The One Ring: Combat

[GothmogIV]

Greetings. I am giving Free League's The One Ring a look through, and I'm a bit turned around by the combat. If I am understanding it correctly it is strategic vs. tactical. You don't need a grid. Instead, it is about the stance your character takes, which in turn determines how the game master allocates monster attacks. Is that the gist of it?

 

[Takei]

Kinda. The close combat stances are more a level of aggressiveness than a position.
Forward is an all-out attack, focusing more on offence than defence (+1d to your attack, +1d to your enemy's attack against you).
Open is a balance of offence and defence (no modifiers)
Defensive is, not surprisingly, more focus on defence (-1d to your attack, -1d on your enemy's attack).
Rearward is not in close combat so you get to ping arrows at your enemies. And they get to ping arrows at you!

If your group is outnumbered enough then the enemy can effectively swarm around your close combat line and engage your Rearward archers.

 

[GothmogIV]

And you can do this all without a grid? Movement, attacks of opportunity, stuff like that are abstracted? I play on a VTT so I'm trying to imagine what this looks like.

 

[zarionofarabel]

And you can do this all without a grid? Movement, attacks of opportunity, stuff like that are abstracted? I play on a VTT so I'm trying to imagine what this looks like.

Precise positioning is not a thing in TOR combat so a grid is not needed. [There are no attacks of opportunity (very few TTRPGs use AAO honestly) and movement is abstracted.]

 

[Takei]

And you can do this all without a grid? Movement, attacks of opportunity, stuff like that are abstracted? I play on a VTT so I'm trying to imagine what this looks like.

There’s a circular stance map (on the back of I can’t remember which map) which we used for one combat. It just confused things as the players treated it as a combat grid for physical positioning, so we dropped it and went back to using the combat stance/journey role cards from the starter box. These cards see almost as much use as the dice!

 

[GothmogIV]

Thanks, friends. I watched a few Youtube vids and I think I have a handle on it.

 

[Laurefindel]

Thanks, friends. I watched a few Youtube vids and I think I have a handle on it.

While we don’t use a precise-position battle map, I like to use a tactical battle mat (not map) printed on a 8x11 paper sheet with tokens visually indicating who is in which stance and engaged with whom, who is knocked back, etc.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

While we don’t use a precise-position battle map, I like to use a tactical battle mat (not map) printed on a 8x11 paper sheet with tokens visually indicating who is in which stance and engaged with whom, who is knocked back, etc.

Similar.

I use a sheet of paper divided into bands for each stance, and poker chips with player and opponent images glued to them.

Depending which group (players or opponents) has the numerical advantage, the other places tokens first and then the advantaged group chooses who each of their team engages.

That seems to work pretty well and works for my online discord-based game better than using minis or other methods