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TOR seems to have three main systems, combat, journeying, and encounters. Two of these have the ability for players to generate bonus dice ahead of the situation (Battle skill for combat, Lore skill for journeys), but no such ability exists for encounters by RAW.

I'm considering a house rule that would allow the fellowship to gain bonus dice for encounters by using the Insight roll made before the encounter, and allow the bonus dice to be used as above. I think the little bit of edge this would represent will help out my starting players without unbalancing things.

Comments or thoughts?

It's an oft-cited house rule and certainly one that I use.

Encounters may involve less dice-rolling than combat and journeying; be sure bonus dice do not players a proportionally overlarge advantage.

I was wondering the same thing while I was reading it. Whether by bringing appropriate gifts, or just being prepared for any personality quirks they may face, why couldn't the Fellowship prepare to meet someone important. Seems like a common thought process when reading the rules.

Francesco posted some different options for preliminary rolls on his blog.

I introduced this rule for my last session, and it went pretty well. It didn't seem to give us too much of an advantage, as we still failed one encounter, and only succeeded at another due to hope points. Of course we are a party of Woodmen, so our social skills aren't exactly stellar. I suppose you could argue that it did give us an overlarge advantage considering our base skill set.

Overall adding a pre-encounter insight test for bonus die makes sense to me--the symmetry of the whole skill system layout is one of my favorite things about this game, so I am all about enhancing it with house rules.

I think this is an excellent idea... I've been taking it easy on my players during Encounters; doing bonus dice will allow them some more ability and allow me to be a little more strict on the encounters (we're running TfW and using Skywalker's degrees of success tweak).