Question on Rewards

[Yepesnopes]

Some good ideas, both for changing it to a Sword and for keeping it as a Spear. I was actually nearly convinced to make a sword out of it, but boosting that spear.... I like

[Angelalex242]

...Eh. If you insist on keeping it a spear, make sure it can be used in melee too. I wouldn't take it otherwise.

[Yepesnopes]

Well, I have come with the following changes to the virtues I like less in this game. I will appreciate comments a criticisms.

Cultural Rewards - Men of the Lake
Brazen Armour (mail armour)
Men-folk out of the East favour suits of armour made of overlapping brass plates, or composed of small scales arranged in a mesh, like the scales on a fish or the feathers of birds. Many of these elaborate coats have been hanging on the walls of the great hall of Lake-town, waiting for heroes worthy to wear them.

• A Brazen armour is the equivalent of a suit of mail armour, but wearing it allows you to roll one additional Success die on a Protection roll against an attack made with a edged or blunt melee weapon (swords, axes and clubs).

Cultural Rewards - Bardings
Spear of King Bladorthin (spear)
The Dwarves of the Mountain forged these spears for a king who lived before the Dragon came. Their thrice-forged heads never lose their keenness, and their shafts are inlaid with gold.

• Rise your Standing by 1. Additionally, when you make an attack using a Spear of King Bladorthin, you roll the Feat die twice and choose the best result.

Cultural Rewards – Hobbits of the Shire
King’s Blade (short sword, dagger)
At times, country Hobbits find ancient swords inside fallen mounds, amid tilled fields or washed ashore along a watercourse. Unable to discover their precise origin, they call them simply ‘King’s Blades.’

• If you roll an great or extraordinary success on an attack using a King’s Blade, spend 1 point of Hope to automatically inflict a Piercing Blow with +4 Injury rating.

Bow of the North Downs (bow)
One of the oldest stories told in the Shire remembers how a company of the best archers that the Shire could muster went north to aid the King in battle. They never returned, but a number of very strong bows are said to have been recovered from the battlefield and preserved to this day.

• When you are using a bow of the North Downs your ranged Damage bonus is based on your favoured Body score.

Cultural Virtues - Beornings
Skin-Coat
…nothing could withstand him, and no weapon seemed to bite upon him.

Tales say that a warrior’s own courage will turn steel and iron better than the smith’s hammer-work.

• When you are hit by a Piercing blow in combat, you may choose to reduce your Endurance score by a number of points after rolling for Protection, to lower the Injury rating of the blow by an equal number.


Cultural Virtues - Hobbits of the Shire
Fair shot
They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed and sure at the mark. Not only with bows and arrows. If any Hobbit stooped for a stone, it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew very well.

You have spent a great deal of your time practising with all sorts of throwing games, and your accuracy is exceptional.

• When making a ranged attack, add to your rolls a bonus of +3, or your Valour rating (whichever is higher).

Cultural Virtues – Elves of Mirkwood
Deadly archery
...their small knives... would have been of no use against the arrows of the Elves that could hit a bird’s eye in the dark.

Most members of your kin possess a natural talent for hitting the mark when using their bows. You seem to possess that quality yourself, as your arrows find their target with uncanny precision.

• When you make a ranged attack, you can roll the Feat die twice and keep the best result.

Wood-elf Magic
Though their magic was strong, even in those days they were wary.

• You are mastering what mortals might call ‘Elf-magic.’ You learn how to fling a Elf-lights when you first select this Virtue. You may later master the making of Stinging Arrow or discover the secret of Enchanted Sleep as your undertaking, and spending one Experience point during a Fellowship phase (for each additional spell).

[Glorelendil]

New simulator is chugging along. The first thing I decided to test was the "always on Spear of King B".

Here's a Body 6(9) hero with Spear:3 spending hope whenever needed on Pierces and Great/Extraordinary Successes (Open stance, no complications, no opening volley):

Spear Barding[B:6(9), H:6(4), Skill:3,
Virtues: []
Rewards: []
Weapon: Spear(D:5|E:9|I:14|[])]
...vs. Attercop
Average Rounds to Kill: 2.32
Average Hope Spent: 0.1

...vs. Black Uruk
Average Rounds to Kill: 3.52
Average Hope Spent: 0.49

...vs. Great Orc
Average Rounds to Kill: 8.6
Average Hope Spent: 1.1

Hopefully the metrics make sense. (I'm only running 1,000 iterations of each adversary, so the results are only accurate to about +/- 0.1) Now here's that hero with Keen and Fell enabled:

Spear Barding[B:6(9), H:6(4), Skill:3,
Virtues: []
Rewards: []
Weapon: Spear(D:5|E:8|I:16|["keen", "fell"])]
...vs. Attercop
Average Rounds to Kill: 2.15
Average Hope Spent: 0.09

...vs. Black Uruk
Average Rounds to Kill: 3.29
Average Hope Spent: 0.47

...vs. Great Orc
Average Rounds to Kill: 8.43
Average Hope Spent: 1.15

In each case the average rounds to kill goes down a little bit (a fraction of a round), and hope expenditure barely changes. So the Fell & Keen spear is clearly better, but not by a game-changing amount. (Unless you happen to get that lucky roll at a critical moment, of course.)

Ok, now I'm going to turn on "Fair Shot" for that hero, which is basically what the modified Spear of King B does:


Spear Barding[B:6(9), H:6(4), Skill:3,
Virtues: ["fair_shot"]
Rewards: []
Weapon: Spear(D:5|E:8|I:16|["keen", "fell"])]
...vs. Attercop
Average Rounds to Kill: 1.75
Average Hope Spent: 0.01

...vs. Black Uruk
Average Rounds to Kill: 2.67
Average Hope Spent: 0.26

...vs. Great Orc
Average Rounds to Kill: 7.53
Average Hope Spent: 0.66

I need to add in a function that computes the deltas, but here it is manually:
Adding Fell & Keen dropped average kill times by: 7%, 6.5%, 2%. That's for two Rewards. Change in Hope use was less than margin of error.

Adding in Fair shot dropped those kill times by a further: 19%, 19%, 11%. For a single Virtue. Plus necessary Hope expenditure plummeted.

Moral: "Fair Shot" is very, very deadly in the hands of anybody with high Body and full-sized weapons.

[Michebugio]

Brazen Armour (mail armour)
Men-folk out of the East favour suits of armour made of overlapping brass plates, or composed of small scales arranged in a mesh, like the scales on a fish or the feathers of birds. Many of these elaborate coats have been hanging on the walls of the great hall of Lake-town, waiting for heroes worthy to wear them.

• A Brazen armour is the equivalent of a suit of mail armour, but wearing it allows you to roll one additional Success die on a Protection roll against an attack made with a edged or blunt melee weapon (swords, axes and clubs).

Definitely agree on this one. It's true that the original version provides more protection against the weapons with higher Injury, but Bows and Spears score more Piercing thanks to a lower Edge and Called Shots, so in the end characters tend to be Wounded more by arrows and spears than by swords and axes. Even more rolling 1d6 less, thus making the "RAW Brazen Armour" a very poor choice. So I use this rule too.

Spear of King Bladorthin (spear)
The Dwarves of the Mountain forged these spears for a king who lived before the Dragon came. Their thrice-forged heads never lose their keenness, and their shafts are inlaid with gold.

• Rise your Standing by 1. Additionally, when you make an attack using a Spear of King Bladorthin, you roll the Feat die twice and choose the best result.

From the worst Reward in the game, to the best! It's like Fair Shot but much better, since it applies both to ranged and melee and there is a +1 to Standing on top of that. Too much in my opinion, I would remove at least the +1 to Standing.

King’s Blade (short sword, dagger)
At times, country Hobbits find ancient swords inside fallen mounds, amid tilled fields or washed ashore along a watercourse. Unable to discover their precise origin, they call them simply ‘King’s Blades.’

• If you roll an great or extraordinary success on an attack using a King’s Blade, spend 1 point of Hope to automatically inflict a Piercing Blow with +4 Injury rating.

A Bitter Spear increases Injury by 4 on a Gandalf. Stinging Arrow inflicts an automatic Piercing Blow spending 1 point of Hope. You essentially combined these two effects into a short sword, substituting the Gandalf requirement with the great or extraordinary success requirement. But the Gandalf has a chance of 8.33%, while the great success has a chance that scales up with skill and even at Weapon rating 2 is roughly 20%.
Again, it's too much. I would either limit the Injury to +2, or change the Reward to:

• If you roll a great or extraordinary success on an attack using a King’s Blade, you may choose not to apply your
Damage rating to automatically inflict a Piercing Blow.

That's how I houseruled it, by the way.

Bow of the North Downs (bow)
One of the oldest stories told in the Shire remembers how a company of the best archers that the Shire could muster went north to aid the King in battle. They never returned, but a number of very strong bows are said to have been recovered from the battlefield and preserved to this day.

• When you are using a bow of the North Downs your ranged Damage bonus is based on your favoured Body score.

Fair shot
They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed and sure at the mark. Not only with bows and arrows. If any Hobbit stooped for a stone, it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew very well.

You have spent a great deal of your time practising with all sorts of throwing games, and your accuracy is exceptional.

• When making a ranged attack, add to your rolls a bonus of +3, or your Valour rating (whichever is higher).

Deadly archery
...their small knives... would have been of no use against the arrows of the Elves that could hit a bird’s eye in the dark.

Most members of your kin possess a natural talent for hitting the mark when using their bows. You seem to possess that quality yourself, as your arrows find their target with uncanny precision.

• When you make a ranged attack, you can roll the Feat die twice and keep the best result.

So Bow of the North Downs has become Fierce Shot, Fair Shot has become Bow of the North Downs, and Deadly Archery has become Fair Shot.

Not much to say, I personally use different rules (Deadly Archery lets you ignore penalties due to medium/long range, darkness and cover, and the over Virtues stay the same). I don't see any problem of balance here, it's just a matter of tastes.

Skin-Coat
…nothing could withstand him, and no weapon seemed to bite upon him.

Tales say that a warrior’s own courage will turn steel and iron better than the smith’s hammer-work.

• When you are hit by a Piercing blow in combat, you may choose to reduce your Endurance score by a number of points after rolling for Protection, to lower the Injury rating of the blow by an equal number.

I rule this exactly in the same way, i.e. you can choose to reduce Endurance to lower Injury after the Protection Roll, not before.

[Yepesnopes]

From the worst Reward in the game, to the best! It's like Fair Shot but much better, since it applies both to ranged and melee and there is a +1 to Standing on top of that. Too much in my opinion, I would remove at least the +1 to Standing.

Yes, I doubted as much on this one. I was playing here with the fact that if a Barding goes down the Spear route, he has to renounce to the Swordmaster virtue, which gives him parry. But may be that is not enough. I want to avoid to re-skin this reward completely, but I see to that this is not the best solution.

A Bitter Spear increases Injury by 4 on a Gandalf. Stinging Arrow inflicts an automatic Piercing Blow spending 1 point of Hope. You essentially combined these two effects into a short sword, substituting the Gandalf requirement with the great or extraordinary success requirement. But the Gandalf has a chance of 8.33%, while the great success has a chance that scales up with skill and even at Weapon rating 2 is roughly 20%.
Again, it's too much. I would either limit the Injury to +2, or change the Reward to:

• If you roll a great or extraordinary success on an attack using a King’s Blade, you may choose not to apply your
Damage rating to automatically inflict a Piercing Blow.

That's how I houseruled it, by the way.

I was afraid a +4 was too much, may be I will keep it down to a +2 then. In any case I don't think anyone will play a Hobbit in my game.

So Bow of the North Downs has become Fierce Shot, Fair Shot has become Bow of the North Downs, and Deadly Archery has become Fair Shot.

Not much to say, I personally use different rules (Deadly Archery lets you ignore penalties due to medium/long range, darkness and cover, and the over Virtues stay the same). I don't see any problem of balance here, it's just a matter of tastes.

I was following the whole discussion about Deadly Archery, and I saw this a possible good solution for Deadly Archery. It is just that I am no fan of a Virtue which is situation dependent. Which reminds me, I don't like neither the Durin's Way virtue for Dwarfs, I was not even aware of its existence.

[Angelalex242]

Durin's way is basically the cultural blessing of woodmen, except for dwarves and underground. Home field advantage by adding +3 parry.

[Falenthal]

Durin's way is basically the cultural blessing of woodmen, except for dwarves and underground. Home field advantage by adding +3 parry.

Not very useful in most of the Darkening campaign, but wait until The Moria Campaign comes out!
A Life of Toil (Wits 6) + Durin's Way (+3 to Parry underground) + Shield (+2 to Parry) = Basic Parry 11
In Open Stance it makes for a 20 to be hit!

The same can be said of Water Legs for the Lake-town culture when the Great Belegaer Campaign comes out. Recover the sunken Palantir in the Bay of Forochel! Retake the captured city of Umbar from the Corsairs! Explore the númenórean ruins of Lon Daer at the mouth of the Grey Flood! And find the secret elven haven of Edhellond! Watch out for the new Naval Fights rules! You'll surely get wet...

[Disclaimer: none of this fictional campagins have nothing to do with Cubicle 7. For now...]

[Angelalex242]

A dwarf is happiest when invading an orc base. Orcs typically live underground. Now that great axe wielding dwarf with Old Hatred and Durin's Way is doing One Hit KOs on endurance alone.

[Rich H]

Recover the sunken Palantir in the Bay of Forochel! Retake the captured city of Umbar from the Corsairs! Explore the númenórean ruins of Lon Daer at the mouth of the Grey Flood! And find the secret elven haven of Edhellond! Watch out for the new Naval Fights rules! You'll surely get wet...

Sound like adventures for my new Hobbit character, Imladris Jasper!

Imladris Jasper and the Curse of the Seeing Stone
Imladris Jasper and the Corsairs of Doom
Imladris Jasper and the Lost Tribe of Lond Daer
Imladris Jasper and the Mysterious Secrets of Edhellond

Der der-der derrrrrrr, der der der!

<whip crack> "Can't reach it!"