No Quarter

[Glorelendil]

I've never really seen the Nazgul as throat cutters. Even though could easily be as the Black Breath could easily render a PC unconscious.

I agree. But that illustrates that No Quarter doesnt simply correlate to intelligence.

[Yepesnopes]

I have no problem with "No Quarter", there are enemies that must be feared and PCs can and shall die from time to time.

Out of curiosity, how many times have you used this skill as written?

Hi Corvo, I am no LM in TOR. I am a player in a TOR campaign. A fellow player lost his character against an enemy with No Quarter, our LM warned us that it was a dangerous adversary and yet we choosed to fight him. Heroes die by the sword, c'est la vie!

[Morgoth]

Everything else being equal, I'd much rather fight an adversary with No Quarter rather than Hideous Strength, Savage Assault, Mangle, or Bewilder. Here's why. No Quarter turns sticky situations into dead situations. But the others make sticky situations.

No Quarter does not increase the adversary's chance of winning the combat. Not at all. If a character is unconscious or dead, either way he's out of the combat. So in a close fight, No Quarter turns a close call (an unconscious character or two) into a death. However, if it really is a close fight, Hideous Strength will turn one or two unconscious players into four (then they can kill you afterwards at their leisure).

[Corvo]

Out of curiosity, how many times have you used this skill as written?

Hi Corvo, I am no LM in TOR. I am a player in a TOR campaign. A fellow player lost his character against an enemy with No Quarter, our LM warned us that it was a dangerous adversary and yet we choosed to fight him. Heroes die by the sword, c'est la vie!

Thank you for your answer Yepesnopes.
Can I ask who was this enemy?

(snip)
No Quarter does not increase the adversary's chance of winning the combat.(snip)

Morgoth summarise one of my perplexities about this skill.

[Evening]

I agree. But that illustrates that No Quarter doesnt simply correlate to intelligence.

Why does it have to simply correlate with intelligence?

So Hill Troll Chieftains are more intelligent than Nazgul?

Which is why I used the word innate. It doesn't have to understand why your character needs to be dead ASAP. Maybe something in its brain knows that the quicker your character is dead, the quicker it can get back to doing whatever it was enjoying before your character crapped all over its day (either by attacking it, mouthing off to it, or just simply existing).

And besides, for all we know, the genetics for trolls destined to be chieftains has them wired to 'double-tap' all their combat moves whenever possible. Which if that is the case, it would fall under the 'efficiency' clause.



I like your question because it opens another door, namely, who says Nazgul are any more intelligent than your character? Just because you are a descendant of the former king or queen doesn't make you smart. And becoming a semi-autonomous undead creature under the thumb of an evil narcissist doesn't increase your intelligence. (or maybe it does?)

[Beran]

I've never really seen the Nazgul as throat cutters. Even though could easily be as the Black Breath could easily render a PC unconscious.

I agree. But that illustrates that No Quarter doesnt simply correlate to intelligence.

I never said it did.

[Seosaidh]

I think the inspiration for this came, in part, from the description of hill trolls in the Battle of the Black Gate (Return of the King). It describe Beregond being felled by a hill troll (I don't remember if it was described as a chieftan or not). As soon as it had knocked Beregond down (presumably unconsious) it stooped to bite out his neck. Pippin saved Beregond's life by jumping in and using the sword from the Barrow to kill the beast; although in the process, it fell on Pippin and nearly suffocated him. This anecdote also supports the idea of allowing a hero in Defensive Stance to use Hope to prevent the No Quarter attack (presuming he had declared the knocked out hero as his protectee). However, this does not explain why they gave this ability to any other enemies except to add flavor/danger.

[Falenthal]

I'd like to add a new question to this Ability.

The description says:

If the creature has just knocked out a character...

(emphasis mine)

If we take the Revised book and look for the "Knock Out" status, we find this:
p.129

Knock Out
Being Wounded does not have any immediate
consequences on the fighting performance of a character,
as it is a warrior’s prerogative that of being able to endure
such pain, but the injury puts a character in danger of
being knocked out of combat:
When a character whose Wounded box has already been
checked is Wounded again, he immediately becomes
Unconscious (see below).
The second Wound is not recorded in any way. The
character was simply knocked out, or passed out from
shock.

So, literally, a foe "knocks out" a character only if it inflicts two Wounds to the same character, but NOT if it reduces the character Endurance to zero (that is covered under Exhaustion, p.128).

I guess the text for No Quarter should read "If the creature has just made a character Unconsciouss..." or something along this lines.

Anyone thinks there should be made a difference between inflicting two Wounds and reducing to zero Endurance?

[Falenthal]

... continues last post...

When applied to NPC characters and Adversaries, the description read like this:

p.218 (Named LoremasterCharacters):

Loremaster characters involved in combat
are treated as adversaries, and are knocked out at the end
of a round if they are reduced to zero Endurance, or are
killed outright when wounded once.

p.231 (Adversaries):

a creature is knocked
out of combat at the end of a round if it is reduced to
zero Endurance, or is killed outright when it is wounded
once.

Also, the Adversaries' Special Ability "Giant Size" says:
p.233

The creature is so resilient and tough that it is not knocked
out or killed when reduced to 0 Endurance or if wounded
once.

So that, if someone wants to take the term "knock out" literally, when applied to heroes it means "Wounded twice", but when applied to Adversaries and NPCs it means "reduced to zero Endurance".

Eitherway, the term "Exhausted" is never again used during the book, even when talking about hits that reduce someone's Endurance to 0.

[Angelalex242]

Alternatively, just fight smarter against No Quarter Foes.

And, in the case of the big trolls, draining their hate to 0 before attacking is damn near standard procedure.

For the masses of small foes...well, you better have a High Elf with Might of the First Born handy, and you better pray he doesn't miss. Otherwise, Rest in Pieces.