Travelling and Traits

[Tar-Palantir]

Just checked this with Francesco and his feeling is that Hardy cannot be used to auto-pass Travel tests.

Good to know. What is the function of this trait then?
(The rules seem to indicate otherwise, but I guess they leave a lot of room for interpretation)

[Majestic]

I use the first (from Falenthal's list), as this issue came up for me with a climb (in one of the first adventures in Tales). The adventure required three successful Athletics rolls to succeed, and my player wanted to invoke his Nimble Trait three times.

So I now just have that each Trait can only be used once per scene, encounter, or journey.

[Stormcrow]

Did Francesco mean that the rules support using a Hardy automatic success on journeys but shouldn't, or that the correct interpretation of the existing rules is that you can't use a Hardy automatic success on journeys? If the latter, did he explain how to arrive at that interpretation?

[Rich H]

Just checked this with Francesco and his feeling is that Hardy cannot be used to auto-pass Travel tests.

That's an extremely surprising response and could really do with further clarity as Stormcrow has suggested above.

The Hardy trait is defined as follows: "You can withstand long hours of toil and travel far without rest, or under extreme conditions."

I think I'd have a problem explaining to a player why this couldn't be used to auto-succeed at a Travel test. Every explanation I can come up with sounds whiffy (eg, "you can withstand hour of toil like tilling a field but can only travel far without rest and this doesn't mean you avoid taking fatigue just that you can travel without rest"). This is ultimately why I was the person to suggest limiting the invocation of each trait to auto-succeed to one use per scene (eg, Encounter, Journey Leg, Combat, etc) to mitigate this trait tax and players pressing the "I Win" button repeatedly. Now if we're suggesting that it can't be invoked for this specific test then I'd like to hear a good explanation as I'd say the majority of players of TOR see Hardy as being able to auto-succeed at Travel and either (a) are okay with that or (b) have house ruled limitations into its invocation.

[Ferretz]

Another related issue that came up recently in our campaign was with the riding rules, charging and the Horsemanship Trait.
If a Rider of Rohan with Horsemanship, atop a war horse can just auto success his Riding checks when Charging, he can just wheel around again and again and kill every single foe before combat even starts (as long as the foes don't have ranged weapons).
Am I reading the rules wrong here? Or couldn't the rider do this, because failing the Riding check has serious consequences?

-E.

[Summerhawk]

Another related issue that came up recently in our campaign was with the riding rules, charging and the Horsemanship Trait.
If a Rider of Rohan with Horsemanship, atop a war horse can just auto success his Riding checks when Charging, he can just wheel around again and again and kill every single foe before combat even starts (as long as the foes don't have ranged weapons).
Am I reading the rules wrong here? Or couldn't the rider do this, because failing the Riding check has serious consequences?

-E.

I have a Rider in my party, so I've put some thought into this. As I understand the rules, a Rider can use Horsemanship to auto-succeed all related checks.

As for wheeling and charging, notice that the section of the rules dealing with that specifies "A group composed exclusively of riders, facing a group of footmen may try to charge their foes, sweep by them, and then wheel back and charge again." All of them have to be mounted and all have to succeed. The moment even one fails, close combat begins.

Now, what about a group composed entirely of Riders? I would start throwing mounted foes at them, or have footmen start shooting at their horses with ranged weapons.

Finally, in some cases, I might rule that the situation would allow a foe to essentially brace a weapon to receive such a charge, allowing for an attack. This would probably require some level of organization and some significant numbers, since a scattered few footmen couldn't do much against a group of mounted warriors.

[Falenthal]

If a Rider of Rohan with Horsemanship, atop a war horse can just auto success his Riding checks when Charging, he can just wheel around again and again and kill every single foe before combat even starts (as long as the foes don't have ranged weapons).

Following the main 3 ways of approaching Trait invocation described above, this is how I think this would go:

1) Allow automatic success at the LM's interpretation (RAW).
Could be that the LM allows to autosucceed at every Riding test, and would have to find a good reason not to. Or another LM could understand that there are important consequences for failing and disallow any autosuccess. Could vary a lot between tables.

2) One Trait invocation per Scene limitation.
The Rider(s) could autosucceed only at one of the tests each, either the first (TN14) or any other later (as long as they didn't fail the prior ones, of course).

3) Traits can't autosucceed at tests with a TN higher than 14, and/or those with important consequences.
The Riders could be allowed to autosucceed at the first test, that has a TN of 14, but not at the others, that have a TN of 16 or higher.

[Stormcrow]

It's important to remember what an automatic action is: an unspectacular achievement. Invoking an automatic action on the Riding test for a charge means the charger has a professional level of skill at riding and does an adequate job. Experienced riders can certainly run circles around footmen all day if they choose to.

The rules for charging say that after each wheel, the chargers must pass another Riding test at an increased level of difficulty. Now we run into the question of what it means to achieve an ordinary success against a high level of difficulty. It means that someone untrained at a specialized skill (a trait) must try harder with a common skill to achieve the same ordinary success, but someone trained in that specialized skill may continue to treat it as routine. In this case it means that untrained riders have to work harder and harder to wheel and successfully repeat a charge, but trained Riders do not. This supports the original notion: experienced riders will always be able to outmaneuver footmen.

Even this does not preclude reaching a point where even experienced Riders can no longer charge. At some point, probably when the difficulty goes beyond Daunting, the Loremaster is perfectly within his rights—but not required—to declare any further charge an epic feat, requiring a roll even from experienced Riders.

But really, the best way for the Loremaster to handle repeated charges by experienced Riders is for the chargees to seek shelter. A band of footmen caught in the open by a group of experienced Riders is toast, and that's realistic. But frankly, the rules also need a special case for setting spears against a charge.

[bluejay]

Ok so I chatted further with Francesco to dig a little deeper. I don't want to get into a contentious discussion here when putting forward someone else's points. I understand why people want further detail but at the same time I do not want to accidentally misquote Francesco or misrepresent his ideas.

Nevertheless I got the following gems:

The Hardy trait needs to be reworded to avoid confusion.

Hardy would be useful for times when resisting cold or other difficult weather conditions or exhausting tasks such as crossing the ford of Tharbad.

[Stormcrow]

Maybe something like, "You can withstand extreme conditions when toiling long hours or traveling far"? Put the emphasis on withstanding extreme conditions rather than toiling long and traveling far? Then something like a test triggered by bad weather could benefit from Hardy, but just traveling could not.

Any idea whether Francesco is revising this to fix journey Fatigue tests, or whether he is simply clarifying what he meant all along?