I have some doubts about the Hardy Trait (You can withstand long hours of toil and travel far
without rest, or under extreme conditions.)

Having a player invoking the trait at every travel roll seems broken to me as it shut off an entire part of the game

the rules say

"The Loremaster may agree with a Trait invocation to speed
up play, especially if failing at the roll would not lead
to dramatically relevant consequences, or if the action
wasn’t difficult. In some occasions, the Loremaster may
ask his players whether they possess a pertinent Trait, in
order to move the story on"[B]

i was thing allowing it on easy or moderate rolls, freelands borderlands.

Or maybe allowing one automatic success per journey like the advantage you can get from passed lore rolls.

How do you handle this trait?

You are right not to allow it on Travel rolls. Allow it only for Travel rolls without dramatics consequences on a fail. I would see this more as being for short journeys where the fatigue would be of little consequence and rolling a pain, more than easy Travel rolls, but whatever works for you.

I would avoid making a blanket ruling and embrace the discretion in the rules exactly as suggested.

Thanks for the reply.

It hardly ever speeds up play as all other characters will have to roll anyway

I guess allowing 1 success in any journey, like passing a lore roll, is already a nice treat, especially if it's a hard roll.

I'll talk it through with my players.

I think the player is foolish for invoking the trait to auto-pass every travel roll. What he should be doing is invoking the trait every time he gets a great success on a travel roll, so he can bump it to extraordinary and get an advancement point.

Personally, I'd let him get away with choosing to ignore the single most reliable source of advancement points in the game.

Bob, I'm with you on the invoking a trait when you succeed for an AP (although I wouldn't grant one on that basis more than once per adventure).

But where are you getting the bump from great to extraordinary from? I've missed that somehow.

I agree with Skywalker. I wouldn't allow the Hardy trait to be used for autosuccess as the OP describes, because there are negative consequences for failure (the character's Fatigue rises). And if the Fatigue accrued doing the journey doesn't matter, why is anyone rolling for it at all?

It is here that trick with Trait invocation arises. If something doesn't matter, you are right that a GM shouldn't call for a roll. However, if it does matter in some way, but failure is not dramatic, then allow for a Trait to get an auto success.

Gaining Fatigue will almost always matter in that it has an impact of a PC's effectiveness at the journey's end. But if that impact is likely to be slight, its the perfect opportunity to let a Hardy PC just not have to worry about it, where other PCs do.

I... don't know.

hmm. I noticed that last night, when I was reading through the book again. Appearently I misunderstood how it worked.

I thought it was "increase degree of success by one step", with Failure to Success (useful), success to great success (which means nothing mechanically most of the time), or great to extraordinary (which means advancement point). Turns out its just "failure to success" or "invoke on any success for advancement".

I've noticed that many people are saying you can't / shouldn't get more than one advancement point this way. Why? Where does it say that?

If you've got, for instance, Hardy, which is relevant to exactly one skill (travel), why shouldn't you be able to invoke it each successful travel roll? You'll cap out at three advancement points per fellowship phase anyway, why restrict it further to just one?

It's something to do with making each successive AP harder to get. Hang on, I'll see if I can find a reference...

OK, LM p30:

"Additionally, the number of Advancement points already granted by a given group increases the requirement for earning additional ones:
• If no circles have been checked yet in a Skill group, the Loremaster should feel free to award an Advancement point as soon as a player makes
a roll satisfying the requirements described above.
When a skill group has already been granted an Advancement point, the Loremaster should only grant a second point when something out of the ordinary has been achieved, and a third point only in exceptional cases."

That's the bit I was thinking of, anyway.

My player has been very reasonable.

He's mostly roleplaying it, being the first one up in the morning, kicking buts for everyone to get up and get ready to move on. He always acts "fresh" and is eager to move on. He also takes the role of the look out, as he's never really tired anyway

From time to time, when he is on the edge, he'll invoke the trait to autopass a travel roll. We agreed to limit it to once per journey, which is already a big plus.

I guess, every group should decide for himself.
We didn't get into any argument about it. Maybe i'm blessed with reasonable players.

I haven't run the game yet but I plan to be guided by two recommendations that stood out to me in the trait rules.

1. It can only be used when the outcome does not have dramatic consequences. In this case I'm reading dramatic literally as pertaining to the (main) story/plot/character development and not as another adjective for extreme/striking/drastic.

2. They can be used for tests with a good chance for success (I'm reading as low TN). I'm extending the converse of this so they cannot be used on high TN rolls.

In the hardy case I'll allow autopass on all travel roles TN14 or lower.

There is a cost to the player in the benefits of greater successes and APs. Plus the rest of the Fellowship has to roll and this game focuses strongly (as it should) on looking out for one another.

One problem is that travel rolls come up a lot so it makes the trait appear more valuable. But even if you take away the autopass invocation that's still the case for invoking for APs.

I'm planning on handing out little goodies for great successes, which, with APs, make players think twice about auto-pass invocation. For a scout rolling an extraordinary success: "Your footing it true and quiet so that you approach eagles closely without their notice. The rare look at the majesty and elegance of their daily lives fills you with hope." Here's a point of hope. There is precedent for handing out a goodie for great successes in an example I read in the rulebook somewhere last night.

Hi there! I've just joined the forum after lurking for quite some time.

I've seen statements like this many times on this forum, and I don't understand where it comes from. According to the Adventurer's Book, traits can be used in three ways:

1. Automatic Action: achieve an automatic ordinary success.
2. Unforseen Action: allow a roll that would be impossible without the trait
3. Advancement Point: earn an advancement point after succeeding in a related action

The bit about automatic actions allowing a trait to speed play doesn't seem to be restrictive. That is, automatic actions aren't used only to speed play. They are also used to allow characters with traits to avoid dramatic failures.

One situation that has been questioned is whether a Hardy character can perform all travel tests as automatic actions. Of course he can! He's hardy! If he became fatigued on a journey as often as everyone else, he wouldn't be particularly hardy. Of course, the player may want to roll anyway, hoping to roll a great or extraordinary success and ask for an advancement point. After the first such point gained on a journey, however, he would be wise to invoke automatic actions for the rest of the trip, since advancement points after the first are harder to obtain.

A compromise on the Travel test matter is to say "you can auto pass one Travel check" in a series.

I think it would be over-use of the trait "auto pass" invocation to allow it to allow consecutives autopasses on any "repeated rolls" such as extended tests etc. Also, in any "consecutive series" I would only allow one use of trait in whole series in the sense if that if you invoke it for an auto pass you can't later invoke it on a roll that did well for an advancement check.

Stormcrow, I'm with you. Those are the three uses of traits when they are allowed. There are guidelines on when to allow the use of traits for those three purposes. The most significant to me are the non-dramatic consequences and when the task is easy. I think the specific mention of "non-dramatic" is in the AB at the beginning of the traits section. It might even be in a sidebar on that page about trait etiquette. I'll look tonight.

AB p95 fifth paragraph. "The Loremaster may agree with a Trait invocation to speed up play, especially if failing at the roll would not lead to dramatically relevant consequences, or if the action wasnt difficult."

its up to the LM and personal interpretation.

Yes, but that only tells part of the story. Automatic actions may be used whether failure is "dramatically relevant" or not. That page gives an example of each.

If you only allow automatic success when failure is dramatically irrelevant, then you're saying that the character has that trait except when it really matters. That is clearly not the intention of traits.

I'm not saying that its the sole intention of traits, merely providing the citation to USgrandprix's above's reference.

I read it as saying: if it's not that vital, and you want a reason to just skip the roll, a Trait is a good reason to declare an auto-success.

I also tend to think that the Distinctive Features are more keyed into getting AP, and the Specialities for auto-successes, but I'd be interested to hear other people's experience there.

I'm not sure why you say that. Automatic success is only one of the three possibilities.

Re-interpreting the 3 items:

1) Auto-successes for minor items that highlight your character while moving the story forward,

2) As a ready-made story reason to try things other people can't,

3) Earn advancement points for playing in-character.


I grant that this is all loosey-goosey, and that the traits aren't "balanced". I also do see the hardy trait as a particular issue...if you're rolling tons of fatigue dice.

-Jeff

A part of it is definitely related to the character; between Adventurous, Curious, and Small I can cover just about all of my common skills, but I only use them when rolling (which I always do, for a shot at an advancement point) and I tend to get myself into trouble (the rest of the party seems to think I'm quite the insane little hobbit, charging at trolls, wandering through the wilderness looking for dragons, so on and so forth; it does help that I'm the only one in the fellowship with a valor of 3).

But automatic success isn't just for minor items. It's also for important actions that don't require more than an ordinary success. The first example in the book demonstrates this:

Finding enemies in ambush isn't minor! Failure has a significant and dramatic consequence!

It's only in the second example that we see a "minor item":

Rather than spend time fussing with exactly how to open the casket, the trait allows the character to get on with things. There are no serious consequences for failing to open the casket, except having to find another way to open it.

Both uses of automatic actions are about giving an ordinary success to the character without making them roll. The book simply gives examples of what these successes mean when failure has significant consequences (the grimy tracks) and when it doesn't (the casket).

If you only allow automatic actions when failure has no serious consequences, then the trait will only affect the performance of the character when the result of the action isn't actually important. When it really counts, the character will be no more skilled than any other.

I'm keying on the "dramatic" guideline not the task. So if they want to find hidden minion ambushers that's fine to use an appropriate trait. If the main villain is well-hidden in the wings no dice, or actually in this case yes dice.

Agreed. When I said "minor", I meant "not central to the story". Sure, it's important to the characters if they get ambushed...but if it's simply one encounter along the way then I'm not worried about.

I do understand this is a hugely grey area, where individual & group tastes will differ, and even someone's mood may make a difference.

-Jeff