Community Focus

[Elmoth]

Hi!

In the Spanish edition of the game it says that if your community focus is damaged during the adventure you do not earn the second point. Does "damaged" mean "Wounded" or as long as it loses some Endurance you already lose your community focus?

The later is how our LM is reading it, but that would certainly incentivate everybody to make the archer in the group their community focus and the other relationships in the community to be poorer, right? I find it strange.

Is it the same in the English version?

Thanks

[Hermes Serpent]

There's Francesco's response to this question in the old forum posts.

"With 'otherwise be harmed' I meant anything that gave a fellowship focus a hard time during the last session of play. It can be anything from getting beaten badly during combat (losing a lot of Endurance while not inflicting a lot of damage in return) or ending up being miserable or even weary. But I understand that this is a little too hazy, so I'll try (with your help?) to come up with some stricter guidelines."

No more detailed guidelines seem to be available.

[Elmoth]

Thanks for the response

Meh.... less clear than I expected, though. Our LM is taking the strict take: if the Focus lost 1 Endurance point or more due to damage you do not get the +1 Hope.

[Hermes Serpent]

You could show him that Francesco is not firm about the penalty and offer up the suggestion of "received more damage than inflicted" as a better concept of what Francesco meant by his "harmed" statement. Everyone could of course switch to the archer at the back as Fellowship Focus to show how ridiculous that any damage rule is.

[Angelalex242]

I believe 'damaged in any way' refers to wounded, the status effect, or hitting 0 end. I'd also count poisoned. Anything less then that doesn't count.

Of course, by my way of thinking, the smartest thing to do is get a dwarf with 5d armor and a great shield with 6 wits, keep him in defensive stance at all times, and watch the monsters flail uselessly at him. And don't forget Durin's Way, the virture, to make it even more ridiculous underground.

[amajo]

Although there are still no strict guidelines to determine if a Fellowship Focus has been "harmed" or not, losing 1 point of Endurance is definitely not damage enough to deny the other character the Hope point, otherwise the Fellowship Focus rule would lead to some unwanted situations (such as the ones you already mentioned in your posts).


Amado.

[bigsteveuk]

I don't know maybe it doesn't need specifics maybe it is the overall state, motivation and well being of the focus.

Our fellowship tackles a infestation of spiders that has been plaguing a village and as a result in game terms my Hobbit chum Widget (my focus) ends up wounded, got poisoned and lost most of his endurance. In game terms enough to not warrant the extra hope point as your focus took a bashing.

Scenarios 1 (nil point)
Bob and his fellowship is involved in a failed attack on the spiders and is driven off

Scenario 2 (nil point)
Bob is kidnapped by the spiders and dragged deeper into the the nest

Scenario 3 (yay)
Bob sneaks into the nest to rescue some children and is badly mauled but he on battles his close friend by his side at all times and on the brink of exhaustion Bob lands a piercing blow on the spiders leader. The spiders are laid low.

To me it's not about numbers but the end situation, if at the end of the day your focus is alive and in some way victorious then you should get the point. If you have somehow failed them, they are down in the dumps, have lost hope. Then no.

[James Harrison]

A complicating issue is the three way nature of it all
1 - focus fine = hope
2 - focus harmed = no hope
3 - focus wounded = shadow (killed = lost of shadow)

perhaps becoming weary or miserable would qualify for "harmed"... (and wounded also... otherwise you could be wounded (+ shadow) but not weary and gain hope)

Would that work? Weary at some point = no hope?

[Rich H]

Similar to James, this is how I've been running this:

Hope Recovered (Focus Fine)
This includes Endurance loss that doesn't lead to being Wearied, etc.

No Hope Recovered (Focus Harmed)
This includes Wearied and Miserable characters. Also Wounded/Poisoned/Bouts of Madness characters - see below.

Shadow (Focus 'Wounded')
This includes Wounded, Poisoned, Bouts of Madness, and similar states of duress (if created in future supplements).

... Not had any issues with it so far.

[Stormcrow]

Harm should be defined as any time something happens to a character that makes the other players say, "Oh, no!"