Dagger skill

[qwercus]

Do your players use and level up their dagger-skill? I just found out that my players tend to concentrate on their primary weapon skills and so tend to disregard dagger, resulting in characters who are excellent with a sword (4d) but fight like complete rookies in a tavern-brawl... Seems like I have to include more tavern brawls or to houserule that your best weaponskill may only be 2 dice higher than your dagger-skill...
Greetings, qwercus

[bluejay]

Maybe put in some situations where weapons aren't allowed but a fight breaks out. Most characters can keep a dagger (for eating if nothing else) but if not then brawling works.

I've been trying to think of something like this myself. I know PCs hate being captured but how about an adventure where they allow themselves to captured specifically to get into an enemy's camp? Maybe a quick tussle with the guards before they can get to their weapons. Could be fun...

[Deadmanwalking]

Experience is valuable, hard to come by, and the things it buys escalate in cost pretty rapidly, making fitting in situational or ancillary things tricky (and due to its very low damage, dagger is highly situational). Getting primary weapon skill, Valour, and Wisdom all to 4 costs 46-52 experience. Spending 10 xp on Dagger 3 instead means you only have a 3 in one of those things, not a 4. That's not a small difference, and Dagger usage comes up really rarely. Way more rarely than a point of any of the three 'main' things to increase.

At higher xp levels, say 5 in all three main areas, we're talking 94-100 xp, but Dagger 3 still means one of them is only 4 (though itg does leave you with a bit of spare xp), and adds two dice very rarely rather than one very commonly. That's starting being worth it maybe, due to 5 dice not being nearly as much better than 4 as 3 dice are than 1. Still, that's ignoring Virtues and Rewards, so I'd expect only weapon skill to be foregone from Dagger, and even then, you could instead be saving up more Valour or Wisdom.

At the very highest levels, say 6 in all three main areas, we're talking 172-178 xp...and you could get Daggers 4 (and some spare xp) rather than one of those at 6. That's definitely worth it...but it's again, only soif the point is taken from Weapon Skill due to Virtues and Rewards.

So...short version: It's almost universally not worth it for a rare usage until at least 78 xp has been spent on other stuff, and potentially not until 146 or so have been. So...not early on. Not at all. Which means only people who expect to go weaponless a lot are gonna bother doing this...and given the cultures of Wilderland, being forced to go weaponless by people likely to attack you is a rarity.

Also, Dwarves and Beornings can manage alright in a brawl by going into forward stance and using a dash of Hope sorta by default, while Elves and Bardings/Men of the Lake do a bit worse and Woodmen and Hobbits are sorta in trouble...That seems appropriate, actually.

[Falenthal]

I don't consider it worthy as is. Maybe you can use/abuse the hindrances penalties in melee combat for dense wood and narrow underground passages, so that some players might consider it worth to fight sometimes with a dagger (which you could house-rule that avoids hindrances when there's little space for combat).

On the other hand, I think that TOR aims to avoid this kind of micromanagement of penalties ("Spears have a +2 to TN, Axes a +4, Swords,mmm... are you puncturing or swinging?") with the use of Encumbrance.

The only idea I can throw in is to change the Hobbit's cultural weapons to Bow 1, Dagger 2 or Axe 1, Dagger 2.

This way, Hobbits have a reason to increase their dagger skill either for melee or to throw stones at Trolls.

Also, adding a Called Shot: Piercing Blow to the Dagger weapon might help those Merrys that go stabbing Witch Kings from behind.

[Angelalex242]

Rather then making people spend good XP on this, I'd say a worthy houserule is that 'your dagger skill is always one die lower then your primary weapon skill.'

So the master swordsman with 6 dice of longsword is still so skilled at combat in general he has 5 dice with a dagger (or brawling, whatever.)

[Deadmanwalking]

Rather then making people spend good XP on this, I'd say a worthy houserule is that 'your dagger skill is always one die lower then your primary weapon skill.'

So the master swordsman with 6 dice of longsword is still so skilled at combat in general he has 5 dice with a dagger (or brawling, whatever.)

This seems like a solid idea. You could make it two dice lower (minimum 1) as well, if you want it just a little lower.

Another possibility if you don't want to give out free stuff would be to halve the cost of raising the Dagger skill. That'll make a few points more tempting from a cost/benefit analysis point of view.

[Michebugio]

I have one player who specialized in the dagger. And yeah, it's the worst weapon, but...

1) The proficiency is used also for Brawling attacks, good if you are disarmed or you need to defend yourself/attack someone in a (quite common) circumstance where you had to drop your weapons / leave the weapons to the guard outside the building / surrender and handle all your weapons to your captors.

A Beorning with a lot of dices in Dagger and Body 7 can dish out quite easily haymakers worth 15 Damage, by the way.

2) The proficiency is used for Throwing attacks with improvised weapons, so everything I said in point 1) is still valid, plus the fact that the Dagger itself is an improvised weapon. And it has Encumbrance 0, so you can carry a reasonable amount of daggers (say, four or five) that have no impact on your Fatigue score and you can throw them with remarkable accuracy. Maybe not very effective, but so cool.

A Brandybuck Hobbit with Fair Shot and a rock in his hand can roll 2 times the Action dice keeping the best result and deal 9 Damage, enough to one-shot a Goblin Archer. With a rock.

3) As I said in point 2), the Dagger has Encumbrance 0. You can fight with 2 daggers at Encumbrance 0, so maybe your Loremaster can give you an additional attack, or make appropriate rules for that. Or you can simply fight with a dagger in each hand with no particular benefit, except for looking so badass.

[Angelalex242]

None of which is enough to justify putting XP into it from a powergaming/character build efficiency point of view.

Hence my 'make it one less die then your main weapon skill' idea.

[Rich H]

None of which is enough to justify putting XP into it from a powergaming/character build efficiency point of view.

... Of which the vast majority of players of TOR probably aren't. If they were, they'd likely have long since grown tired of the system and moved on (or back) to other games that scratch that itch far more effectively.

I have a player that has put points into Dagger because it fits into his character concept. He isn't interested whether it's optimal or not; based on him spending points I throw in the occasional situation where such skill usage makes life a lot easier. His purchase is basically a flag to me saying "LM, this is important to me in some way, make it part of the story".

[beckett]

His purchase is basically a flag to me saying "LM, this is important to me in some way, make it part of the story".

And that right there is the best Loremaster advice I've seen.