Fellowship Levels for Middle Earth d20

[Endur]

I was thinking about the Lord of the Rings as an epic adventure and started wondering about how many levels the characters gained during the adventure.

Suppose:
Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Sam all start as 1st level.
After facing the Barrow Wight, level 2.
After making it to Rivendell, level 3
After making it to Lorien, level 4
After making it to the Falls and the party splits up, level 5

From then on, Frodo & Sam go their own way, so their leveling might be different from Merry & Pippin.

Frodo & Sam
Marshes of the Dead, level 6
encounter with Faramir, level 7
Shelob's Lair, level 8
Escaping from Cirth Ungol, level 9
Traveling through Mordor, level 10
Destroying the Ring, level 11
Return to the Shire, level 12

Merry & Pippin
Escaping the Orcs, level 6
Treebeard, level 7
Battle of Isenguard, level 8
Versus Denethor or versus the Witch King, level 9
Battle of the Pelanor Fields, level 10
Battle of the Gate of Mordor, level 11
Return to the Shire, level 12

Thoughts? Comments?

Aragorn and the other members of the fellowship probably started out as higher than level 1, so their own leveling approach would be different as well.

 

[Isyid]

I always had the idea that the d&d concept of "gaining levels" was especially exemplified by Lotr narrative structure: the hobbits especially, by passing through many trials, are at the end of the story competent and confident fighters. And, when reading the books (or viewing the movies), you can almost say the precise moment when a character gains a level (he generally does or say something that suggests that suddenly he is wiser, stronger, etc, than before).


The issue of the fellowship members levels has been much discussed in the boards, and the site middleearthd20 proposes many interpretations of Lotr as a low, -medium- and high-level campaign (personnaly I opt for a "medium-level" approach : hobbits rising from 1st-2nd to 8th or 9th lvls; Aragorn from 12-14th to 18-20th, Gimli and Legolas from 6-8th to 10-12th, Gandalf (with perhaps Aragorn at the very end) being the only "epic level" character in the story, rising from 16th-18th lvl at the beginning, 20th when facing the balrog, to 24th lvl as the white (probably gaining something like the "celestial" template, if he did not had it before…).
Of course, these levels depend closely of the strenght of the opposition the characters meet!
If Tolkien's "barrow wights" are simply d&d "wights", it's no surprise that Aragorn, that I would rate at least as Ran8/ Pal4 at this moment can easily scare ("turn") them off, etc… A standard uruk-hai can be rated as a d&d orc (or hogoblin), or as a 3 HD crature (orog, bugbear…), etc…

So the exact number of levels gained depends of the "power level" of the whole campaign. For example, Pippin begins the story obviously as a 1st lvl guy (Rog1? perhaps Ari1/Rog 1). Before the black gate he slays singlehandly a "hill troll of Gorgoroth clad in close fitting-mesh of scale mail" (almost dying himself in the process!): if the hill-troll is, as I would rate it, an Ogre with Ftr2 and perhaps the Fiendish tempate (?), i.e. a CR 5 creature, then Pippin has to be around 5th-8th lvl to face it alone with some chance of success (but it was very close! 0 hp at the end of the fight, and buried under the troll body!). If your olog-hai is a 6, 8 or 10 HD creature, of course Pippin has to be rather around 10th level!

So how many levels gained in the course of the campaign? For Lotr as an "epic adventure", more than 10 (as in your proposition); in my "medium to high" point of view, 4 to 8 (according to the characters). One last thing: what fascinates me with the Fellowship is that it can be considered as a "mixed level party" (let's say : 18th lvl "wizard", 14th "ranger", 6th-12th "fighters", and… "3rd-4th lvl hobbits!). It's a kind of play I try to promote with my players, with the strongest having to guide and protect the weakest: very interesting interaction occasions between the players! - but of course the GM has to devise encounters where high AND low level characters can play an active role (in fact, you can do it more easily if you keep in mind the relative "low magic" flavour of Tolkien's world, but that's another topic)

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Thoughts? Comments?

Seems reasonable to me. Click the link in my sig, and you'll see a number of interpretations, if you're interested.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure, that's reasonable.

My own approach would be to start the halflings off at slightly higher level - 2nd to 4th level - and finish at slighly lower level - 9th to 10th.

I won't bother giving classes because I'm not sure that the D&D core classes are strictly appropriate here.

I figure Aragorn starts at 15th level or so, and gains at most one level over the course of the adventure. (My expectations for leveling are based on 1st edition I suppose.). Aragorn has basically already arrived at the peak of his power, and if he gained a level, he put it into the PrC 'High King' to increase is leadership and command radius.

Gandalf/Olorin is alot harder to pin down, and I'm not sure that he actually gains a level in the tradiational sense at all, but instead increases his Divine Ranks a couple of points and adds the Skill Domain to his own Wisdom Domain portfolio.

 

[Endur]

Power Level vs. Experience Level

I guess part of the problem in pinning down how many levels the fellowship characters have is based on the general problem of "what is a level"?

A level is some measure of combat ability based on a standardized progression.

Following assumptions for D20 (different from AD&D of course)
level 1 = beginner
level 20 = world class expert, best of the best
level 20+ = demiGod, supernaturally powerful

Balrog, Gandalf, Sauruman, Sauron fall into the level 20+ category

Aragorn probably falls into the level 20 category, best of the best

The rest of the fellowship falls somewhere between level 1 and level 20.

Tom

 

[Mjollnir]

Agree with Endur