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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 366944" data-attributes="member: 5435">Really an excellent book--I picked it up last week and was quite impressed.  I do have some concerns with it, however.  Nothing crippling, these are all things which are easy to fix for any GM worth their salt.  I love the spells, the character creation process, the fact that they threw balance out the window (elves are just *better*!), the social skills and the importance of bearing, the orders (I want to play a dwarven craftsman/loremaster!), and almost everything else.  The comments below are therefore not to be taken as whining or mudslinging, but a starting point for discussion.Starting skills can have up to +6 (on 2d6) ranks, and the rules imply that +12 is the maximum.  Each order has about half-a-dozen abilities that can be picked, although some can be picked multiple times.  I have the impression that after 10 or so advancements, the players will be casting about for somewhere to go; their key skills and order abilities will be maxed out.  You can spend picks on improving your stats as well, but by this time you'll have pretty much acheived your primary character concept I think.  Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression is that it would be difficult to sustain a long (say, 2+ years) campaign in LotR.I know you can always pick up another order, but then all the players start to converge.  I don't think it's very LotR-like for Aragorn to start learning magic from Gandalf just because he's mastered the art of being a ranger!This is very good, but some of the spells beg for more limitations or prerequisites.  The only spell that really stands out as a black sheep to me is the Lightning spell, which does a huge amount of damage and has no prerequisites whatsoever.  Sure, it's tiring, but even a magician with a few advancements could cast it pretty frequently.  The only literary source I can see for this spell is from the Hobbit "I killed a goblin or two with a flash..." (Gandalf to Beorn), and it seems overpowered for the genre.In the books, the main reason Gandalf didn't use magic a lot was because he didn't want to reveal his presence--or so he claimed.  Gandalf the White was clearly more powerful and used it when called for, but was such an important figure that he had more pressing duties relating to politics and leadership.  I agree with the authors that it's not very genre-like to have the spellcasters throwing around a lot of spells, but I wish they'd supported this tendency with more rules.  The Sense Power spell, for example, has a very short range--if they made it a much longer range (miles instead of feet, for example), and everyone knew that the powerful magicians of middle-earth would probably detect your spellcasting, that might be a good way of doing it.While it's true that DMs can really set the tone of a campaign, this advice didn't ring true.  The world of Middle-Earth is a dangerous place, and simply telling spellcasters not to use their spells too often because it's out of genre, or the fighters not to wear armour because Aragorn didn't, just feels wrong to me.  The illusion of threat is not enough, and pulling all your punches to maintain the atmosphere isn't a good solution.Finally, I would have liked to see some of the Fellowship statted as well as their enemies.--Ben</blockquote>

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