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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 1286379" data-attributes="member: 8158">Good thread. Thanks for the posts WizarDru, Z Wrath. D20 certainly has the potential to serve as the basis for a LotR setting. The fundamentals of the D20--skills, feats, races, & character classes--all work well enough. But using D&D's core classes and magic system for a classical heroic fantasy setting amountes to trying to jam a sqare peg into a round hole. I've seen numerous attempts to convert D&D into something suitable for "low magic" campaigns, and they usually consist of imposing various handicaps on spellcasters, such as restricted spell lists (no "flashy" spells) and limited spell advancement (no spells above 4th level). More often than not, these conversions wind up losing sight of the fact that classes need some sort of role in the party to make them meaningful. Once you've watered-down a core class so that they don't fill out the roles that they had been designed for (healing, artillery, etc.), without adding any new capabilities that offer them a new niche, they just aren't fun to play. A LotR campaign definitely needs classes and a magic system that fits the world, rather than just a half-baked D&D kludge. The powers Gandalf used to fend off the balrog and drive off the ring wraiths weren't lightweight, but it does beg the question of why Gandalf resorted to strength of arms to kill off droves of orcs. In LotR, it seems that "spells" (if for lack of a better word) aren't things that you casually expend to boom-blast a few goblins that are hassling you. Perhaps those magicks can only be called upon to combat creatures of magic? That suggests a possible role for spellcasting classes. While warriors fight off creatures of flesh and bone,  magicians wield spells to provide a defense against the supernatural.</blockquote>

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