How many fatigue points does a PC aquire when he fails a travel roll while journying? In the book it says they aquire the amount of their traveling gear, does this include the encubrance of weapons and armour?

1 or 2 points only, depending on the season in which they travel.

Spring and Summer 1 point.

Autumn and Winter 2 points.

Adventurers Book page 76.

Ok, then 2 questions.

1) Why does armour and weapons have an encumbrance rating as well if they are not taken into the caluclation for fatigue while traveling?

2) "A companion embarked on a vessel or equipped with a pony halves the total Fatigue increase due to failed Travel rolls (round fractions up)." p. 155 AB

How does this work? You can't have half a fatigue point, what is the point of having a horse?

Armour and Weapons have encumbrance rating which determine the base Fatigue at the start of the journey.

As you fail Travel rolls, fatigue creeps higher, meaning that you become Weary more quickly when your endurance decreases as a result of combat.

As for horses, they cover double the distance per day that you do walking (p34 LB), so you will make half as many Travel rolls.

"Armour and Weapons have encumbrance rating which determine the base Fatigue at the start of the journey. "

I don't understand this point.

I should point out I am not the person running the game; so I haven't read all the books. I am just trying to help clear up a point of contention with the rules that came up in our last session. Pointing out p. 34 in the LB went a long way in doing so, thanks.

Another question. As they are referred to as ponies in the game are we assuming that the PCs are actually riding them, or that the ponies are carrying all the gear and being led?

I'll illustrate by example.

If your armour and weapons have a total encumbrance of 18, then you begin the journey with a Fatigue of 18.

Each time you fail a travel roll the Fatigue goes up by 1 or 2 points (depending on then season).

For the purpose of this example, assume you fail 3 Travel checks during the Journey which takes place in the summer, which adds 3 to your Fatigue, taking it to 21 at the end of the Journey.

When you enter combat, assume you have 32 Endurance. As you take damage, that will decrease and when it falls to your current Fatigue or lower (in this example 21), the character becomes Weary.

As you can see, someone who fails a lot of Travel checks, particularly on a long journey, will become Weary quickly, especially if they have a high fatigue due to weapons and armour at the start.

Does that make sense to you?

As for leading ponies or horses. I would assume riding for the increased speed, as I walk quickly and even if I was leading a pony for a full days travel, I doubt I would cover 40 miles in that period! But I could be wrong!

The horses/ponies thing works both ways.

If you have ponies carrying your gear – but are not riding them – you lose 1/2 (round up)* the fatigue from failed Travel rolls.

If you are actually riding the horses, you get that and move at double speed.



* Now, 1/2 round up on it's face looks like you just lose 1 or 1 fatigue rather than 1 or 2 fatigue from spring/summer or fall/winter respectively. I think this may have been a holdover from the idea that you add the fatigue in after you make all the rolls (so if you fail 4 out of 9 total rolls for a leg of the journey, you get 4 fatigue dumped on you all at once). The half loss makes a little more sense that way.

An fix would be to track the .5 fatigue loss, but then treat your total fatigue as rounded up.

Ok, yes. That is the way I thought it ran.

Then a Pony would actually be a smaller ambling gait breed of horse then? One suited for long, somewhat comfortable, travel.

The way I understand the rules for halving fatigue when using mounts is that you halve the total fatigue from the journey, since you roll all the travel checks before the stage of the journey begins.

You halve the total fatigue from the journey, not every one point increase. That makes a difference.

Let's say a fellowship starts out on a journey in autumn that requires seven travel checks. If they had failed all of them, they would see a 14 point increase in their fatigue. If they were using ponies, it would be 7 points increase. So halve after all fatigue is calculated.

Eirik

After checking the book I think we have been making fatigue checks at a higher frequency then we should be. I'll have to check with the GM next time we get together.

Beran,
Something to keep in mind is that Francesco Nepitello (the game's author) is seriously considering altering the Fatigue Check mechanics. Specifically to reduce the number of checks required by players during the course of a long journey. He was also looking at clarifying the wording.

He opened a topic a month ago (approx), posted a copy of the proposed change, and asked for thoughts / comments. He's no longer asking for feedback, but the proposal and discussion may still be present.

"A companion embarked on a vessel or equipped with
a pony halves the total Fatigue increase due to failed
Travel rolls (round fractions up)."

Ok, so then the above is not worded correctly then? Instead of halving the fatigue point increase, it halves the travel time. Which causes the PC to make less fatigue rolls over the whole journey.

Ferretz,
Using a mount provides two benefits: greater speed (thus reducing the number of checks required) and halving any fatigue that does accrue. I don't know if you simplified things in your example, but if not, you're missing out. Read my comments to Beran (below) to see the full impact of mounted travel.



Beran,
I was responding to the following comment:

I suggested that you read the topic, 'revised' Journey Resolution, and download the proposed rules changes. Some of the material clarifies existing wording and other portions are completely new. One point specifically addressed is a means of reducing the number of dice rolls required for Journeys.

Otherwise your group might put in a lot of time and effort to understand something that might change. There is no official word on when the Journey Revision might be released.


As for...

Francesco applied all fatigue at the end of the Journey leg. As such it is completely possible to say: Your Company travels on a 33 day Journey, during the summer, on foot, requiring 11 fatigue checks. You failed each one, so +11 fatigue.

Things change drastically when traveling by vessel/pony though. First off, the company moves at a greater rate of speed, so that same journey only takes half the time (LMB p34 walk speed 20 mi/day vs pony speed of 40 mi/day) so 16.5 days. It's still summer so a fatigue check is required every 3 days or portion thereof, so 16.5/3=5.5 or 6 checks (instead of 11!). Lets say you still fail all of the checks, so +6 fatigue, but you're on a vessel/pony, so you only suffer half fatigue, so only +3 fatigue is actually applied against the character.

11 vs 3 is a huge difference. Eleven fatigue is likely to result in the character being Weary. Three fatigue is completely manageable for the average character.

One extra comment. I would suggest reading "vessel/pony" as "land vessel/mount", unless a future TOR product excludes a specific vessel/mount type. Why? So this rule covers all mechanical and animal based means of transportation. Including any form of non-waterborne transport, such as sky-ships (Earindil), carriages, mine carts, wagons, etc; as well as camels, dragons, oliphants / mumakil, eagles, dolphins, fell beasts and anything else that can be dreamt up.

Waterborne travel is excluded because it's speed depends on whether traveling with or against water currents. Thus you cannot make a blanket statement equivalent to "any animal halves fatigue taken" about waterborne vessels.

Thanks for the assist. I think I have this down now.