Recovering Hope

[starkllr]

This is probably a dumb question, but: how exactly do characters recover Hope Points during the game?

I see in the rules that you can:
Replenish Hope points from the pool of Fellowship Points
Get one point of Hope at the end of an Adventuring Phase if your Fellowship Focus made it through the adventure unharmed
Be awarded a Hope point by the Loremaster in specific circumstances.

Is that it, or is there some other mechanism I've missed? Do Hope Points reset after a Fellowship Phase? Or do you just have to be REALLY careful how you spend them, because once you go through your initial pool of Hope, it's going to be slow and difficult to build them back up?

[Glorelendil]

I asked this exact same question when I first got the game.

You read it right: it's a finite resource over the life of your character. So add an "L" to the end of AEDU.

[zedturtle]

It is a very tricky subject and one of much contention for those being introduced to the game. As characters gain experience and higher levels of skill, Hope becomes less important.

The Fellowship Pool resets every session, so careful session management is important. Hobbits and Beornings with Twice-baked Honey Cakes are very helpful to have around. And you've already indentified another source... Fellowship Focus. Confindence and visiting special places help as well.

But, the most important point is one that is in the rulebook; new heroes have little skill but plenty of Hope. Experienced heroes have higher skill and less Hope.

[Murcushio]

Generalrule of thumb: if nobody gets wounded, you generate a number of Hope points each session equal to the number of members of your Fellowship x 2, plus one for every individual instance of someone being a Hobbit or someone having Twice-baked Honey Cakes.

What this means as a practical matter is (again) if nobody gets Wounded, or otherwise prevents the person who has them as their focus from recovering a Hope point, you have enough Hope generation for everyone to use two points a session, plus usually a little bit of "cream" from Hobbits or Beornings. If you plan around that, you'll usually be okay.

You can generate a surprising amount of Hope, especially if your players are into extended roleplaying and thus sessions drag out in length. Conversely, you can blow through it really fast. I once spent seven points of Hope in a single session. To win a drinking contest.

(To be fair, the drinking contest was with Bombur, and by the end we were both hitting TN 28. But I still won! I don't regret not having a Hope budget for that fight with the wolves at all. The bragging rights? Worth it.)

[helghast]

Generalrule of thumb: if nobody gets wounded, you generate a number of Hope points each session equal to the number of members of your Fellowship x 2, plus one for every individual instance of someone being a Hobbit or someone having Twice-baked Honey Cakes.

???

The rulebooks states: "The number of points in a Fellowship pool available to a
company of heroes at the beginning of the game is equal
to the number of heroes in the group."

I can`t find where its doubled ? Members of the party + 1 additional for every hobbit + 1 for every "honey baker"

And the matter, if somebody was wounded during the session is only important when regarding fellowship focus. It`s no general matter.

Or I am wrong on these

[Yusei]

It's not doubled, he was counting the hope you get if your fellowship focus wasn't hurt.

[Glorelendil]

It's not doubled, he was counting the hope you get if your fellowship focus wasn't hurt.

This assumes it makes narrative sense for everybody to have a fellowship focus. In the three games I'm playing in I only have one focus so far.

[HotSnow50]

The rulebooks states: "The number of points in a Fellowship pool available to a
company of heroes at the beginning of the game is equal
to the number of heroes in the group. ... Members of the party + 1 additional for every hobbit + 1 for every "honey baker"

And the matter, if somebody was wounded during the session is only important when regarding fellowship focus. It`s no general matter.

This is accurate, as of my reading of the (2014) Core Rulebook. The only other thing to add is that the Loremaster can use things like Travel Hazards or general dice-roll misfortunes to create instances where the characters don't regenerate any Hope even during a rest period, eg: "The travel roll failure of the company guide gave the Loremaster the opportunity to create a mishap along the way, and that mishap was that their shelter broke during the night, ruining any chance of sound sleep, and therefore even though their endurance was maxed and no characters had shadow points or wounds, ZERO Hope was recovered due to the tough ground, driving rain and horribly cold and wet conditions" etc.

[Murcushio]

It's not doubled, he was counting the hope you get if your fellowship focus wasn't hurt.

This assumes it makes narrative sense for everybody to have a fellowship focus. In the three games I'm playing in I only have one focus so far.

The rules seem pretty clearly written under the assumption you are going to have one, with the Hope economy balanced around it, so yeah, I made that assumption. It is true that you don't have to have one (the rules for picking one use the word "may" a lot) but you probably should.

If the intent was that a Fellowship Focus be truly optional, then I have to say that it is poorly implemented at best. Not having a Focus cripples your Hope regeneration and makes it much harder for you to help out the Company in general, in exchange for... well, nothing at all, really. There are going to be some people who are committed enough to roleplaying they're fine with that, but mechanically speaking you are, essentially, playing on hard mode.

You also may be a drag on the group, and the other players may resent that you never spend Hope because your cool loner who can't be arsed to bond with their characters husbands it, and that when they do spend it they need to tap the Fellowship pool disproportionately to the others in order to get it back. That depends on your table, of course.

[Robin Smallburrow]

Which is why one of the LM's jobs at start is to spell out the implications of some of the rules.

I have banged on about this before, but I will repeat it:

TOR is designed to benefit a Fellowship that acts like a true Fellowship.

Thus the RAW for Combat, Hope, Shadow, Fellowship Points, Fellowship Focus etc. - the mechanics are all set up assuming that your players will act and behave as a Fellowship should, and as true heroes should. There are also passages in the rules that imply this as well.

So when Player X tells me (as LM):

'I don't want to choose anyone of these losers as a Fellowship Focus' OR 'I want to play a Dunedain/High Elf character' you as LM need to point out the implications of their choice. I have 4 players in my campaign and two of them have not chosen their Fellowship Focus - it is their choice.

Also important then is that when first designing characters, it is even more important in TOR to design the Fellowship first, then individual characters.

Robin S.