According to the books, you can only have a rating at standing with your own culture. But what if a character spent a lot of time at another culture and did many important deeds? Shouldn't he get a rating at standing with this culture too? And according to the books, a player has to buy standing with treasure during the fellowship phase. But shouldn't standing be something which raises through deeds and not through money only? Did I overlook something? How are you handling this?

I haven't had to handle it but for "shouldn't deeds increase standing", I see nothing wrong with granting something like, "King Thranduil is so pleased with you he names you elf friends and gifts you with (nice trinkets) so signifying, treat this as [Treasure enough to buy Standing 1] but useable only to obtain standing in the Woodland realm if you so desire, if you wish to instead convert these trinkets to other uses (and dishonour the noble offer) they are effectively half that Treasure".

I think this has a lot of validity. I too believed one should be able to increase their standing (rep) with other cultures - much like the faction rep in the LotR-Online game.

What I was intending to do was:

"if you succeed in 2 tasks/quests you raise your standing to 1, and doubling the number of tasks each time raises the standing again." (i.e. 2 tasks for rank 1, 4 for rank 2, 8 for rank 3 etc).



What I haven't yet truly grasped is what exactly game-wise (mechanics-speaking) if any does the higher standing affect? Other than the aesthetic-wise "oh they like me and I can weigh in my opinions on important matters"

Does it modify diplomatic skill tests/tasks or such?


Robert

As to use, a key point of Standing is that it increases the Tolerance of the person encountered giving more chance of success and better success socially.

This can be handled without standing as well, just noting per the situational modifier option on Tolerance that "those named elf friends have a +2 bonus to Tolerance with elves of the Woodland Realm".

That's probably simpler because maintaining standing in home culture costs treasure etc.

So the bonus is a flat +2 regardless, however there are 6 tiers of standing....?

Still all a little confusing. I guess it's just a ad hoc feeling by the LoreMaster is your standing anywhere is adequate or not for any given interaction.



I would think that the level of standing is the actual integer used for modifying test/task rolls.


Robert

That example modifier was something I made up, the rules are just that situational modifiers apply to Tolerance.

In the current rules, the renown of a character as an adventurer is reflected by his Valour and Wisdom ratings. A Standing rating is basically the opposite: a hero's reputation as a respected member of the community, despite his activities as an adventurer. Under a strict interpretation, a character cannot have a Standing rating outside of his culture.

This doesn't mean that if a character saves the daughter of a local dignitary he shouldn't get recognition and not have a bearing on an eventual Encounter - the rules handle this through the application of an 'Additional modifier' (page 53 of the LM Book). The temporary nature of a modifier is meant to reflect that people are quick to recognise the worth of a good deed they profited from, but even quicker to forget about it.

Francesco

Thank you once again, Francesco. Now the handling of standing, valour and wisdom is much clearer to me. I thought that wisdom is something "inside" a character. But now I understand that wisdom reflects how NPCs see a character. I was hoping that you reply on my question. I really appreciate that.