Permanent Hunt Threshold?

[Deadmanwalking]

And/or simply raise the threshold from 4 to 6 for Valour/Wisdom modifiers. 4 just isn't very high or uncommon.

But no matter how the values are tweaked, the situation described...Eye Awareness Score permanently higher than Hunt Threshold...is going to occur at some point. What does that even mean? Life is just one big Revelation Episode? (Ironically, the penalty for rolling Saurons disappears when it happens.)

I'd be inclined to rule that what that means is identical to having a Hunt Threshold one point higher than your starting Eye Awareness:

You get a brand new Revelation Episode for every Eye rolled or Shadow gained. That's harsh enough for me.

[Corvo]

And/or simply raise the threshold from 4 to 6 for Valour/Wisdom modifiers. 4 just isn't very high or uncommon.

But no matter how the values are tweaked, the situation described...Eye Awareness Score permanently higher than Hunt Threshold...is going to occur at some point. What does that even mean? Life is just one big Revelation Episode? (Ironically, the penalty for rolling Saurons disappears when it happens.)

When it happened to my players I had them hindered by bad weather during travel (+4 to tn, see Out of the frying pan...), and being eyed with suspicion by the people they meet (someone seeded suspicions about them, see Lathspell).
Eye rules allows for harder (ie combat) and softer (ie subtle) revelation effects. I think that alternating between the two styles is fitting the devious nature of the Enemy.

[Falenthal]

I guess what Glorelendil is asking is wether this is some kind of bug in the rules or if it is inteded to play that way. And if the second (which probably is, knowing Francesco & Co.), what does it mean? That powerful groups are not supposed to go to dangerous places? Never? That only Hobbits can wander into Mordor without arising constant danger? That being Wise and/or Powerful puts those around you in peril, sometimes more peril than you are worth?

It might be a correct and interesting way to play things in Middle-Earth, but maybe not everyone's cup of tea.
There could come a time in a campaign where players need to create two separate characters for different kind of adventures: the powerful Heir of a Throne, that faces the enemy up front wielding his legendary sword, and the small unarmed Hobbit, gardner by profession, that enters Minas Morgul even though the Witch-King passed only a few meters by him.

Personally I haven't used the Eye of Mordor rules. My campaign is in a summer standby in 2950, so I'm not going to use them anytime soon. But I must say I'm ambivalent towards the rule: I like how it sounds, but it also means a new thing to bookeep, with a result that, to my eyes, is too similar to the Travel Hazards. I have trouble distinguishing what should be a Hazard and what a Revelation (other than how they're triggered).
I think there can be other ways that don't involve an entirely new rule to reflect the increasing danger in the lands: raising all Travel TNs one grade after 2951, increasing all Sauron's servants adversarie's Hate score by 1, making everyone more distrustful of strangers (reduce Tolerance automatically by 1 if there's no one from the same culture as the NPC in the group),...
Just ideas popping out of my head that could achieve (more or less) the same dramatic effect without adding a new rule.

[T.S. Luikart]

This strikes me as an interesting discussion, not one that needs snark, eh?

I wasn't being flippant when I suggested that some companies would, in fact, earn a "permanently hunted status". That said, I agree the numbers are a bit low for that, as written - too many groups would earn such, er... "notoriety" too readily, in part just because of having "too many members".

[zedturtle]

This strikes me as an interesting discussion, not one that needs snark, eh?

I wasn't being flippant when I suggested that some companies would, in fact, earn a "permanently hunted status". That said, I agree the numbers are a bit low for that, as written - too many groups would earn such, er... "notoriety" too readily, in part just because of having "too many members".

I really like DMW's suggestion to scale it with the number of members. My big group (9 players) will fairly soon see the Eye of Mordor activate, and we have a variety of notable individuals (one High Elf, one Ranger, one Wood Elf, one Dwarf, four Men, and one Hobbit). That seems to be the best way to go, although it might need to be capped (otherwise folks we travel in small armies in order to prevent triggering Revelation episodes).

[Deadmanwalking]

Capping it at 9 or 10 people seems reasonable. Nine has the advantage of playing into the Fellowship of the Ring's numbers so that'd likely what I'd go with.

[zedturtle]

Capping it at 9 or 10 people seems reasonable. Nine has the advantage of playing into the Fellowship of the Ring's numbers so that'd likely what I'd go with.

I think maybe

Dark: 8 + # of C
Shadow: 10 + # of C
Wild: 12 + # of C
Border: 14 + # of C
Free: 16 + # of C

would work better and distort less with higher numbers of heroes. It also helps with the problem of smaller groups, since the number of heroes is less of a factor overall.

[Glorelendil]

Factoring party size into the threshold basically counters the starting value, which sort of means that we would have two mechanics that cancel each other. In other words (and ignoring Noldor and Rangers for a moment) all we are doing is raising both the starting value and the threshold by equivalent amounts. We might as well just fix the thresholds as constants and reduce all cultural modifiers by 1, so that the rule is "Starting Eye Awareness is equal to zero, +1 per Ranger, +2 per Noldor, and -1 per Hobbit." We end up with the same gap between starting value and threshold, with simpler rules.

When I first considered including party size in the equation my concern was that larger parties should attract more attention. But I think that is accomplished without trying to adjust either starting value or threshold: the gap itself will be closed faster because a larger party will roll more Saurons. Which, in my mind, only argues against basing starting Eye Awareness score off of party size at all.

The challenge for this mechanic, whether RAW or not, is that it needs to accommodate novice parties to experienced parties, small groups to large groups, and free lands to shadow lands. Which raises the question: for every combination of those variables, what is a reasonable number of Saurons between Revelation Episodes? It seems to me the way to approach this design problem is to first answer that question, and then determine the mechanics.

However, we still need a way to address that case of "permanent hunt threshold", unless the solution to the above makes that case impossible. If the threshold is T, and our fellowship's starting score S is equal to T + 6, then the rule "every time somebody rolls a Sauron something bad happens" doesn't feel very satisfying to me. For one thing it puts a burden on the LM to come up with a crisis for every Sauron, for another it kind of spoils the tension of watching that number creep closer to the threshold, and finally it doesn't scale past parity. That is, a starting score 10 over the threshold is no worse than being right at the threshold.

I'm mulling over some ideas, but I'll refine them first and then maybe start a thread in house rules. In the meantime I'd be interested in other people's suggestions.

[Deadmanwalking]

Like I said, the simplest way to rule it remains that having a 'Permanent Hunt' just makes it so that every Eye or Shadow gain triggers a Revelation Episode. Th's what happens when you're one under and is more than harsh enough for me.

[Rich H]

Factoring party size into the threshold basically counters the starting value, which sort of means that we would have two mechanics that cancel each other. In other words (and ignoring Noldor and Rangers for a moment) all we are doing is raising both the starting value and the threshold by equivalent amounts. We might as well just fix the thresholds as constants and reduce all cultural modifiers by 1, so that the rule is "Starting Eye Awareness is equal to zero, +1 per Ranger, +2 per Noldor, and -1 per Hobbit." We end up with the same gap between starting value and threshold, with simpler rules.

I think that's a really nice alteration. Love the idea that Hobbits actually actively reduce Eye Awareness. Very fitting to the literature. It's also a simple alteration that just alters the number of an already existing piece of the RAW.

When I first considered including party size in the equation my concern was that larger parties should attract more attention. But I think that is accomplished without trying to adjust either starting value or threshold: the gap itself will be closed faster because a larger party will roll more Saurons.

The challenge for this mechanic, whether RAW or not, is that it needs to accommodate novice parties to experienced parties, small groups to large groups, and free lands to shadow lands. Which raises the question: for every combination of those variables, what is a reasonable number of Saurons between Revelation Episodes? It seems to me the way to approach this design problem is to first answer that question, and then determine the mechanics.

However, we still need a way to address that case of "permanent hunt threshold", unless the solution to the above makes that case impossible. If the threshold is T, and our fellowship's starting score S is equal to T + 6, then the rule "every time somebody rolls a Sauron something bad happens" doesn't feel very satisfying to me. For one thing it puts a burden on the LM to come up with a crisis for every Sauron, for another it kind of spoils the tension of watching that number creep closer to the threshold, and finally it doesn't scale past parity. That is, a starting score 10 over the threshold is no worse than being right at the threshold.

I'm mulling over some ideas, but I'll refine them first and then maybe start a thread in house rules. In the meantime I'd be interested in other people's suggestions.

I think you still need the feel of, how you've put it, "creeping towards the threshold". I think that's a game mechanic that leads to in-game tension, even if it's from a meta-game perspective; such things aren't always bad - a little player knowledge seeping into character actions/perceptions can often be used in a good way to support RPing opportunities and the like.

As you've said, more PCs mean that more EYEs will be rolled so based on the RAW that gap between threshold and starting Eye Awareness will be closed far sooner but their Eye Awareness will be higher. If you want the gap to be proportional to group size then you need either a quick fix like has been suggested above where the Threshold factors in group size as part of its calculation. It complicates it a little (ie, it's not a static number based on Region) but it does give you that variation.