08-26-2019, 07:09 AM | #21 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
I'd agree with Chris on spells. Gandalf, in particular, creates some of the most RPG-ish effects in good fantasy literature. His magical battle with the Balrog (before he knows what it is) is a good example, as are his blasting of Orcs in the Misty Mountains and his setting fire to wargs.
Here are some lines about the spell-duel with the Balrog: Quote:
There's also quite a lot of suggestion that there is lots of magic in Middle Earth that we never actually see being performed in the books. For example, the Mouth of Sauron "learned great sorcery", and the Witch-king of Angmar is described as "dwimmerlaik" and "sorcerer". TFT's focus on creating magic items is quite a good fit with Middle Earth too; most of the magic in the books is in the form of enchanted weaponry and objects, whether it's the barrow-blades or Sting or the phial of Galadriel. On the superiority of the Numenoreans to the Men of Middle Earth, there's this from the appendices of LotR: Quote:
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08-26-2019, 07:30 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
The Witch-king would be hard to stat up; he's obviously a powerful fighter and a great sorcerer, but then there's the problem of the prophecy. Does that mean he's essentially invulnerable to attacks by men?
I'd probably sift the spell-book for un-Tolkienish things (the summonings and illusions, most probably) but give him everything that's left. After all, he's been a great sorcerer for thousands of years! As for Beorn: I thought you could go with the cave-bear stats from ITL with a boost to DX and armour ("no weapon seemed to bite upon him"). But actually, I think he's meant to be much more powerful than that. He functions as a one-bear army, after all - routing the biggest Orcs, killing Bolg and driving wargs before him. So he's got to be sufficiently powerful to take on hundreds if not thousands of Orcs and wargs in close combat and come out the winner. That, I think, makes Beorn more a character for a wargame than RPG combat. If you're staying faithful to the books, he's going to destroy any group of PCs unless they have someone like Gandalf among them. As a comparison, Boromir was a fairly mighty hero of the Third Age, but he was killed by goblins (though he took quite a few of them with him - four of the big sort and many of the smaller ones too). Beorn, in contrast, routs a whole army of them and their wolf allies, including the huge goblins of their king's guard, and kills their king without a scratch being laid upon him. I don't think even the biggest TFT dragon would manage that! I'd suggest that those sorts of characters might be best as non-combat encounters. If you think of the dwarves visiting Beorn (and the slightly chilling display of the severed Orc head and warg skin) or the sight of the Witch King riding out of Minas Morgul at the head of his cavalry, that's probably the best sort of way to use them in an RPG session. |
08-26-2019, 09:35 AM | #23 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
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08-26-2019, 11:30 AM | #24 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
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In game terms, I think the most satisfactory route would be to have the Witch-king as a distant presence with the PCs most keen to avoid him (even if they happen to be burgling Minas Morgul!). Then there's the whole business about having that "blade of Westernesse" to hand: "No other blade, not though mightier hands wielded it ...". Quote:
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That's why every attempt to wargame the Battle of Five Armies that I've seen has Beorn as a (very powerful) unit even though he's but a single creature. In a game with a figure scale of 1:100, Beorn will be a single figure with a 1:1 scale. And he attacks unsupported. He's not even one of the Five Armies, but he's more decisive than any of them! Quote:
That illustrates the point I was making more generally about Middle Earth; it does often have an epic flavour, with heroes and villains that are more or less demigods (though Tolkien probably wouldn't have used that term) and formidable foes that are nevertheless usually dispatched with a single blow. I think that's quite a hard note for satisfying RPGs to strike, although Heroquest (the Gloranthan one) can cover similar territory. Most fantasy RPGs, though, have more of a gritty, Fafhrd-and-the-Mouser/Conan feel, and TFT seems to me to be one of those. That's no slight on it at all - I think "gritty" generally makes for better encounters and campaigns than epic. And of course, TFT can work fine for games in Middle Earth, because it's a great system. But if you don't tweak the standard stats to adjust for Middle Earth's idiosyncrasies, you'll probably get something that's more like "Fafhrd and the Mouser visit Middle Earth" than The Hobbit or The Fellowship of the Ring. I don't think tweaking stats and rules to reflect Middle Earth rather than Cidri is a particularly outré suggestion either. I mean, a Cidrian Orc is clearly not quite the same thing as a Middle Earth Orc, so why not make appropriate changes to reflect that? There's so much fun to be had by digging into Tolkien's texts and finding stuff to model game profiles on. This is much more true than with almost any other fantasy author, I think, because Tolkien really cared about internal consistency (to a quite obsessive degree in some cases). |
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08-26-2019, 12:49 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
I think there are two different issues here: 1) are the main gears of a game system a good basis for most of the inhabitants, places, events, etc. of a setting you have in mind; and 2) is there a way for you to describe special features of that setting (either literary or from your imagination) in a way that adds to rather than destroys the core game system? I feel like TFT is one of several very good systems for describing the common inhabitants of middle earth and their interactions, and that the apparent exceptions can be addressed in relatively trivial ways. For example:
Elves: they are special because they are old and highly experienced. So, make them old and highly experienced. If you start with a standard TFT elf template and then add 10-20,000 XP you will pretty much always end up with a character having 40 stat points (say, ST 12, DX 18, IQ 10) and 20-30 points worth of talents and spells. In a world inhabited by 30 point humanoids with 8-10 points in talents, that is a very special being. Yet vulnerable to the dangers of battle and adventure (as they should be). There is nothing wrong with Elves in TFT. Beorn: He's not a bear; he's an enormous werebear, meaning he is invulnerable to non-silver weapons, heals 1 point of damage per turn, and I'd say he plausibly has a ST of 40-60. This means he is basically invincible to mundane foes. Surround him with allies on a battle field, and he becomes unstoppable, even playing RAW. Fighting all day, at a very conservative murder rate of 1 goblin per minute, he would single handedly account for a legion of foes. There is nothing wrong with Beorn in TFT. The Witch King: Start with a powerful magician king, transform him in a specialized kind of Wight, and pile on 10-20,000 XP worth of talents, spells and ST for whatever passes as his 'staff' (perhaps his ring?). The only thing needed is a sort of limiting enchantment or curse that provides the vulnerability that will spell his doom. That is easy: just make it up, like you would any other spell, item or magical force you wanted to have exist in your campaign. There is nothing wrong with the Witch King in TFT that can't be solved with a pretty simple declaration by the GM of a unique magical effect. |
08-26-2019, 01:16 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
One defining characteristic of Middle Earth is that it is deadly. One orc can kill pretty much anybody, just like in TFT. Just because Beorn's slaying of Bolg's bodyguard demoralizes the rest of the orcs, it does not mean that he could singlehandedly take on an army. He surprised the army's leaders and killed them, which heartened their foes who seized upon the moment to press a successful attack. In TFT terms, one can imagine Beorn probably attacking from behind, killing a few of the bodyguards before anyone even notices and maybe rolling double or triple damage on his first swipe at Bolg. Seeing such terrible carnage come out of nowhere, the orcs panic.
If Beorn could destroy whole armies, there would have been little need for the White Council to attack the Necromancer (Sauron) in force. Beorn would, in effect, be more powerful than Galadriel, Elrond, Gandalf, and Saruman--hardly an orthodox interpretation of the story. I heartily disagree that the heroes of Middle Earth are like demigods (save for Gandalf who sort of is). The whole point is that they were ordinary people who had to step up to lay their lives on the line; they had to live out their mighty dooms. Galadriel and Elrond wer powerful partly due to their age and experience, but also their possession of the rings. And, Galadriel had basked in the light of Valinor before coming to Middle Earth. But Aragon and Faramir were just men--certainly not 32 point characters in TFT terms, but absolutely bound by the limits of their mortal frames. One could certainly stat up Beorn with ST 100 DX 15 and a high IQ, if that is your vision of him. I would stick closer to stats for a big bear. |
08-26-2019, 02:46 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
Exactly. Isildur cut the one ring off of Sauron's hand (he's a god who walks among us!), and was then killed by an arrow shot by some orc (he's a chump!). The system you want for a game set in a world where all this is possible is one where people might have special powers or items, but everyone is at some sort of quantifiable risk from everyone.
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08-26-2019, 03:23 PM | #28 | |||||
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
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And Bolg's bodyguard are engaged in combat; Beorn fights through other goblins and wolves to get to them. So, yes, he surprises the leaders, but only because he mounts an onslaught of such unstoppable ferocity. It's not like Beorn reaches them instantly. Quote:
What I'm saying here is that if you simply stat up Beorn as an ordinary TFT cave bear (or whatever), the chances of your getting the result in the book are infinitesimally small. You have to have him perform two attacks into massed Orcs, some of them very large and well armed, and one fighting retreat carrying a stricken ally between the attacks. Just think how many rear and flank attacks all those Orcs will get! And remember that there are thousands of Orcs. Their army is described as "a vast host" with "countless" banners, and they severely outnumber the couple of thousand or so on the other side. So I simply can't see how you could play that encounter straight in TFT and achieve the outcome that happens in the books. A cave bear surrounded by huge numbers of orcs and dire wolves would perish pretty quickly in TFT. Quote:
And he doesn't destroy the army; he routs it. Tolkien spells out every step of it in the quote above. Quote:
Aragorn and Faramir are a bit different, yes, but Aragorn is hardly a normal Man. And he does get a bit Achilles-like from time to time. Another way of looking at it is that Tolkien switches between "novelistic" and "epic" modes in The Lord of the Rings and, to a lesser extent, The Hobbit. The "novelistic" characters are the Hobbits, Gollum, the Men of Bree and the Orcs. Gandalf flits between; so too do the members of the Fellowship. But the "epic" action is heroic or superheroic and very different from the "novelistic" action. The Aragorn of Moria can be knocked aside by an Orc; the Aragorn of Helm's Deep or the Pelennor can cut through swathes of them unharmed. Beorn, at the end of The Hobbit, is a full-blown epic character; he charges into enemy armies on his own; he appears invulnerable to weapons; and he routs an army. And the book at that point is in a very different mode to the encounters with the Orcs in the Misty Mountains or the wargs in the forest. My contention here is that the gulf between those modes is so vast that I wouldn't even attempt the "epic" mode mechanically in TFT (which could do an excellent job with the "novelistic" mode). But again, the "epic" heroics are often so powerful (Gandalf v Balrog, for example) that they're probably best treated as a backdrop for the PCs to have their adventures against. But how do you think that version of Beorn (the ST 100 one) would get on in a (crowded!) game of Melee against, say, ten dire wolves and twenty-five orcs (five of them elites with a 40-point build, perhaps)? Let's assume those orcs were kitted out with the normal orcish gear (mail, shields, bows, spears and scimitars). Remember, he's got to get through their ranks (and survive!) three times! And their ranks can be replenished for each of his three sorties. I'd back the orcs! |
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08-26-2019, 04:01 PM | #29 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
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In any case, the ITL werewolf isn't invulnerable to non-silver weapons; he can just heal 1 point of non-silver-caused wounds every other turn. (Is there an official werebear somewhere?) So if Beorn's a two-hex creature, he's going to get a lot of 2d bites in the flanks and rear. So I'm not sure he'd be unstoppable RAW. But where I think we agree is that there's no need to do it RAW; Beorn isn't the Cidrian were-creature but something a bit different. I do think, though, that that bit of difference would take him into the demigod/epic hero territory one way or another. But that - I think - is as it should be. Even Gandalf seemed to be a bit nervous around Beorn! Quote:
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08-26-2019, 07:24 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Re: Middle Earth Characters
Good thoughts all around, but technically any role play in Middle Earth is an alternate Middle Earth. But seriously I think it’d be cool to have players run into him pre-LOTR or do a showdown with him and Gandalf for fun.
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Tags |
character, home brew, middle earth, middle-earth |
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