Concerns over new spells

[vgunn]

With the new Paths of the Wise book on the horizon it will not be too long before a number (5o I believe were mentioned) new spells will come into play.

My concern is how true to the Middle-Earth it will remain. Would hate to see it turn into D&D type atmosphere. One of the things I enjoyed about the LOTR RPG was the attention to detail on the original spell list.

So what is the thinking for adding additional spells?
Where are the source references going to come from?

[Doug Burke]

I can assure you of two things:[list=1][*]TPTB are very concerned with maintaining the proper feel of the setting in all LOTR products.[*]The playtesters selected are just as dedicated to this end and would do their best to prevent any "CODA D&D" kind of thing from happening.[/list=1]

[Phantom]

As long as they keep things similar to the spell selction in the main book (ie very limited offensive spells) things should be fine.

[Elendur]

Gandalf doenst cast every spell in ME in the books. YOu cant be afraid to make up your own spells.

[Jason Durall]

Originally posted by vgunn
With the new Paths of the Wise book on the horizon it will not be too long before a number (5o I believe were mentioned) new spells will come into play.

My concern is how true to the Middle-Earth it will remain. Would hate to see it turn into D&D type atmosphere. One of the things I enjoyed about the LOTR RPG was the attention to detail on the original spell list.

As one of the playtesters, I can assure you that we were very concerned with keeping the Tolkien flavour and avoiding the D&D atmosphere when evaluating the new spells.

I can't give specifics due to the NDA we playtesters signed, but my advice would be when the book is published and you want to introduce elements of it into your campaign, and (as with all such additions), you should go through the list and decide which work for you and which you think are out of the feeling you'd like to represent with your chronicle.

However, it should be said that even sticking to the spell list from the core rulebook could yield D&D style play if the Narrator and any magician/loremaster/wizard characters are indescriminate about their spell-use.

Our magician player often talks about the struggle between him wanting to be "effective" in combat and hose lightning bolts and blade-shatterings around like there's no tomorrow, or to rely on subtler uses of spell-craft, and even suffer for it. I cannot imagine how he does it, as in our 25th session, he cast a spell for the first time - one that he'd had since character creation. And it would have been a quite useful one. He cast a different spell in our second session, and hasn't repeated it since, though it would have been equally useful on several occasions. In fact, the only spell he's cast more than once visibly was lightning bolt, which he's cast on all of two occasions.

[Ineti]

Just wait till you see the write-up for "Gandalf's Magnificent Mansion."

[vgunn]

Thats what I wanted to hear. Of course you can abuse the rules for magic to the point that the campaign turns into a re-run of D&D, but didn't want Decipher to fuel this fire.

Sounds like this won't be the case and that is good.