House Rule for No Quarter

[Arthur Fisher]

There's nothing wrong with games where a gobin is on par with a PC, but The One Ring is pretty explicitly not that game. The PC's and enemies have different stats, different skills and different abilities. The enemy's to hit is based on player decision. Whether the enemies can make a called shot is based on a player's roll. PC's can take a Wound. And a lot of that is based off the fact that, in Tolkien, the forces of light are almost always outnumbered by the forces of darkness and the forces of light usually prevail.
It's so intrinsic to the system that hacking it to make it more Old School seems like a momentous task.

But there are lots of very cool games where that's not the case. The GM rolls a crit and you're done. Make a new character. DCC comes to mind. Swords & Wizardry. Lamentations of the Flame Princess. There's probably a bunch more. But I've played all of those and they were all super fun.
Those, and those like it, could probably be modded to a Middle Earth setting and make a sweet game easier than taking apart TOR.

[voronwe]

Hummm... all of this has in my opinión very little to do with the point I was taking...

Simply that I find a bit unrealistic that even a humble goblin without No Quarter would not be able to kill a companion with a single, lucky and vicious blow... I'm not saying that the odds should be high (you have your protection rolls and your hope and lots of good tricks to survive that fist strike - that's the Valar trying to keep you alive )... but at least some risk of death should exist to make players think twice before charging strait on that enormous evil-looking troll instead of using their wits to save the day...

A critic about an specific point of the system doesn't mean taking apart TOR... as a matter of fact, I fancy proposing interesting changes or optional rules for a fantastic system as TOR is far more tan creating house rules or changing the game system.

[jamesrbrown]

It is possible to kill a hero in The One Ring with a single blow. The hero just needs to be Wounded once already and, with one blow, be Wounded again and dropped to zero Endurance at the same time.

This is not incredibly difficult most of the time. Heroes could be Wounded for awhile, or Poisoned (which is the same as being Wounded once). This puts them in constant danger of being Wounded a second time and dropped to zero Endurance if they should enter combat.

What cannot happen in The One Ring is for a fully hale companion, without a Wound, to be dropped by a single blow. The enemy would have to have either the No Quarter or Savage Assault Special ability to make a second attack on the same turn and possibly kill the hero. This is probably what the original poster meant all along, in which case I sound like a technical nitpicker, but I wanted to point out that it would be possible for a single Orc to kill a hero with one shot, if the hero was Wounded already from a previous event.

If a Loremaster wanted to make it possible for a fully hale hero to be killed with one shot, he could easily do so by stating that if a Protection test is failed with an Eye, the hero suffers a grievous Wound (making it count as 2 Wounds). The hero falls unconscious and if he is reduced to zero Endurance at the same time, he dies. If not, he could be killed by the next blow of the enemy if not protected. But, now I'm getting into house rules territory...

[Arthur Fisher]

If you really want to make TOR more deadly, just make it so that a Wound or 0 Endurance kills a PC, just as it kills an enemy.

But like I said, I've killed a PC with one hit from a Mountain Troll and I find that there are more than enough deadly enemies in the game to keep players on their toes.
Death is common enough in TOR that players aren't reckless and know their characters can disappear in an instant, but it's not so common that players have a pile of character sheets, each more disposable than the last.

[voronwe]

Interesting ideas, James & Arthur. Thanks.

Probably I simply miss too much those sessions with Rolemaster's Middle Earth rpg where we players took half an hour devicing a smart plan to prevent being spotted by a roaming Orcish war band, he, he...

[Farath]

What cannot happen in The One Ring is for a fully hale companion, without a Wound, to be dropped by a single blow. The enemy would have to have either the No Quarter or Savage Assault Special ability to make a second attack on the same turn and possibly kill the hero.

I didn‘t understand No Quarter this way. RAW states (in the current version):
If the creature has just knocked out a character, reduce its hate point score by one to immediately roll a second attack...
It doesn’t state:

• If the creature has just hit a charakter, ... or
• If the creature has just wounded a charakter, ...

So from my understanding to kill a charakter with No Quarter you have to knock him out first, which means you have to wound him twice or to reduce his Endurance to 0 in order to get the second attack (for a hate point). So there‘s no way to kill a fully hale compagnion in one blow, even with No Quarter.

As I see it, there‘s no point using No Quarter as described in RAW. Yes, I want hard fights and tention, but killing a PC already lying on the floor is another thing. I‘d rather tend to house roule No Qwarter towards the second bullet point: If a charakter is wounded by an adversary, it can spend a hope point to get a second attack trying to knock him out (and if things go bad - maybe kill him).

[Indur Dawndeath]

So from my understanding to kill a charakter with No Quarter you have to knock him out first, which means you have to wound him twice or to reduce his Endurance to 0 in order to get the second attack (for a hate point). So there‘s no way to kill a fully hale compagnion in one blow, even with No Quarter.

But there is:
Obvious Example
Mountain Troll, attribute 9
Extraordinary success will inflict 27 points of damage. Add Horrible strength for 1 point of Hate and the player will have to deal with 36 endurance loss.
However the Mountain Troll does not have No Quarter as standard, so it has to be a specially murderous Troll...
Another Example:
Black Uruk, called shot with poison and rolling edge. The result is double wound and therefore uncunsiousness.

Hill-Troll chief, has the ability to inflict 32 endurance points of damage and he have the No quarter ability According to RAW.

[Farath]

You’re right. But that’s the brute force approach. If the adversary is big / strong enough, that works.
I had smaller adversaries in mind, but haven’t checked whether there are some with with No Quarter ability.

[Farath]

I’ve just checked: at least the Hobgoblin (lvl 4) and the Dunlendings (lvl 5) have No Quarter and more or less regular weapons.

Edit: and the Servants of the Tyrants Hill (lvl 3).

[Majestic]

I don't have the book with me, but I'm pretty sure some of the Outlaws in Tales from Wilderland had this ability as well.