Month: August 2026

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Non-lethal Damage in The One Ring

A common situation that seems to come up in my games and in the Discord server: how do we deal non-lethal damage? I don’t want to kill the guy – I just want to knock him out!

By the rules, we see this in the 2e CRB, 3rd printing:

Player-heroes whose Endurance is reduced to zero drop unconscious, and wake up after one hour with 1 Endurance point.
(pg 69)

Once a victorious battle is over, the Player-heroes often must deal with the dead and dying. If the information is relevant, the Loremaster can consider that adversaries that were taken out of combat reducing them to zero Endurance could be still barely alive when a fight has ended, and might even survive if rescued.
(pg 143)

From this, we can say that the baseline mechanic of “falling unconscious at 0 Endurance” can be reasonably extended to adversaries.

I play with the following considerations:

  1. The player-hero must declare their intent to deal non-lethal damage, render someone unconscious, or otherwise non-lethally subdue a foe (e.g., “I hit him with the pommel of my sword”, “I take the flat of my sword and whack him across the back of the legs to try to knock him down”).
  2. Piercing blows still count as piercing blows, so there’s risk when using weapons.
  3. Unarmed attacks (Brawling) are an option to reduce the risk of piercing blows.
  4. Grappling someone can be achieved using Brawling; narrate that they are grappling. A high-attribute opponent may require extra successes.
  5. Ranged attacks can’t take a non-lethal option.
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Ally and Player Burdens for The One Ring

I really enjoy using Ally Bands from the Moria: Through the Doors of Durin supplement for The One Ring RPG.

This expands the Ally Gifts and Quirks with an optional third distinguishing trait: a burden.

  • A Gift says what an Ally can do.
  • A Quirk says how you recognize them.
  • A burden hints at what they want… or might be running away from.

What we want is good stories, and what helps that is having more hooks. Of course, though we all have our burdens, we don’t always know about the burdens of others. Adding a Burden is most useful when you want to give someone more narrative weight – the party’s favorite NPC, an ally surviving three expeditions, or someone who seems to be driving the Band apart. It isn’t necessary to give every ally a Burden (unless you want to play a soap opera); just having one or two can drive a story in unexpected directions.

While I conceived of this in the context of Ally Bands, the table is also a useful source of inspiration when creating new player-heroes.

These Burdens are the kind of details that are great to explore in a Fellowship Phase: debt gets paid, confession gets made, letters get sent. They also make some of the losses land harder…

Burdens Table

The entries on this table are deliberately culture-neutral. I suggest filling in details in a culturally specific way. A dwarf and a Breelander might both be in debt, but their stories are likely to be quite different.

Many entries have (notes in parentheses). This serves as an optional, additional twist on the burden.

Feat Die Success Die: 1–2 Success Die: 3–4 Success Die: 5–6
25 Owes a ruinous debt to a hard creditor (and is ashamed of it) Blames themselves for a death they could not have prevented Has seen the Enemy’s true strength (and no longer argues when others speak of victory)
1 Sends every coin home to family (who do not write back) Carries a weapon/armor/token of a dead friend (have sworn to return it to that friend’s kin) Tells one story often (and leaves out the part that matters)
2 Took this work under a name that is not theirs (and flinches when surprised by its use) Wants desperately to go home (and will not admit it) Believes they saw their own death (and is settling accounts)
3 Serving out a sentence, an exile, or a penance Nurses a grudge (older than anyone else in the Band) Was refused by someone they loved (and took this work to be gone)
4 Promised someone they would not take this job/errand Carries an old head-wound, and the Band has learned which days to leave them be Suspects another Ally of something, rightly or wrongly
5 Following a rumor of a lost kinsman into the dark Their family name once meant something Keeps a secret (that would break the Band’s trust if told)
6 Wants the quick answer, the easy road, the shortest way Duty-bound to a post (they would abandon if anyone would take it) Has a child, or one coming (and has not told the Band)
7 Trying to buy back a thing their family sold or lost Swore an oath (they now regret) Signed for a share they have already promised away
8 Certain the expedition is cursed (and saying so) Someone they wronged is also in the group Younger than they claimed to be when they signed on
9 Wants to be reckoned worthy (by one particular person) Grieving (and works twice as hard so no one asks about it) Left a craft or calling they were good at (and misses it daily)
10 Has a rival in the group (and competes beyond all sense) Cannot go home (there is nothing left to go home to) Made a promise to a dying comrade (and has not kept it)
15 Believes they are destined for something (and it makes them reckless) Owes their life to another Ally (and cannot repay it) Serving someone else’s purpose (and does not know it)

Giving Burdens More Heft

I mostly use Burdens narratively, but they can be incorporated into play mechanically. Consider:

  • Unresolved Burdens can trigger shadow tests, especially if postponing or working against the direction a Burden would drive a character toward.
  • Connecting an action to a Burden is a source of inspiration, similar to a Distinctive Feature.
  • Acting against a Burden makes a roll ill-favored (similar to a Shadow Flaw).
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Ally Bands in The One Ring

I really enjoy using the rules for Ally Bands in The One Ring from the Moria: Through the Doors of Durin supplement – which, by the way, is one of the best RPG supplements I’ve come across, and a total joy for any fan of Middle-earth.

Bands have featured heavily in our campaign Twilight of the Western Shores. There are two player-heroes in this game, and we have adapted the Band rules to represent the groups of NPCs they recruit.

This page collects my notes on using Bands during play, along with the extensions I’ve created.

Overview

Bands are introduced in the context of doing a solo campaign in Moria, set during Balin’s ill-fated expedition to retake those hallowed halls. You craft a player-hero, but you also create a Band of Ally dwarves that accompany you.

Bands as a whole have one Target Number to roll against (“Readiness”), a “Burden” level, and five skills – Expertise, Manoeuvre, Rally, Vigilance, and War – that roughly map onto the skills of the player-heroes. Readiness can be improved by succeeding at missions and “Hardening” allies. Band skills can be adjusted by changing the size of the Band, deciding how heavily kitted it is, and selecting a specialization.

Individual members of a Band are distinguished by a gift – a unique characteristic that can be invoked for +1d on a roll – and a quirk – a narrative detail about personality or appearance that sets members apart from one another. Members also have their own injury and fatigue tracks.

The Band rules also cover Clashes, which expand the standard combat rules in The One Ring to model the effect of having larger groups in play. You can resolve things at the level of the Clash, or your player-hero can focus on dueling an “arch-foe” while the Band dukes it out.

Expanding Bands

  1. Supporting Other Cultures
  2. Ally Burdens

Supporting Other Cultures

In the context of Moria, Bands are composed of dwarves on a mission to reclaim their ancestral halls, and many of the tables are themed around that premise. Because of this, questions often come up about how to adapt Moria Bands for other cultures or for use outside of Moria.

In Twilight of the Western Shores, this was never really a problem: we picked culturally appropriate Gifts and Quirks to model the NPCs that were recruited. Most of the Gifts and Quirks are also relatively generic, or easily adjusted to be so.

While our group is fine with narrative selection, other players want more structure. I took it as a fun exercise to create alternative tables for other cultures. Some entries are unique to each culture, some are reskinned variations of the same idea, and some are a direct port of a “stock” entry.

  • Alternative Gifts and Quirks for Ally Bands

Once I organize the materials, I will also add name tables for different cultures.

Ally Burdens

Ally Bands help organize supporting NPCs in a way that makes them distinct and usable through Gifts and Quirks. I’ve expanded on this with Ally Burdens, which flesh out key Band members with additional details about what they might be seeking… or running from.

This is most useful when you want to give someone more narrative weight – the party’s favorite NPC, an ally who has survived three expeditions, or perhaps someone who seems to be driving the Band apart. Restraint helps here: not every Ally needs one (some of us do well to keep our burdens hidden, after all). Though if what you’re after is more of a soap opera feel, then the more burdens the merrier.