Changing the Eye & Travel Encounters

[GaladrielsHeels]

I have a couple of queries :

1.) What are the implications of changing the eye result from 11 to 1 on the feat die? Was considering making the eye a 1; is there any reason why it is 11? Just seems more natural to have them on the extreme ends of the die result than right next to each other.

2.) Does anybody have a list or ideas about travel encounters? I don't want to fall into repetition with things like : you meet merchants at camp, a farmer asks you to help him or you meet some dancing elves/stoned hobbits!

[Andrew]

I have a couple of queries :

1.) What are the implications of changing the eye result from 11 to 1 on the feat die? Was considering making the eye a 1; is there any reason why it is 11? Just seems more natural to have them on the extreme ends of the die result than right next to each other.

Because the die runs 1-10, with an Eye and a Gandalf rune. If you replace the 1 with the Eye, it'll run 2-11, and I'm sure that'll do something funky to the probabilities.

2.) Does anybody have a list or ideas about travel encounters? I don't want to fall into repetition with things like : you meet merchants at camp, a farmer asks you to help him or you meet some dancing elves/stoned hobbits!

If you can wait a little while longer, the forthcoming Journeys & Maps supplement contains just this! Loads of sample hazards, as well as non-hazard encounters too.

[bluejay]

Regarding the first question, I think the answer is simply that the die produces a result of 1-10 with two special cases. In most cases the G rune (a Gandalf) is simply an auto-success and doesn't have a value. In some cases the Eye counts as 'something specific' and for the most part is simply counted as a zero.

If you made the Eye to be the 1 value then you get some odd results. Effectively it shifts everyone's competency '1 higher' making all tests a little easier.

[Baldrick0712]

For an online random die roller I tried out recently I considered making the roll d12-1, with 0 = Eye and 11 = G Rune. As long as you take 1 off the d12 roll it's fine treating a natural 1 as the Eye ( which would become 0 due to the -1 DM, which is what you want anyway).

[zedturtle]

When I use online dice rollers, I actually do this, using 1d12-1 with the 0 meaning the Eye (or Gandalf if a bad guy is rolling and 11 meaning Gandalf (or the Eye for bad guys). But that's too fiddle for face-to-face play. Fortunately I have somewhere in the neighborhood of five sets of dice (with extra Feat dice so that I can make smaller sets of dice for convention games).

[Majestic]

Having the Eye at the 11 spot ends up affecting PC weapons. Ordinarily, if a PC has a 10 for the Edge rating on their weapon, then they only hit their Edge one time out of six (about 17%, on a roll of a 10 or a 12), but if you changed the Eye to a 1, then they would hit on a 10, 11, and 12 (25% of the time).

[zedturtle]

Having the Eye at the 11 spot ends up affecting PC weapons. Ordinarily, if a PC has a 10 for the Edge rating on their weapon, then they only hit their Edge one time out of six (about 17%, on a roll of a 10 or a 12), but if you changed the Eye to a 1, then they would hit on a 10, 11, and 12 (25% of the time).

That is a really good point... you're not just increasing the average total, you're also making a lot of weapons more likely to crit.