Character Building: Tough Decision.

[Rocmistro]

I need some thoughts from the experienced players out there.

I PbP in Zedturtle's game. He has recently, in light of the Rivendell supplement, allowed me to "re-build" my Elf of Mirkwood Noble into a High Elf Vengeful Kin.

All other things being decided upon, here is my dilemma:

I have taken the starting weapon skill package: Spear: 2, Longsword: 1, Dagger: 1, Bow: 1

Now the High Elf gets 16 starting background points. My intent was to put as much as reasonable and necessary towards weapon skills due to the high XP premium we pay for weapon skills and wisdom/valour.

So I increased Spear to 3 (which is about as high as I need it for him to be, since he's built as a crit monkey more than an endurance damage dealer). Since he's been in play a while, I already have Valor 3, and the 2 qualities were used to make the spear fell and keen.

Now it's also worth noting he wields a Great Shield, and so the likelihood of him putting the Longsword to use as a two-hander is pretty slim.

I have recently offered to adopt my Fellowship Focus's Chain Shirt, which he will no longer be using because he's a Beorning who just picked up Great Strength. It's a fluffy decision as well as an aesthetic one; I have for a long time envisioned him wearing mail armor, but he did not have the endurance to really support it. As a high elf, my endurance is 28, and my parry is a whopping 11 (8 wits + 3 shield). But my gear payload is looking to be:

Spear, enc: 2
Great Shield, enc: 5
Mail Shirt, enc: 12
+ secondary weapon, enc: 1-3

If i take the Longsword (which high elves get as a starting weapon skill), I rack up 3 more encumbrance, for a basic fatigue of 22 out of 28 endurance. That's not exactly comfortable. It's a lot of extra encumbrance for a 2 handed weapon which i will almost never use 2 handed.

So the question is, do I spend 2 (or 6) points to get weapon skill 1 (or 2) in a different 1 handed weapon? (probably either short sword or sword.

Short Sword would be 5 damage and enc. 1 (injury: 14)
Sword would be 5 damage and enc. 2 (injury: 16)

It seems silly to pay the extra XP to save on 1 point of encumbrance to move down to a regular sword, although aesthetically I prefer that choice to the short sword.

It makes more sense (I think) if I'm going to do it, to move down to the short sword and gain 2 points of encumbrance back, although I like this less, aesthetically, and the lower TN of the short sword means probably fewer 1 shot kills against enemies overall.

Thoughts?

[Majestic]

I suppose it really comes down to individual preference, but my opinion is that you should go with what you aesthetically prefer, which also saves you that 1 Encumbrance (even that single point could end up being huge).

[Falenthal]

Do you need a secondary weapon?

In your case, I think I would go with two spears: one for opening volleys and one for melee.

Why do you want to carry a sword?

[bluejay]

Yeah I agree with Falenthal, why even carry a sword? I recently made a pre-gen for my game at Dragonmeet and he was a High Elf with a Great Spear for his main combat and a regular Spear for the opening volley (really taking advantage of that Spears cultural weapon group there). It's a great combination and worked well in practice. I mean they already have a huge Parry anyway and the Keen Great Spear is fantastic for scoring those Wounds (plus dishing out a significant amount of Endurance as well).

[zedturtle]

The other thing to think about is that maybe you go for radical acceptance that Amroth will be Weary a lot of the time and try to get Spear up to 4 (now preferably, later if absolutely can't make it happen). With a Parry of 11, it will be a while before he does get Weary* and throwing four dice means that the chances of two of them coming up 4+ isn't too bad (approx 44%).

* Travel 3 means I'm ignoring Fatigue from journeys in this spitballing.

[Rocmistro]

Right, many good questions about why that I will attempt to explain.

The Great Shield is a relic from his original build as a Mirkwood Elf. When I originally made the character back in April, I had just finished a Greek Warrior re-enactment event which I do, as well as watching 300, so I was high on the spear and board concept. The character concept unfolded along that design path. In "remaking" him, I could not just get rid of the shield, as much as I wanted that Great Spear of the Last Alliance (yum); he has written songs about his shield and there have just been so many in-game references to it. It's part of his "schtick".

The reason I wanted the sword is because I intend to, at times, throw his spear as a ranged attack, and then follow up in hand-to-hand with his secondary weapon. I realize this is not a wise mechanical decision; again it's based purely on fluff and narrative and aesthetic design. The "smart" thing to do would be to up "Bow" to 2, which has a low Enc of 1, and use that for ranged and my spear for melee only. But again, using a bow, as an Elf, is so.....elfy cliche.

Zed: I probably could do that, but I never intended for Amroth to be a weapon virtuoso. Weapon Skill 3 is enough for me, especially if I can get +1 or +2 to the weapon through Artificer.

The more I think about this, the more I realize how dumb it is to NOT just leverage the bow skill....

[zedturtle]

With having lost both Bergmál and Adalgrim, Amroth deciding to practise his bow wouldn't be amiss. But it's hard to imagine him staying in a rearward stance.

[Rocmistro]

Agreed. He's way too much of an energetic nut-case to stay in Rearward

Question for which I've never seen a good answer:

-In between Opening Volleys and initial round of combat, can a hero switch from his bow to weapon and shield? Does the game assume you can switch weapons?

-Likewise for switching weapon loads between individual rounds?

I've always imagined taking a "round" to re-arm yourself, but that might be a D&D concept holdover which doesn't apply here.

[zedturtle]

I have no problem with a character using a bow for an opening volley and then dropping it to rush into close combat. I kind of assume that it's a 'throw it down and worry about it later' thing.

Passing an object to another PC counts as a trivial action, so I think switching weapons is probably of the same complexity.

[Corvo]

Rocmistro,

we all agree that flavour beats crunch in these choices, yet...
since we are crunching numbers, how many creation points have you left over?
You got the starting 16, spent 6 to raise (Spears) to 3, and then you wrote about having Valour 3 frm the previous incarnation of the character.
Do you have 10 points? Or less?

I think High Elves and Rangers are great characters, but need more attention at building, since they are slower at correcting eventual errors.