TROS Middle Earth: Hobbits

[Edge]

In pure mechanics the -1 TO is fairly hefty especially in a combat heavy game.  +2 will and health would only be a slight benefit

EDIT: So i would agree with the +2 will and health :)

[bergh]

yes, its very hard to give them stats, its why i need help!

[Turin]

I'm not real experienced with the system, but look at a cut to the lower leg.  an avarage man would take a level 3 wound, the hobbit a level 4 wound.

Hobbit:  IV -Shock-10  Bloodloss-8  Pain 13-6=7
Human III - Shock-8   Bloodloss-4   Pain 8-4 =4

The Hobbit would have an additional 2 levels of health before being knocked out, but is bleeding @ 8 vs 4.  The Hobbit also suffers 2 more dice of shock, and 3 more dice of pain even with the higher Will.

The 2 points and will and health are more than offset by the point of toughness for combat damage.  

This portrays hobbits IMO as there should be in LOTR - Tough in a way, but their small stature is a big disadvantage in combat.  But able to withstand things loke the morgul knife, which would be more of a function of Health and Will than toughness.  I would also probably set maximum toughness at 4.  Maybe even -2 toughness is warranted.

For a comparison - a Troll has a toughness of around 10-12 by opinions I've seen on the poll, which are accurate IMO.  They are almost twice as tall as a man, and a lot more massive.  But the weight ratio is not too far from a hobbit to man ratio, though I think the troll to a man is somewhat heavier than a man to a hobbit.  but a troll gets 6-8 additional levels of toughness.  The Hobbit only loses -12 points of toughness in the comparison.  And I think a points lost is more accurate comparison than a proportionate numeric ratio of toughness lost with this issue.

Last but not least - the hobbits were able to strike some telling blows with the troll in Moria, the troll at the battle before the gates and the witch king.  But these were often "suprise attacks",  either because they were not noticed or the enemy was not very concerned with them and underestimated them (another pervading storyline in LOTR).  In TROS, an attack not defended against, and they used superior weapons when they struck.  I do not believe this is reason to turn them into overly competent warriors.  Perhaps sneaky and little attention is paid to them, but not great warriors.

[Dain]

I'd say go with what these guys say. Two reasons:
1. I'm too new to the system to make good calls yet.
2. The bump up health instead of toughness argument sounds as legitimate to me as bumping up toughness.

If it were me personally, though, I'd probably pop toughness if I were going to chose between HT and TO, but that's my own predjudices based on the flavor I interpreted from Tolkein and the flavor I THINK I see from TROS. I think bumping health instead sounds every bit as valid, but it just wouldn't be the flavor I'd choose due to personal taste. It seemed to me hobbits blew off damage in the first place at every turn (from Bilbo knocking his head when he first found the ring to Frodo getting stuck with the Morgul blade to Frodo being Shelob stuck, beaten, etc,....and then taking a multi-mile trek across the deadly plains to the mountain of Doom followed by losing a finger, etc,.... Talk about the energizer bunny! It wasn't healing ability (none was done, nor was there time for any), it was shear "blow the damage off" through and through.

Again, however, I have to say before I'd go popping stats up and down at all, I'd have to go check the book for game balance so I didn't create a race of gods. I have the book in hand now.

Dwarves only get this:
-1 Soc
+2 ST or TO (choice, not both)
the flaw "little"
one craft at SR 6

Now consider a Dwarf for wilpower...is ANYTHING more stubborn than a Dwarf? No...yet they get no bonus. Basically they get one stat popped up and one stat popped down, the flaw "little", and a craft skill. No mention of health, endurance, willpower, or any of the other MAJOR characteristics of a dwarf. Basically it looks like the designers took ONLY the MOST significant bonus and ONLY the MOST significant penalty and bumped them, leaving everything else alone.

Based on that, for game balance I'd suggest something like this for Hobbits:
-2 ST
+ 2 (or +3 if you really want to be perverse) AG or WP (choice)
flaw "little"
SR 6 in some skill hobbits excel at (given their predisposition to socialization and story telling, I'd almost suggest Folk Lore or Orate)

Again, the above is PURELY based on GAME BALANCE...and in no way is an attempt to match the characteristics exactly of the movie or book. As for why I chose AG and WP (leaving out TO and HT), hobbits are notorious for being nimble and good at thrown missiles (AG) and are also known for surviving on nothing but raw grit (WP), and these two stats alone kindof COULD cover the other areas somewhat.

I also wouldn't limit any stats to a max....here's the reason, nothing else in the system does, so why should Hobbits get screwed over? Sprites, fairies, etc, aren't subject to max ST or TO...likewise Dwarves aren't subject to max Soc, etc,.... Hobbits shouldn't have to bend over and grab their ankles just because their ankles are closer to their hands than other races. Vive Le Hobbit!

In any case, go check out the book races before you taint your campaign. Sometimes you have to choose between:
1. game balance and fairness to players running differing races.
2. logical stat by stat stereotyping based on racial characteristics.

Generally the closer you get to 2 the more unstable 1 becomes, and pretty soon NO ONE at the table rolls up a human anymore.

[casinormal]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the points of TROS to throw "game balance" out the window?  That certainly has been said of the magic system, and it's also been suggested with regards to Tolkien-style elves in another thread.  I recall when playing the LOTR game from decipher how Elves seemed to have an "unfair" amount of bonuses, and so half the party decided to be elves.  But in Tolkiens world, these special races were indeed special, and so I don't see a problem with being liberal with the bonuses for hobbits or dwarves or elves or whoever...just keep the Race priority high so that not everyone is a non-human, as in what happened in our game.  Incidentally, I played a hobbit in my old LOTR game (who also have a few nice bonuses, but are not near as "powerful" as elves), and he ended up saving the god-like elves' arses several times.  Smart playing does a lot more than stat and skill bonuses.
If anyone says they're going to "look through the books again for game balance," I'd be tempted to say that they are contradicting themselves.  The books never ever even pretended that the races were balanced...that's DnD's invention.

-Joel Norman

"Let the saints be joyful in glory:
let them sing aloud upon their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
and a twoedged sword in their hand"
-Psalms 149:5-6

[Dain]

Throwing out game balance sounds like a grand idea...right up until the time your game falls apart and everybody stops playing. The reality of the situation is that human beings in general don't like sitting at a table where everyone is so much more powerful than they are that they feel their character is worthless. Then they either quit playing, or kill it off or just stop playing it and roll up a megarace they didn't really want to play in the first place just so they don't feel worthless...instead of playing the character they REALLY DID want to play and went to all that time and trouble of rolling up only to pitch it out the window and roll up a megarace they don't really care for. If your group didn't run into that issue, then you have some very NON-characteristic gamers in it that are exceeding good natured and more interested in roleplay than character importance/advancement...because that is definitely NOT the norm...so congratulations on that. Most of the rest of us however do have to deal with players that fall more into the normal bell curve of human beings...namely people having strong drives, personal agendas, baggage, hectic daily lives they need an escape from, etc..... And in many areas (including large cities such as the one I live in), well adjusted players are hard to come by, so if you tried to "dump the problem children" and replace them all with more well adjusted players you'd be sitting at an empty table.

Just my opinion...based on 19+ years of gamemastering dozens of campaigns in dozens of systems in several cities.

Not attacking casinormal here. His points are all very valid and correct, and work fine if you have a great gaming group, and I approve wholeheartedly of his views. I'm just presenting the counterpoint for those people whose groups fall a little less into the "ideal" category.

As a ps to that, the groups I've been involved with (whether as game master or player) have ranged from 5% ideal players to 85% ideal players. There's almost always at least one problem child, but even when there's not one, people get in moods from time to time and emulate one...but that's normal...people have good days and bad days, and that's to be expected.

Last note...although designing game balance/player fairness may or may not have been the intent of the designers, it seems to me VERY much so that TROS was designed with EXTREME game balance (other than the magic system, which they went out of their way to say was on purpose, so I feel no need to address that). So, whether the intent was there or not the end result still was balanced...in my opinion.

[Turin]

I don't mind things like high elves being superior to humans.  But high elves are rarely playd in my campaigns, for one reason - there is no reason they would be campaigning with humans for the most part.  They are relegated to NPC's.

This is the opposite approach of a standard D&D campaign - "OK, we're going into a dungeon.  Nain is the Dwarf fighter, Elwyn the Elven Fighter/Mage, Barth the human cleric.  But we need a thief.  Oh, Urk the Half-Orc can be our assasin/thief"

Putting individuals that have no logical reason to be together makes no sense.  The fellowship was EXTREMELY unusual, for that collection of races to be together.

[casinormal]

No offense taken, do not worry.  I realize that not everyone is the world's greatest roleplayer (my last group wasn't either).  Incidentally, the three gals (yes, even women roleplay) who decided to play elves in that LOTR game played them because they are "pretty," not because they have kewl powerz, even though they certainly do.  Yes, occasionally other players grumbled at being outclassed by the elves' far vision and the like, but that was about it.
The funny thing was, several of the players (in character and out) grumbled that they were having to drag my poor little hobbit around (kind of like in Tolkien's works, incidentally) until I busted them out of sticky situations a few times.  I found that playing a character that other players and characters underestimated was to my advantage and was a lot of fun.  I really don't think that hobbits need to be wimpy...people just assume they are.  Even if you saw a kid weilding a sword or knife, you might condescendingly tell him to put it down.  But then, you probably wouldn't have the benefit of seeing the hobbit.
My main point is this:  I do not care who has the most or kewlist kewl powerz, because an inventive and creative player with a completely mundane character can usually defeat/outsmart them.  That has held true in every single RPG I've tried.

-Joel Norman

"Let the saints be joyful in glory:
let them sing aloud upon their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
and a twoedged sword in their hand"
-Psalms 149:5-6

[ZenDog]

They do have other strengths than their hardiness...

BOGGINS

Smaller and slightly more portly than Dwarves, these fair faced, cheerful and simple living folk are friendly and gregarious.

Which is all just a front, as anyone who has ever met them can confirm. They are in fact the biggest bunch of inveterate thieves to ever walk the planet. The smiles and pleasantries, are all just a ploy to put people at ease, before they relieve them of their belongings.

The only exception to this is, whilst adventuring after generations of 'learning the hard way', Boggins have found it's not cost effective to steal from their fellow adventurers.

The Boggins also know as Bogginsses but more commonly know as 'Those thieving little *********!!!!!' live in Shires (the largest being Leicestershire). Which are scattered with Boggin Holes (sometimes referred to as Bogholes) handy places to hide their ill-gotten gains.

The only thing they are more renowned for than stealing is eating. The average Boggin eats 11 square meals a day and snack in between.

Boggins go barefoot, having no need for shoes, due to their tough leathery soles. It is a compliment for one Boggin to say of another 'I reckon he would even steal shoes' .

Languages: Boggins speak Boggit, which is actually a dialect of common, which can sometimes be understood.

"'ere yung 'un where 'e geddin to with that thar pie'.

Boggin Character adjustments.
– 1d6 Str
+ 1d6 Con
+ 1d6 Dex
+ 2d6 Lk
- 1d6 Will

Boggins can get Rogues gear, backpacks and provisions at half price.

–1d6 Will roll not to steal (anything and everything). –1d6 Will roll not to eat any food they see (irrespective of its location and condition).