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Having been looking over the Adventurer's Companion, an amusing fact leapt out at me: There is now a new king of high Parry, and it's a Bree-Hobbit. Which struck me as an amusing factoid nobody else was talking about.

With a potential Wits of 6, Small Folk, and Desperate Courage, plus Gifted (for Favored Wits 10) and a Reinforced Shield, they can manage a Parry of 16, and higher than anyone else in the game.

Now, it's only an unconditional Parry of 9, but a +4 vs. anything bigger than them and another +3 vs. creatures with an Attribute of 6+. So...the vast majority of the time yo're fighting something that can hit better than a 21 (the TN to hit you in defensive even with neither) you have at least one of those (for Parry 12 or 13), and usually both (for the aforementioned Parry 16).

LOL. Nice. I do not have that suplement so it is good to know.

So he would fear snaggas A LOT but not direct attacks by trolls, giants, dragons or ringwraiths. Funny.

Luckily we do not find many hobbits in our games. I always found that they are too combat oriented for my taste.

Elmoth wrote:Luckily we do not find many hobbits in our games. I always found that they are too combat oriented for my taste.

I have to admit, that is not a description of Hobbits that I ever expected to see or hear.

Elmoth wrote:LOL. Nice. I do not have that suplement so it is good to know.

I thought it was interesting. And amusing.

Elmoth wrote:So he would fear snaggas A LOT but not direct attacks by trolls, giants, dragons or ringwraiths. Funny.

Actually, Ringwraiths are a much bigger problem than the rest, having Attributes of only 4-5 for the most part. And snagas have the issue of not being able to hit TN 21 very often in the first place. But yeah, small stuff is definitely the bane of hobbits in general.

Elmoth wrote:Luckily we do not find many hobbits in our games. I always found that they are too combat oriented for my taste.

Really? I'm pretty sure they're the single lowest damage culture in the game, so about as non-combat oriented as is quite reasonable.

We had a pair of hobbits once. They were the tanks of the group due to the high TN they had. They did not kill much (but not less than a lot of other characters, since their base damage of 5 is no worse than other cultures) but their strength was the high defense they sported. We did not like that, so they stayed at the last inn, where other characters joined the group.

Plus the King's Blade is deadly! Get Fell on those Short Swords and these guys are death from below!

Sure the Revised Rules added the Hope cost but Hobbits have stacks of that!

Elmoth wrote:We had a pair of hobbits once. They were the tanks of the group due to the high TN they had. They did not kill much (but not less than a lot of other characters, since their base damage of 5 is no worse than other cultures) but their strength was the high defense they sported.

But...shouldn't Hobbits be hard to hit? That seems pretty true to the books, and also makes good logical sense to me.

Besides which, with the exception of Bree-Hobbits as noted here, most hobbits don't have much (if any) Parry above other good Parry cultures (they can technically max two higher than most, but only by taking Gifted on top of Small Folk and a Reinforced Shield, which is a bit of an investment, and even then only situationally). Indeed, vs. stuff their own size they have one of the lowest max Parry scores in the game (tied with Dwarves, beating only Men of the Lake).

And the lower Damage scores matter much more as characters progress and get higher weapon skills, for the record. As do the higher Injury numbers most other Cultures possess.

Elmoth wrote:We did not like that, so they stayed at the last inn, where other characters joined the group.

To each their own, I suppose.

bluejay wrote:Plus the King's Blade is deadly! Get Fell on those Short Swords and these guys are death from below!

Sure the Revised Rules added the Hope cost but Hobbits have stacks of that!

Eh. IME, Injury 16 is pretty unreliable as a method of taking any enemy you care much about out of the action. And to get that, you need to either forego Grievous and Reinforced...or have Valour 4-5. Which is to say, we're talking later-game stuff.

It was certainly overly good when it was free (enough TN 16 hits will take stuff out), but the Hope cost gets prohibitive quick with the new rules.

Deadmanwalking wrote:But...shouldn't Hobbits be hard to hit? That seems pretty true to the books, and also makes good logical sense to me.

The only hobbit that was ever demonstrated to be hard to hit was Frodo, and that is because he was wearing his mail-shirt—he was hit lots of times, but the blows were deflected each time.

Uh...I only remember Frodo being hit twice (once by the Nazgul, once by the troll when the mithril saved him). But even assuming you're right, I can't recall any of the other hobbits getting hit much if at all, which leaves 3/4 of them as quite hard to hit.

Sam got a hit on the head in the Chamber of Mazarbul.