Spellcasters

I'm Confused :confused:

i recently bought the core book and have slowly been expanding my collection. so i thought i would make up a pc just to see how easy or not it is.

a created a noldor who was a magician. stats and skills went ok sort of. when i got to the order skills i became baffled. with the spellcasting ability the pc gets 5 spell picks to choose spells. Who teaches them the spells? or are they spells that the pc has already discovered on his own? what happens if the pc Does have a mentor? can they learn spells off them?

when the magician gains an advancement he gets 5 picks to increase stats etc if he spends 3 and gains new order skill/improve order skill does that mean he gets another 5 spell picks so he can choose new spells or improve existing spells?

am i reading correctly that if he wants to learn a new spell he has to do so the hard way with research? or do the spell picks he gets with advancement mean he learns new spells by experience?

sorry to ask so many questions, the answers to which are probably crystal clear to most of you but ive been an RPG'er for nearly 20 yrs and this has stumped me.

Manty

Taking the spellcasting ability gives you 5 spell picks which you can spend to get more spells. As a starting character, these would be spells your character has already learned.

When you advance, you could buy Spellcasting again (for 3 advancement picks) and get 5 more spell points to spend on new spells or to improve existing spells.

There are rules on page 168 for learning spells. Your narrator may or may not enforce them.

Personally, for a Noldo magician, I would use the natural learning rules. The magician would suffer a -10 penalty the first time or two he used the spell. Then it would go down to a -5 penalty until he had used it at least 10-11 times. Now, I wouldn't let the player go walking around just casting the spell to work off the penalties. I would rule that only appropriate uses of the spell would work to reduce the penalty.

Don't you think this would discourage people from getting new spells? And add a new layer of bookeeping to the game?

IIRC, the player can only advance to the -5 penalty AFTER being successfull with a spellcasting test. Man, that's simply inacceptable...I know Middle-earth is a place where subtle magic resides, no great pyrotechnics show, but this is too damn strange.

So, I just put a penalty in the beggining...like -10 for the first time, 9 for the second, and so on...bookkeeping, of course...but since the magician in our group is not D&Dish (the player love Tolkien as much as I do), I'm not worried...:)

Cheers,

Helegond