Hi All,

Does anyone feel that Hope can be a bit of a game killer early on in a campaign, with freshly generated characters? As each character in the company starts with 10+ hope they collectively have a huge pool of Hope to use in their first adventure.

It takes an exceedingly low roll for an attribute bonus to not be enough to turn a failed roll into a success, and as characters have no Shadow points when they start adventuring, they can easily burn several Hope points each without much danger of becoming Miserable.

The net effect of this mechanic in the early stages of a campaign is that the characters very rarely fail a test, if at all. If the first scenario involves tests to avoid combat (such as sneaking passed guards etc), they can end up never fighting a single adversary.

Have any other Loremasters experienced this problem, and if so, do you have any solutions?

If players burn through hope, then they will end up miserable later. My players have been quite conservative with their hope spend - using only 1 or 2 per session each and thereby reclaiming the hope from the fellowship pool and/or fellowship focus. Shadow point gain has varied from only 1 shadow point for an adventure to up to 6. Remember, the only way to regain hope is the fellowship pool or keeping your fellowship focus safe (if they have one). Hope isn't regained in the fellowship phase, as endurance is - though the character can reduce shadow that has been gained.

Don't look on it as bad that the players don't fail a test. The hope is there so players can decide which tests, if any, their characters fail. But, the more they succeed now the less they have for later, when it may really matter.

Same here, my players only spent one or two Hope per session for the first few adventures. When things got more rough (ie. when they crossed Mirkwood in "Don't Leave the Path") they started using more, but now they only have a few left, and they are very careful not to become Miserable.

A character one of my players generated for the "Tales from Wilderland" campaign started with 12 Hope. We are half way through the "Don't Leave the Path" scenario and so far she's used 4 Hope to avoid any really bad effects. She managed to avoid combat in one part of the story just by repeatedly raising failed Athletics checks to successes.

I appreciate that in the long term, she won't be able to be so profligate with Hope as she is now, but right now she has nothing much to lose by spending Hope. It makes starting characters kind of superhuman in my opinion. I'm not sure if it needs fixing, or if there is an easy fix, but it kind of spoils the fun of being a Loremaster when starting characters can avoid detrimental effects pretty much all the time until their Hope is low enough for them to worry about it.

Oh, and by the way, there is one aspect of Hope that I am not sure of. If a roll fails but a 6 came up on a Success die, does it count as a Great Success if you raise the roll to a success using an Attribute bonus, or is it capped at Ordinary Success?

(slight SPOILERS for Tales of Wilderlands)

In DLtP, I had one player use lots of hope to avoid disturbing the spiders, so in the end, only one character had to fight spiders because he decided to remain with Belgo. But I don't see that as a big problem. They used hope because they were scared of the spiders, but they can't escape everything that way.

If your players don't worry about losing Hope until they are close to being Miserable, maybe they didn't understand how slowly they could regain Hope. As a player, I would want to always have a few points to spare to avoid being killed, so spending 4 Hope points on a single event seems a lot!

There is another small problem I encountered during this scenario. One of the characters used Hope to pass a Corruption Test. Is it worth using Hope to pass a Corruption test? The net difference between Hope and Shadow Points ends up being the same (you lose 1 Hope instead of gaining 1 Shadow Point) so I am not sure this is a good use of Hope, unless there is something I am missing?

One variant which I've tried in-game is to allow the players to spend 1 hope before a roll to add the attribute but if they want to use hope after the roll it costs them 2.

I don't think the hope use on the corruption test makes sense, unless the potential shadow gain is more than the hope loss. It could be a trade-off though. If the player doesn't spend a lot of hope, they could avoid shadow and regain the hope at the end of the session by using fellowship pool.

It's almost always worth it. It is much easier to regain Hope than it is to get rid of Shadow.

Not necessarily.

Hope loss regained from fellowship pool (1 point, maybe 2 if there's a Hobbit or someone hasn't spent theirs) or from the fellowship focus being safe (1 point). Okay, this is each session - so there could be an advantage if you're not spending heavily.

Shadow loss regained through Fellowship phase undertaking (1 to 3 points).

It takes a whole Undertaking to lose 0–6 (two per success) Shadow. That is something my players started doing their first few Fellowship phases, but then they wanted other things and so had to let their Shadow grow. They also changed their minds the first time someone failed the roll and burnt their Undertaking on nothing.

I know I would rather have 4 Hope and 2 Shadow than 10 Hope and 7 Shadow.

I checked the rules on Corruption again and noticed that suffering a Bout of Madness actually resets your Shadow points to 0, at the cost of gaining 1 permanent Shadow point plus a "Degeneration" flaw. You can take 4 degeneration flaws before you finally succumb to the darkness and end up as some sort of minion of Sauron.

It might sound crazy, but I actually quite like the idea of being "touched" by the Shadow and gaining a degeneration flaw. Has anyone seen a character go this far towards slipping over to the dark side?

No, I've only had characters on the edge of being Miserable.

Personally, I like there to be serious tension between Hope and Shadow. Bouts of Madness should be more frequent than they are (at least at my table). I think after the first of my PCs succumbs to their first bout, the rest of the party won't treat it as if it is a fate worse than death.

Also, after the 5th bout of Madness, it doesn't mean the character becomes a minion of the Enemy. For elves it means the journey west, and for others it's usually running off into the wilderness and dying alone – or killing one's self there. (check out pg 64 in the LM Book)

I wouldn't think of PCs with permanent Shadow like they are Golumn; I would think of them like Thorin, or the Elfking (both of whom were willing to go to war for sheer greed).