Long term advancement in DoM

[Angelalex242]

It's different in D&D, where the long lived races had 'level caps' to represent their ennui (after a certain level, they just can't learn anymore.)

However, in Tolkien, the professor himself does acknowledge longer lived races are simply more badass then short lived races. Particularly elves, who've had 1000 year or more to hone their craft. Why are Galadriel and Elrond more powerful then a PC elf? Well, cause they've lived longer, it's that simple. (This is before you add being a keeper of one of the 3 rings.) Celebrimor is a better smith then any in the 3rd age, and most of the smiths of Gondolin were better then him, and Faenor was better then all of them. Why? He who was born first kicks the most ass.

Of course, for the sake of game balance, this is tossed, so the elves and dwarves players actually play are amazingly young for one of their species.

[Rich H]

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?

It's as much exposure to 'things' than it is to actual aging. Elf PCs are out and about all the time so their longing for the sea could be accelerated. It's pushing the envelope but I wouldn't have a problem with introducing that into my game if it brought such a narrative to the table.

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.

His great friendship with Gimli was what kept him in Middle Earth.

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.

There are a number of options:

1) Stick with the TOR rules as written.

2) I think differing XP progression rates would work, therefore tweaking the TOR rules to accommodate. Like I said earlier with regard to rookies and veterans, you could apply the same to non-Dunedain humans (rookies) and dwarves and elves (veterans) to simulate them starting at a higher power level but then progressing slower than humans. What you have got to buy into there though is a long term campaign so that the human PCs see the benefits of such a mechanic.

3) Or you simply accept character imbalance, building characters in TOR that are mechanically superior to others.

4) Or you go with another game system that makes the trait Hobbit Gardener just as mechanically important as Heir to Elendil or Elven Warrior. Something like Risus. This isn't the same as TOR traits, in Risus they each have a dice rating and can be rolled in opposition like skills in others games.

6) I stated upthread that I think Shadow accrual was implied in the design as limiting character progression to such high values but I'm not seeing this in my game.

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I think this is an important and valuable discussion though that I hope the game designers are taking note of... Long term advancement isn't something that can really be tested effectively in playtesting. The numbers can be analysed and artificial advancement can be used but those aren't the same as multiple, and very different, gaming groups running real campaigns with differing play sessions over the course of a couple of years. These kind of issues are emergent due to time spent at the table.

[Yusei]

Ok, after giving it some more thoughts, I have a few suggestions:

- Allow buying Specialties with XP. This solves the problem of how a character should gain Cooking if he wants to take full use of his inn Holding. Given that traits are very powerful, I think it should be expensive, maybe 10 or 12 XP for a trait.

- Allow buying Standing with XP, as I suggested previously. The usual way is that you do an adventure and learn stuff, modeled through XP. You could also do an adventure where you learn less, but where you gain fame. I would use the "raise standing" table, but with the cost in Treasure Points divided by 3.

- Allow buying Masteries without raising Wisdom (and Qualities without raising Valor? Not sure) at the cost of maybe 10 to 15 XP. This would allow some improvement without reaching high levels of Valor/Wisdom too quickly. I also noticed that my players didn't take masteries, as they thought they were less powerful than cultural virtues.

- Make Shadow more important, and make sure Bouts of Madness are still a risk later in the game (so that more characters will be retired early).

I don't think any of those suggestions break the game, but I'd like your opinions. Do you think creating more ways to spend XP is acceptable?

[Angelalex242]

How, exactly, is Shadow to be more important at later levels?

The typical Valor 6 Wisdom 6 guy essentially only gains Shadow when he goes mano a mano with Nazgul or a Balrog or something equally ludicrous, and might have a song of 6 to reduce what shadow he does get to 0 on a single roll.

Put it another way...at this point, you're essentially trying to make bouts of madness a risk for Elrond. Just what would it take to drive Elrond mad?

[Yusei]

I would not mind if the 6/6 guy already had permanent shadow that he could not get rid of. Which is why I already lowered the rate at which you can remove shadow during the fellowship phase, but I'm not sure that's enough.

I think corruption tests are a problem, because if you're too wise, you cannot fail. I'm considering the following house-rule: when an adventure gives you a Corruption TN of X, and the player has Y (permanent?) shadow points, then the TN becomes X+Y.

(I think Elrond is way above 6 in Wisdom, and would be ok with the house rule. On the other hand, it seems at least Gandalf and Galadriel are afraid of corruption.)

[Angelalex242]

If you're talking about the One Ring, they're afraid of it specifically, because the One Ring tosses TN 30 corruption tests around for giggles. And Elrond won't touch the One any more then Galadriel and Gandalf will. In short, they 'pass their corruption test' because they're too smart to lay a finger on it. They 'know better.'

Against lesser stuff, though...they really aren't worried about it. That's the real trick with the wise. They know in advance what's nasty enough to threaten their moral purity, and they also know what isn't, and you can't pull a fast one on them.

And does a 6/6 guy necessarily have permanent Shadow? Just how much permanent Shadow does Elrond and Galadriel have, anyway? (Clearly not much, if any, or they'd act more like Faenor.)

That said, the Istari are clearly corruptible (Hi, Saruman!), so magic does not equal wisdom. Neither does being a Maia.

[Yusei]

And does a 6/6 guy necessarily have permanent Shadow? Just how much permanent Shadow does Elrond and Galadriel have, anyway? (Clearly not much, if any, or they'd act more like Faenor.)

Well, my point was that I wouldn't want my characters to become Elrond or Galadriel (during the length of the campaign). I don't want them to feel safe. So I'd want them to have permanent shadow before they reach 6/6.

[Dreyton]

I would not mind if the 6/6 guy already had permanent shadow that he could not get rid of. Which is why I already lowered the rate at which you can remove shadow during the fellowship phase, but I'm not sure that's enough.

I think corruption tests are a problem, because if you're too wise, you cannot fail. I'm considering the following house-rule: when an adventure gives you a Corruption TN of X, and the player has Y (permanent?) shadow points, then the TN becomes X+Y.

(I think Elrond is way above 6 in Wisdom, and would be ok with the house rule. On the other hand, it seems at least Gandalf and Galadriel are afraid of corruption.)

I like this idea of dealing with it. If I'm not mistaken DoM has multiple places where fear/corruption tests are augmented this way. And more so than that you could make permanent shadow count doubly so when calculating TN. So it would be X+Y+Z where z is permanent shadow points.

Another idea is to have varied TN for each character. While this sounds unfair it could be easily explained. For example, if the heroes are in Mirkwood are needing to pass a corruption test while traveling, a Dwarf might have a harder time doing so as they generally dislike wooded areas so they may be more "afraid" of them and more vulnerable. Or maybe one of the characters flaws or shadow weakness comes into play, tempting the character to give in to the corruption, giving them a disadvantage against the test.

There's no "right" answer here, simply finding what works best for you and your group. Play around with it some until you figure it out.

[Angelalex242]

Well, you can't FORCE permanent Shadow. All you can do is keep your players rolling dice. After all, most groups are going to use their fellowship pools to reinforce the hope of the guy who's nearly mad, and the two biggest hope expenditures are corruption tests and protection tests.

Personally, as a Player, I ALWAYS hope spend on corruption tests if it'll help. Maintaining the moral purity of my characters is a top priority equal with and on par with preventing wounds.

[DavetheLost]

There is of course one thing that renders experience points moot...that is Character Death. Yes, this is difficult and unlikely in TOR as compared to say low level D&D, but over thirty years of game time for DOM somebody should die. After all Thorin and two of his companions died, so did Gandalf and Boromir. Granted Gandalf got to come back, but still...

None of these were low level, inexperienced beginning characters, they were well established heroes. They still died, as did Nalin and others in Moria.

Don't make the game so easy that everyone arrives at the end of DOM or TFW with their original character and bucket loads of experience points...