House rules (The One Ring, 1st edition)

[Vladim]

The following house rules are meant as either Quality of Life-style improvements to the game (esp. given this format) or for avoiding trait invocation exploits, while still keeping them useful. Additionally, a few published subsystems will be used to make the game more fun (Revelation Episodes) and give a bit more power to less experienced PCs (Courage points).

• Fellowship pool: The GM keeps track of it, and withdrawing the first Fellowship point does not require approval by the rest of the players. Withdrawing more points does, as per RAW. The GM keeps track of the how many points were used by which PC. When narratively appropriate, the Fellowship pool refreshes. At this time, unused Fellowship points go towards replenishing the Hope of the PCs who did not use Fellowship. If determining who gets the fellowship points is not straightforward, then this will be determined randomly by rolling.
• Trait invocations and auto-successes: Traits can only be used to auto-succeed at actions of TN of 14 or lower. More difficult actions (TN > 14) cannot auto-succeed in this way, but invoking a trait lowers the TN by 2. This usage of a trait does not interfere with gaining advancement points (RAW applies).
• Limitation to trait invocations: For each chapter of the adventure, characters can invoke each of their traits only once. Once invoked, the same trait cannot be used again in the same scene. The GM keeps track of this.
• Hope recovery: Characters will recover Hope when their Fellowship Focus is unharmed when narratively appropriate (e.g. after a fight), and this can happen more than once during the adventure (probably 2 or 3 times).
• Taking Courage: We will be using the Taking Courage rule from the Adventurer's Companion. The GM will track Courage points.
• Eye Awareness & Hunt threshold: We will be using the rules for Revelation Episodes from Rivendell. The GM will track relevant stats.