Scrollreader's House Rules

[Rich H]

Hobbits have to be murder hobos. It's an unwritten law of all Middle-earth based RPGs.

[Deadmanwalking]

Do you have the math for that conclusion posted anywhere? Like you said it's a bit hard to believe. I don't see Mirkwood Elves are being all that powerful by the RAW. They have their good points, but I don't see them as being in danger of overpowering the game. I'd like to see what made you come to that conclusion.

I think you've misunderstood what I was saying:

Mirkwood Elves are not more powerful than other characters. If using the official rules they are right on par with other Cultures, and work quite well.

My point was that since, by the math, they're already on par with everyone else using House Rules to power them up significantly makes them more powerful than everyone else. Which would be bad. So people probably shouldn't do it.

[Glorelendil]

Sorry, but I just don't see how an extra opening volley makes the Mirkwood elves so powerful compared to the other cultures.

You're not alone; a lot of people don't see it at first. I didn't realize how great it was until I built a monte carlo simulation and saw some numbers, which I posted somewhere in these forums.

Some factors that make it especially potent:
- As I mentioned above, the entire bonus comes at the start of combat, instead of distributed across the whole fight (like, say, a static bonus to Edge or damage would do), which increases the likelihood of eliminating an Adversary early. So if you do a DPR calculation it's not as impressive as a turns-to-kill calculation.
- An extra attack increases your damage and Pierce numbers (whereas most other bonuses affect only one or the other)
- As an extra attack is also has synergy with all other archery-related bonuses you might have. E.g. it benefits from Grievous, Fell, Keen, a Hindered target, etc..

When you get to 4+ skill, potentially two Called Shots before the enemy can even engage in close combat is pretty sweet. Sure, Trolls are going to make their Protection test, but if you slap Fell on that woodland bow you have a solid chance of dropping two orcs or wolves or spiders or bandits before combat even starts. (Or forcing a single tougher opponent to make two Protection tests.)

Again, it doesn't make Mirkwood Elves killing machines, but it adequately compensates for their other weaknesses in archery.

Of course, if you want Mirkwood Elves to all be action movie stars, if you think that they should be wreaking holy havoc with their bows, then by all means buff away.

[atgxtg]

Sorry, nothing personal, but I think I'd need to see the numbers to be convinced. I still don't think it is as powerful as Hobbit's Far Shot.

And as far as Orcs and Spiders go, someone with a good body score and a 2H weapon (say a Beorning) with skill 4+ is probably going to be dropping more orcs and spiders, since they can do enough damage on a great success to drop most mooks with a single hit.

[Glorelendil]

Sorry, nothing personal, but I think I'd need to see the numbers to be convinced. I still don't think it is as powerful as Hobbit's Far Shot.

Well then you should work through the numbers. I hope you're not waiting for somebody to type all that out for you.

Hobbit's Fair Shot is also very, very powerful. But, like Mirkwood Elves, they are also limited to normal bows, so they need something good to bring them up to parity, and Fair Shot has poor synergy with both their cultural reward and Called Shots. (In contrast, as I noted above, to Woodland Bow, which has synergy with everything.)

(What Fair Shot really does is allow Hobbits to invest less XP into bow skill. With Skill: 3 and a Keen bow you'll have great numbers for both hitting and getting Pierces, without ever using Called Shot. The other reason for high skill...bonus damage...is far less significant for Hobbits because of low Body. TL;DR: Francesco figured this all out a long time ago.)

[Scrollreader]

Yeah. I've been convinced Elves don't need an injury buff, generally, even a mild one. But it bothers me a bit that the Deadly Archery virtue is so lackluster. (I'm also slightly bothered that the biggest boost to effectiveness for an elf archer goes away if you get a Famous Weapon, but I'll take that into effect when I'm working on my Treasure Indexes in the future).

This still leaves the Wood Elves with an empty virtue slot. (Or at least, one with only marginal use for even the half of the elves who primarily arch). Which is frustrating. But I may just recommend caution to new players, and call it a day.

[Falenthal]

To me, the most annoying point of Deadly Archery is its requirement to spend a Hope point to have some use.
The most thematic variation I've read around here came from Glorelendil, who proposed to give the elven archer some kind of boost if succesfully ambushing the enemy.

This can go as powerful or mild as wanted. Taking into account that, with the Woodland bow, Silvan elves already have a benefit to the Opening Volleys phase, it shouldn't be too powerful.

I don't have a clear option, but the one I consider goes like this:

"When succesfully ambushing an enemy, the first shot of the Wood-elf gets a -3 to the TN [optional: gets a bonus equal to his basic Heart rating]."

This covers several aspects:
1) Thematically, needing to ambush the enemy requires a stealthy group or going alone. Just one failure from your companions and your bonus is gone. Therefore, it won't be applied in every combat.
2) It doesn't increase the damage or injury output. But if the archer wants to do a Called Shot, or use two Opening Volleys to do a Prepare Shot, the bonus makes it easier to succeed: for the Called Shot he still needs to roll a Tengwar; and if taking advantage of the Woodland Bow's extra volley to do a Prepare Shot, it makes you lose that extra attack in favour of a more powerful one.
3) If the elf ambushes a bird in the dark, the +4 TN modifier is (almost) negated, and fits the description of the Virtue .

It looks very situational to me, and the bonus just betters (but doesn't grant) your chance of succeed, without increasing the damage output of a normal hit.

[Glorelendil]

Alternatively:

When Ambushing an opponent, you may re-roll a Success die on the attack roll

That would both increase the hit chance and benefit Called Shots.

And if you really want to go all Peter Jackson:

When Ambushing an opponent, you may elect to re-roll a number of success dice equal to or less than your Valour score.

I haven't done any math/sim on that, but I don't think it's really as OP as it might sound. First, it only really matters if both Bow and Valour are high, and if Bow is already high then you're going to be getting Tengwars 50+% of the time anyway. Second, even with Fell you're only getting TN 16 for the Injury, so what this really means is that if you Ambush enemies you're going to kill two weak ones pretty reliably. And the amazing synergy with Woodland Bow means you'd cancel out the benefit of using a bow with a much higher Injury.

[Falenthal]

Alternatively:

When Ambushing an opponent, you may re-roll a Success die on the attack roll

That would both increase the hit chance and benefit Called Shots.

This is a good one, too. Sort of Fair Shot (sort of), but very situational.
You know I'm not good at maths and statistics, but seems a bit better than the plain +3 to attack rolls I proposed, right?
But not too much, still. Looks good.

[Scrollreader]

I feel like the Anvil Way quality will help the Greatbow users catch up, but as seen with the better than expected Woodland Bow, I'd be curious to what extent. (The quality also helps the Elf, of course, but at a more significant cost, IMO)