Combat Tasks to help archer in small Fellowships

[Hermes Serpent]

I think everyone should play the rules as written for any game at least once before tinkering with it. After all the majority of games have been carefully crafted and playtested to achieve the result that the author(s) want. Messing with mechanism before you've played it will probably mess up multiple things that you (generic you not personal you here) do not even realise are related.

[Indur Dawndeath]

Since Woodmen have a Virtue that allows them to stand back in RW even when the party is outnumbered 3 to 1, then I think deviating from RAW will render that Virtue useless.
That being said, I will allow players to come up with imaginative ways to place their archer in a favourable position. Like on the roof of a building, so when they are attacked it will take longer for the Orcs to climb up to him and attack, result would be more volleys before fight is joined... That would solve the issue for me. Allow imagination, but keep it within the RAW.

Cheers

[Glorelendil]

Since Woodmen have a Virtue that allows them to stand back in RW even when the party is outnumbered 3 to 1, then I think deviating from RAW will render that Virtue useless.
That being said, I will allow players to come up with imaginative ways to place their archer in a favourable position. Like on the roof of a building, so when they are attacked it will take longer for the Orcs to climb up to him and attack, result would be more volleys before fight is joined... That would solve the issue for me. Allow imagination, but keep it within the RAW.

Cheers

Agreed. Chokepoints are the answer.

[Mythicos]

Just wanted to pop in and thank everyone for the feedback.

But I just want to say that I have already LMed one whole campaign (that included but was not limited to Tales from Wilderland). So I played a lot with the RAW before even considering tempering with it.

I know that as LM you control the "environment" of combat (how many monsters, features of the field, etc.) but at some point, there are times when combat is hard to avoid for the PCs yet matching them 2-1 or less so the archer can act (and believe me, an archer PC [unless going +1 rank in bow then +1 rank in melee, rinse and repeat... and even then] will be all but useless in a battle when caught in melee) gets old and feels "artificially arranged" (*) at some point. And the problem is not one of PC empowerment, but simply that if you remove one PC out of three from combat, the odds of TPK (and we unfortunately experienced one a few months ago) go up drastically. That was the objective with my proposal in the OP: allowing the archer to still have an impact, even though with greater difficulty, when the PCs are overrun.

(*)there's an expression in French in Montreal that says "une situation arrangée avec le gars des vues", which approximately translates to "a situation that's been scripted by the movie guy" (meaning the director or script, I guess ) that reflects the fact that being railroaded is not very pleasant most of the time.

[JoeArcher]

And althugh the movie legolas may not be considered true to the books, he still engages quite a lot in melee, and would have died in the hobbit if his close combat skill wasn't great.

[Hermes Serpent]

Forget the movie, it's only going to be a disappointment when the One Ring doesn't play like a PJ movie and emulates the Professor's books instead.

[Stormcrow]

Your archer player should have rise a melee skill instead of putting all in his bow skill. If he didnt realise the utility of that after a whole campaing, it is maybe because you were too easy with your party, making situation perfect for him to always be in rearward.

Bingo. There's no such thing as an archer without protection. Movie-Legolas is just so much nonsense, and archers firing into melee without any repercussions is the worst kind of D&Dism.

[Hermes Serpent]

I'm ignoring your attempt to bait me into a flame war.

[JoeArcher]

Forget the movie, it's only going to be a disappointment when the One Ring doesn't play like a PJ movie and emulates the Professor's books instead.

I don't want to. I like the movies. I've read the hobbit many times and LOtR three times. I am however in no way a purist, fanatic or in any way inclined to religiously not enjoy or disregard the movies simply because it's a sub cultural trend

I actually think the movies portray legolas very much like tolkien imagined him, although his words weren't so action packed. But I doubt very much that he would share his fans point of view here

But as for the rules. I like them as they are now. If you remove restrictions you also remove tactical depth.

[Hermes Serpent]

Like the movies for an action adventure packed multiple hour extravaganza but don't mistake them for anything that the One Ring is likely to produce as a role playing game. The game sticks far more closely to Tolkien's concepts as found not only in the Hobbit and the volumes of Lord of the rings but, although not acknowledged, it also uses a lot of the ideas as discussed in HoMe and his letters

I think you'll find that is you read the Professor's work, including HoMe and his letters, an action hero Legolas is the very last thing he envisaged for his Elven Prince.

I quote Christopher Tolkien talking about Pj's films, "They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. And it seems that The Hobbit will be of the same ilk. Tolkien became...devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work."