As written parry effectively awards the bearer of the skill a def 10. Perhaps in the next iteration parry could function as it does for Rumil. The unintended def bonus was the reason the elf saw an errata to his rule.

Hey jdizzy001,

How are things? Regarding the Parry, let's see here.

Swift Parry: Must re-roll all 6s to win the fight.

Parry: Defender may force a re-roll on a single 6 to wound.

I do not recall Rumil forcing re-rolls to wound. It might have been in the Fall of Necromancer and he was changed with the release of the journey book for Free Peoples. The detail doesn't matter, what is important is that in Battle Companies where everyone has 1 attack your point does have a lot of merit. What is funny is that in my playtesting group I had adjusted it to re-roll 1 enemy die in the duel roll in our own games. Why the change never got implemented in the actual rules was a matter most unfortunate.

I shall be looking it over. My main conversationalist regarding Battle Companies has had extensive experience with Parry of both iterations and will prove useful. (His Minas Tirith Knights at Tier 2 lead by a parry-blademaster lieutenant was scary.).

Half-Sidenote, as the new Hobbit book releases this month I will be starting work on a 2016.1 Patch for the Battle Companies system to assimilate all the new profiles. 2017 Edition/Patch will begin production when Middle Earth SBG releases followed by patches to incorporate any new profiles/changes that come after.

With that being said, I will be including this in my list of things to address as I start the production. If I have time, I will be including a snippet of thoughts and changelogs to give you fine folk insight of each change and their process.

In my thread of add-ons I will begin coming up with a list of "quasi-updates" that are deemed to need emergency implementation, but feel free to try these things in your groups. Getting data on the Black Numenorean / Dol-Amroth edit and so forth is valuable.

_________________
- Wild
Battle Companies Developer

(CE) Battle Companies 2016 Edition

I'm doing very well, thanks for asking. I hope all is well with you!

It sounds like you are working on some great stuff! I look forward to your progress.

You are correct regarding Rumil. Originally, his swift parry ability allowed him to make his opponent reroll a six from a duel or a wound. It made him nearly unstoppable. His profile was altered for the Free peoples manual.

I know what you mean about the blademaster/parry combo. It is really powerful. As much as I love Parry, my unsolicited advice would be to rein it in and restrict the reroll to trigger when your opponent rolls a 6 during the duel (as with Rumil). Blademaster is fine as is being there are no traditional banners in BC. Another idea for parry (and I'm just spitballing here) perhaps it could inflict a -1 penalty to your opponents dice rolls during the duel? That is what Parry did in Mage Knight, it reduced your opponents atk by D3 (D3 would be a little excessive in BC, but a -1 to duel rolls wouldn't be too out of line). Or perhaps it could reduce your opponents Fight Value? Chief Hugh and I noticed that Fight Value is a big deal in BC (more so than in SBG standard). That would give it some great utility and having a blademaster/parry combo wouldn't mean auto win as it did in the last iteration (not that I'm complaining because it was great when my LT got the combo).

Oh, and since I have your ear, why restrict Heroic Presence to Heroic Combats only? Why not open it up and allow the player to choose or roll for a specific heroic action for their Champion? Same goes for the Rapid fire skill.

One last thing to consider, and I think this is a big one as it deals with the heart of the story of Lord of the Rings. The concept of currency. I understand that gold is the traditional currency of fantasy worlds, but in LOTR currency is a non factor. Gandy and the others are never pinching pennies to buy their equipment from the patrons of the sanctuaries they visit. The heart of LOTR is influence. In fact, that was the reason Frodo was taking the ring to mount doom. The influence the one ring possesses over the hearts of people was too great to be allowed to remain in middle earth. Everything in the story of LOTR has to do with influence. Every gift given, every decision made and every discussion had in LOTR was bound to the influence someone had over, with or through someone else. With that in mind, and in order to align BC to the spirit of LOTR, I would ask that you consider altering the term "Gold" to "Influence." It would function in 100% the same way, and is a purely cosmetic change, but the term influence captures the essence of LOTR much more than Gold. Thus, with such a change, every time a player spend their influence to increase their force it is more akin to meeting with Lords and Kings to request aid by exerting influence among them as opposed to walking into your local tavern and ponying up some coins to swell your ranks. Do you catch my meaning?

Anyways, thanks for reading, good luck and if I can help in some way, send me a PM.

-PS, I love what you have done with Furious charge. Changing the bonus from atk to FV was great!

I am going to respond out of order because, I think in bursts.

Gold vs Influence
I actually agree a lot with your influence idea from the flavor perspective. I play Mount and Blade Warband(MnBW) and there is a mod called Last Days of the Third Age(LDTA). Usually MnBW uses Denars as currency, but the mod changed it to influence and I think "resources". I liked the change and it makes sense as you describe it. The only reason the term "gold" is used is because it was just plain simpler to think about for new players. The term "gold" has been the influence of the Dwarven, Umbarian, and Khandish special rules if I remember off the top of my head. In the end, both terms are both sides of the same coin. I might take action on the influence, or equivalent, idea in some shape or form. At the very least a footnote can be made much like I did for Shadow of Saruman, which I still want to rename "Saruman's Influence" or one of the other names I had picked out.


Heroic Presence & Rapid Fire
Assuming that the proposal is to replace both options with "Select a Heroic Action, from now on your hero does not expend might to use that action on a 4+ once each turn", that might be an idea. A hero could be known for their ability to swiftly maneuver troops and so the player would say their hero could heroic march or move. I like the flavor and concept. Eventually a problem forms where you can make deathstars very easily if you have a hero of each action in a sort of "Super Friends" formation of various assortments and groupings. It is not hard to achieve, relatively speaking, and there is only 100% profit. I can add that to a list of things to playtest, it'll take time to watch it be nurtured in each stage of a campaign from early to late game.


Perry, I mean Pippin, I mean Merry, I mean Parry
I like the idea of -1 to the opponent's roll. Possibly -1 to one die, so as to represent it being harder to parry many attacks and keep power in check for high fight value units. The Rumil-dupe is also an idea that I like, because we did it anyways with my testers.


How Am I?
Doing well, moved to where there are no players so I am based out of Roll20 and Tabletop Simulator now. However, I found out that 4 players live 15 bucks of gas away (one way) from me and want to actually use their lotr models and try Battle Companies. Perhaps I need to tap into that seed-community and visit once per month.


In Conclusion
I have more stuff to add to my processing track, thank you for your input and thought-out statements. It is most helpful! If you have more input and/or any questions, I will also be making a thread. This new thread is meant to be a one-stop-shop for having a line with myself. Hopefully that will clean up my clutter so that people's awesome threads don't get washed away as a side effect.

I hope your day is fantabulous and may you never get supply-blocked on Starcraft,
Commi

_________________
- Wild
Battle Companies Developer

(CE) Battle Companies 2016 Edition

I can see why having a "super friends" group is problematic. A possible fix could be to limit the special rule to a single hero in the group such as with your heratige weapons (also another great addition to the recent edition). Thankfully the roll of 4+ helps alieviate that.

Another concern that I have with the idea, along the similar afore mentioned super group, would be a character with a list of special strikes which afford him chances to call multiple free actions in a single turn. The fix I thought of would be to provide the special action hero with an upgrade to the skill which would transform it from a single heroic action to Erol's special rule which allows him the chance to save the first point of might no matter how its used.

Yeah, the One-Man-Action-Army was another problem I foresaw. So of course, it would be limited to one per hero however it doesn't stop super friends.

I'd prefer not to have a level-up rule that turns into Eorl's, not to mention that Rohan already has Eorl's special rule. It adds another layer of complication to SBG and BC which try to remain simple at heart. It might not be that deep of a complication, but a move in an uncomfortable direction.

Regardless, my focus at the moment is balance before edits. Rapid Fire and Heroic Presence do not have major imbalance issues so far, as a result they won't get any love until everything else is caught up.

Regards,
Commi

_________________
- Wild
Battle Companies Developer

(CE) Battle Companies 2016 Edition

No problem. I wasn't expecting immediate action, just throwing ideas out as they occur to me.

Thank you, it is very nice to seem them!

_________________
- Wild
Battle Companies Developer

(CE) Battle Companies 2016 Edition