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I don't know if anybody else watched the Q&A about the 2nd Edition Fria Ligan posted around the same time as the Kickstarter, but here's a low-medium effort post about some of the things I caught: In general, the biggest change is a tightening up of mechanics--1e had a lot of rules that were only engaged in one or two specific places, and it sounds like 2e has tried to consolidate that somewhat. A couple of examples: In 1e, you had Attribute values and Favored Attribute values, with Favored Attributes being higher and added to your roll when you used a Favored Skill (and spent a point of Hope). Other mechanics occasionally allowed you to reroll the "Feat die" and take the more advantageous result--those have now been consolidated, so when you roll a Favored Skill, you get to reroll the Feat die and take the better result (which is actually called Favor and is used throughout the rules, as is Disfavor, which as you might expect is just the opposite). Another example is the "magical" abilities of the various peoples of Middle-earth. In 1e those were mostly represented by character build options called Virtues, which represent the cultural skills and heritage of the Free Peoples. Francesco mentioned that this was specifically pretty difficult in some cases (i.e. it's really hard to make a Virtue that covers all of Elf Bullshit(TM)), which also left weird cases where, say, an Elf didn't really feel like an Elf because you didn't pick the option that had all the iconic Elf abilities. In 2e, they've merged the system for these kinds of abilities with the system for magical items introduced in the Rivendell supplement--every culture has a list of skills with which they can achieve a "magical result:" basically, on a successful roll you spend a point of Hope and the result of your action is in some way "supernatural." Specific examples given were Hobbits moving utterly soundlessly and being able to hide so quickly they seem to vanish, or Legolas running along snowdrifts and being untroubled by the storm on Caradhras. There are six PC cultures in the core book. None of them are "new" in the sense of "never seen in 1e," but they aren't the same spread as the 1e core--which makes sense, given that 2e's core book focuses on Eriador (the Northwest of Middle-earth, from the sea to the Misty Mountains) rather than Rhovanion (the Northeast, roughly from the eastern faces of the Misty Mountains to the Lonely Mountain and Dale). I think it's safe to assume "Hobbits of the Shire" will be one of them, and my guess is there will be at least one Dwarf and one Elf culture--could be Dwarves of the Blue Mountains (who are more "local" to the region) or Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain again (who are more recognizable and do seem to travel the region enough to fit). I'm less sure about the Elf one--we know it's not High Elves of Rivendell since that's confirmed as an add-on for the Loremaster screen, and it's not Wood-elves of Mirkwood since they're a different stretch goal. I assume we'll also see the Men of Bree and Rangers of the North as core options--in 1, Rangers were considered a "powerful culture" and had special rules regarding advancement and such, and I expect they'll want those rules in the core for 2e rather than having to reprint them in any later book that introduces a new powerful culture. I'm less sure what the sixth could be--none of the cultures in 1e really seem to fit the region, so maybe Francesco was overstating when he said none of them were new. EDIT: Welp, I'm a dummy, one of the example pages on the Kickstarter is the beginning of the character creation chapter and shows a list of the available PC cultures as:
All of the cultures and their Treasures and Virtues have been given a major balance pass--not to make them balanced with other cultures per se, the goal was never to make, say, Hobbits have the same "power level" as High Elves--but to make sure that within each culture there are no obvious "every character should take this" options or "don't ever waste your time with this" options. The goal is to make every choice within a culture viable. There are "a lot" of monsters in the core, but the only things that got explicit confirmation were things that will not be included: no dragons and no giant spiders. Well, I guess the fact that there will be a "build your own Nameless Thing" system for weird things like the Watcher in the Water isconfirmed since that was a Kickstarter stretch goal. Some production-side info: They're looking into whether their license allows them to make an art book, but it definitely does not allow them to make miniatures. They might be looking at additional dice designs (and since the video was posted, at least one new design has been added as a stretch goal). EDIT 2:  Ring-a-dong-dillo, motherfuckers. GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Feb 15, 2021 |
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Feb 15, 2021 09:43
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:33 |
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Kemper Boyd posted:My guess is that since High Elfs are already back in (in the Rivendell addon), they're probably doing something about that, anyway. Its hard to imagine them actually walking back on the differentiation of different Dorf and Elf groups. 1st ed didn't get anything besides the elfs of the Woodland Realm before the 1st ed Rivendell book and the rest showed up later. Yeah, but even in 1e core they were called "Wood-elves of Mirkwood" and "Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain," not just "Elf" and "Dwarf." I suppose it could just be placeholder text in the sample image, though.
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Feb 15, 2021 17:44
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Kemper Boyd posted:Dropping by to notify that Tom Bombadil is now in: Hey come, merry-dol, Tom has filled his larder! Ring-a-dong, hop-along, Tom is on Kickstarter! Onward stretch the goals, now's no time for resting! Hey come derry-dol, Tom will send you questing!
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Feb 18, 2021 17:46
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:does this game let you get high and kill sam Yes, but sadly we'll have to wait for a supplement for rules on burying Gimli in a hole and beating him with a stick while hurling racial abuse at him to unlock the doors of Moria.
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Feb 20, 2021 10:19
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My personal feeling (and admittedly this is just from reading and crunching some numbers, so maybe there's another dimension in play that I'm missing) is that, while overall I like the vast majority of the rules changes, the changes to how TN is calculated and the effects of spending Hope represent a significant downgrade in player heroes' odds of success. 20 - Attribute is just too high, requiring an above-average Attribute rating of 6 just to hit 1e's "average" difficulty. And with Hope now adding an extra Skill die to the roll instead of a flat bonus from your Attribute, there are good odds that you'll end up getting less of a bonus than you would have in 1e. Worse, since the extra die from spending Hope in 2e is a regular Skill die, when you're Weary (aka the time when, both mechanically and thematically, burning Hope should be a real clutch moment), there's a 50% chance that your Hope expenditure is completely wasted. Even if you're Inspired and thus getting 2(d) per hope, there's a 25% chance you get nothing. Now, for skill checks this isn't necessarily a bad thing--the new Favoured mechanic means you always get a bonus on Favoured skills, no resource expenditure required, and the rules are more explicit that you should only be calling for rolls if the action being attempted is dangerous, uncovering hidden information, or trying to influence an NPC. But in combat? Well, 2e no longer allows combat abilities to be Favoured, so that bonus is out, and you're rolling an action every round on your turn, no automatic successes on attacks or combat tasks. Also, 2e has gotten rid of the free roll for combat advantages at the start of a fight--getting bonus dice is now an action that takes your turn. Let's take a couple of simple starting character as an example: Wundo Proudfoot and his cousin, Tudo. Both are Hobbits of the Shire, with a starting Attribute spread of Body/Strength 3, Heart 7, Wits 4. Wundo is a 1e Hobbit, so he has two points in Short Sword, while Tudo is a 2e Hobbit and thus just has Swords 2. Wundo's Favoured Body score is 5, and Tudo lacks the concept of such a strange thing. They are otherwise identical, and both fighting the most basic Orc in their respective editions, the Orc Soldier, in Open stance. Wundo's base TN is 9 + the Orc's Parry rating, which for a 1e Orc Soldier is 4 (3 if he loses his buckler), for a total combat TN of 13. Without spending any resources, he has a nice, even 50% chance to hit his Orc. (The Orc, meanwhile, also has a 13 TN to hit thank's to Wundo's Wits 4, and with his 2d combat ability, the Orc also has 50% odds to hit). Tudo, meanwhile, is staring down a Difficulty of 17 (20 - Strength) + the Orc's Parry, which in 2e is thankfully only 1. That means Tudo's TN has jumped to 18! Without spending any resources, he has a roughly 16% chance to hit. Meanwhile, the Orc's TN is equal to Tudo's Parry rating of (12 + Wits 4) 16, but the 2e Orc Soldier picked up an extra die in his combat ability, so his odds of hitting that TN have gone up to 54%! Now, let's see what happens when each of our Hobbits spends a point of Hope: With his Favoured Body score of 5, Wundo sees his odds to stick an Orc Soldier with his short sword jump to a hair over 87%. Poor Tudo, meanwhile, is only adding an extra d6 and gets no bonus for Favoured anything, so his odds to hit only jump to slightly below 39%. And if they're Weary? Hoo boy. Without Hope, a Weary Wundo has about a 38% chance to hit, while Tudo is looking at about 15% odds--so at least his chances don't drop too much (but that's a very low bar to clear). With Hope, on the other hand, Wundo's odds are about 71%, while Tudo squeaks his way to 26% odds. That is a hell of a downgrade. Now maybe you could make a case that 1e was a little too generous with success, but I would have to disagree--for me, at least, 50% base odds is about the lowest I find tolerable when the failure state is "accomplish nothing, wait until your next turn." 16% odds to hit is just ridiculously low. (For the record, using the optional "18 - Attribute" TN calculation helps a bit, but it's still pretty harsh: Tudo goes to 27% base odds, 54% with Hope, 20% when Weary, and 35% when Weary and spending Hope). If anybody else wants to check the odds, I used anydice.com to calculate probabilities, simulating TOR dice with this code: code:GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Oct 6, 2021 |
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Oct 6, 2021 10:31
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:33 |
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Fake Name posted:Really tempted to pick this up after being on a bit of a lotr binge recently - are the solo rules included in the core rules? And are they any good? The solo rules are not out yet, no.
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Apr 19, 2022 11:26
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