Defence only viable stance for experienced characters

[mica]

We are close to the end of the Tales of Wilderland and the characters have developed good combat skills. They have concluded that there is almost no point in using any other stance than defensive.
The reasons are manifold:
A good attack skill means that the character will invariably hit all enemies even from defensive stances (especially with battle rolls).
Endurance does not noticeably increase with experience and armour does not reduce incoming damage. Decreasing chance of being hit is paramount especially when engaging multiple foes.
Intimidate is a waste of time in virtually all circumstances. Often only 1 or 2 hate will be removed. Most creatures have two or more. Even using it against craven with 1 will only deplete the number by a couple while these are often met in groups of 10 or more. Essentially a monster host will have around 15+ hate between them.
Monsters with Horrible Strength will invariably use their hate to increase damage. Spiders in particular have low attack skills so somebody attempting to intimidate them will invariably fail to get even a single one to flee but then be hammered for considerable endurance.
As players having the initiative always attack first irrespective of stance, they still get to attack while defending before the enemy attacks.
The only reason that has been found for choosing forward or open stance was to enable a character with a poor parry to be defended by a character with a much higher parry.
Even a single troll will have sufficient hate to allow it to mash characters with horrible strength and reduce incoming damage such that it invariably dies from damage before its hate is expended though if a character is intimidating instead of attacking, what he gains in reducing hate is generally inferior to the loss of inflicted damage and potential wounding.
In essence intimidate foe sounds good but is vastly inferior to giving good ol' whack from defensive and even offering yourself up through open stance for a chance to recover endurance is rarely worth the good kicking you may have to endure.
Have others encountered this issue and if so, what have done to resolve it?

In defence of the game, all other aspects are pretty damn good, it is just this one aspect that has got frustrating. The characters want to use other options but they are simply not worth it under the rules as written.

[artaxerxes]

Before 4 dice in a combat skill, I danced through all the stances. Battle/Awe is one of the few ways to 'attack' without swinging a sword, and fitted with a more peaceful hobbit.

The Rally / Inspire action in the Mid stance is perfectly useful too. With 2 successes it grants Heart hope back... which for a Hobbit can be very high!

The Defensive stance was reserved for the Defend Ally action alone (and escape combat, which I have never seen).

However I am coming to agree that the forward stance exposes you to great danger, for little or no gain. Becoming essential only when weary... which is itself sidestepped by Brave at a Pinch / Furious.

I think this is as designed... experienced adventurers (4D sword skill) can strike from the wariest stance. However by the time that is true you want to be able to take an even greater difficulty to hit / bonus to defence as the creatures also are hitting regularly.

[EDIT] I forgot to discuss called shots; these have an unusual difficulty - in that you need 6's *and* to exceed the TN. This might begin to drag your players forward. As failure with these with an Eye of Sauron is catastrophic. These are the end game plays for your high XP characters.

[Woodclaw]

Intimidate is a waste of time in virtually all circumstances. Often only 1 or 2 hate will be removed. Most creatures have two or more. Even using it against craven with 1 will only deplete the number by a couple while these are often met in groups of 10 or more. Essentially a monster host will have around 15+ hate between them.

Maybe I misunderstood how Intimidate works, but I alwasy thought that every opponent in close combat with the character would lose the listed amount of Hate, making it the "go to" trick to quickly dispose of goblins and other low-level threats.

[Rich H]

Intimidate is a waste of time in virtually all circumstances. Often only 1 or 2 hate will be removed. Most creatures have two or more. Even using it against craven with 1 will only deplete the number by a couple while these are often met in groups of 10 or more. Essentially a monster host will have around 15+ hate between them.

Maybe I misunderstood how Intimidate works, but I alwasy thought that every opponent in close combat with the character would lose the listed amount of Hate, making it the "go to" trick to quickly dispose of goblins and other low-level threats.

It's very often a house-rule, what you describe, but the RAW suggests the results are a total amount lost:

"The Loremaster assigns the Hate point loss in any way he sees fit".

This means that the LM can take all the Hate points off one creature or spread them out. If the resulting amount of Hate lost was per creature then the above quote would read differently.

I've also seen the Hate point loss being brought into line with how Rally Comrades works - ie, using the Body score on an Extraordinary success if higher than 3, although I think that is a little too much! You could add some kind of additional rule that on a Gandalf result the Hate loss is across all opponents rather than just an amount divided between them.

[Corvo]

(...)
Have others encountered this issue and if so, what have done to resolve it?

In defence of the game, all other aspects are pretty damn good, it is just this one aspect that has got frustrating. The characters want to use other options but they are simply not worth it under the rules as written.

My experience is not far from yours (not the same: Rally I find pretty useful). I can add that later, when you are fighting against some uber-opponent, stance is almost meaningless for most heroes (not-Woodmen/Hobbits): Hobgoblins and Great Orcs will hit you most of the time, making the stance's TN not so important.
My solution was to houserule the combat A LOT and have Parry be a roll instead of a fixed value. And I can understand that it's too much of an houserule for most LM

[Rich H]

My solution was to houserule the combat A LOT and have Parry be a roll instead of a fixed value.

How have you converted it to a roll rather than a fixed value added to stance TNs?

[mica]

Thanks for the comments, some interesting stuff. How do you apply rolls for defending and how does stance affect this?

I had considered giving forwards characters 2 attacks (or intimidate and an attack), open characters a single attack and a rally, and defensive, just a single attack (and their use of a defend should they need it). But as you say, with big monsters that will always hit irrespective of stance, there then becomes no point in not going forward.

[Sprigg]

I've contemplated giving characters with a weapon skill of 4 or greater the option of a virtue that allows a second attack (at the usual TN) while in Forward, but we're not far enough to know how that would affect balance.

[Angelalex242]

I'm in a game that has this multiple attacks rule.

If you have 4 dice, (or 6), you can divide your dice up between opponents, so long as you assign at least 2d to each opponent. (At 5, you assign 3 to 1 and 2 to the other.)

This lets the Shadow Bane Elf with 6 dice of Great Spear strike thrice in forward stance and actually make Shadow Bane pull its weight, instead of its typical role as 'weary insurance.'

[Corvo]

@Rich H
@Mica

As I wrote, it's a lot of houseruling, but since you are asking...

-the combat skills are changed from, say, Sword/Bow/Knife to Melee-Attack/Ranged-Attack/Defense. The last one is the new “Parry”, and is rolled against the enemy's attack (in other words, the Defense roll is the target number for the Attack).
-In Forward stance you roll +1d6 to Attack and a -1d6 to Defense.
In Defensive stance you roll -1d6 to Attack and a +1d6 to Defense.
In Open stance you got no modifiers.

As a side benefit, in forward stance you got more chance to score extra damage, less so in defensive. And intra-party duels aren't a problem.

These are the basics of my system. I put other trinkets to it (splitting dices in multiple combat, for example), but it's enough for the matter at hand.