I'm looking for clarity. During your journey you roll against travel and if you fail you lose endurance?

So it seems elves would loss a lot of endurance since they start with no skill in travel or explore.

However, if one has region lore say Mirkwood or Anduin lore one could automatically pass a travel or explore because the they knew the area?

Am I reading this correctly?

Thanks,

HN

Traits may grant auto successes when failure is not significant. I would say that Fatigue would often be significant, though perhaps not for short journeys.

From page 95 of the AB:

"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."

Thanks!

BTW - you don't lose Endurance on a failed Travel roll for a fatigue test, you instead get a temporary increase to your Fatigue rating equal to the Fatigue of your traveling gear (1 in warm seasos, 2 in cold ones). This temporary increase goes away at the end of the journey at a rate of 1 point per prolonged rest in good circumstances (warm, bed, decent food, etc.)

John

This brings up one of my few issues with the rules: in LOTR, elves don't appear to suffer fatigue at all, when when traveling under duress. But in TOR, elves are gonna get tired pretty easily. They're also pretty lame when it comes to woodland skills (Explore, Hunting).

I had the same thought, until I worked it out in my head to have the Weariness of Elves be a spiritual thing rather than physical. Descriptions are everything...

Note as well that the only Elves we see in action in LOTR are Legolas, Elladan, and Elrohir--none of whom are anything like beginning characters. I suspect that they all have their Travel and Explore skills maxed out.

And Gildor and Glorfindel...

My bad--but again we're not talking about starting characters.

I also suspect that Silvan Elves are much lower on the spiritual totem pole than Noldor or Sindar Elves and are thus lower power overall.

Agreed.

I'm still not buying elves that get lost in the woods and tired after a light jog over a hill

"Still elves are light-footed, and though they were not in these days much used to the marches and the treacherous lands between the Forest and the Lake, their going was swift. Only five days after the death of the dragon they came upon the shores and looked on the ruins of the town"

I guess they must have rolled well or they would have arrived a few days later.

The way I am working it out is this way. Elves get a high lore score and this is used to :


Successful Lore Roll Options
1. Reduce the length of the journey by one day (to a minimum of one).
2. Allow one character to automatically pass one Fatigue test.
3. Reduce the TN of all Travel rolls made by one character by one level, (eg. from moderate to easy).

Also,

Attribute Bonus
If a character attempting the Lore test is already familiar with the route taken by the company (if, for example, he comes from a nearby area) the rolling player may be granted a free Attribute bonus; the same applies if the route has already been recorded on the company’s Adventurer’s Map.



So maybe the first leg was to the raft elves. Then a second leg from there to the ruins of Lake-town. If they rolled high they may have cut a day off of each leg for a total of two days.

Also the weariness an inexperienced elf might succomb to could be explained as the decay of the mortal world. The elven realms are " magical" so wandering in non elven realms could be draining to an inexperienced adventurer. As an analogy, person coming from a pampered environment would probably be emotionally beaten down if they were in 3rd world slum. That is until they got some advancement points.

Also being reclusive they may now their area well. However, if the do not travel out of their area why should they ( beginning elf characters) have high starting travel and explore skills? But, don't forget this is offset with their high lore score which is mention in the rules posted above.

HN

I think my explanation to my players will be that people tend to have an inflated idea of how good elves are at travel, simply because nearly all the elves you meet when out travelling are travel specialists and not typical elves. Most wood elves never go anywhere much, and feel intimidated by the very idea of navigating a mountain pass, reluctant although they might be to admit it. Being an insular race has its disadvantages, and easily feeling like a fish out of water is one of them. This seems to fit well with the statement that few Mirkwood elves have the calling of Wanderer.

Thanks Thriddle. That is a good explanation.
HN

For what it's worth, that'd be my explanation too. The ones we see wandering about are the experienced characters, the less experienced ones are shifting empty barrels in the elf kings hall...

Elves are, in fact, more capable and enduring, physically, than Men, according to Tolkien.

It wasn't just more experienced Elves that could travel long and far, all of the Elves that appear in LotR are descended from the three kindreds of Elves that made the journey west across the entirety of Middle Earth toward Valinor in the First Age.

I suspect that Elves in TOR do not feature more physcial prowess overall due to game balance concerns, primarily, and that the Hobbit/LotR stories do not strictly describe the capabilities of Elves as fully as the TOME/Silmarillion books describe them.

I'm still chewing on Elves for TOR, not close to modding them well enough for the ruleset. But they will not be 'balanced' in terms of game stats with other races, but more in terms of story and setting ties. For example, Men have the gift of true Free Will, but Elves are bound up in the Fate of Arda and the Ainulindale. They're also more susceptible to grief, after living for centuries watching everything they build and love decay away and die, over and over again. Also, the Shadow hates them more than any other race in Arda. That sort of thing.

While I do agree that it has more to do with game balance, you did mot mention that Men, Dwarves, and Hobbits, migrated far from their places of awakening. Also, all these migrations including the Elves were not made in a single trip.

Elves also have the Elvish Dream virtue,People of the Dusk and a high starting lore which makes travel easier so the hardships are lessened

Again I state that it is mostly because of game balance, but I think that it has been done fairly well as to fit into Tolkien's world. The question for me would be how are the Sindar, Noldor, and the Calaquendi going to be treated in the later source books.


A Calaquendi should have great abilities. A Silvan Elf not so much. Legolas was Sindarin not Silvan or at least his father Thranduil was, so worst case he was 1/2 Sindarin and should have high starting stats. But it seems that the adventurer's books mostly deals with Silvan Elves.


HN

Well sure. But being *descended* from people who made long journeys thousands of years ago (as I probably am) doesn't make me any kind of expert traveller, and I don't see why a wood elf who has never ventured any further from the halls of Thranduil than running a few errands to Esgaroth should be a good traveller either.

I guess the real question is what the designers think elves' low Endurance is meant to reflect. I think it's something like discouragement, based on the observation that it's a fixed number plus *Heart* (not Body). If this is so, then the fact that

is true, but probably wide of the mark.