Long term advancement in DoM

[Jacen]

I am getting myself ready to run a long term campaign of the epic Darkening of Mirkwood and I somewhat concerned over long-term advancement of characters.

I have not played the One Ring in some time, and when we did it was just a Tales of Wilderland mini campaign, but it reads in the Loremasters book that a player should reach excellence in about 15 years and have accumulated around 195 experience points in that time. Now by my calculations a player would be able to advance both Valour and Wisdom to rank 6 as well as max out a weapon skill and have some experience to spare by the end of this.

Is it just me or does that seem a little TOO powerful? I would prefer if by the time the players retired they had either Wisom or Valor at max only if they invested a great deal of there XP into just one of them. For that reason I am thinking that my players will receive 150 XP over 15 years, give or take.

Has anyone played in a long term game and can elaborate on this?

[Beran]

One thing that balances out what you mention is the accumulation of shadow points which can lead to character retirement. Not to mention players wanting to try something else as new information is published, and you have age to consider with Manish PCs. Plus, if you PCs follow the advice in DoM they might incorporate family into their backgrounds or even add one during the campaign. To be truthful I would b e greatly surprised if a player finished DoM with the same character he started with.

[Yusei]

I agree that the characters become poweful a bit too quickly to my taste. My group hasn't maxed out their stats yet, but they already are as powerful as Boromir or Gimli seem to be in the books, after 5 years of adventure. The game is still fun, but I'm trying to slow things down.

I thought the accumulation of shadow points would help, but they're becoming very good at resisting corruption, and they almost always succeed their Craft or Song rolls to get rid of shadow. I know I just have to keep them busy with other occupations during their fellowship phases, but still...

I'm considering creating more ways to spend XP. Maybe they could buy Standing with XP. It would make sense: you'd spend money to "buy" the affection of people, but you'd gain affection by doing hero stuff (that gains you XP).

[Etarnon]

I run it that time between each adventure is a year, so they only get like 2 to 4 XP a year.

We have already planned out that the Human characters will retire in about 30 adventures if they don't get killed first.

We have also set up that players will play each other's kids. a few people in the group had a long talk about long term plans early this morning out of game, for about 5 hours.

So the initial Fellowship's kids or grandkids will fight alongside any Surviving Elves in the war of the Ring in ~70 years.

[Angelalex242]

Don't forget Dwarves and Dunedain, who will also live long enough to be fighting in the War of the Ring.

More to the point, though, a 195 XP character is strong enough to take on Dul Guldur. If you've got powerhouses, send them deep into enemy fortresses. Raise the challenge. Beginning characters, send a few orcs after. At 195 XP, send trolls. Plural.

And if the trolls aren't challenging enough, send in a Nazgul. And if the Nazgul isn't enough, just send in more of them. You've got 9 of 'em to play with, and the Witch King is considerably mightier then the rest AND completely invincible unless one of the player characters is female.

[Elmoth]

If a character at any level, even 400 XP is strong enough to take on dol guldur you are not playing in the same ME as I am.

[Glorelendil]

I'd love to see a statistical analysis of what things like Corruption Tests and Combat look like when you've got skills, wisdom, etc. maxed out. I spent about 60 seconds thinking about it and realized the following:
- With 6 wisdom your average Corruption roll will be 26.5.
- With 6 weapon skill you will essentially always hit, and you will get extra damage 67% of the time, with 60% of those being Extraordinary success.

And of course with 6 Valor your weapon and armor, with 3 upgrades each, will be pretty impressive.

Maybe I'll hack up some Ruby code to simulate the difference between a new character and a maxed out character.

[Glorelendil]

Update: Ok, now that I've got that idea in my head I've started typing up a combat simulator.

What are all the factors I should take into account between a new character and a maxed out character? So far I've got:
Weapon Upgrades
Armor Upgrades
Weapon Skill
Virtues

What else?

My approach is going to be to assume 6 weapon skill, 6 wisdom, and 6 valor, then create a few different "characters", e.g. a Hobbit with:

• Short Sword 6
  Fell-Handed, Small Folk, Dour-Handed, Resilience
  King's Blade (Grievous, Keen, Fell)
  Lucky Armor (Close-Fitting)

Then I'll pick a couple different foes, run 1,000 or so battles, and see how our heroes fare.

Any suggestions of what to build into the simulation?

[Beran]

Heh, Ultimate Warrior: Middle Earth. Maybe you can get David Wenham to narrate the simulation.

[Elmoth]

I want a special: Pirate vs Mirkwood elf.