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Two in forward (or open) hit more often than two in defensive, but are hit more often. Assume this stance when you're fresh for fighting (haven't lost endurance). When you become weary, switch to defensive (or "Escape Combat" to rearward) to make yourself harder to hit to save your life. Meanwhile, those in defensive will be relatively unscathed; they move to forward (or open) to start pressing the attack.

Doing this you'll only expose part of your company at any one time, leaving the other part available to clean up when the first part is too weary. This is instead of everyone fighting to weariness at the same time. Those in heavy armor who get weary sooner will do their proportional part, and will be much less likely to die.

Naturally, if you're only able to fight the enemy to a stalemate or worse, this won't help you, but in that case you were in trouble anyway and you haven't made things worse. This strategy is especially good if you've got a high weapon skill AND heavy armor, since you'll still do damage while fighting in defensive stance. But if your group has been making progress, then once you get weary your unweary friends come out of defensive and cleans up the rest of them, and there was no point at which everyone got weary at the same time.

Angelalex242 wrote:Except the advantage of PCs is typically 'action economy.' They swarm a single big target to take it down. Anything that prevents a PC from attacking, even if it prevents them from being attacked in turn violates the law of action economy, which is 'hit it as hard and as often as possible.'

Not entirely sure that tactic works against big trolls. Take a mountain troll for instance. They throw 4d+9 to attack meaning they are averaging 23 plus the feat die. They will hardly ever miss. A regular hit (with horrible strength) dishes out 18 points of damage. An extraordinary hit can do 36 points of damage. They can pound on one character until they're out and honestly even in a defensive stance it's very hard to avoid being hit.

In these situations I think an experienced fellowship will do more than swarm a target. One or two might be using Rally Comrades to help restore lost Endurance. At the same time other characters might be in defensive stance marking team members to use protect companion if required. This ensures the damage is spread amongst the group while Endurance is being healed back. I believe these kind of tactics become essential to survival in these combats.

Anyway just a suggestion but from what I've seen in the game the swarm tactic is likely to see at least one or two of the fellowship taken down.

Stormcrow wrote:Two in forward (or open) hit more often than two in defensive, but are hit more often. Assume this stance when you're fresh for fighting (haven't lost endurance). When you become weary, switch to defensive (or "Escape Combat" to rearward) to make yourself harder to hit to save your life. Meanwhile, those in defensive will be relatively unscathed; they move to forward (or open) to start pressing the attack.

Doing this you'll only expose part of your company at any one time, leaving the other part available to clean up when the first part is too weary. This is instead of everyone fighting to weariness at the same time. Those in heavy armor who get weary sooner will do their proportional part, and will be much less likely to die.

Naturally, if you're only able to fight the enemy to a stalemate or worse, this won't help you, but in that case you were in trouble anyway and you haven't made things worse. This strategy is especially good if you've got a high weapon skill AND heavy armor, since you'll still do damage while fighting in defensive stance. But if your group has been making progress, then once you get weary your unweary friends come out of defensive and cleans up the rest of them, and there was no point at which everyone got weary at the same time.

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I don't believe this strategy provides any benefit, and probably does the opposite.

All else being equal (that is, ignoring Combat Tasks or various other special circumstances, like the Snow Troll case) each character should pick whatever stance gives them a decent chance of hitting while minimizing the chance of being hit. Which, once you have 4+ skill, almost always means Defensive.

Certainly there are reasons to go defensive later in the fight, but "keeping some characters fresh for later in the fight" just means there are going to be more adversaries still standing later in the fight. TOR mechanics reward killing things as fast as possible, not dragging out the fight.

Thank Illuvitar for High Elves, then.

"The troll uses Horrible Strength."

"Might of the Firstborn. Nope."

Yes that's certainly a viable tactic. Of course you have to make a Valour roll at TN 19 and if you fail you lose a Hope point.

Nevertheless the Mountain Troll will roll at least a great success over 50% of the time.

The point is really that I believe that swarming the troll is likely to result in one or more PCs out (and therefore Weary for a while).

Snow trolls aren't much easier in this respect.

That's why a wise High Elf who plans on noping trolls has at least a valor of 4. Preferably 5. It's also wise to have a natural heart score of 5, and even up it to 6 with that lesser ring. Because if you're gonna lose a hope for failure anyway, you'll ALWAYS try to amp it with hope if it's within range.

Yeah obviously you pay the Hope cost to succeed if you're going to have to pay it anyway.

Like I say it definitely could be a viable tactic but I seriously believe at high levels you need the teamwork I'm suggesting.

Even if you succeed at stopping horrible strength you're likely to be weary in two rounds. Remember, over 50% of attacks will at least be a great success.

Anyway just a suggestion.

One thing I do love about the game is that there is no killer build and you have to be prepared to change tactics to win.

A couple of turns of Intimidate Foes from a couple of PCs who are decent at it will also pretty thoroughly destroy a Troll's ability to use Hate in such a manner. And is otherwise very much the right thing to do when fighting a troll, and with any luck at all can be done before it gets more than one attack off.

Takes longer (and is thus more problematic) with multiple trolls, but it remains a very good strategy without the need for anything but two characters or so with decent ratings in one of two skills.

And that's where Dunedain comes in handy, as Royalty Revealed lets them Awe and attack in the same round.

Stormcrow's reply shows up the central importance of teamwork, especially in the Fellowship. This tactic does work in fact quite a lot, especially when the Fellowship is outnumbered (orcs,spiders etc.) as they often are.

This way the 'heavy-hitters' are able to take out a lot of The Enemy but at a certain point in the combat the more defensive guys take over so the heavy-hitters don't get Wounded. The trick is to know when to 'Switch' as it were....

Its true that this tactic is not as effective against a creature such as a Troll, but the idea with this strategy is to protect your warriors from getting Wounded, so a smart Fellowship does this when most of the Forward/Open guys are Weary or close to it...

All players should approach a combat thinking 'Team' not 'individual'!! And all LM's should reward such heroism!


Robin S.