When using the Fellowship Rating, page 81 of the AB says: During the game, players use these points to recover spent Hope.

My question: Can you use the point immediately as a Hope Point? In other words, your hero is in combat. He fails his roll with his weapon. He is dangerously low on Hope. Can the hero use one Fellowship Point as a Hope point to turn his failed roll into a success? Or do you spend a turn "moving" from the shared pool to your character and then you can use it next turn?

Also: Does Hope return to its maximum during "downtime" between quests? Like if the hero is at a sanctuary or at home for several weeks or months?

I let my players spend the Fellowship points as they go and if the stash depletes, then they start drawing on hope.

Might not be the official way, but works for us.

Hope is not recovered between adventures.

You can draw Fellowship points instantly. In effect, you spend a Fellowship point instead of your own Hope point.

To recover Hope, you must undertake a special task during the Fellowship Phase. One of these tasks is given in the Adventurer's Book. The player may invent others.

I know that there is a task that removes point of Shadow. I don't think there's one for regaining Hope though. There were several discussions earlier on the forum about finding true love, Marriage and childbirth as potential undertakings for this very purpose.
There is a Mastery hidden among the Virtues that can boost Hope IIRC.

You may spend Fellowship points as Hope automatically, assuming the fellowship agrees. The example on page 106 helps illustrate this.

You recover Hope by spending Fellowship points. So, if you have an easy session, you might have some spare Fellowship points for the heroes to replenish their Hope.

"Heroes may recover Hope during a game session spending Fellowship points..." AB p.105

In any case, everything is on page 106.

I HOPE that helps. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Is it replenishable at the end of a session? I thought it was only at the commencement of a fellowship phase. Could be wrong though, I'm on my coffee break at work and don't have my books at hand.

It's replenishable using the Fellowship pool, which is refreshed at each session. Use it or lose it, basically. The only other mechanisms for gaining hope are the Fellowship focus bond and the moments of hope (like the fallen statue of the king in Ithilien). Nothing in the fellowship phase allows replenishment of hope, only loss of shadow.

My 2 cents: looking at game mechanics, I believe that both Fatigue and Hope are entirely restored during the Fellowship phase (up to the character's initial value). It may just be an oversight in the rules, or maybe it just have seemed obvious to the game designers.

Here's how I justify this:

-- I think it's pretty obvious that Fatigue is fully restored during Fellowship phase, even though it's not written anywhere (as far as I know). Hope and Fatigue follow very similar game mechanics, Fatigue being to the body what Hope is to the mind. In that spirit, I believe Hope, just like Fatigue, should be restored to its fullest if the player can rest long enough (i.e. during the Fellowship phase).

-- If you consider that 4-5 hope points can be restored for the group per game session using the Fellowship points (so 1 point of hope per character per session), you could imagine that the same mechanism occurring during the fellowship phase would eventually restore everyone's hope to its fullest, since characters will probably not use much hope during that phase.

-- Looking at the books, when characters reach a haven, a safe place and rest for long enough, they seem refreshed both physically and mentally, they regain their optimism (hence Hope) and are ready for new adventures (Elrond's house, Lake-Town in the Hobbit).

The Shadow is a different matter, as it takes a long time for a character to get read of that kind of corruption, which is why it takes a special action during the fellowship phase to occur (a slow process).

At least, that's how I play it

Have to disagree with you booga...

Page 105 of the Adventurers Book states...

Heroes may recover Hope during a game session spending fellowship points and possibly through their fellowship focus.

And on page 124 under the Mastery of Confidence...

Raise you maximum Hope by two points. When you choose this mastery, set your Hope score again to it's maximum rating.

As the only time to learn a mastery is during a fellowship phase, the fact that it states that Hope is reset to maximum, implies it does not reset otherwise.

Hi Garbar,

I have to disagree with your disagreement

Raise you maximum Hope by two points. When you choose this mastery, set your Hope score again to it's maximum rating.

This could just mean that the the Hope is set to match the new max Hope that just got bumped up by two points, hence the use of the "again" in the second part of the sentence (instead of "back").

As for the quote form page 105, you'll notice that all these rules apply mainly during the adventuring phase, not during the fellowship phase.

Theme-wise I think it makes sense to recover both Endurance and Hope points during the Fellowship phase, where characters have time to lick their wounds, be they mental or physical.

You have a bit of an uphill battle here, trying to argue that Hope is reset based on supposition rather than something in the book that actually says that Hope is reset.

It doesn't help that if what you say is true, it diminishes the importance of both the Fellowship Pool and keeping one's Fellowship Focus safe.

After having run the game a few times, I can say with certainty that having Hope refresh drains a lot of the tension from the game, as well as making the player's choices over when to spend it less meaningful.

I'd be interested to know if you've run the game this way and if that experience factors into your reasoning.

Docweasel is right about Hope depletion being an important aspect of the tension in the game.

If it's constantly reset, the Miserable condition will become extremely rare.

Until recently, the fellowship pool of my group has been used to offset any Hope loss, so they have had their full quota at the start of the session.

Now that we are going through 'Those Who Tarry No Longer', they are starting to spend Hope and not able to fully recover at the end of the session, so they have to be sure that they want to spend a Hope, and there are some unpleasant encounters in that scenario, where they really need to spend it!

Just to clarify : I'm just thinking Hope is reset during the Fellowship phase (that is, at the end of an adventure, so once every few game sessions), not at the end of each game session.

The players have to be in a safe place for several weeks or even months (which typically occurs during the fellowship phase). I could imagine that in some cases, if the fellowship phase was too short, or occurring in an unsafe , I would not allow Hope to be recovered.

The fellowship pools and fellowship focus stay very important during the Adventuring phase, because they are the only ways to recover hope between these sessions.

We've played three adventures so far, with three adventuring phases (2-3 session each) and a fellowship phase at the end of each adventure. The whole thing spanned over 3 years, and the fellowship phases took a whole winter each.

I understood you there. If Hope refreshed per session, then the free point you get when your F. Focus was unharmed would be useless.

Try out a few games with no Fellowship Phase refresh. I think you will find that it makes the whole game much more exciting and tense.

This was answered in an earlier thread by the designer. Hope does not refresh during the Fellowship Phase.

I recently had a player of a Dwarf in one of my games get miffed at the idea that Hope does not refresh, other than threough fellowship.

Every action he takes, he wants to spend Hope, this last session the fellowship gave him 4 points from the Fellowship pool.

So now their first adventure ended, he's erasing his spent hope, and I'm saying "Noooo... where in the book does it say Hope refreshes during Fellowship phase."

So he specifically asked me here to check up on this issue. thanks, Gentlemen.

Solved.