Middle Earth - LotR

[Gentlegamer]

Call halflings "hobbits", of course. Call goblins "orcs", and give them light sensitivity. Call hobgoblins "Uruk-hai". Call ogres "trolls", and have them turn to stone in sunlight. Stick to red dragons, and just call them "dragons". Treants are obviously "ents".

Very reasonable suggestions.

Eliminate heavy armor (splint, banded, plate, etc.). A warrior wears a hauberk of mail. You may also want to eliminate magical armor. A great warrior should wear mithril mail. Or you can just call magical armor "dwarf-forged", describe it as mithril, and keep the same +n bonus as always.

The soldiers of Gondor, as shown in the film, can reasonably be expected to use plate armor . . . particularly the Knights of Dol Amroth.

Masterwork weapons should always be dwarven or elven.

. . . or Numenorean.

Magical swords should have cool elven names and a history. Oh, and they glow when orcs draw near, of course.

Not every elvish blade has to glow in the presense of orcs. Glamdring, Orcrist, and Sting were forged in Gondolin for the Orc wars . . . that is why they had that specific property.

Eliminate the arbitrary distinction between divine and arcane magic. Allow wizards to choose spells from any list, but make sure they fit a character conception. For instance, Saruman stuck to enchantments (charm person, etc.); Radagast stuck to nature spells (the Druid list); Gandalf cast all the cool evocations (Sunbeam, Wall of Fire, etc.). I suppose any skills fitting that character conception should be considered class skills (e.g. Diplomacy and Bluff for an enchanter like Saruman, Animal Handling and Riding for Radagast).

Very sensible suggestion for Middle-earth magic!

Toss out clerics and paladins. Also lose most of the magical healing -- OK, just the "cure" spells really. Most of the healing in the book is performed by trained healers using herbs and still requires plenty of bed rest. The more "magical" healing seems to be restoration of drained levels/abilities from Nazgul attacks.

Clerics can be taken out, although I firmly believe that Gandalf the White and Elrond would be considered to have cleric levels. Elf Lords, such as Glorfindel, could be considered paladins.

Any magic item should have a famous history revealing clues about how to use it.

I firmly believe this should be the case for ALL magical items in D&D!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

There was a Middle Earth d20 fan site, but it pretty much died a death due to lack of interest.

True. What's odd, though, is that I was still getting the occasional email discussing some article or other on the site, and even got one as recently as maybe a couple months ago, after I thought the site had been removed.

I've been kicking around some ideas lately, especially after Unearthed Arcana appeared. I ran the Decipher game for a while, and tossed in a few d20 ideas here and there.

I also recommend looking at the MERP stuff, as well as Decipher's material. Decipher's game has a number of elements easily converted to d20.

 

[Ranger REG]

There was a Middle Earth d20 fan site, but it pretty much died a death due to lack of interest. There are loads of (old) threads in the Conversions forum if you feel like digging them out - you may need to go back a good while, though.

That's sad.

Somebody should revive the fan site and have it archived.

 

[qstor]

What happened to the Yahoo! Group. I know at one point it was flood with spam. Anyone have the conversions as .doc files or something? Maybe the web files could be moved to Geocities or something.

Mike

 

[Desdichado]

I ran a short-lived, and unfortunately unfinished Middle-earth d20 game, but I used the Wheel of Time ruleset as the baseline, not D&D. I never got around to addressing how magic would be handled, but it didn't come up because none of my characters wanted to play a spellcaster. I chronicled some of it in this thread.

 

[Seeten]

The new Iron Lore game from Malhavoc sounds like it might be a fantastic basis for a MERP. I am of the opinion that spellcasting and spellcasters in MERP either shouldnt really exist as PC's or should be vastly underpowered compared to regular D&D.

 

[Seeten]

In fact, thinking about it, I think I'd run spellcasting as feats. A feat per spell level, maybe, and allow it for every class. Gandalf was certainly an able fighter with a sword, although I'd argue all the Istari knew magic more due to their Maiar stature than their skill in "Wizardry". All the mages in the books came from Valinor.

Sauron isnt a wizard, he is a demigod. Same with Gandalf. A demigod of smaller stature than Sauron, to be sure, but still a demigod. The reason Sauron needs the ring is each act of creation(or power) sends his godly power out of his immortal vessel and into the world at large. That diminishes him permanently. To prevent this, he poured much of his power into his ring, and made the ring "recharge" itself, so he could use the ring to power his magic, instead of his essence.

Humans dont have this essence unless they have elven blood. (Numenoreans, High-Humans) Without the essence, a human in ME is no more capable of casting spells than I am.

 

[Desdichado]

All the mages in the books came from Valinor.... Without the essence, a human in ME is no more capable of casting spells than I am.

That's not true. Although we don't see any on-screen, there are all kinds of references to "sorcerers of the hill-men of Rhudaur" and the sorcerous Queen Beruthiel, and sorcerous cults established by the blue wizards, and blades and armor that were wrapped up in spells and the like.

There's plenty of evidence in Tolkien's own writing to at least suggest very strongly that magic can exist without it having to be angelic or elvish in origin. We just don't see very much of it, which leads one to believe that it has to be extremely rare.

 

[ruleslawyer]

We do see one sorcerer "onscreen" in LotR: The Witch-King of Angmar. That said, "spellcasting" in LotR really looks like a bag of spell-like abilities for most characters in the setting; come to think of it, that goes for most characters in most fantasy novels as well. The learned wizard with a vast array of spells gleaned from ancient tomes and spells isn't actually as common an archetype in practice in most fantasy literature; rather, it seems a folktale artifact more than a common modern high fantasy trope.

 

[Michael Morris]

Guys, the site is still in archive. It can be restored as long as it is used and maintained.