Character Optimization Guide

[zedturtle]

Since my name was brought up, I will pop in and say that I had a heck of a day. I find the discussion interesting, but don't feel the mental capacity to weigh in too much at the moment.

I do think that it might be fun to write the guide from our three viewpoints. I'll be the one arguing that making smart choices is fine but munchkins in TOR will find that I'm a LM that will challenge their weak points.

Speaking of which, anybody got any good ideas on how to nerf Twice-Baked Honey Cakes?

[Glorelendil]

Since my name was brought up, I will pop in and say that I had a heck of a day. I find the discussion interesting, but don't feel the mental capacity to weigh in too much at the moment.

I do think that it might be fun to write the guide from our three viewpoints. I'll be the one arguing that making smart choices is fine but munchkins in TOR will find that I'm a LM that will challenge their weak points.

Speaking of which, anybody got any good ideas on how to nerf Twice-Baked Honey Cakes?

How to nerf the cakes themselves, or how to counter their benefit?

(Response to Roc will have to wait till later.)

[zedturtle]

Since my name was brought up, I will pop in and say that I had a heck of a day. I find the discussion interesting, but don't feel the mental capacity to weigh in too much at the moment.

I do think that it might be fun to write the guide from our three viewpoints. I'll be the one arguing that making smart choices is fine but munchkins in TOR will find that I'm a LM that will challenge their weak points.

Speaking of which, anybody got any good ideas on how to nerf Twice-Baked Honey Cakes?

How to nerf the cakes themselves, or how to counter their benefit?

(Response to Roc will have to wait till later.)

Well countering their benefit is easy. Just tempt the heroes to walk into certain doom in dangerous corners of the map.

Nerfing the cakes whilst still making them highly desirable is where I'm at. I want about 75% of current effectiveness.

[Glorelendil]

Since my name was brought up, I will pop in and say that I had a heck of a day. I find the discussion interesting, but don't feel the mental capacity to weigh in too much at the moment.

I do think that it might be fun to write the guide from our three viewpoints. I'll be the one arguing that making smart choices is fine but munchkins in TOR will find that I'm a LM that will challenge their weak points.

Speaking of which, anybody got any good ideas on how to nerf Twice-Baked Honey Cakes?

How to nerf the cakes themselves, or how to counter their benefit?

(Response to Roc will have to wait till later.)

Well countering their benefit is easy. Just tempt the heroes to walk into certain doom in dangerous corners of the map.

Nerfing the cakes whilst still making them highly desirable is where I'm at. I want about 75% of current effectiveness.

Oh that's easy.

0.75 points into the Fellowship Pool, -1.5 to Travel TNs.

[Glorelendil]

By the way, I'm sensitive to both what Roc was saying about planning for level 20, and Zed's concerns about minmaxing sucking the joy out of the game. I read the D&D 5e threads where people are designing Rogue/Fighter/Warlock/Monk multiclasses optimized to do huge burst damage in controlled situations and my reaction is that they've lost sight of what's fun about RPGs.

And yet...it's fun to tinker with and think about the mechanics and the theorycraft as well. And that's what my guide and this thread are about.

I'll be the first person to definitely demonstrate that Weapon X is the best weapon in the game, and then go off and build a character with Weapon Y because it sounds fun at the time. (Although you can bet I'll be studying how to be effective with Weapon Y...)

Response to Roc still incoming. Will have to wait till baby is asleep.

[zedturtle]

I have to admit that one of the reasons why I'm so easy-going in my Tales game is because I am really curious what 'high level' TOR looks like. I guess I should be worried about making y'all so tough that I can't challenge you, but I'm not too worried, yet.

I'd be interested in getting everyone's thoughts if there's any sort of LFQW problem in TOR... what background/build benefits the most from advancement?

[Glorelendil]

Ok, the little goblin is finally asleep.

Here's where I think I'm differing from Roc: I believe that there is role in a group for somebody who gets Pierces with very high TNs, the more frequently the better but the main thing is high TNs, in order to take down trolls with Great Strength and favoured armor.

But that does mean that there is also a role for other sorts of "specializations". To make an analogy: if we knew there were an adversary in the game with immunity to slashing and piercing, then you would want at least one companion with a mace or hammer. But that wouldn't mean there is also a "slashing role" or "piercing role", even though in theory you could call yourself that.

Similarly, I don't think that the other companions...the ones other than the one who specializes in Wounding trolls and Great orcs...should be specializing in reducing Endurance, or in fishing for Pierces. Outside of the Snow Troll case, my belief is that everybody else should simply be optimizing for balance. If Edge is high, lower it. If Injury is low, increase it. If both are bad, take Grievous.

The Snow Troll killer is going to have reduced effectiveness against opponents for which he doesn't specialize. Sure, he's going to kill a lot of enemies with Wounds, but with overkill. Most of them won't have favoured armor with 4 dice, or will die like good little goblins upon reaching zero endurance, so against those enemies the specialist should have taken Grievous, or Keen, or improved his armor, rather than taking Fell. Fell was wasted on them. But he de-optimized himself for the general case to serve a specific party role: killing Snow Trolls. And there just aren't any other roles like that. There aren't enemies that are immune to Pierce but have stupidly high Endurance, for example. Or enemies that automatically fail Protection tests but are immune to Endurance loss. So specializing for those mechanics at the cost of all-around balance is a bad idea. For most enemies a combination of good damage, lowish Edge, and highish Injury is the right recipe.

Conclusion: yes, there is one case where specializing for one stat can be useful (assuming the LM throws those adversaries at you) but that doesn't mean players should in general be picking a stat and specializing in it. Weapon choice, attributes, and anything that influences stance choice will largely determine whether it's best to increase Injury, reduce Edge, increase damage, or improve your defenses, but the goal will still be to balance all those stats, not pump one at the expense of the others.

On a somewhat related note, I've been trying to figure out when Grievous is a good choice, and I have three possible reasons:
1) At low skill a high percentage of your hits will be Edge hits (because you'll need a solid Feat roll to reach the target TN). So reducing Edge or increasing Injury early in the game is the way to go. But at higher skill level more of your attacks with a low Feat die will hit, which means fewer of your hits will be Pierces, so Grievous gains in value. I don't know how to compute the break even point, but that's the trend.
2) There are a lot of adversaries in the game with exactly 12 Endurance, so if your weapon damage + body score is equal to 10 or 11, then adding 2 more damage will let you one-shot a lot more adversaries.
3) Hobbits: +2 is a bigger percentage increase of their damage, given their weapon choices and their body scores, and they're not effective Pierce fishers because their weapon options don't have high Injury ratings.

Thoughts on that?

[Glorelendil]

I'd be interested in getting everyone's thoughts if there's any sort of LFQW problem in TOR... what background/build benefits the most from advancement?

And thinking about that question...

I'm starting to think that the Woodman Archer is a beast at high level. With high bow skill and a Great Shepherds Bow, he's got two things going for him:
1) On regular attacks he's going to get a lot of Tengwars, with +8 (or even 9!) for each one. Expect to see 15 to 25 damage almost every round.
2) This isn't limited to Woodmen, but the Great Bow makes an awesome Pierce fishing rod if you have lots of dice. Especially if it's Fell.

Bardings with Fierce Shot can achieve similar results. Although they can have equivalent damage ratings, though, their Parry scores are lower. (2 to 4 compared to 5 to 7 for the Woodman, plus another 3 in the Woods) On the other hand, they can take Fierce Shot and Dalish Longbow, increasing effective Injury in some cases.

Another possible contender, for a similar reason, is Mirkwood Elves with Bitter Spear and Shadow Bane. Although the extra success die becomes irrelevant at Skill: 6, before that point it's extremely valuable. Again, with all those dice he'll get tons of Tengwars (and Mirkwood Elves have solid body scores), called shots will be reliable, and he'll have an even higher Injury (and, like the Dalish archer, sometimes a ridiculous Injury). The weakness, relative to the Woodman, is that he'll be much easier to hit.

So those are my three candidates for being overpowered at high levels.

Note that in none of my games am I playing one of those builds. (Yet...)

[bluejay]

Hey Glorelendil I've been thinking about a few things here.

Firstly 'the unwoundable Snow Trolls incident' had a big impact on my group as well. Honestly I like the idea that some weapons are designed for wounding and work more effectively against these kind of creatures. My group at the time were all armed with swords and bows with relatively low injury ratings. Great spears and axes would have been far more effective.

I have also thought of one situation that does specifically apply to the wounding vs crits builds:

SPOILER ALERT

Fighting Nazgul and their Dwimmerlaik ability. The last thing you want (in close combat) is a piercing blow but doing endurance damage is (at least partially) effective.

[Rocmistro]

1. With respect to LFQW (which I will admit I had to look up what that meant!), I don't see that manifesting in TOR. TOR's curve is very flat to begin with.

2. Elfcrush: (sorry I just can't say that other name). In a vaccuum, I agree with you. I think what you're just not realizing about my argument is how few the number of choices you get to make in this game are. If you had unlimited build selections (or let's even just say "a lot"), I think I'd be more inclined to agree with you. But you only get five...5 gear selections. That's it. So spending an extra 1 of your 5 selections to pimp out your main gun along a different damage path is committing 20% to what may amount to overlap. That just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm not saying it's useless to do so, or even bad...but it presents measurable redundancy. And I just don't think, when you're talking about 5 selections, that overlap can be so casually disregarded. It's not as if you're NOT doing damage if you don't take grievous, or as if you're NEVER going to score a pierce if you don't take Keen, etc. And I'd like to add I don't think that my advice applies to every hero build out there. I'm sure I could come up with some examples of builds where I would commit all 3 qualities to an effective weapon.

3. I think a better optimization guide for TOR could include 2 components: 1) an analysis and breakdown by culture and 2) not just a "take this", but rather a "take these things in this order"

4. Zed (and others). I would just like to comment that my own peculiar brand of optimization always starts with a character concept first, and then I do my best to build my character to that vision. I think min-maxing, power-gaming, and optimization carry different nuances to their definitions. To me, power-gaming is about "beating" the GM, and to a certain extent, beating the other players. I'm not interested in that. I am interested in not having any "fat" on my characters though, which I think is really what optimization is all about. Or a better defintion would be, scrutinizing every choice I get to make to insure it compels my character in a direction that fits my vision.