NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 136476" data-attributes="member: 1645">Joshua, it's funny that you bring up Middle Earth, because my original train of thought that led to this thread was, what little changes can I make to D&D to get a more "Lord of the Rings" feel?You can see the evidence of that in some of the "little changes":<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dark Ages -- For most of the middle ages, plate armor was not available, and neither were the various reinforced forms of mail (splint, banded).  Bastard swords and great swords weren't around, and many polearms weren't common.  A soldier in a full hauberk of mail was a serious threat</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Stick to just a handful of monsters.  Choose either goblins or kobolds or orcs as your cannon fodder, and rely on class levels or different equipment to differentiate them.  (<a href="http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9157" target="_blank">What's Your Monster Palette?</a>)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Have an enemy.  Despite all the dark overlords in fantasy fiction, few of them last past an adventure or two in D&D.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make all magic easy to "track" with Detect Magic, so covert spellcasters won't want to cast indiscriminately.  Make flashy evocations (e.g. Fireball) particularly easy to track.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Remove the distinction between Arcane and Divine magic. Is there a difference between an evil sorcerer and an evil high priest?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Have Knowledge (History) provide characters with the names of weapons, their powers, any magic words they need to activate them, etc. That way the wise wizard (who really should have plenty of knowledge skills) doesn't cast a spell to uncover an item's powers; he looks it over, mumbles to himself, then announces that this must be the long, lost whatever, used in the great wars against whomever's army, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Have magic items' powers reveal themselves to the characters gradually, based on their actions and what they learn about them. Rather than having a Fighter find a +2 sword and ditch his "worthless" +1 sword, he can discover new powers in his original sword with the help of the wizard (or ancient elf, or crotchety dwarf, or talking animal) he rescued.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Provide treasure with a place in the world: armor once worn by the current king in his youth, works of art by a now-mad mage, historical documents, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Try a different set of combat rules, like Ken Hood's <a href="http://www.sleepingimperium.rpghost.com/downloads/GrimNGrittyHitPointRules.pdf" target="_blank">Grim-n-Gritty Hit Point and Combat Rules</a> or any variant that doesn't keep giving extra hit dice ad infinitum.  Instead of increasing hit points, you can increase armor class.  This makes magical healing less necessary, even if you keep the heroes at roughly the same power level.</li> </ul>(Let's not turn this into a Middle Earth thread though.)</blockquote>

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