In another post, Scottomir posted:
I don't understand this comment. The things you suggest don't matter do matter. Maybe I can describe the way I handle the mook rules and you can tell me what doesn't make sense and/or why you hate them.
Yeah, and I could also toss pennies at a wall all night. In fact, Decipher's immensely lame 1/2/3 success rule is a lot like throwing pennies: heads you hit, tails you miss. It doesn't matter if you're a warrior with a longsword or a hobbit with a club, it doesn't matter if you're fighting a platoon of Uruk-hai or a gaggle of little goblins. If I'm going to play so that all of the other rules (Strength, damage, Health, wounds) don't matter, why did I pay $40 for the book? I could have just downloaded pretty stills from the LOTR website and free-formed my own crap-shoot rules.
In a recent combat, I had 9 Uruks go up against the heroes. 1 Uruk had the standard array of Wound levels. The other 8 were split into four mook levels, 2x 1 success, 2x 2 success, 2x 3 success, and 2x 4 success. The heroes didn't know which was which going into the fight.
The fight got going, and as heroes scored hits on the Uruks, I'd compare the hero's attack roll vs. the Uruks Defence, Dodge, or Parry as appropriate. Depending on how well they succeeded at the hit, they either knocked off success levels or did damage normally (if they hit the one Uruk with 'normal' wound levels).
Some Uruks fell after one blow, some fell after a couple. The good fighters in the group tended to do better, but the lesser capable fighters still managed to get a shot in from time to time.
The combat was fast, fun, and very open to cinematic inspiration on both my part and on the part of the players. I didn't have to track wound levels for every single Uruk, and it was fun hearing the imagery the players came up with.
I don't understand why other people don't like these rules. Enlighten me, please!
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