First game of TOR some issues

[Hermes Serpent]

Midden,

While Jamesrbrown's house rule of not using Weary rules for Protection rolls works for him the game authors have clearly stated that the intent is that Weary applies to Protection rolls as well. This will matter when dealing with tougher Adversaries - having a Troll go from easily hitting his Opponent to being some 20% less effective is a real boost to the company. The ability to dictate Stance each round and going first in most cases is the win for many heroes.

Protection is a combination of actual armour and movement just as Parry is a combination of Wits and a shield so having heavy armour tires you out during combat. There seems to be a sort of sweet spot around armour 3 where the Protection value is good enough while the Encumbrance value is low enough to matter less.

Looking at numbers when considering what to wear is important as heroes get far more choices than non-human Adversaries. Most lower Attribute level Adversary weapons have an Edge of 10 with an Injury rating of 12 or 14. An Edge of 10 gives a 16.6% chance of a Piercing Blow and in order to defend well against the Injury rating Armour needs a better than average chance to meet that number.

0D 1D 2D 3D 4D 5D 6D
TN 12 8% 29% 58% 83% 95% 99% 100%
TN 14 8% 17% 42% 70% 89% 97% 99%
TN 16 8% 10% 27% 54% 78% 93% 98%

When Weary the numbers drop by around 20% for mid-range armour:
0D 1D 2D 3D 4D 5D 6D
TN 12 8% 25% 44% 60% 73% 83% 89%
TN 14 8% 17% 31% 48% 63% 75% 83%
TN 16 8% 10% 20% 35% 51% 65% 75%

As can be seen from the probabilities 3D Armour is optimal against these lower level Adversaries when balancing Protection and Encumbrance.

A Great Orc with a Favoured weapon attacking at 2 or 3 dice plus 7 is a very different proposition, effectively pushing their weapon skill up by 2 dice and successfully hitting for 12-14 damage about 70% of the time against Parry 20. Armour Protection rolls need 14/16 to prevent that Wound and 3D armour works well enough in most cases. The bonus +1 for a cap or Body value for a Hope point generally get you out of a scrape here.

However 12 or 14 damage out of an available maximum of 20 or so (after Encumbrance is deducted) doesn't make for happy heroes so by the time that Great Orcs feature as regular Adversaries Cunningly Made Armour is a good buy for the 2 point reduction in Encumbrance.

[Elmoth]

Angelalex242, I guess you have LOADS of Hope-recovering features in your community, right? Otherwise the ninja-like character you describe will work in a few stances, but be left depressive and overcome by shadow really fast if he is conjuring his Wits skill so regularly to get an edge... My Wits 7 woodsman is certainly not THAT good there, and he has a starting Hope of 14.

Xavi

[Angelalex242]

Not at all. Just wise players who assign their AP points and initial skill points (After getting their weapon to 3) to wits related skills. And they favor the wits skills as often as possible if they're a woodsman with wits 7 favored wits 10. (Slayers choose to favor stealth and persuade, for example...) Or a Hobbit with wits 6 favored wits 9. The idea is to synergize your witty ninja skills with wits related common skills as often as possible, taking advantage of favored bonuses where applicable. Make the system work FOR your character, by making sure he's the best there is at what he does.

(For the record, the two elven characters I've played so far are NOT ninja parry monsters, but rather elven zweihander users who favor offensive power. And I try to balance my favored stats out as much as possible to abuse Folk of the Dusk. My first Elf was noble blood with favored 7/6/7. My second was Envoy with favored 8/5/7)

Also, it's extremely important weary be applied to protection rolls. Axe of Az, the dwarven reward, is fairly useless if that's not the case. The point is that it wearies the opponent BEFORE the protection roll against TN 20 or 22 is made...

[Rich H]

Not at all. Just wise players who assign their AP points and initial skill points (After getting their weapon to 3) to wits related skills.

You've missed the point with what Elmoth was getting at. In order to apply attributes to actions your PC needs to spend Hope. So, if you keep spending Hope to do this then you need, as Elmoth put it, "Hope recovering features".

For what it's worth, high attributes with high skills are actually an inefficient build. It's more prudent to have high attribute levels coupled with low skills so that they can be bolstered when you roll low; which is more common with skill ratings of 1's and 2's, less so with 3's, and hardly at all with 4's+.

Also, it's extremely important weary be applied to protection rolls. Axe of Az, the dwarven reward, is fairly useless if that's not the case. The point is that it wearies the opponent BEFORE the protection roll against TN 20 or 22 is made...

Not really. The wearied state will apply to the whole of the encounter so its utility and advantage exists beyond the protection roll. Granted if you use James' house rule, you don't get the benefit for that attack but the wearied state exists for the rest of the combat which is still invaluable as adversaries are usually only wearied when they have zero Hate.

I still personally wouldn't apply the house rule.

[Rich H]

I think if my statistics math is not flawed....... 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 2/12 = 4/6 = 66% chance on each throw to pierce. That seems extremely unbalanced to me.

That's just not correct. I don't have the link to probability calculations as I'm on my Android phone but you need to also include the probability of not getting a tengwar result so your calculation is off, and by some way, as you haven't included all combinations of dice results!

Trying to work through the maths in my head, I think hitting a TN of 17 (defensive stance plus parry of 5) is a bit under 50% for a character with 3 skill dice. Not sure what the probability is for a penetrating attack but it's going to be less than the probability for a successful non-penetrating attack as it's logically a subset of that result.

Sorry I can't be more precise, but like I said, limited access as on my phone - perhaps someone with better internet access can go through the numbers for you in more detail.

[jamesrbrown]

I am going to apply the rules as intended for Weariness and Protection rolls and see what happens during our next session. It's not as big of a deal as I am making it out to be by my argument. Was this discussed by Francesco on the old forum or this one or somewhere else? I will have to search for the thread.

[Hermes Serpent]

Rich, a quick bit of mental arithmetic tells me it's about a 20% chance of getting a Piercing Blow on 3D. Another quick maths check says 45% to hit TN17 with a 3D weapon skill.

[Hermes Serpent]

James, the issue of Weary was discussed before.

Francesco quoted a post by Osric dated Aug 28 2011 at 4.13pm and confirmed that all rolls were affected by being Weary in a post at 12.22pm, it's in a thread entitled Armour.

[Angelalex242]

The problem with Axe of Az is that silly attribute cap. Because of it, and the fact it's applied to axes, most of the time, a dwarf with Axe of Az will get a piercing blow on that Gandalf Rune that finishes the enemy off anyway. Applying weary before the protection roll makes that one shot kill even more likely. The prolonged weary state only takes place in two instances:Creatures with Great Size (almost none of which can be hit with Axe of Az thanks to the attribute cap), and Creatures that luck out on protection with an Eye on their protection roll. Otherwise, that TN 20/22 if fell Great Axe will end the life of the creature it's wounding long before it has to worry about being weary.

Thus, weary must be applied first to make sure Axe of Az isn't the department of redundant overkill department.

Now, if Axe of Az didn't HAVE the attribute cap, it'd be the BEST boss killer reward in the game. I suspect the attribute cap is there, however, because if it wasn't, Thror's dwarves would've killed Smaug. He had enough warriors that it was only a matter of time till someone wearied Smaug, and then he'd be hacked down by wounds, even if his endurance is something like 500 and he has a hate score of 50 or something like that. Great Size only lets him take 2 wounds, after all. Even if you up it to 3 or 4, he's still going down sooner or later once wearied, as his 6 protection dice won't save him anymore from all those dwarven greataxes.

[Rich H]

Rich, a quick bit of mental arithmetic tells me it's about a 20% chance of getting a Piercing Blow on 3D. Another quick maths check says 45% to hit TN17 with a 3D weapon skill.

Yep, I thought around 45 or 46% for hitting TN17. Couldn't grok the piercing blow probability but I knew it was *a lot* less than the OP was stating!

These correct probabilities therefore show that the Hobbit laying low the Troll in just two combat rounds is a statistical aberration and like James suggested in an earlier post should be the stuff of local legend with bards singing songs about the brave hobbit that faced and defeated the bestial troll!