I've been making a set of crib notes for myself for running TOR. Last night I went through all the Virtues and Rewards to precis them down into a table. A few questions arose, I'd be interested to hear what others think:

- If you have weapon with qualities (up to 3) on it, and then choose a Cultural reward, I assumed that they are two separate weapons and you choose which to wield at any one time, rather than a generic melding of the two.

- But, if you choose a Cultural reward first, can you then apply Qualities to it afterwards? This would seem to be a rather more powerful choice, as weapons/armour don't really get removed from PCs.

- If you have a Cultural reward, and you are killed/incapacitated, can others use it? Obviously the correct thing to do is to return it to the heirs/clan, or to burn it, put it in a boat with the body (a la Boromir etc), but if you are in the middle of Orc caves and need to get out, can you use it? Could you "take over" another's Rewards, even if you have to pay the XP costs to raise Valour, you still might end up with Rewards that you could otherwise not achieve.

- Do heirs receive the cultural rewards of deceased/retired PCs? In addition to the XP bonus this could be rather nice...Cultural weapon+3 Qualities as a coming of age present? Maybe that could be an alternate possibility for spending starting XP on.

- Re Brazen Armour (Lake town), this seems rather odd, as it's the only Reward/Virtue I've seen that seems rather neutral (+1d Protection vs edged/blunt weapons, but -1d vs piercing/missiles). Is it worth it for the XP expenditure? I can't see it being popular with PCs. (Also, given the name, I can't help seeing it as a set of something like a chainmail bikini rather than how it is actually described!)

I see there was a bit of related discussion here but it's not quite the same thing, as that was more about PCs buying the Rewards directly with XP

I don't know how the official rules work, but I said to my group that, if they bought a quality for a weapon, but then decide to buy a cultural weapon, then they would could decide to lose the first one, and get the quality on the cultural weapon.

If a character gets killed, it would be strange, story-wise, to prevent the other characters from using the rewards of the deceased, at least during the ongoing fight. I would not allow them to keep the rewards, however. If they insisted, they could maybe keep them, but gain a lot of shadow points.

If my hobbit has a axe with the quality "keen", then buy the cultural reward "King's blade", I would give him a choice.
Either he has two different weapons, or he loses the axe (it breaks, he gives it, he loses it) and gain the "King's blade" with the quality "keen".

Therefore, there's no advantage in choosing a Cultural reward first.

For me, people can use another cultural reward, but they're bound to lost it quickly (call it GM-enforced fate).
However, I may not give all the bonus. For example an hobbit with the awe-inspiring dwarven helm may be more ridiculous than awesome.

I've no definite rule on this, it would depends on the situation.

Yes, I was leaning towards allowing the Quality to apply to a later bought Cultural reward, or remain as two distinct weapons, so that 's good to hear that's also how you would rule it.

I think it's ultimately up to the player to describe how the rewards are allocated onto which gear, and I think having that flexibility built into the system is intentional. In any case, Rewards aren't something that should be "taken away" from a character, especially because of a "fluff technicality" like "you already have an axe."

Regarding other players using a companion's weapon, I would simply rule that they can't gain the benefits. Anduril "works" for Aragorn because he's Isildur's heir. Though magic isn't overt in Middle Earth, I'd argue that most Rewards aren't 100% mundane either. Even if described as mundane, you could always fall back on the argument that the player who paid XP for the Reward is the only one practiced enoguh with that weapon to gain the bonus.

Yes, I think that's a good view; ME and magic therin is mostly about who you are rather than anything else. Rewards are definitely partly cultural and partly physical. Maybe when someone takes a Reward they need to specify how it is that they are able to use it...apart from anything else it will add to their character's background.

PS: any thoughts re Brazen Armour?