Unused Spells So Far

ScarpeIron · **Posted:** Fri Feb 14, 2014 4:31 pm

A "conjure of cheap tricks" can simply be a human sleight-of-hand expert gifted with oratory charisma that is able to beguile the slow of wit.

As for more casters, well LoTR is set in the time where "magic" is fading away. I agree with some of the above posters. Tolkiens "magic" seems to be centered around totems of some forms, artifacts if you will. A means to channel energy. Except for that "magic" used by the likes of Gandalf and such. As for humans, those short lived/average joe/everyday human, being magic-users; there were none. There were those that were looked human but had came from a different lineage (Numenorians, Beornlings, etc.). If you recall Numernorians were known to have diluted there bloodline by marrying into the lesser forms, Beorn is either descended from a line of bears older than the 1st age or used a skin of a bear and skin-shifted like the shamans of Norse lore (where Tolkein took a lot of inspiration).

Then let us not forget that what we play is a game that has been "telephoned." If you know the game you know what I mean. Tolkien is the 1st Teller, a few people later Jackson becomes a Teller then a down the chain a bit to gw. Magic in LoTR should not become what gw fantasy magic is. If that is what one wants, then take up gw fantasy skirmish gaming or mordheim.
Gw already has flooded the game with enough casters, we all know the "saber rattlers" claiming it was done for game balance, blah, blah, etc. Though no where in Tolkein lore AND/OR Jackson movies is there a goblin able to cast tremor, shatter, or an elf stormcaller....or dwarven warriors riding mountain goats/rams(not Tokien, but in Jackson version...), in the ME ages that we current play in. That is gw becoming the Teller.

And...its all good. Would be nice is they start using the word "inspired by..." instead of "based on..."

gw has the rights to this venue for another 6-7yrs? Then what? Fades away? Destined for gw speciality games nightmare...

ScarpeIron · **Posted:** Fri Feb 14, 2014 4:43 pm

To be honest I would like to see more human factions. Not like the short lived/short selections of the fiefdoms, but to seriously flesh those out. Yes even make a human faction from the Woodsmen or some human population north of Mirkwood. I don't know just give more bite to the human side. Make the KoMT better than the cannon fodder WoMT on horse that they are, etc. After all it is the ending of Time for the fey folks.

I know it is easier to make up evil troop/hero types, but would be nice to see that same creative drive shifted to the human faction, with balanced statlines and such.

But alas, I understand that it is a matter of what draws in the money.

VandalCabbage · **Joined:** Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:12 pm **Posts:** 286

It's not all that bad. True, there are some bad eggs, but compare it to a lot of other lotr games on the market and we're not doing too bad. LoTRO, for instatnce. I love this game, but the rune-keeper and to a lesser extent lore-master classes feel a bit too magiky. Wheras Ringwraith abilities in SBG work just as I pictured them in the books, mostly working on fear. Anyway, it's all up to personal interpretation; I may wish to picture a post-apocalyptic middle earth where elves scavange army rations and Denethor and Saruman huddle over the last computers with Skype. Am I wrong? Really, the only "right" interpretations are those that the majority agrees on.

GWvsJohn · **Joined:** Fri Dec 13, 2013 3:30 pm **Posts:** 62

ScarpeIron wrote:

A "conjure of cheap tricks" can simply be a human sleight-of-hand expert gifted with oratory charisma that is able to beguile the slow of wit.

As for more casters, well LoTR is set in the time where "magic" is fading away. I agree with some of the above posters. Tolkiens "magic" seems to be centered around totems of some forms, artifacts if you will. A means to channel energy. Except for that "magic" used by the likes of Gandalf and such. As for humans, those short lived/average joe/everyday human, being magic-users; there were none....

I yet again point to the fact that the white council, at the very least, considered the possibility that the Necromancer was a human sorcerer. Doesn't this imply that a human magic user of significant power is possible?

VandalCabbage · **Joined:** Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:12 pm **Posts:** 286

They considered him to possibly be some sort of witch doctor striking fear into woodsmen with cheap parlour tricks. They had not yet connected him to the corruption that would later turn the greenwood into mirkwood.

JamesR · **Posted:** Fri Feb 14, 2014 8:56 pm

VandalCabbage wrote:

They considered him to possibly be some sort of witch doctor striking fear into woodsmen with cheap parlour tricks. They had not yet connected him to the corruption that would later turn the greenwood into mirkwood.

Thank you! Lol exactly the point I thought I had made earlier. The White Council didn't go "Oh the Necromancer is powerful! Maybe he's human" they said "oh the necromamcer is a stage magician. He's some human who's fooled people into thinking he's actually magic. "

GWvsJohn · **Joined:** Fri Dec 13, 2013 3:30 pm **Posts:** 62

JamesR wrote:

VandalCabbage wrote:

They considered him to possibly be some sort of witch doctor striking fear into woodsmen with cheap parlour tricks. They had not yet connected him to the corruption that would later turn the greenwood into mirkwood.

Thank you! Lol exactly the point I thought I had made earlier. The White Council didn't go "Oh the Necromancer is powerful! Maybe he's human" they said "oh the necromamcer is a stage magician. He's some human who's fooled people into thinking he's actually magic. "

Where are you getting this information from?

JamesR · **Posted:** Fri Feb 14, 2014 11:13 pm

From watching the movie. The white council scene is pretty obvious that Saruman (who is the one who suggests its a human "dabbling in black magic") is writing him off.
No one else is convinced its a mere human as Gandalf and Galadriel know the significance of the morgul blade and Elrond is very neutral but obviously shocked seeing the blade

ScarpeIron · **Posted:** Sat Feb 15, 2014 2:45 am

I think you are missing our point. Or failed to follow what I was saying about there being different Tellers of the Hobbit.

This conversation is purely a Jackson'esque movie moment. There was no such meeting in the Hobbit by Tolkien. So seeking "proof" is based solely on how you interpret that movie scene.

As a side note; Gandalf discovered that Sauron returned in a living body, but in the movies Sauron is a disembodied "eye". My point is that there are movie moments that do not match in Tolkien lore.

Beowulf03809 · **Posted:** Sat Feb 15, 2014 8:34 am

And if I recall correctly, Gandalf suspected that it was one of the Nazgul in Dol Guldur.

Although I'm enjoying the Hobbit movies and really glad to see some of my favorite 'backstory' moments coming forward they really are taking a lot more liberty than they did with the LotR movies. I have to accept it at different levels...

VandalCabbage · **Joined:** Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:12 pm **Posts:** 286

To be fair they are having to show things about which we know almost nothing of the details. The liberties they take during that scene is a lot better than the ones that affect Thorin and Co in my opinion since they blatantly change what happened. As for Saruman's accusation that it is just a human trickster that's hardly out of character for him since he wanted to downsize the threat.

And as for the "Teller" theory, I disagree. Everyone has their own opinion on how characters should look. GW has drawn some characters from the book and thus their interpretation is significantly different than PJ's in that way.

ScarpeIron · **Posted:** Sun Feb 16, 2014 5:43 am

What? I am not referencing individual characters, for I know of no magic casting goblins or orcs in the Hobbit or LoTR.
I meant that Jackson and then gw are "telling" the story in their own way. Adding to it. Tolkien did not have Transformers (the mountain giants) which Jackson did nor were there warg buses carrying 3 goblins about which gw made up. It was said before; I really enjoy Tolkiens works, but the game I play is inspired upon his works.

VandalCabbage · **Joined:** Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:12 pm **Posts:** 286

The first paragraph was not a response to you ScareIron, it was to Beowulf, sorry.

What I mean was, Tolkien did have mountain giants in the Hobbit: see page 77: "across the valley the stone giants were out". But how Peter Jackson interpreted them is obviously different to how most people would, but that doesn't make his reading any less valid. All of our personal readings of Tolkien's works are "inspired by" his works. In the hobbit, Goblins are described as riding on wargs; they are diminutive, so a few could easily fit on one. It's not how I would have done it, but I can see GW's logic. And as long as I can see the logic of a particular reading in an adaptation even if it is not my preferred reading, as far as I am concerned it is a valid reading and therefore "based on" rather than "inspired by".

GWvsJohn · **Joined:** Fri Dec 13, 2013 3:30 pm **Posts:** 62

I just reread the section of the Silmarillion about the Necromancer. I guess they thought he was a Ringwraith before they realized he was Sauron.

Beowulf03809 · **Posted:** Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:59 pm

As I mentioned, MOST of the expanded interpretation I like. PJ did a good job for the most part pulling in references from conversations in dialog, notes in appendix, etc. and building a pretty good plot around those. But there are some things that actually DO have details in references and when creative liberties change them dramatically it can bug a person that cares a lot for the source material. For example, treatment of the Nazgul as some beings that were tombed up and 'broke free' does bug me.

Some other areas are more 'gray' in that I wish it wasn't done like that but it doesn't really detract from my enjoyment too much. For example the barrel scene was too over-the-top (like the chase in Goblin Town in AUJ) and the golden statue meltdown was totally bogus IMO. But those aren't going against the core writing, just liberties. I can still enjoy the movie in the theme it was intended...a child's story that is being adapted to a more mature audience with tie in to a grander epic ( LotR ). Some things that really crash against Tolkien's themes will bug me though.

VandalCabbage · **Joined:** Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:12 pm **Posts:** 286

Well said Beowulf. The thing about the nazgul didn't annoy me before but now is getting annoying since PJ has apparently never read the appendices. The thing is for me, I like the things he gets right, like the Erebor prologue, the unexpected party and the riddle game from the first film and the confrontation with spiders and Thorin's character development in the second film only make the things he gets wrong seem even worse in comparison. That said, since the Hobbit has so far acted like the prequels to the original trilogy of Star Wars films I am excited for the third one, since Revenge of the Sith was so much better than the other prequels. That's my logic anyway.

Has anyone noticed just how far off-topic from the original post. this all went? It's actually really funny. :rofl:

Beowulf03809 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 19, 2014 7:18 pm

Not TOO far off. Let's see if we can pull it back...

PJ is pulling from a lot of scattered (and usually 'thin') sources of additional material to fill in the Dol Guldur and Dwarf/Orc backstories. Some of this material originates from the appendices of the LotR to various degrees of detail while some is developed from fragments of conversation or description in the texts. To fill in the details and flesh out three movies PJ and company have sometimes taken creative liberties that may stretch the acceptance of Tolkien fans more so than the LotR films did.

GW, as the second layer, works off of the films as its starting point more so than the source text. This is completely understandable but just as with the pre-school game "telephone" the message is distorted more and more with each pass. GW has a greater flair for dramatic magic in the flavor of D&D more than Middle Earth and this flows into the game when not already contained by the source material.

GW has expanded on the Spells available in the game as a result of this flexibility but has not yet assigned all those new spells to an applicable caster. And so we are left wondering about...

Unused Spells So Far

TheFlameoftheWest · **Posted:** Wed May 14, 2014 1:48 pm

I personally think that Gandalf in both incarnations should have Banishment and Fortify Spirit.
"Go back to the Shadow!" sounds like an attempt to Banish the Balrog, as well as the blast of light that sends the Ringwraiths running when rescuing Faramir and the retreating Osgiliath garrison. For game balance and theme, it should be very difficult even for Gandalf to cast and require a 6.
Fortify Spirit is used several times on Frodo, and probably on Aragorn when he states "the defenses have to hold..."

What do you think?

JamesR · **Posted:** Wed May 14, 2014 1:51 pm

Gandalf probably should have banishment but it'd make him too strong regardless as no one had more than 1 damaging spell. And he's got a better spell than Fortify IMO so it'd be redundant

TheFlameoftheWest · **Posted:** Wed May 14, 2014 2:19 pm

Quote:

Gandalf probably should have banishment but it'd make him too strong regardless as no one had more than 1 damaging spell.

He'd have to have additional points cost, I'd say probably +10

Quote:

And he's got a better spell than Fortify IMO so it'd be redundant

I'm not so sure... Think about being able to add Will points to friendly models who you've already Fortified their Spirit and they're rolling extra dice to resist magic! Again I think it would an additional +10 points to Gandalf.

Unused Spells So Far

Who is online