Hello all,

I am running TOR for a group of 3 that is going down to 2 players this week. As such, and having faced many of the dangers of the Wildlands, the players are VERY interested in recruiting followers to help them prosper (and survive!).

I came up with the following rules tweak based on the Dice Probabilities Thread. Basically, it involves taking the probabilities for success for a full Skill + Feat die roll and compressing it to a simple Feat roll.

Step 1: Determine the Skill Level of the Follower/NPC
Step 2: Roll a single Feat die and consult the chart below. If the follower rolls the number required or higher, they succeeed. If not, they fail in their task.

Additional Notes:
- G = Gandalf rune
- An Eye of Sauron is an automatic failure
- Followers cannot get Great or Exceptional successes. Any success is standard.
- If a follower has a favoured skill, reduce the TN by one level.

Sorry about the formatting here - I'll be back to fix it soon.

Or, if the NPC is Weary:

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks!

CG7

I like the idea.

though I would keep the attribue level and have that effect favoured skills rather than drop the TN. Makes it easier to use your idea in combat.

I also wonder at followers with 4d+ in skills (why are they the followers ).

Welcome to the forum!

Yeah, I'm with Poosticks on trying to keep the attribute level bonus for favoured skills rather than lowering the TN. That way it matches up with similar rules within the LM book. Not sure how you could include that in your rules though.

Also, I'm wondering what the benefit is here from just resolving things in the normal way? The gain in not rolling as many dice has been replaced by having to cross reference skill rating with TN vs a dice roll anyway, which appears more invloved/fiddly. I'm guessing the original way is probably just as quick. In fact, just trying both ways out now I think the original way is actually faster but that's probably personal capability - ie, for me it's easier and more fun to add up small numbers than cross reference things on a chart.

I therefore don't understand the benefits here. It doesn't appear to be faster in resolution, doesn't appear to be simpler as you now have to refer to a table rather than adding up numbers on dice, and you lose a lot of granularity in the results. Also, I personally find refering to tables as opposed to rolling dice to be pretty boring and uninspiring.

Thinking about it a bit more, it also disadvantages any NPC using these rules as anyone else has the potential for greater levels of success so these followers may very well have a higher death rate (they're disadvantaged within these new rules as opposed to their opponent) which would eventually mean no-one will want to travel with your PCs ("Don't go with them, you don't come back!").

I'm really very sorry to be so negative here, I appreciate it's your first post and all, but I really don't see the point of this - I don't think it makes things easier and I think it's a lot less fun than the RAW. I at least hope these comments have been well explained and offer up things for you to think about. Apologies again.

If I was going to use this, I'd just use this bit:


0D 1d 2d 3d
TN 14 G 10+ 7+ 4+

And I would only use it to speed up play if I had a lot of followers to keep track of. Although you could just as easily fudge it.

Actually thinking about this a bit more - why not just fudge it totally or if the follower is important give him some stats and roll the dice properly.

Hey Cgeist, can I make a suggestion?

Have both of your players run 2 characters...

This will cut down on your legwork of having to run all those NPCs

Just a thought.

I'd go with this, or more specifically, give them an extra character but use the NPC rules from the LM book. That way the second character they control isn't as detailed with respect to their skills and attributes and there's not as much bookkeeping involved with them either. It'll therefore give them the extra manpower but will still allow your players to focus on their primary characters.

Thanks for all the ideas, guys.

And no worries at all about the critiques - I put the idea up to either see if it floats or to make it better. Your thoughts only help with either objective.

My idea was to make up a short NPC sheet, almost exactly like Poosticks said:

Dale - Man-at-arms

TN 14 TN 16
Skilled (3D): 4+ 6+
Trained (2D): 7+ 9+

Parry: 6 (4 + shield) Protection: 2d
Weapon: Sword - Dam 5
Endurance: 19

The GM/player determines if the test is an area that the follower would be skilled in, trained in or untrained in (in which case a 10+ or G is needed), and then rolls. This is primarily useful with a number of unnamed followers. If there are 5 men-at-arms in the caravan, the GM could just roll 5 feat dice and apply damage to enemies on any successes.

If a PC had several followers, they could roll extra Feat dice with their own combat roll and allocate successes.

I agree that any major NPC should have their own NPC template at minimum and we're also considering having each player run two characters - but all want to keep the focus on the major (1st) characters.

Hmmn... anways. I'll think about it a bit more and see what comes up. Thanks very much for all your feedback, though!

CG7