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How much xp for them to not get too powerful?

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Fenton Hardy
Gnarri
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How much xp for them to not get too powerful? Empty How much xp for them to not get too powerful?

Post by Gnarri Wed May 30, 2018 1:21 pm

I'm planning on letting my campaign go through Tales from the Wild and Ruins of the North, mixed up with some stuff from the Darkening of Mirkwood.

It will probably be around 12 bigger adventures. If they make around 6 xp for session, at what adventure will they get too powerful? Around 40 xp? 60? Or can you still play the adventures as written when they have 4-5 in weapon-skills, wisdom and valour?

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Post by Fenton Hardy Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:30 am

My players are nowhere near the 40-60XP range so take my answer for what it is worth. If you are just starting, I would not worry  about character advancement. As the PCs become more powerful, you will have a sense of what will challenge them and can scale the encounters accordingly. If you find the company is getting too powerful for the adventure, you can raise the TN for certain skill tests, add more adversaries, or give existing adversaries additional abilities using the Rivendell supplement.

Keep in mind that TOR is not D&D and characters do not level up the same way. So while TOR characters will build skills and acquire some powerful objects and rewards, their endurance will change little. They should not be invincible, and if they seem that way let them confront a Nazgul or a dragon. I should mention that the PCs supply of Hope should be dwindling as their Shadow points increase leading to potential bouts of madness. That Hope versus Shadow struggle is central to gaming in Middle Earth.
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Post by geomtje Sat Jun 02, 2018 6:28 am

I don't have any experience with high XP characters, but weapon skills, virtues and rewards get quite expensive quite fast.

It takes a total of 64 experience points to take only 1 weapon skill from 0 to 6. Same goes for Valor and wisdom. Chances are that your character will be old and grey before you will reach that level.

You could also play with the TN if you feel that things become too easy, like mentioned above. But I do feel that it's logical for players to become 'stronger', which only means that the change of hitting is higher.
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Post by Wbweather Sat Jun 02, 2018 7:04 am

I have a campaign that has been going on almost 4 years in real time. We used to play a session per week but over the last 9 months have gone to every other week. The original players are on their second characters and are probably close to retiring them. I have one player with a total of 180 XP. He has been adventuring over 15 years of the Darkening campaign. He is quite overpowered as characters go. (He is a Barding and wants to use his Birthright virtue after dying in some glorious way.) He has several skills at the 5-6 rating. He almost never misses in battle. Even so, after the last adventure, he was left with 2 endurance, a wound and unconscious from a nazgul's Black Shadow curse.

In my experience, players usually find that once they get around 100 XP, they usually start to think about retiring their character. Some may want to do so sooner. I think Character age or life circumstance can also help. I've had characters get married and settle down. One character hung up his axe and became leader of the Woodmen when Ingomer died. Sometimes it is more about the story than the actual XP.

Players like to have the ability to roll 5 dice and get ridiculous hits and test results, but the system is great in that even a new player can jump into a campaign with seasoned veterans and still contribute without getting insta-killed.
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Post by Láthspell Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:05 am

One of the nice things about TOR is that it actively encourages companies with mixed experience, as opposed to D&D where you tend to want you PCs to be about the same level. Sure, your PCs will start off the same but as they characters start dying off or retiring, their new characters will start mostly from the ground up, but they get an extra supply of courage (a similar resource to Hope) proportional to the difference between them and the most experience character.

In addition to the fact that your endurance doesn't tend to chance much, your parry doesn't really either. One thing I noticed as the PCs became more experienced, they mostly defaulted into Defensive stance. Novice characters tend to be in Open or Forward so that they can actually hit enemies, but when their skills get high enough they can hit reliably regardless.

The biggest contributor to retirement is caused by the legacy system itself. I sent the Company on a mission to Carn Dûm which ultimately resulted in the death of one character and several other getting permanent Shadow. Once they had escaped Carn Dûm and had made it safely to Rivendell, three of the players promptly retired their characters, rather than continue to risk death and madness. The nice thing about this was, it allowed another player who had been playing second fiddle (having joined the campaign late) to come to the forefront and shine, as he was now the veteran in the party.

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Post by Dunheved Sun Jan 07, 2024 4:08 am

The Courage rules also apply for those PC that are not as powerful as their more experienced allies. I have played adventures where my first PC has the most experience ( about 90XP now) and a second PC was created when we took the exiled Oderic of Stoneyford into our Fellowship. He had about 25 to 30 less XP AND I agreed to play him in parallel.

Using two PC in this way was great fun because my original PC meant I was never a second fiddle player, while Oderic gave me a great opportunity to develop a useful Healer which the fellowship was a bit of a weakness of our company.

I retired my original Barding  (Wisdom &  Valour both at 4, Great Bow at 5) now that Oderic is at Wisdom 4 and has a weapon skill at 4 himself.  


I think that in a larger party when any skill gets to 4 or higher the odds are usually with you in most situations. But having an adversary either with Great Size or Attibute at 7+ will always keep you quite vulnerable to defeat and death*.
Even weaker adversaries can overwhelm you with numbers, try taking on three times the company size in Black Uruks, or even four times their number in wolves.

And sometimes the dice roll badly for you. Our quite powerful party had a really bad time with a small bunch of four wolves in a Travel event. Two PC were Weary in a short fight that the LM called off when two wolves were killed. If they had been a little more aggressive.... who knows?


* "quite vulnerable" IMO is where one or two strong attacks from the foe  will reduce your PC to single figure Endurance; and there is about 25% to 30% chance of that happening in the time it takes to defeat that opponent. A big Troll is usually enough!

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