made up to and including FATAL, the GM can change things until it works). If you start out with the Shadow forces outnumbering the Free Peoples (the smallest possible advantage to give them while still giving them an advantage) and then you roll a Sauron, that's game over in one round of battle and there's nothing the PCs can do about it. Not only that, short of ignoring the rules altogether (which is hardly a point in favor of the rules), even the GM can't do anything about it.

@Chamomile - I see what you're saying.

So, what's a suggested solution - add a modifier based on a relevant skill to the d12 Assault Wave? Space final victory/defeat conditions further out, i.e. add another step so that an Eye or G can't immediately trigger win/loss (granted, this should only happen 8.3% of the time)?

And, to your point in your post up-thread, would you add a G-equivalent of a Battle Hazard to offset the Eye?

I will concede that the system offered here seems to be all about the player-heroes' ability to endure through a series of assault waves (whether only one assault wave, lasting an hour or a day, or five or six assault waves). It is not very much at all about their ability to evoke a victory for the Free Peoples (at least not overall).

When Eluadin and I were designing the rules, we had many conversations about the nature of war in Tolkien's writings. A prominent thought was the idea that no matter how hard the Free Peoples could fight for victory, true victory would only come if it was providential. Therefore, either the overall conclusion of a mythic battle or siege would be pre-determined by the Loremaster (according to the tale being told) or a die roll could take that burden from him so that he could be surprised in the end as well.

That is not to say that the way we designed the rules is completely devoid of player-hero influence. There is at least one way in the current version of the rules that a player can make a powerful difference in the larger tale - player-hero intervention.

The idea is that through narration around the table, a player-hero can propose a die roll to change the details of a battle. Therefore, if a player can plausibly narrate why his character changes things, the Loremaster can set the TN and change the circumstances. Even though I did not explicitly state in the rules that the outcome (or effects) of an Assault Wave roll could be changed, there is room for such intervention. In moderation, a Loremaster could allow a player this kind of influence on the results. It would be very heroic to narrate how he blew his horn and changed the course of events by stymieing the onslaught of the Enemy or even causing great destruction to their ranks. If it had not been for his intervention, the results would have been terribly different.

Our thoughts have not concluded on such matters. There are so many ideas lurking in our minds. Thank you for your continued feedback and thoughts! For now, remember that the ability to endure (standing and fighting against the tide), until the light comes shining through the clouds, is an important part of heroism.

This post has been edited by JamesRBrown on Jan 9 2013, 06:12 PM

Utulië'n aurë! Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva!

@JRB - just wanted to let you know I ran a simulation of a battle, one using a hack of D&D's War Machine from the Rules Cyclopedia, the other using these rules (with the addition of a Commander's Battle skill test, prior to combat) and I'll say that I thoroughly enjoyed your rules - very immersive and takes what normally is a very mechanical exercise of unit/army strengths, percentiles and casualties, and turned into a fairly dramatic narrative experience.

I think I will continue to tweak here and there - Battle rolls, perhaps add a Gandalf feature as ballast against the Eye during Endurance tests, maybe add stances and/or small unit actions, etc. But, as it stands, I feel like these are a strong addition to the fan material of the game.

Compliments to you and Eluadin.

I love your document! I really enjoyed reading the example you give at the end, and I think it would have been fun to play, except for the poor dwarf who gets left with the siege equipment! Maybe he was wounded prior to the battle....

I skipped the episodic section because (though I'm playing lore master for a bit) I may be a player again in the game and I am not running or reading the published adventures. Anyway that is why I skipped the episode section. I hope that does not prevent me from understanding your true intentions.

Episodes aside, I really love the narrative approach to the resolution of the battles. I do have a couple of pieces of (hopefully) constructive criticism. I don't know if the version you have is final or if you are looking for feedback but I'll provide it none the less.

1)I kinda like how the battle could swing either way. It makes things very uncertain even for the LM. Well I like it as long as the LM does not have a predefined idea of who needs to win the battle! One criticism however is that the system as it stands does slightly favor the bad guys (this is regardless of whether the bad guys start with the upper hand) looking at the "assault wave table" we can see that there are an "eye" and "G rune" which each happen 1/12 and each swings things equally in favor of either the dark or the light, so they balance each other out. However "shattered shields", which swings things 1 step in favor of the dark, happens on a 1,2,3, or 4 (4/12), while "the night is ending", which does the opposite, happens on a 8,9, or 10 (3/12). Personally I think 4 should be given over to "the line is held" which does not shift the battle in anyone's favor. I wonder if this could be a simple error or typo :-)

2) The system as it stands makes the battle more dangerous to the players the more intense the engagement mood. This does in itself make perfect sense. The only problem with it is that there is no implied benefit to weigh against the added risk. Of course a heated engagement is more dangerous to the players but it is also more dangerous to their foes and allies alike so would it not make the battle progress faster and therefore reduce the number of assault waves required?

In the example you give at the end, one of the players keeps trying to lower the engagement mood. In fact the system itself really encourages any player who knows the rules to try to make the engagement mood calmer and more cautious. To me this seems out of place in battle, where veteran warriors and heroes would be expected to show bravado, and incite a mood of aggressiveness in those who look to them for example... they do this to attempt to give younger warriors courage so that they do not flee battle at the first sight of blood or the first rumor of trouble. In fact many historical battles were decided primarily by which side lost heart and fled first. I'd like engagement mood to be more balanced so that sometimes the desired mood would be aggressive and sometimes the desired mood would be cautious depending on what makes sense to the LM and players.


3) And here I know I'm going on a limb.... I'd kinda like to see some mechanism for combat advantages to effect the die roll; whether they be fortifications, high ground, cunning tactics, quality of troops, armaments, preparations, traps, presence of bright light or darkness, and player hero actions to somehow effect the assault wave roll. I would be more than half inclined to replace the assault wave table a contested roll between 2 sides where the LM assigns a number of dice to each side based on whatever circumstances the LM feels are appropriate for that wave. I think that is how I will use it if I do indeed run a large battle.

I'd like to thank a large part of the mini story telling victory I had tonight to you guys and your document! Huzzah to you both!

I ran a character creation session for 2 players, complete with character backgrounds, ensuring the character sheets the players produced were complete and roughly correct, and fitting both the characters into the upcoming story. I also decided to give the players a taste of how the dice rolling of the game works with their heart pounding flashbacks to memories of their actions in the battle of five armies, since both of the characters were supposed to have been there and wanted to have met each other on the field fighting.

I got the third player who was present, but who already had her own character - but whose character was not involved in the battle of 5 armies- to play a temporary roll important to the scene so she felt like part of the action. I only covered a small section of the battle, around the two players, on one of the flanks....

I may not have had a strong enough grasp to run it "by the book" and was somewhat limited on time anyway.... but I got a lot of inspiration on the narrative style and making people do battle rolls and taking endurance damage from the fighting, and flip flopping between narratives and regular game play with dice rolling and attack rolls. I also did something like the assault wave rolls. They all seemed to LOVE it, and one of my new players told me that he never played in anything so epic in all his years of gaming!

The action mostly followed a group of lake town archers who were deemed too young for the front line fighting... who through accidents of fate ended up right there, and the nearby dwarven unit that helped them out. The characters were put in the roles of having to inspire courage, restore order when things went crazy, saving confused young men from likely death, covering each others backs, rallying troops, plugging holes in the shield wall, fighting off waves of goblins, wargs and huge bats, some of which hit simultaneously. I did a few weapon skill rolls, but more battle rolls and quite a few inspire/awe rolls... along with a couple of other tests (so I was successful in that objective)

We got the guy who was playing the teenaged ( 5 years younger) version of his character to emerge as an unlikely hero, comign to the aid of endangered friends and inspiring courage in others. That was, at least in my mind's eye, spectacular! We got to see the two main characters who will continue in the story, meeting in the shield wall and fighting back to back, and we got to have the older huntsman-turned-sergeant, witness his wards turning from reckless boys uncertain of their own abilities into men choosing the paths they would follow for their lives, be ready risk or lay down their lives for their kinfolk, or to break ranks and flee abandoning all hope of honor.

In short everyone had a good time, there was tension, drama, and excitement.

I think you guys definitely have something going here!

Tonight surely would not have been the same without your great ideas!

That is wonderful Cynan! It sounds like you guys really put forth the effort to make it a memorable evening. Using the ideas from the rules system in your own way to maximize the fun and excitement of roleplaying is really what Loremasters and players should do. It's your gaming experience after all! I'm glad that it worked for you so well.

Just to hear what you have said makes all the months of collaboration, designing and writing late into the evening worth it. Sincerely, "Thank you" from Scott and me.

Great summary, Cynan! It was inspiring to read, and sounds like an amazing night of gaming!

My group ran through a Mythic Battle last night, a slightly adapted version of the Battle of Stonyford from Tales from Wilderland. The rules presented in your Mythic Battles handout led to what one of my players referred to as "one of the best gaming sessions I've had, like, ever!"

The rules allowed the players to take part in the overall battle and immerse themselves in the seeming chaos and horror of a large melee without the drudgery of endlessly rolling combat checks and fighting a never-ending line of mooks. The players took advantage of the narrative possibilities and really changed the descriptions of the villagers being saved and the bandits being slain, all within the context of the ruleset. If you get a chance to read the summary of the session, I strongly recommend it (it will appear soon in my thread for that purpose).

All that wonderful goodness aside, there were some issues for some of my players, that I said I would share here as feedback.

1) As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, there is not much impact on the overall battle on the part of the characters and their abilities. In fact, as I had set up our particular battle, I decided that the bandits outnumbered the heroes significantly (as I wanted the fight to seem like an uphill struggle) but that they would retreat if 1) the bandits were ever outnumbered, 2) the good guys weathered 3 attack waves, or 3) the feat die declared the good guys the winner. Any of those three would trigger a Last Stand, in which the heroes battled the bandits' leader (and tried to capture Oderic, the reason the heroes were involved in the first place). Unfortunately, the very first thing I did was roll a Will of the West on the Assault Wave Table, resulting in the Beornings outnumbering the bandits, and, according to my initial preparations, immediate victory. This was not based in any way on anything my heroes had done (indeed, they hadn't even picked up their dice, yet). Obviously, like any good LM, I cheated and ignored my initial surrender conditions, in order to extend the fight to a reasonably dramatic length. The issue remains, though, that the actual results of the battle have nothing to do with the abilities, strategies, or numbers of either side in the battle. I certainly agree that a certain amount of randomness makes sense in the chaos of battle, but this seems much too arbitrary for good drama. As someone else mentioned earlier, the LM can always overrule the rules, as it were, but that suggests that something is lacking in the rules.

2) The other primary issue for my group were the Endurance Tests. One of the PCs in my group, is a Wildman Warder, who has made an effort to improve his skill with an axe and his parry. He is Bold and rarely stops to think about strategy very long, so his Battle skill is quite low (1 dot). Therefore, he almost never gets bonus dice in combat, but he thinks that's a fair trade for playing his character in a fun way. Unfortunately, in the Mythic Battle, he got stomped. The reliance of Endurance Tests on a single skill entirely ignored his actual combat skills and led to his quickly running out of endurance and collapsing in a heap, while his hobbit companion, who is not nearly the warrior that he is (but has 2 dots in Battle) kept on fighting the good fight at his side. So, we have two issues here, 1) too much investment in a single skill, and 2) no consideration of other skills that might come into play. Yes, the Heroic Actions section of the assault wave allows for the players to use other skills in the battle, but there didn't seem to many opportunities for these uses to have much of an impact beyond the possibility of accruing Advancement Points.

3) Perhaps this is a subset of my previous point, but the amount of possible endurance lost per roll seemed high. Since the characters were consistently failing their Battle rolls, 4 endurance lost (I felt a charge into a village mid-raid was at least a Bold Assault) per roll (due to the circumstances of the adventure, the bandits were Worthy adversaries) was a significant amount. Then, based on a Shattered Shields result, this was supposed to be doubled to 8 endurance per failure. This would have knocked out all of the heroes. I compromised and set it at 6, which still knocked out 2 of the 4 heroes and forced me to move up the Last Stand to following the second wave, rather than the third. I also had to significantly modify the foes in the Last Stand to just 2 named villains and 2 mooks, rather than the suggested 6-to-1 ratio based on that Shattered Shields roll. In short, the battle was waaaaay too unforgiving.

Possible solutions: I am not a game designer, and I won't suggest that I know how to fix the issues that I saw come to the fore last night, but I think that I can come up with some things to think about.

1) I would like to see some sort of modifier (again, as has been discussed previously) to the Assault Wave Table roll based on circumstances, strategies, and combat abilities. Perhaps a +1 to the die per Success on the Commander's pre-battle Battle roll?

2) Somewhat like the revised Travel rules, perhaps the Endurance Tests could be spread over several skills, based on the heroe's in the fight (i.e., Skirmishers could make Athletics or Stealth rolls, etc.) as well as the occasional combat roll. For example, the first roll could be Battle, then an appropriate non-combat skill, then a combat skill, repeating this cycle for following rolls. Every failure would lead to Endurance loss, per usual, but this would allow for more varied resultes.

3) As has been mentioned before, balance for the positive and negative choices. A high Engagement Mood should lead to fewer Endurance Tests (or fewer Assault Waves). Choosing to be In the Vanguard (which has a higher TN for Endurance Tests) should allow the hero to get some cool bonus for a G-rune, for example.

Again, lest I sound too complain-y, I will note that my players had a great time last night, and it was a terrific session. The Battle Hazard that occurred (Protect the Commander) was awesome and led to some very hard decisions (draining the Fellowship Pool, since the dwarf next to Grimbeorn was down to 1 Hope). There are some great ideas here, and I look forward to using these rules again soon, with a tweak here or there.

O

Ormadz, thanks so much for the feedback! Your session sounds like it was amazing. Really, everything you said is very helpful. I'm glad that we could provide the framework for your battle and you sound like you improvised well to fit your needs. What makes me particularly happy is that even though our system isn't perfect, you were able to make some tweaks and you had FUN. Having fun is pretty much my number one priority when roleplaying. Telling a great story is second.