Hi

I have made this PDF if you play hobbits in the middle earth universe with TRoS rules

www.fflr.dk/tabletop/TROS/Hobbits.pdf

ehhh, people please give me a comment and review! just a line or something.

My flaw is that i sometimes don't see the BIG black holes in some of the thing i do, I need other to find them for me.

Anyway should i stop showing what i do in this forum? i was thinking maybe it was not so relevant for alot of people anyway.

Hey Bergh,

You might want to be a little careful with what you have there. That's starting to look high enough quality that the Tolkein people may take notice. They tend to pursue with extreme predudice anything even vaguely similar to copyright infringement. They sued D&D BIG TIME (along with many other copyright holders like those for Elric, Cthulhu, etc,...) and made them remove all references to Hobbits. Apparently changing the name to "halflings" was sufficient back then, but I'm guessing their blood thirst would be much higher now with the increased bankability the movies have added. While I'm sure it's fine to do whatever you want in your own game as long as you don't distribute it, posting it here might possibly get TROS in hot water if the wrong people notice it.

Or I might be totally wrong too. Just an opinion.

As for the actual content, I think hobbits in general tend to be thought of as fairly tough regardless of exact lineage (but not as tough as Dwarves) so the negative ones seem low to me and the negative 2's seem completely off base to me. I don't recall for sure which one, but I think one variation was supposed to be slightly stronger than the rest (Stoors maybe?). The biggest caution I'd raise though is that you've got a ton of bonuses there overall...and balancing the positives with negatives doesn't really make it better in my opinion as all making stuff low to start with does is guarantee low SA prices for getting it high quickly. For game balance I'd severely suggest looking at the races in the book and toning it down a bit if they outpower those. I don't have the books with me, but I think I recall that most races listed have like one or maybe two stats at most with modifiers like that, and I think I recall the modifiers are fairly small on top of that. You've got an overall bonus there of something like +1 times 4 or more stats...that's pretty stiff...especially since spending only 6 SA points on a 2 raises it up to a 4...those initial penalties aren't really that bad...in fact they're kindof a major benefit because the stats you care about start high and the others you can buy up quick and cheap. If you really want to base your hobbits on stats, I'd almost suggest kicking up the SA cost by 2 categories (ie if you want to increase a 2 to a 3, use the cost for increasing from a 4 to a 5) or just put a top limit of 8 instead of 10 or something like that. Of course I'm new here, and all of that may be complete crap, so if someone else has a suggestion go with what they say instead.

Again, I might be totally wrong here too. Just an opinion.

I don't worry about the Tolkien people, i don't make money on anything of it, and as long as there are no money included i don't think they would do anything, most of the stuff i do, is found on various websites.
If i was selling the stuff, i would be worried. but i will take notice of it in the future [what world are we living in these days?]

Hmm, maybe hobbits are a bit tougher then i make them, but i read it as they don't take a sword blow better then they should (size vice), therefor the low toughness in TROS. if im wrong please tell me!

hmmm, i was thinking that i want them to be VERY different from normal humans, but maybe they got to many stat bonus's, i was mostly inspired by the LoTR RPG....

i will quickly just see i i can tweek something....

Dain wrote:
I don't recall for sure which one, but I think one variation was supposed to be slightly stronger than the rest (Stoors maybe?).

Hey Andrew,

Took is a family name (like Baggins), not a "race" of hobbit...that's why I didn't mention them directly. You of course are exactly correct, but I couldn't remember if the Tooks were Stoors, or Fallohides or Harfoots or some combination thereof.

Should the Hobbits only have -1 TO instead of -2 TO?

And should they have a minimum or maximum?

In MY opinion (not that that counts for much) it should be one less than whatever Dwarves get, but no less than what humans get. Gandalf and others remarked on multiple occasions that hobbits seemed to be made of tougher (or sterner) stuff than their appearance would have led them to believe, and many remarked on the amount of physical hardships they could endure (implying it was more than would be expected of normal humans). Now granted, hobbits in general (other than Tooks), would go out of their way to avoid anything OTHER THAN eating, smoking, lounging about, and socializing (no adventures welcome here, thank you), but once forced into a grim situation they always seem to be better equipped to handle physical hardships, starving, cuts, bruises, and abrasions than most humans I know.

Again, just my opinion.

then only -1 TO, im still keeping them worse then humans, but they still got -2 strength....

Hey, your game, your call guy. Just something to keep in mind though, Frodo carried that morgul knife fragment for something like 14 days, and everyone universally agreed that just about anyone would have succombed to it LONG before that. Be careful when you stab a hobbit...they're kind of bad asses in disguise. After all, it was Merry that killed the Witch King (not Eowyn) with the blade of Westernesse specifically enchanted to "unknit the magical sinews that bound him together"...and no blade, though wielded by mightier hands would have dealt him so deadly a blow. As for Eowyn, fantastic warrior, but her blade broke when it passed harmlessly between his cloak and helm, and there was nothing there...her blade didn't do squat (book stuff the movie completely bypassed). Merry got knocked down hard, and forgotten, shrugged it off and burried that blade in from behind as the Witch King was ignoring him, then after suffering the black breath from striking him still managed to walk into the city on his own power, without being carried, and got very far into the city before Gandalf found him (and commented something to the effect of he should have been carried in on everybody's shoulders for what he had done instead of just being overlooked and walking in on his own...and then it goes into the whole "unknit" dialog mentioned above). Hobbits are a whole lot tougher than they act and look! But again, your game, your call.

Now, given all the above, appologies to Tolkein fanatics that I'm sure are going to find exception with what I've said above. Controversial subject I'm sure I'm going to be berated for and then told how "full of s*%t" I am.

yes its my game, BUT i was asking on the forum, becouse i also want some game balance put into playing a hobbit, something im not very good at. and you have convinced me that there are more to hobbits then the eye see!

Funny you should mention that. Over and over again in the books people make comments to the effect of "there's more than meets the eyes to these hobbits". Gandalf was the only one smart enough to go in for hobbit lore. Everyone else kindof ignored the cute, fuzzy, unthreating looking little things. If they'd have checked their lineage they would have seen hobbits claim to go back to the early days of the world, and feel more akin to the first line of men than anything else...and the first line of men were real bad asses...over time the bloodlines kindof thined out and weakened. The Rohirim were one of the few races that remained fairly true in blood, and were supposed to be considerably more competant than the beggerly villages they were displayed as in the movie. They were kindof described as golden haired great and powerful men, kindof reminding me of Vikings...but then again that's my own interpretation there and might be considerably off from other people's interpretations. I think the movie did mention that the King of Rohan did discuss with Merry lineage a bit and was interested in hearing about their lineage to see if there was a common point far back in history (after which Gandalf laughingly warned the King not to ask a Hobbit about such things unless you wanted days upon days of earfuls as lineage is a favored Hobbit topic).

Agreed Hobbits are tougher for their size than men.

But I would still go with the -1 to toughness, and have health and will receive +2 bonuses.

IMO toughness translated directly in game terms is how much damage a blow does - and being small (1/2 man size), hobbits will have a lower toughness, as it would be easier to cut of an arm, etc. etc.

But the can handle the wound better, so health as it relates to healing and bloodloss would be more accurate, and their willpower may be best represented as being higher, being able to walk off pain and shock, as well as Frodo's ability to deal with the ring.

+2 will and health, would that not make them super creatures in TRoS?

kindof reminding me of Vikings...

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 :)

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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).