Where are the High Men/Dunaden?

So watching the extended edition of the Two Towers, and Strider mentions that he's of the old blood line.

In Rolemaster, that was a High Man. Stronger, longer lived and well, better than normal men. Just fewer background points.

In MERP, (old Middle Earth Role Playing), it was a Dunaden (probably spelled that wrong.)

As so much else from D&D is influenced by the Lord of the Rings, why are there no high men?

Good question, unless all heroic PCs are "High Men" and all NPC classes are the ordinary ones.

I have thought about using this idea for a Gestalt game in which the PCs were of a almost extinct race of men whose lineage stretched back to the ancestral gods. All "normal" humans would be single classed.

I think that with the goal of keeping races balanced, high men wouldn't really fit very well. After all, they are really just watered down half-elves, and do we really need to water down half-elves any more than they already have been?

Human paragon, perhaps?

I certainly think there's room for such a thing. Would Illumians fit the bill? (I don't have the book they're in so I'm not sure).

Or how about Aasimar? Just change their flavor text from "outsider" to "old lineage" and you're pretty well set. Remove their Daylight ability and give them, I don't know, Detect Evil 3/day or something. The Dunedain seem to have an intuitive ability to judge people.

I never jived with Tolkien's "some men are inherently/racially than other men now shut up and accept your king" attitude.

That being said, I have no problem allowing a PC human to be of some special long-lived line of humans...since I've never dealt with aging in a D&D game, and allowing a human (or any other race) to live for 500 years is no problem. I wouldn't give them anything special other than that.

I don't use a specific race to reflect the "Dunadan" idea - I use the PHB Bard class and limit it to humans from one specific culture.

For bards who are spellsingers, loremasters, and travelling troubadour-types, I use Monte Cook's variant bard from Eldritch Magic (the one with spellnotes, spellchords etc). The PHB Bard is instead used for a bloodline of high men and ancient chieftains who have magic running in their veins and can uplift their fellows to heights of greatness by inspiration. They don't sing, they use oratory, conviction and their innate nobility (think of Aragorn's speech at the Black Gates in the RotK movie, or of the cooler Crispin's Day speech from Henry V). Their spells are magic that is in their very blood and their lore abilities come from having been raised in the ancient traditions of a land now lost, whose influence is nevertheless still felt in many parts of the world.

The class is more of a cultural artifact limited to members of a single race but it captures the feel of this kind of individual better than having a race with all sorts of powers tacked on, neccesitating unwelcome level adjustments and the like (although I agree that a modified aasimar might work well if that's the approach you took). You can rule that all members of the Dunedain have at least one level in the PHB bard class, or state that those who don't have failed to embrace their heritage, for example, and are falling into the ways of lesser men.

lukelightning said:

I never jived with Tolkien's "some men are inherently/racially than other men now shut up and accept your king" attitude.

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Tolkien's history makes it a bit more than "some men are better". The Dunedain are the men who went into the West to live among the elves and angels in olden times, and they tended to interbreed a bit. So they aren't normal humans.

In D&D, we have a whole bunch of races, some with level adjustments higher than +1. Why not have a sub-race of humans?

Umbran said:

Tolkien's history makes it a bit more than "some men are better". The Dunedain are the men who went into the West to live among the elves and angels in olden times, and they tended to interbreed a bit. So they aren't normal humans.

In D&D, we have a whole bunch of races, some with level adjustments higher than +1. Why not have a sub-race of humans?

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Not to mention that he wasn't the king because he was better. He was the king because he was descended from the king.

Of course, D&D isn't as much influenced by Tolkien, except in dwarves and halflings. Just look at the elves, any attempt to do a LotR adaptation messes with them the most.

If I had to point out to one race as being the High Men/Dúnedain of D&D, I'd say Half-Elves. They are almost like humans, but live a loooong time. Maybe slap the Ruathar (elf-friend) class (from RoWild) onto a human or half-elf.