Encounters: spokesman or not?

[Celebril]

Encounters are one of those things I tend to dread and will hand wave sometimes. This is the one aspect of the game that feels like it is better suited for a board game. I find that the encounter rolls seem divorced from what comes out of the player's mouths. Let's take for example, the dwarf character in the group I LM'ing for basically called the Elvenking a "douchebag" but the player then rolled his dice exceptionally well. So as an LM I am supposed to spin that into some type of success like the Elvenking admires he candor or something like that because in the rules there is nothing I can do about as long as the player makes the target TN. At the time I just acted like Thranduil ignored it but after thinking about it for a while I decided to penalize the player and the group for insulting one of the most powerful figures in Middle Earth. Now the players are at an extra -1 for all Mirkwood Elf encounters if any of the elves recognize the dwarf. Only the Mirkwood elf in the party is now welcome at the court of the Elvenking.

[Woodclaw]

Encounters are one of those things I tend to dread and will hand wave sometimes. This is the one aspect of the game that feels like it is better suited for a board game. I find that the encounter rolls seem divorced from what comes out of the player's mouths. Let's take for example, the dwarf character in the group I LM'ing for basically called the Elvenking a "douchebag" but the player then rolled his dice exceptionally well. So as an LM I am supposed to spin that into some type of success like the Elvenking admires he candor or something like that because in the rules there is nothing I can do about as long as the player makes the target TN. At the time I just acted like Thranduil ignored it but after thinking about it for a while I decided to penalize the player and the group for insulting one of the most powerful figures in Middle Earth. Now the players are at an extra -1 for all Mirkwood Elf encounters if any of the elves recognize the dwarf. Only the Mirkwood elf in the party is now welcome at the court of the Elvenking.

One might ask how high he rolled, because I wouldn't set the TN for that kind of interaction lower than 26 or so.

[Falenthal]

However, if the group decides to have a spokesman, and then someone else speaks without being invited to, I would count that as a failure, unless he succeeds at a Courtesy roll.

Something like that is what I understood. I sometimes run the encounters more by intuition than by the rules, but that's also because I have my doubts regarding the RAW. I don't have problems improvisating, but I'd like to understand the RAWs before I start making things my own way.

I guess the idea is that not every kingly court is a neighbours meeting, where 6 heroes can talk at the same time. If they choose a spokesman, then he/she should be the only one to speak for the group during the encounter, making all persuade, inspires, etc rolls when possible. The rest of the group can be part in planning the objectives of the encounter, but they will remain silent behing his companion.
Then, again, the scene where Gandalf and Pippin meet Denethor comes to mind: Gandalf was the spokesman, and Pippin had to remain silent for the whole encounter. Then he decided to intervine with a Courtesy roll... and succeeded, being those able to speak to Denethor and get something from him.
This Courtesy roll might have a higher TN than usual, what it would allow for a silent hero to intervine in the encounter.
Other situations might be a king who is falling to despair when told about the incoming orcs and a heroe would interrupt with an Inspire roll.

[Glorelendil]

Like this?

Well, it's an outline, not a flowchart.

But I was also thinking of more detail, e.g. the various rules for Tolerance, and how to set TNs, etc.

Something like this:

[Celebril]

One might ask how high he rolled, because I wouldn't set the TN for that kind of interaction lower than 26 or so.

He got a Gandalf rune on his roll if I remember right so it would have been an automatic success. I rarely adjust the TN on encounters because I am dealing with 8 - 10 players. It is hard to keep the rolls of that many people when we are also roleplaying but maybe I should adjust it on the fly.

[aramis]

One might ask how high he rolled, because I wouldn't set the TN for that kind of interaction lower than 26 or so.

He got a Gandalf rune on his roll if I remember right so it would have been an automatic success. I rarely adjust the TN on encounters because I am dealing with 8 - 10 players. It is hard to keep the rolls of that many people when we are also roleplaying but maybe I should adjust it on the fly.

One can readily rule that anything shifted past daunting (TN 20) is Epic - you don't even count the dice until you're looking at a gandalf, and then still don't succeed unless you rolled a 6 on one or more dice. (See LM 20-21)

Extrapolating further, an intermediate layer, say, "absurdly hard" might be to rule that a gandalf isn't an autosuccess for TN's >20, merely 10 points towards it. This falls into "house rules" turf, but really, it's a good benchmark for ignoring autosuccess.