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I wish I had my books with me; I'm at work.

Anyway, let me go into more detail about how my group has been adjudicating this, to hopefully clarify things. First of all, I'd like to note that this is just how we're adjudicating Called Shots, not Prepared Shots; we haven't had any of those yet in which the interaction is at all relevant.

Basically, we think that the way the rules are written, and that it's intended to work, is that when you make a Called Shot, if you succeed, you get both 1) the benefit of the Called Shot, and 2) anything else that the roll would have generated on top of that Called Shot.

So to break that down... we have a Barding using a longsword. When he succeeds at a Called Shot, he disarms his foe, assuming they can be disarmed because they aren't like a spider or a warg or something. Since the successful Called Shot is also a great success, he does his weapon damage AND his base damage on top of the Called Shot. If he were to succeed on the Called Shot and also roll two tengwars, for an Extraordinary Success, he would disarm his foe, and do his weapon damage and double his base damage. If he succeeds at a Called Shot and hits his Edge rating on the Feat die, he disarms his opponent, does his weapon damage and his base damage, and also inflicts a Piercing blow.

We have a Rohirric axeman. When he succeeds at a Called Shot, he does everything the Barding does, just with shield smashing except for disarming.

And we have a Barding Bowman and a Beorning with a Great Spear. (Me!) When we succeed at Called Shots and also make our Edge rating... we Pierce twice, because the Called Shot was ALSO a pierce.

Worth noting: this makes what Bard himself did to Smaug actually mechanically possible within the system. Dude makes a Called Shot, hits his Edge rating, Smaug whiffs on both Protection tests, that's a one-hit-kill on a dragon.

This seems right to us, but we've gotten a lot of stuff wrong, apparently. I'm open to being told otherwise, and I'll check the rulebooks first thing when I get home.

I enjoyed the fight, I was pretty sure Njal was done for and that only the elf would have a chance of escape. I wish I had detailed Njal's singing a bit more and defied the creature a little more poetically in the face of certain death. Next time though! Its good to have a healthy respect for Trolls and feel that you could be facing not one but several character deaths in a single fight.

When I took splitting axe as the first reward on the axe it felt better than taking keen as the first reward. I can see Njal NOW taking this axe to have it improved and made keen by the dwarves ( I dont have a problem with rewards affecting the same weapon although I think theres license to do it how ever you prefer as long as it feels right ), the improvement seems a more natural progression now for this character at least. Its interesting though because prior to this fight I was thinking I had made a mistake in choosing Axe over Great Spear. Now, judging from those protection tests I'm not so sure, Great Spear and Giant-slaying Spear reward are potent ( dam 9 adge 8 injury 16 ) and with the +4 damage for giant-slaying quite tasty. But again once that splitting axe is sharpened and tempered in the forges beneath Erebor and made keen I think I will be more than happy with it. It is nice looking forward to keen in this situation despite it might seeming to make more sense to take that first, it just sits better for me!

Murcushio wrote:I wish I had my books with me; I'm at work.

Anyway, let me go into more detail about how my group has been adjudicating this, to hopefully clarify things. First of all, I'd like to note that this is just how we're adjudicating Called Shots, not Prepared Shots; we haven't had any of those yet in which the interaction is at all relevant.
snip
This seems right to us, but we've gotten a lot of stuff wrong, apparently. I'm open to being told otherwise, and I'll check the rulebooks first thing when I get home.

You do realise that Andrew is a C7 staffer and he's told you that you're doing it wrong and that you shouldn't be having two Piercing Blows.

Hermes Serpent wrote: You do realise that Andrew is a C7 staffer and he's told you that you're doing it wrong and that you shouldn't be having two Piercing Blows.

I did not, actually. That, also, is on me; I didn't read his actual sigblock, only his posts. I apologize for the mistake; I should be more observant.

While I'll happily accept the official ruling with regard to double-Piercing, does that also logically extend to all the other Called Shots? Can you also not disarm and Pierce, smash a shield and Pierce, etc? Are we at least doing damage right, counting a Called Shot as a Great Success for damage purposes?

(I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that those rules could be a lot more clearly worded.)

I may be a staffer, but I'm also not the game's designer, so please don't take my name in vein

While I think the rule is clear and my interpretation is correct, I will get you an actual answer though using nefarious means.

Murcushio wrote:While I'll happily accept the official ruling with regard to double-Piercing, does that also logically extend to all the other Called Shots? Can you also not disarm and Pierce, smash a shield and Pierce, etc? Are we at least doing damage right, counting a Called Shot as a Great Success for damage purposes?

You're absolutely right to say that the Called Shot results are in addition to all other effects - the rules say that clear enough - so you can disarm and pierce, smash and pierce and whatever. No arguments there!

The crux of the issue is that, specifically for bows and spears, it says "regardless of the roll of the Feat die." So, in the specific instance of doing a called shot with a bow and rolling a Gandalf, you only get one outcome.

As I said in my post above though, that's my reading of the rules. It's every Loremaster's right to interpret the rules for his game however he likes, though.

Andrew wrote: You're absolutely right to say that the Called Shot results are in addition to all other effects - the rules say that clear enough - so you can disarm and pierce, smash and pierce and whatever. No arguments there!

The crux of the issue is that, specifically for bows and spears, it says "regardless of the roll of the Feat die." So, in the specific instance of doing a called shot with a bow and rolling a Gandalf, you only get one outcome.

As I said in my post above though, that's my reading of the rules. It's every Loremaster's right to interpret the rules for his game however he likes, though.

My GM really prefers to use the rules as written and as interpreted and intended by the designers unless it becomes clear there's an egregious screwup somewhere. He was even letting us use the original flava King's Blade (our Hobbit started with a Virtue rather than a Reward, tho) because he wanted to see it in action before making up his own mind.

He came to the conclusion, and we agreed, that the "regardless of the roll of the Feat die" wording was added because, while all the other Called Shot effects were special effects, the Piercing ones were double-dipping (you can achieve them with a Called Shot OR an Edge), and the writers didn't want people to somehow think you always needed an Edge to get them, since that is how it is usually done. So combining that with the idea that you can get an Edge result AND succeed in your Called Shot, the conclusion was "you can double Pierce." The group largely concurred.

But if it works the other way 'round, fair enough.

The "regardless of the outcome..." part doesn't necessarily require single-pierce, but when you combine it with the logical awkwardness of the double-pierce concept, that's probably what it means.

However...

It does strike me as..."unfair"...that other Called Shot effect can stack with Pierce, but Pierce itself cannot. That makes Called Shots a worse idea with Spear or Bow than with other weapons. Particularly spears. And even more if either is Keen.

I think my house rule would be that if you also roll Edge on a Called Shot with Spear or Bow, its Injury gets +2.

I could do with someone to check my math but it looks like a 3D attack, against a creature with a Parry of 5 regardless of Stance, gets a Piercing Blow about 15% of the time with a weapon Edge of 10. A Called Shot by the same 3D attack happens more often as it is more likely that a six will be rolled on any of the three Success dice than a 10+ on the Feat die while still scoring enough for a successful attack.

Hermes Serpent wrote:I could do with someone to check my math but it looks like a 3D attack, against a creature with a Parry of 5 regardless of Stance, gets a Piercing Blow about 15% of the time with a weapon Edge of 10. A Called Shot by the same 3D attack happens more often as it is more likely that a six will be rolled on any of the three Success dice than a 10+ on the Feat die while still scoring enough for a successful attack.

That actually raises another interesting point: spears already have the highest probability of a pierce, and bows are tied with swords. So not only does the called shot success cancel out the normal pierce, but they have the highest chance of getting that pierce.

On the other hand, you could easily argue that a Pierce is way more valuable than a Disarm or a Shield Smash. So there.

The other thing that occurred to me is that once the Troll was weary anybody with skill 3+ (which I think was all of us) should have used nothing but Called Shots, because additional endurance loss wasn't having any effect, so missing completely on a failed Called Shot wasn't actually any worse than a normal hit. (That doesn't factor in fumbling of course.)

EDIT: All of the above aside, the Beorning character I've been making uses Great Spear because I like the visual. Statistics be damned.