Character Optimization Guide

[Glorelendil]

Oh, duh...I have a Woodman character but forgot the +3 was from his favoured wits; I thought it was a fixed value.

I think I'll add a subsection that lists priorities by culture.

[Glorelendil]

It's my experience/opinion*, that the marginal difference between +6 vs. +8 or 9 to a roll is far less important than, say, +4 or +5 getting boost to +6 or +7.

It's also mathematical fact. It's the point I'm making in my item #3 in that section.

So, yes, the math holds for all cultures, but perhaps it makes the most sense for Mirkwood Elves since they have no other particularly compelling use for favoured stats.

[Glorelendil]

Roc,

I've been incorporating some of your suggestions, which in some cases means just writing more clearly.

Two quibbles:
1) Although a +1 shield that weighs less would be great, I'm not sure it's worth the opportunity cost of all those valour points. I'll play with the sim and see.
2) Although the damage vs. crit tradeoff is present in the mechanics (e.g., you can optimize for draining endurance or fishing for wounds), I'm not sure I believe it's optimal to focus on one versus the other. What's the logic behind it? Why is specializing in one, versus balancing between the two, optimal? I could see the argument that one member of the party should be a crit monkey for that rare, very-hard-to-kill Snow Troll, but should each party member pick one or the other? I don't see it.

While we're on the topic, one other consideration on spending Valour (and I'm getting really min-maxy here) is that any weapon or armour upgrade you take could be replaced by a magical treasure roll. Sure, you get to unlock qualities by giving your old item to a museum, but you can also unlock them by visiting a Loremaster. So ideally you would want to avoid spending valour on anything that ever gets replaced by Famous Arms & Armour. How do you do that:
1) Raise Wisdom before Valour to delay the decision.
2) Spend Valour on items that are unlikely to be replaced. (Unless I'm forgetting something, only Men of the Lake, Noldor, and Dunedain have this option.)
3) Distribute the point spend on different items. I.e., a Dwarf could get Helm of Awe, then make his Mattock Keen, then get Dwarf-Wrought Hauberk. That way if he suddenly gets an amazing magical weapon he's only "wasted" on Valour point. (Of course, if he keeps adventuring he might eventually replace all three of them, but in the short term that's still better than suddenly retiring a Keen & Grievous Axe of the Azanulbizar.)

[Rocmistro]

Roc,

I've been incorporating some of your suggestions, which in some cases means just writing more clearly.

Two quibbles:
1) Although a +1 shield that weighs less would be great, I'm not sure it's worth the opportunity cost of all those valour points. I'll play with the sim and see.
2) Although the damage vs. crit tradeoff is present in the mechanics (e.g., you can optimize for draining endurance or fishing for wounds), I'm not sure I believe it's optimal to focus on one versus the other. What's the logic behind it? Why is specializing in one, versus balancing between the two, optimal? I could see the argument that one member of the party should be a crit monkey for that rare, very-hard-to-kill Snow Troll, but should each party member pick one or the other? I don't see it.

While we're on the topic, one other consideration on spending Valour (and I'm getting really min-maxy here) is that any weapon or armour upgrade you take could be replaced by a magical treasure roll. Sure, you get to unlock qualities by giving your old item to a museum, but you can also unlock them by visiting a Loremaster. So ideally you would want to avoid spending valour on anything that ever gets replaced by Famous Arms & Armour. How do you do that:
1) Raise Wisdom before Valour to delay the decision.
2) Spend Valour on items that are unlikely to be replaced. (Unless I'm forgetting something, only Men of the Lake, Noldor, and Dunedain have this option.)
3) Distribute the point spend on different items. I.e., a Dwarf could get Helm of Awe, then make his Mattock Keen, then get Dwarf-Wrought Hauberk. That way if he suddenly gets an amazing magical weapon he's only "wasted" on Valour point. (Of course, if he keeps adventuring he might eventually replace all three of them, but in the short term that's still better than suddenly retiring a Keen & Grievous Axe of the Azanulbizar.)

Q1. Well the preface there should be "if you use a shield". Obviously, not all builds are going to use a shield, but for those that do/will, I think it's valuable as there aren't many ways to increase parry in this game. As a side note, one of the reasons you'll see me keen to stack qualities into a shield is because I think it's a less likely magical treasure, to your points above, and thus less likely to be squandered, wasted. Every blow avoided in this game has measurable, significant impact on your survivability.

Q2. This is just a question of priorities and optimizing. Of course, a weapon with all 3 qualities is better than the same weapon type with 1 or 2...but what is the opportunity cost? I think you will get more mileage, for example, out of increasing a Great Axe to 11 damage vs. dropping it's edge by 1. But you are right in that what I originally wrote is never an absolute. It all depends on culture and your party function, which is why a more in-depth study is needed in order to discuss character optimization in TOR, and it really needs to be centered on culture. A Beorning, for example, I would advise to go: Great Spear, w/ Keen, Grievous, Fell and Giant Slaying, and a Great Helm with Protection +1. He's an absolute damage dealing badass who can do 15 damage + Body on big targets and will score lots of wounds in addition. He'll never use a shield or armor, and the +1 protection rating on his great helm will help him calculate when he wants to avoid a wound and when he wants to take one, which is part of the finesse of the Beorning cultural blessing-sometimes, you want to be wounded. A Barding Swordsman on the other hand, I would not advise to take any of his cultural rewards. For him, I would advise to go Crit OR Endurance Longsword build, and then spend the other 3 qualities to bring Mail Armor to -6 on encumbrance.

The objection about magic items is noted, but since you can't rely, as a player, on when that will manifest, if ever, I can't really discuss it in a character optimization guide.

1. Raising Wisdom before Valour. I actually disagree with this. New heroes can spare gaining some corruption, and being daunted is far more serious consequence when they need to be able to spend hope to increase failed rolls. In fact I would say all Shadow can be accumulated and really doesn't need to be concerned about being healed until after encroaching upon the Hope margin after receiving a first permanent shadow point! Consider this: would you rather have 1 shadow and 3 hope remaining, or 10 shadow and 11 hope? As soon as you have a bout of madness, your shadow pool gets reset to 0. It's like a free shadow healing purge! This is especially true for Dwarves who actually want to have a manageable reservoir of shadow points to fuel their stiff neck. Bardings should take Wisdom over Valour at character creation, absolutely, partly because their rewards are sub-par while their virtues are so good, and also because their cultural blessing also helps make up for a poor Valor score. Elves I would go with Wisdom, given their smaller pool of hope, Hobbits should absolutely prioritize Valour (a billion hope points and unable to spend them? not good) Men of the Lake it's a push since tenacious kicks in for a bad roll either way. Woodmen I would say is a push, mostly because they have great rewards and virtues. Beornings I would probably go Wisdom because their virtues are so great and everyone will want the honeycakes.

2. Again...I just don't know that you can really factor in magic items to a discussion on optimization. And anyway, does it really matter since, I believe, per Rivendell, you can technically go back and trade back in your reward items for a 'refund' using an undertaking in the fellowship phase?

3. I see your point but I don't agree with this method. In fact, in general, I think most of your gear except perhaps your armor will stick with you over the life of your career, especially if you've built your character correct from the ground up. In my opinion, the only thing that should change is your worn armor, by virtue of the fact that your Endurance increases through resilience, thus improving your margin, or you fatigue drops because of close-fitting qualities on stuff (thus also improving your margin)

[Glorelendil]

Oh I'm not actually advocating increasing Wisdom first, just saying that if you wanted to optimize for magic items that's how you'd do it.

Typing on phone. More later.

[Glorelendil]

Ok, I'm at a computer. Longer response:

First, for all of these considerations there's a probability consideration:
1) When the mechanic in question is based on a single die roll (e.g. Edge) then stacking a stat is great.
2) When the mechanic in question is based on a dice pool (e.g. Protection, Parry, Attack) then stacking a stat has diminishing returns.

So looking at, for example, the Reinforced quality, you will get the most benefit if your parry is already low. So when you say you get the most benefit if you're already a shield user, somewhat counterintuitively that actually isn't true. If you're already a shield user then your Parry is, on average, higher, so the +1 gives you less benefit.

For all of the qualities, their value depends on what stats you already have. I would probably never take a Reinforced Buckler for a Hobbit with Small Folk and Wits 6(9). Increasing total Parry from 10 to 11 is worth a fraction (in terms of number of attacks avoided) of what it would be for a Beorning.

Cunning Make is a curious one because, as you point out, dropping a point of Encumbrance might give you the buffer to increase your armor by 1D. But I don't think anybody has anything other than a guess as to what the optimal buffer is between Endurance and Fatigue. At best you can say that the narrower your buffer, the more value Cunning Make has.

I'm going to update my section on Qualities in light of these points.

(Oops mixed up Close Fitting and Cunning Make again. Fixed.)

[bluejay]

I would advise to go: Great Spear, w/ Keen, Grievous, Fell and Giant Slaying, and a Great Helm with Protection +1. He's an absolute damage dealing badass who can do 15 damage + Body on big targets and will score lots of wounds in addition

Cultural rewards count towards the 3 qualities that can be added to an item so you can't add Keen, Grievous, Fell AND Giant Slaying.

Page 115 of the Revised Rulebook: "Adding a Cultural Reward to an item counts towards the maximum of 3 Qualities that can be attributed to it (i.e. an item can feature up to 2 Qualities and a Cultural Reward)."

Not sure if this was made clear in the first printing but a lot of people seem to miss this.

[bluejay]

Also it's worth nothing that a spearman or bowman might be using called shot regularly. Happens a lot in my game and definitely affects the impact of crits on a combat.

[bluejay]

While we're on the topic, one other consideration on spending Valour (and I'm getting really min-maxy here) is that any weapon or armour upgrade you take could be replaced by a magical treasure roll. Sure, you get to unlock qualities by giving your old item to a museum, but you can also unlock them by visiting a Loremaster.

No I do not believe that is the case. The Loremaster can explain to you the nature of the weapon (the Bane(s) and nature of unlocked qualities) but they do NOT unlock the qualities. You need to pay Valour to do that.

[Glorelendil]

While we're on the topic, one other consideration on spending Valour (and I'm getting really min-maxy here) is that any weapon or armour upgrade you take could be replaced by a magical treasure roll. Sure, you get to unlock qualities by giving your old item to a museum, but you can also unlock them by visiting a Loremaster.

No I do not believe that is the case. The Loremaster can explain to you the nature of the weapon (the Bane(s) and nature of unlocked qualities) but they do NOT unlock the qualities. You need to pay Valour to do that.

Oh, yes, you are right! I mis-read that section. So I totally take that back about trying to optimize Rewards; you can never accumulate more than 5 rewards/qualities.

With one caveat:
The language on turning in "Cultural Treasures" says "trade any number of Rewards in exchange for the activation of an equal number of Qualities on a magical piece of war gear". One could read that to mean that if you're trading in a weapon with two qualities that counts as trading in two rewards. If that's not the correct interpretation, the implication is that you should not stack qualities. But since the rules seem to be designed to prevent gaming, I suspect that is the correct interpretation: turning in a Tower Shield with Reinforced would unlock two qualities on a magic item.