Reduced Hope for experienced Heroes

[Corvo]

I got a veteran Fellowship. They are at year 2960 of DoM, and all the Heroes got 100+ px.
They face a lot of hardships, yet, in the end, their Hope is always pretty high.

This is something that goes against the feel of our game: older Heroes should have higher skill but lower Hope, or at least this is our feeling.

I'm thinking of some mechanical systems to enforce this "less Hope for experienced Heroes", and I would like some opinions (unforeseen consequences, and such).

Let say that every time an Hero reach 75, 100, 125, etc XP, they...

Option A) they get a -1 the their maximum (not current) Hope.
Option B) they get a permanent Shadow Point (with no Shadow Weakness disadvantage: just permanent Shadow, like a Lesser Ring).
Option C) the fellowship pool loose 1 point (this will kick in just when ALL the Heroes reach 75/100/125 XP )

[mica]

To be honest I don't find the basic mechanics a problem - should only be 2 hope/session per character and then only if the foci were not made miserable, wounded, poisoned etc.

Where players have chosen the same character as focus you can use this to target the character with LM's decisions during travel encounters.
Also The Hunt should be quite brutal and revelations common with so many powerful characters - you should be finding that with named weapons and armour, so much valour etc the hunt track should be starting at 12-15. This does not leave much room before the Eye gets a sniff. Also make sure you are remembering to use their Flaws - chucking 2 feat die can turn up quite a few eyes leading to revelations and travel encounters
Revelations can be saved and used during difficult encounters to raise difficulty by 2 levels for all. When nearly every roll is 22+ during an encounter you can be sure they will burn through quite a few hope. Making everybody weary does a similar thing - burn that hope just to succeed.

My only grumble is with taking courage - which if there are quite a few modest level characters and one or 2 elites there is suddenly a lot of potential hope kicking about. Anyway I have outlined that issue in another post on this forum.

[Corvo]

After a two month hiatus I'm back at my game, and to the question.

I'll thank Mica for his points, but while I understand that the system as written isn't a problem for him, I found some problem in my campaign, hence this thread.

The Heroes -all Men- are 25 years older. They have fought in another war, and they have seen a lot of Men die at their orders. And while they were ultimately victorious, it's a bitter victory, where much was lost and little was attained.

I think I'll grant them a Permanent Shadow Point each (with no Shadow Weakness), as for option B.

Someone see a pitfall I'm missing?

[Arthur Fisher]

This problem can also be averted by giving them tougher challenges and throwing way more Corruption Tests their way.
If you take away their Hope, the party is going to be resentful. But if you give them more problems they need Hope to overcome, they'll view it as an exciting challenge.

Besides, if The Black Easterling is sitting in Dol Guldur and sees these so called "Heroes" thwarting his plans, he would probably send more dangerous creatures and horrific tidings their way.

[atgxtg]

I agree with Arthur. If you just give thier character more Shadow points and take away Hope then you are penalizing them for being successful, and being arbitrary. If you have some big baddies get upset at them and send more powerful minions out hunting for them you are just letting things run their normal course.

You group got to where they are through luck, grit, skill and whatever other factors applied. Nothing that they should be penalized for. Maybe they should be battered down a bit and more world weary, but they aren't. It's not fair to just declare that they should be and make them so.