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With Sudden Strike, normal combat advantage and Mastery it is looking like characters could easily surpass 8 dice, possibly as high as 12. Is the limit of 6 dice applied to everything but mastery (making sudden strike and combat die largely useless to veteran characters) or do the mastery mechanics apply to the expanded dice pool?

Really beautiful book, C7. Especially pleased with the expanded Wild Hobbits and Men of Bree, not to mention the very specific Moria tease (especially welcome since I'l be having a group of Dwarves comb the Grey Mountains in a few months, searching for pertinent lore to use in Balin's new project).

I find myself, however, more nervous than in recent years. I know Oaths of the Riddermark is coming, but that's it. Very excited!

Rich H wrote:I'm afraid I do find it disappointing that around approximately 1/3rd of the book's content has been presented previously in other sources though. I appreciate it can be useful to consolidate but if another supplement later adds further cultures or undertakings then the content here quickly gets out of date. I get the decision to do this but I don't agree with it, sorry. Still, the new content is invariably pretty groovy so I'm fairly happy with it on the whole.

I kind of agree with you, but on the other hand, what was the alternative? The number of books information was spread out over was becoming unwieldy...

If a player wanted to see all the available cultures they might play, that information was spread out across 6 books by my count (including Wayward Elves and Wild Hobbits). Now it's 2. Fellowship Phase Undertakings were even more spread out all over the place: I'd created an index for my own use and I'm sure others had done so too, so it makes sense to have an official one.

Even when more Cultures and Undertakings are added, it will still be useful to only need the core rules, this book and whatever additional supplements contain new stuff, rather than everything.

Yeah its a tough one to call and, like I said in my initial post, I can see why others like it all collected (to this point in the release schedule at least) but for me the content was already pretty easy to manage as Cultures, Undertakings etc are generally geographically localised so I never saw this as a massive problem.

But if I do have an issue (bit of a strong word, but hey-ho) its that it's mixed with new content. I don't agree with releasing material that exists elsewhere along with new material that doesn't unless you're already getting the old material for free which doesn't appear to be the case here; and I'm pretty sure that the guys at C7 really thought long and hard about doing this for the reasons I've stated because this is the kind of thing that will have caused them concern, cool fellas that they all are. After looking over the book this will be the first (and hopefully last!) in the TOR line where I don't keep the hard copy - I'll sell it on or give it to a friend as I can edit down the PDF and print out the bits I need into a smaller supplement of perhaps half the size; particularly if those new Cultures eventually appear in other regional supplements, which I suspect they will.

Anyway, there's bags of cool stuff in there so it's still a very decent book, its personally just a shame that there's about a third of it that is redundant for me - simply because I already own it, not because it is of no interest or low in quality. Far from it. I'm happy for others that don't see this as a problem though and really needed stuff to be collated.

I'm a bit disappointed that the section on the Fellowship phase is mostly just restating rules from the core book. I can understand repeating things that are in scattered supplements, but right out of the main rule book? I was hoping for a little more structure or clarification.

And whoever came up with the Wayward Elves really doesn't seem to understand that Mirkwood Elves aren't dour anhedonics.

But the new heroic cultures are generally good, as is the new rule for Taking Courage. I'm not enamored of the new combat rules—I've always felt they were fiddly enough as it is. I found the Curious Diversions chapter to be largely useless.

This one's a mixed bag for me. The book's greatest strength is that one can now recommend getting the core book and one single other book to get most of the good stuff (though they'll still need Rivendell to get everything).

Stormcrow wrote:I'm not enamored of the new combat rules—I've always felt they were fiddly enough as it is.

Just finished reading through everything and that's the point I feel more controversial with. For everything else, I find this book both practical (joining all we have in one book for the players) and full of optional details that can be used "as is", or as an inspiration for our own rules.

With the New Combat Rules, I feel that specially the Combat Tasks mix some good ones with unnecessary ones. This hangs a lot on likings, but I feel that Challenge Adversary and Full Defence, for example, are just an additional way of mechanically representing what was already included in the Forward and Defensive stance: you opt to hit and be hitted more often, or the opposite. Also, Sudden Attack (although I will use it for personal likings and compatibility with some house-rules) is something that was already covered under the Bonus Succes Die from Preliminary rolls.

Some things feel like ruling the same thing twice.

But I will definetly use the Two-weapon attack, the Suden Attack and the Harry Foes along with the house-ruled Combat Tasks I already used (adopted from Rich's and Glorelendil's previous works).

As for the Called Shots, I like them all. Swift Strokes is a nice way to introduce the "hit more than one foe per round". And Axes and Mattocks aren't now useless against adversaries without shield (most powerful ones, like trolls and dragons!). And Pummeling Attack is the precursor of the Quarterstaff

As for the new Mastery rules, I think the general dismissal of Masteries could have been corrected by rewriting the existign ones to be more useful. No need for new rules specific only to Masteries. Confidence, for example, is one of the most powerful improvements a character can gain. On the other hand, Dour-handed is pretty useless, IMO. But changing it to something like "Raise your ranged Damage rating by 3" would be enough for many people to already consider it, without new rules.

I love the Patrons rules and guidelines, and the example Companies all give an overview of what kind of campaigns can be run with the published material.

Overall, an interesting supplement, with lots of tiny jewels in it, and some big gems also. I makes the game significantly more complex if the LM wants it all in his game, but fortunately most rules are simply optional and can be used for personal ideas (could the mastery die mechanic be somehow used for the favourite skills? Roll one additonal die, but keep only the best results up to your skill level.)

Falenthal wrote:Could the mastery die mechanic be somehow used for the favourite skills? Roll one additonal die, but keep only the best results up to your skill level.

That's interesting. I like the sound of it.

Rich H wrote:

Falenthal wrote:Could the mastery die mechanic be somehow used for the favourite skills? Roll one additonal die, but keep only the best results up to your skill level.

That's interesting. I like the sound of it.

You won't dare to say it to me in the House-rules subforum...

Anyone else have issues with some of the art in the PDF not showing up?

iPad and iBooks?

In this case just close the app via twice tapping the home button and reopen it. Problem should be solved.