Skilled Characters

[LukeZ]

When Characters stars to have skills at level 4 or more, they almost always fail the relative tests only on an "Eye of Sauron" result. Anyone feels this should be a little different?

[SirKicley]

Not at all. I don't know what the percentage chance of failure is, but it does exist. But you're talking about someone who is nearly a master of the skill - and this against a typical "normal" difficulty-leveled challenge.

A four on a skill is the equivalent of an Olympics finalist caliber at a particular task. The Kobe's and Lebron at dunking. The Tony Stark of normal difficulty of a jump. An Olypmics diver performing a typical flip and spin dive. They're going to succeed 9/10 times easily.

Now if you up the ante - and make things more difficult (TN 16), the rate of failure will increase slightly. So now they're dunking while spinning and behind their backs. Now Tony is doing two flips. The Diver is doing three flips. An un-even bar artist is attempting a triple flip dismount etc. Again these are masters at their art - the will succeed most of the time - but sometimes failure does happen.

Regardless - at a normal difficulty, someone with four stars - equivalent to these kinds of superstars - should be routine. Anything easier - they can do in their sleep.

That all being said - it costs a lot of skill points to get a skill to 4. So - we are talking elite people with a dedication to that ability. They've earned their mastery over it.

Robert
R

[LukeZ]

After more than a year of play (once a week), the characters of my group (gaining something like 3 or 4 advancement points per session) have accumulated a lot of AP, so they now have a good number of skills at level 4+
Maybe they are comparable to Olympics finalists, maybe not, still they almost never fail their "core" tests.
This seems to "dull" the edges a little bit...

[SirKicley]

As LM, you simply need to ensure that every so often they are faced with greater challenges than usual. As with all RPGs, there is some degree of "power creep" via character advancement. a few - but not all - challenges can be made more difficult for them to illustrate them taking on more challenging quests and tasks in middle-earth; the M.O. that pretty much every RPG typcially follows (with the exception of Paranoia - cuz typically you die more quickly than you can advance)

[Corvo]

After more than a year of play (once a week), the characters of my group (gaining something like 3 or 4 advancement points per session) have accumulated a lot of AP, so they now have a good number of skills at level 4+
Maybe they are comparable to Olympics finalists, maybe not, still they almost never fail their "core" tests.
This seems to "dull" the edges a little bit...

I understand your worry, yet... think about characters like, say, Aragorn.
I expect Aragorn to fail few, if any, of his normal, "core" tests. Only when under serious pressure I expect to see the difference between, say, skill 4 and 5.

Then again, after fifty or so sessions, how many Hope point your heroes have? How many Shadow points? I think I remember someone (Francesco?) explaining that young heroes got low skills and lots of hope; old heroes rarely fail a skill roll, yet they should have low hope.

[LukeZ]

Why/how they should have low hope? During all the sessions their hope has waned and waxed, but their maximum is always the same...

[Beleg]

Their maximum Hope will stay the same without certain Virtues, but the 'in play' amount of Hope they have should be different, due to its expentiture on overcoming difficult tasks, or at the least they should have fewer points they are willing to spend for fear of becoming miserable

[Rich H]

Why/how they should have low hope? During all the sessions their hope has waned and waxed, but their maximum is always the same...

Hope should be fairly difficult to replenish and is used to supplement lower skill ratings, so gets a lot of use for starting characters. As its a diminishing resource, your Hope should be getting lower and this, combined with increasing shadow points, means PCs get very close to becoming Miserable and suffering Bouts of Madness.

As characters increase skills through spending APs then standard (TN 14) tasks become easier to pass, so Hope is not required as much. However, it still may be needed for lower rated skills or higher difficulty tasks/tests whenever they come along.

[Rich H]

... Also, if for some reason Hope in your game isn't a dwindling resource then as your PCs increase in competence then surely you're increasing the threats and challenging against them? Therefore TNs would increase in many instances and so Hope would still be valuable, even for PCs with higher rated skills.

[Corvo]

Why/how they should have low hope? During all the sessions their hope has waned and waxed, but their maximum is always the same...

They just used 1 or 2 Hope points for session?