Fellowship

FELLOWSHIP
-“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin to the bitter end.”

The life of a hero is one of excitement, but it is often full of hardships and trouble, and burdens easiest to bear when shared with others.

For this reason, adventurers of all sorts gather in groups of companions, united by a common cause, be it to fight the Enemy, to lead a hunt for a prized prey, or to scour the land seeking for a lost or stolen treasure.

Representing friendship, loyalty and trust, Fellowship points and Fellowship focuses can be used by all playerheroes. Both provide a companion with a way to recover Hope points.

RELATIONSHIPS
All adventurers share a feeling of loyalty towards each other, but each of them can develop a particular level of companionship with another member of the group: it may be uncommon respect for someone wiser or nobler, a special friendship shared with an old acquaintance, the kinship felt for a fellow countryman, or deep affection for a dear family member.

Whatever the nature of the relationship, each player may elect another member of the company as his character’s Fellowship focus, writing the name of this companion in the appropriate space on the character sheet.

Every player is free to indicate one companion of his choice as his focus. It can be any other player-hero, even one that has already been chosen by somebody else as his focus.

The bond doesn’t have to be mutual: a hero who has been chosen by another hero as his focus is free to choose any other character as his own. A Fellowship focus lets a character recover Hope without spending Fellowship (at the risk of gaining Shadow should the focus be harmed or killed);

FELLOWSHIP RATING
The group of player-heroes is more than a band of roving mercenaries brought together by mere necessity. At its foundation are communal goals and mutual respect. This is recreated in the game by a shared pool of Fellowship points. During the game, players use these points to recover spent Hope.

The number of points available to a company of heroes at the beginning of the game is equal to the number of heroes in the group. All players record the company’s Fellowship total in the appropriate box on their character sheet.

This score is updated every time that a companion uses a point to recover Hope, and it is fully replenished at the beginning of every game session.

HOW FELLOWSHIP POINTS WORK
Hope is an ever-dwindling resource: to overcome the many formidable challenges he is going to face, a player-hero who has just started his adventuring career is bound to count on it quite often.

To recover their much-needed trust and self-confidence, player-heroes should look no further than their own companions. Points taken from the Fellowship pool can be spent to refresh a character’s Hope, while the company of a hero’s Fellowship focus can allow him to recover points for free .

FELLOWSHIP POINTS
Members of the company may recover spent Hope by tapping into the Fellowship pool: for every Fellowship point spent, a character may raise his Hope score by one.

To do so, a player must get permission from at least half the other members of the Company: If this consensus cannot be found, he may either agree not to spend any points, or spend them anyway and gain a Shadow point for each Fellowship point used.

Players may recover any number of Hope points up to their maximum Hope score, as long as there are Fellowship points left.

A player may tap into a company’s Fellowship pool at any time. This means that a character can recover some of his lost Hope even as he exchanges blows with a hostile creature or as he bandies crooked words with a cunning diplomat.

A company’s Fellowship pool is completely refreshed at the beginning of each new gaming session. Players may take advantage of their entire Fellowship pool of points, of use just a part of it, or not at all. ‘Unused’ Fellowship points do not carry over to the next session.

FELLOWSHIP FOCUS
Fellowship focuses represent the strong ties between brothers in arms, close kinsmen and compatriots. Fellowship focuses have two effects in gameplay, as sources of Hope or as sources of inspiration.

As a Source of Hope
The presence of a Fellowship focus affects the way a character recovers Hope: A player-hero recovers one point of Hope at the end of a session if his Fellowship focus wasn’t wounded or otherwise harmed during play, and is in the same location as them. A character gains one point of Shadow at the end of the session if his Fellowship focus was wounded, or three points if the focus was killed.

As a Source of Inspiration
Successfully keeping their Fellowship focus safe might inspire a character so much that it lets him recover points of Hope: If a player spends a Hope point to get an Attribute bonus to accomplish an action that can be considered to directly protect or favour his Fellowship focus and succeeds, he immediately recovers the Hope point he just spent.