Survival rate in TOR

[bluejay]

My players made it all the way through Tales from Wilderland, The Darkening of Mirkwood, and Ruins of the North without a single fatality, though they came close a few times and two characters retired.

The main reason they survived is that They came up with a great combat tactic - the Barding bought the Swordmaster trait, which lets him add the encumbrance rating of his sword (3 in this case) to his Parry. Then he always fought from the Defensive stance while his Fellowship Focus the Woodsman fought from Forward stance. Just about any time the Woodsman would have been hit he spent a Hope point to take the blow instead - deflecting it with his higher Parry, and then immediately received a replacement Hope point for having aided his fellowship focus in combat.

It was so useful that I'm not sure I would let if fly again if we run another campaign (since the fellowship rule says "spend Hope to invoke an attribute bonus" I might not allow immediate recovery of a Hope spent to engage the "Protect Companion" maneuver).

The other players were more cautious in combat. The hobbit usually stayed in Open stance, and the Elf stayed Reward so he could always use his bow. The crazy Woodsman with the big axe was usually the primary target, and he always had his Barding buddy to block the blows that hit.

I think you realised where you were allowing them a favourable reading of the rules. The Hope spend is specifically designed to prevent players from doing it for every attack and as this doesn't invoke an attribute bonus it doesn't get replenished automatically.

[Majestic]

In 30+ sessions, I've only had one PC death. And we discovered soon after that I was doing something wrong, and he shouldn't have been Weary (in addition to Miserable and Wounded). The player was okay with keeping it, though, as he'd tried to self-sacrifice himself the session before anyway. It led to another PC naming his weapon after his fallen comrade.

There's been a few close calls, and a few times the PCs have had to retreat or fall back. Like many of you, I've tended not to use No Quarter. I make foes like that fight deadlier, generally, but I've never actually used a coup de grace.

[Deadmanwalking]

For the record, our 'no PC deaths' record does actually include enemies using 'No Quarter' (damn hobgoblins). Protect Companions got used a lot in that fight...

I'm kinda with you all on not using it, though. It's not super fun to deal with, and fun is rather the point of the game.

[Afterimagedan]

One of the things my players often say is that they don't want to plan an RPG in "easy mode." Are more of the pre-made scenarios in easy mode? Is there a way I can make the game a little more risky for them? For example, we have a "hard mode" D&D campaign which basically means, they often get into situations in which fleeing is the best option and if not, someone or more might die. It's not that every situation is overly hard. Hopefully, they will be able to feel the fear doing some things in TOR.

[Deadmanwalking]

The lack of death does not in any way make TOR easy. It's low lethality, but often quite difficult. People go down from Endurance loss regularly, leaving the other PCs to pick up the slack, people become Weary often (and being Weary sucks), and probably eventually become Miserable and go at least a bit mad (and quite possibly need to be retired eventually or go permanently mad and become an NPC).

Indeed, the potential downward spiral on Hope and consequent issues with being Miserable and going mad, as well as how Eye Awareness works (if using that rule, and you definitely should if going for difficulty) actually make the maximum practical lifespan for a character way shorter than a D&D character can often manage, at least in terms of total sessions played as that character.

Additionally, TPKs are every bit as possible in TOR as they are in D&D, people are just less likely to die in non TPK situations. For an analogy, think of D&D only everyone auto-stabilized when they dropped below zero HP. They could still be killed outright in theory, but death gets a lot rarer...without actually making the game notably easier.

So, that said, advice for making TOR harder (specifically, more dangerous, since that's what you seem to be looking for):

-Pre-written adventures aren't all easy by any means. 'The Watch on the Heath' (the final adventure in 'Tales from Wilderland') is hideously dangerous to start with, and can easily be made more so.
-Use the 'Eye Awareness' rules from the Rivendell book. They just flat-out make the game harder, and in a very thematic way.
-Non-combat stuff can easily be as hard as most combats if you do it right. The group I play in have almost lost people crossing rivers a couple of times, for example. And social encounters with unfriendly people can easily be dangerous as well as difficult.
-Unlike D&D there's no CR system, and thus nothing to say you can't throw foes at the PCs they have no hope against. There are actually a number of such foes statted, and easy rules for statting more. There are also a number of abilities in the Rivendell book fore making adversaries more powerful and dangerous.

[zedturtle]

Yeah, totally agree with the above; no one has died in my Darkening campaign so far (despite some very close calls) but they've also suffered a number of defeats where they really haven't achieved their goals at all. They certainly don't think they're playing on "easy mode"!

I think one of the great strengths of the game is that achieving victory is often divorced from combat capability. Of course, being able to defeat your enemies helps with your goals but often the challenges are knowing who the enemy truly is and being able to get into a position where you can do something about them.

A party who relies on combat-orientated solutions for everything would have a very hard time with that last adventure in Tales From Wilderland, where it's very likely that the heroes need to understand the goals of the various foes and be able to play one against the other. Also, I'm not saying that combat is unimportant or not exciting... it is. Heroes just need to see the inevitable conflicts as part of the bigger picture.

[Elmoth]

Raenar did not listen to us (Abysmal rolls) and did eat up our dwarf.

Then we had to fight the orcs at the tower while he was attacking the orcs and us as well in order to prevent his capture. Made for a shitty situation for us and ended in a TPK except for one of the elves, that fell off a cliff and was just unconscious in a ravine (abysmal spot checks for the enemies) until everything was over. We managed to prevent Raenar being captured, but it was a grim battle.

We also lost a companion investigating Dol Guldur. The only reason the crossing of the celduin was not a massacre for us is that the party failed so abysmally at it that we had to run the siege of Dale later on as a new adventure.

TPKs are not common, but they can happen. Still, it is less deadly than other games out there.

For the record I consider the modern editions of D&D (4th, 5th and Pathfinder) one of the LEAST deadly games out there once you are over level 1 or 2, so I do not take that as a benchmark for deadliness. If I do, TOR would be above it in dangerousness.

[Azrael Macool]

I've not ran enough games to really expect any player deaths, but I will note, battle can turn on you quickly if you're not careful. I've ran 2 groups of players through The Marsh Bell adventure, and the first group practically one-shot the troll, and the other group, it was a hard-fought battle. I mean, the worst anyone got was Wearied, but once you've become Weary, it's REALLY hard to recover. Which leads to a lot more failures, which makes things a lot harder, which leads to getting wounded, etc. I'm pretty happy with the difficulty level overall

[Morgoth]

I think the only time we had a player death was a TPK. It was the big boss fight with the main antagonist for the whole campaign. They ended up killing the big baddie and saved most of Eriador, but they all died in the process.

[Valarian]

The only player character death I've had was a front-line Dwarf who fell on the bridge at Celduin. It wasn't the foes he faced, for he had slain many. Just, finally, a lucky hit from an orc got him. Wearied from his efforts holding the bridge on behalf of the villagers, he took a wound as the last of his reserves of strength gave way. The blade took him and darkness fell on the bridge. His comrades rallied and managed to defeat the darkness, driving their foes from the bridge and tipping their cart in to the river below. His actions were remembered by the company, and by the villagers of Celduin, and his memory honoured.