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Well, I figure at high enough levels of XP, you're essentially Faenor Jr. Or Durin Jr. Or whatever. And you can start pulling First Age stunts that most mortals just can't do anymore.

There comes a point that with Valor 6/Wisdom 6/Weapon 6(or even multiple weapons at 6!) where you are essentially 'The Wise' and the game should treat you as such.

Even better, maybe at Valor 6 and/or Wisdom 6, you can get 'virtual Valor and virtual Wisdom' to get more rewards and more virtues.

Maybe you wanna pull a Frodo, and have Sting, a King's Blade Grievous Keen Fell Shortsword with your mithril coat, a Lucky Armor 3x Cunning Make chain shirt. But that's 8 rewards! No problem, you've got XP enough to burn...

I know that the Nazgul have other powers that make them rather fearsome opponents, but skill wise they are rated at 3-4 in their weapon skills. Now, not having seen how fast PCs can advance in a game, our GM kind of fudge things to advance us a little quicker and we still didn't get past 3-4 in our weapons skills. I kind of question games in which PCs approach maxing out in Wisdom, Valour and skills in the short run. DoM each scenario is set during a particular year (for the most part) so that should be one or two XPs per year should it not?

Assuming that a starting PC has 3 points in a weaponskill then it takes 51 XP to get that to a rating of 6.

To get a Virtue (either Wisdom or Valour) from 1 to 6 costs 61 XP.

To get a Virtue from 2 to 6 costs 57 XP.

In total, that's 169 XP. Every adventure I run I award around 6 to 8 XP per adventure, let's call it 7. So to get 169 XP will take 24 to 25 adventures. I run about 1.5 adventures per year so that's going to mean that my PCs (assuming they survive) may potentially get to these ratings in around 16 years.

16 years as an adventurer *is* a tough hack for any race but should it give them top ratings in both Wisdom and Valour as well as a top rating in one Weapon Skill. I'm not too sure.

The rules already have other options to spend XP, for specific cultures and virtues, like the Woodman's hound or Elf Magic. Turning this around a little, I wonder if an idea would be to expand the rules to offer players other options to spend those hard earned XP on?

Also, on of the good points put forth in DoM is the importance of family setting down roots. Which is very much a part of the "Tolkien Feel" in the game...the sense of Home and wanting to stay there. I'm running a pbp game that was originally going to be centered around Dale, and then DoM came which is something I've been champing to run. So, I got the "ok" from the players and did a re write. One of the Rangers has already expressed the idea he is not sure his character would go so far south and spend so much time from his family. Which is really neat as I've never had a player think that way.

For myself I retired my Dwarf character at 1 Shadow Point as I really didn't like the way I was thinking I would have to RP him at that point...he was a some what bitter old veteran to begin with his slid to the dark side would have been quick. So, I choose to retire him and try something else. TOR is a game where the players really have to change there mind set. This isn't D&D where they can keep killing orcs well into their 60's. The mechanic which might be needed here is some kind of degrading of ability as the PC ages.

If you degrade ability as PCs age...then Dwarves and Elves just grin and keep on trucking. Especially elves. "Well, I went from 2870 to 2890 these last 20 years. No, I don't particularly feel it."

Angelalex242 wrote:If you degrade ability as PCs age...then Dwarves and Elves just grin and keep on trucking. Especially elves. "Well, I went from 2870 to 2890 these last 20 years. No, I don't particularly feel it."

Some games handle this with having races like dwarves and elves accrue XP at a slower rate. Humans gain it faster but then age, and eventually retire. It's also applied in order to let rookie PCs play side-by-side with veterans - the rookie starts with lower rating but rapidly progresses and eventually surpasses the veteran character.

An aging mechanic is something I've thought about, and it makes complete sense, but something else would need to be applied to elves and dwarves and even hobbits as well, perhaps. For elves maybe that could be some kind of "Sea Longing" trait, for dwarves something along the lines of "A Return to Rock and Stone", and for hobbits it would be a desire "For Hearth and Home". Almost like traits of extended, long term, weariness but not in the same way as the Wearied condition; perhaps something similar? Perhaps just traits that are added to the PC in the same way as Shadow Traits can be and that affect the PC's perception of the world - build up a desire for 'settling down' or giving up the life of adventure?

I do think Shadow was considered as a 'management tool' for character progression when the rules were being designed - ie, PCs would accrue/succumb to the shadow, or be retired for fear of that, long before they accrued too much XP, although the RAW for Healing Corruption seems to contradict that somewhat (the rates it is healed are pretty generous). Based on my game, I'm not seeing Shadow be such a big issue. Granted, the players have to manage it but it *is* manageable, and obviously with higher Wisdom (even scores of 3) this becomes even easier.

It'd be really interesting to get Francesco commenting in detail on XP gain (ie, how much he sees a PC accruing each year), Shadow accrual, PC retirement, and how close he'd expect PCs in getting to 169 XP (and therefore being able to obtain ratings of 6 in both Valour and Wisdom as well as a Weaponskill of the same value).

Angelalex242 wrote:If you degrade ability as PCs age...then Dwarves and Elves just grin and keep on trucking. Especially elves. "Well, I went from 2870 to 2890 these last 20 years. No, I don't particularly feel it."

Do elves celebrate birthdays, or only every 100th birthday or something? (Heck do they count in base 10?)

I house rule that elves get 1/2 the points of a human and dwarves 3/4, to represent these arguments.

Shadow Weaknesses like Sea Calling, Fading etc. I also use

Robin S.

Sea Longing is a bit dodgy. The time the PC adventures is...perhaps, as little as 1/100th of their life. Why would going out in the world suddenly make the elvish character want to check out for Valinor?

Legolas himself, as an example, heard a seagull, and then his days were numbered...but he STILL stuck around for a solid 100+ years after that.

In all fairness, though, this is why 2nd Ed D&D had 'demihuman level limits'.

However, this makes no sense in Tolkien, where the elves usually are simply more badass, game balance be damned, then mere humans. Indeed, it almost seems like to balance an elf's lifespan with that of a human, the elf should start with 100 xp just to represent his life before adventuring. Even Dwarves might start with a good 50 XP over their mere human allies. Only the Dunedain would start with a similar XP bonus, which is why they're simply more awesome then lesser men.

Angelalex242 wrote:However, this makes no sense in Tolkien, where the elves usually are simply more badass, game balance be damned, then mere humans. Indeed, it almost seems like to balance an elf's lifespan with that of a human, the elf should start with 100 xp just to represent his life before adventuring. Even Dwarves might start with a good 50 XP over their mere human allies. Only the Dunedain would start with a similar XP bonus, which is why they're simply more awesome then lesser men.

Not reflected in the game as I have argued in the past. If it were Dwarves and Elves would start with higher skills to begin with. Power creep is a problem for games with systems like TOR that is for sure. And given the longevity of certain character types one that is very hard to rectify.