Viability of Body Attribute

[Rocmistro]

kdtompos:

I've been Loremastering for about a year now, and I would agree that Body is probably the least important of the 3 attributes. That is still not to say it is unimportant. For me, if I were playing a character, I would like to have a Body of 4 and Heart/Wits evenly claiming 5 points each. that, to me, would be an ideal spread.

Personally, I would have statted out the base Endurance of each race a little lower, and then had a hero's actual endurance be=starting cultural endurance+body+heart, as I think it's more than fair to link endurance to the quality of one's body. Let's be honest; people who are in-shape can go WAY longer than people who aren't.

But when you roll a bunch of 6's on attack dice, it feels good to have a high body score, as others have stated, you'll be one shotting everything. When you're Beorning throws out triple 6's with a Grievious Longspear and hits for 32 damage, thus one-shotting your BBEG, you won't think that Body is underpowered (yes, it's happened to me). And other's have already mentioned the bit about Body for protection tests.

I might also houserule that for a favored weapon, you use your favored body for additional damage.

[Robin Smallburrow]

A question - does anyone recall how the starting Endurance & Hope scores were calculated?

Robin S

[Rocmistro]

Robin, do you mean for each culture or in general for a new character?

For a new character, it's Racial Culture + Hope Score.

But how they decided on each culture's starting racial endurance and hope, I don't know.

I'm sure they structured it so that Dwarves, Elves, and Beornings were at the top, Bardings a bit below, then Woodmen and then Hobbits for Endurance.

And for Hope, I'm sure Hobbits and Men were at the top, with Dwarves and Elves at the bottom to balance out their other gifts and talents.

[Corvo]

(...)
I'm sure they structured it so that Dwarves, Elves, and Beornings were at the top, Bardings a bit below, then Woodmen and then Hobbits for Endurance.

And for Hope, I'm sure Hobbits and Men were at the top, with Dwarves and Elves at the bottom to balance out their other gifts and talents.

Not exactly: elves got less Endurance than the Bardings, and are on par with the Woodmen. For what's worth, made some comparison:

Culture / endurance/ hope
bardings:_ 27-29 __ 13-15
beornians: 28-30 __ 12-14
elves:____ 24-26 __ 10-12
hobbits:___21-23 __ 17-19
dwarves:__30-32 __ 8-10
woodmen:_24-26 __ 14-16