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


Robin S.

This is the central issue of TOR -- actually any game -- most players tend to think in terms of individual possibilities of a character, whereas it's much more correct to think in terms of teamwork and group tactics. I don't know where this mentality comes from, but I'm pretty sure that the d20 system that dominated the market until a few years ago made this much more pronounced. All the "builds" created for D&D 3.x and other similar systems aim at improving the individual chances of dealing massive amount of damage and/or apply an individual strategy on combat, which causes primary support (i.e. Bard) to become sub-ar choices in the eyes of certain players. In TOR and other current products the focus is on the group as a team, making group thinking a central point of the game.

Agree completely. In fact while there have differences in opinions regarding specific tactics I am pleased to see the range of different approaches people are taking to tackle various creatures.

Arguably one of the many, many reasons I love this game is that different opponents do require different tactics.

Woodclaw wrote:This is the central issue of TOR -- actually any game -- most players tend to think in terms of individual possibilities of a character, whereas it's much more correct to think in terms of teamwork and group tactics. I don't know where this mentality comes from, but I'm pretty sure that the d20 system that dominated the market until a few years ago made this much more pronounced. All the "builds" created for D&D 3.x and other similar systems aim at improving the individual chances of dealing massive amount of damage and/or apply an individual strategy on combat, which causes primary support (i.e. Bard) to become sub-ar choices in the eyes of certain players. In TOR and other current products the focus is on the group as a team, making group thinking a central point of the game.

This is absolutely true, though (as you note) not specific to The One Ring. Heck, even in d20 games, teamwork is far more effective than going it alone...people are just more inclined to ignore this fact in D&D 3.5 than they should be for some reason.

That said...I'm not at all convinced of the value of the 'rotating stance' thing. By weapon skill 4 or so, everyone being in Defensive stance whenever they aren't doing a specific action requiring another stance really does seem the way to go the vast majority of the time.

Robin,

Maybe you can help me understand this tactic, because I'm not seeing it. Maybe we need specifics.

Let's assume 4 identical heroes: {H1, H2, H3, H4} and 4 identical adversaries: {A1, A2, A3, A4}. They are paired off, with H1 and H2 in Defensive and H3 and H4 in Forward.

After some number of rounds we can expect, on average, that H1, H2, A1, A2 will be "healthier" (higher Endurance, fewer Wounds) than H3, H4, A3, A4. Let's say that the first group are all at 75% "health", and the second group are at 25% "health".

Why, exactly, does it make sense for them to now trade stances? If a different stance were somehow better for any of them, they should have chosen that stance at the beginning, right?

Some caveats:
- If the dice rolls are not average, meaning that somebody among the eight players gets a lucky or unlucky streak, then yes the optimal stance might change. But then Stormcrow's tactic needs some major clarification: it's not a general tactic it's an edge case one.

- Certainly you're never going to have four identical heroes. But, again, the tactic doesn't say "If one of the heroes is a 'tank'..." or "If some characters have high weapon skill and some have low..." etc.

- If there were, say, six adversaries, such that H1 and H2 each faced two adversaries, then yes H1 and H2 might want to start off more defensive (subject to a lot of other variables, of course). H3 and H4 would then use whatever stance will let them kill their adversaries quickly so as to be able to help H1 and H2, and if by then their health is then low they might want to be more defensive. And also maybe once H1 and H2 only face a single adversary they should switch to more aggressive stances. But that isn't even remotely what Stormcrow was claiming.

- There are tactics using rotating Protect Companion that also make sense (if costing a lot of Hope). But that's also not relevant to the Stormcrow strat.

Can anybody help me understand this better?

Also, I'm not sure where the "teamwork" vs. "going it alone" debate came from. Was anybody in this thread claiming that going it alone works better?

I said that everybody should pick whatever stance is optimal for the fight (meaning, depending on both the adversaries and the number of them of them with which you are engaged), but that doesn't preclude teamwork. I.e, you want to use a sub-optimal stance for a round in order to perform a Combat Task. And if somebody gets badly hurt then, yes, the archer may have to go close combat so that the wounded character can Escape Combat and go rearward.

Glorelendil, I initially made the point about teamwork because people were taking results from your simulator out of context to suggest wearing heavy armour was a bad move.

What I felt needed taking into account was that Endurance can be recovered during the fight. Wounds cannot. The simulator doesn't take into account using Rally Comrades at all and how that affects the situation (nor was it meant to). Not a criticism of the simulator itself, more just a comment on how it only tells part of the story.

EDIT: Corrected typo

Agree 100%.

The point of the simulator is to measure marginal differences in various choices, not to determine overall strategies. It's great at determining, for example, whether Close Fitting or Cunning Make gives you more benefit against various adversaries.

Anything more than that it is reading too much into it.

Following this thread with great enthusiasm.

About the rotating stances thing: I'm not sure what the right conclusion is on this, but I will say as an experienced player, having played the game, I get less chances for my characters to opitmally use "rally comrades" then I would like (this goes back to Action economy; how much damage can I heal vs. cause). Typically, I find 1 or 2 people in the group have taken a good pounding, while another 2 or 3 are unharmed. Ideally, if you're going to focus on being a combat "healer" in TOR, you'd rather that 4 heroes each took 5 damage, than 2 heroes each having taken 10 (or 1 who took 20).

The obvious benefit is that with your healing check, you heal 4x damage instead of 2x (or 1x). But you're also more likely to heal damage that has not dipped the damaged characters yet into the Weary category (or worse, unconscious/knocked out). And if Weariness can be prevented (or rather, the cusp of Weariness be set back) with a Rally Comrades check, it's far more useful and becomes a higher priority when judging action economy).

So...I would agree that you really want to spread around the damage taken in TOR (unlike MMO's and MMO influenced RPG design like DD4)...but I'm not sure exactly how to insure that happens. Hero rotation might get you part of the way there...I'd have to scrutinize it more in actual play.

Yeah me too Rocmistro! It's interesting to see different experiences and approaches.

In terms of spreading the damage, the best approach is to use Protect Companion and judicious use of taking knockback to prevent any major hits and try and keep everyone above the Weary level. This is definitely far easier in larger fellowships where multiple characters can use Rally Comrades.

Of course this costs Hope to continue using Protect Companion effectively...

bluejay wrote:Yeah me too Rocmistro! It's interesting to see different experiences and approaches.

In terms of spreading the damage, the best approach is to use Protect Companion and judicious use of taking knockback to prevent any major hits and try and keep everyone above the Weary level. This is definitely far easier in larger fellowships where multiple characters can use Rally Comrades.

Of course this costs Hope to continue using Protect Companion effectively...

I think the best way to use Protect Companion....if you really want to be a powergaming munchkin...is for somebody with heavy armor and high Parry to pick a glass cannon (high damage/low defense) character their Fellowship Focus. Then just Protect Companion every round.

Caveat: whether the Hope point gets refunded when used this way has been debated. I would argue that the Protect Companion is refundable, but not if you then spend a point of Hope on an ensuing Protection test.