Last Friday we played the last part of The Crossings of Celduin, the battle. We played with a quite novel LM, so the 12 rounds of battle felt a bit flat. It would not harm that the book would include a few tips for (new) LMs on how to make the 12 rounds more interesting for players. Like including small events every few rounds, like a house set on fire, a woman and a kid threaten by some orcs... something that makes the players feel that they can change the course of (some) events and that they are doing something else than bashing passing by orcs for 12 rounds with no real impact.
But I wanted to also rise two points regarding rules
1) Armour rules
2) King's Blade & Small folk
Because we like discussing these topics in these forums
1) Armours: I have to say, that in such a long fight (12 rounds it was), having a good armour makes the difference in survivability. While the hobbit with a Parry score of 11 (for a TN of 23) and wearing a 1d armour was knocked unconscious after suffering 2 wounds, the Dwarf with an armour of 4d+4 ended up weary but conscious.
This happened mainly because we supported each other by doing many, many Rally comrades, so nobody went down to 0 Endurance. It may be a very specific case, but I got the impression that in long battles, like the one in this scenario, or the battle of the Pelennor Fields, or the battle of the Hornburg, wearing armour matters.
2) I have to say that my group is going back to the old version of the King's Blade. We played the whole adventure with its old version, where you don't have to spend hope, and we did not find it overpowered at all. The short sword has an injury rating 14, so any 3d + armour will likely pass the protection test. On the other hand the current version feels rather underpowered (if I am allowed of using those terms).
