I’m the Gm for a high fantasy game and want to include “High” men. The lifepath cap for them is seven, while the dwarvern cap is at six and five for the elves. But even with the high starting cap the characters are coming out underwhelming. Any suggestions? I thought of letting them use the dwarvern age chart for stats.
What’s “underwhelming”? How many skills do they have, on average, and what’s the average exponent? What numbers are you aiming for? Are any of them buying gray stats/skills?
Their stats are underwhelming. They have mostly 4’s and 5’s. They have one grey skill on average with an average skill exponent of four.
That’s hardly underwhelming! Fours and fives is very respectable indeed, especially with a massive spell list. And even one gray skill is a big deal!
My guess is it’s the aging holding them down. If you really want to turn up the power, though, give everyone the Vigor of Youth trait for free. Watch those ancient Numenoreans be practically Elven.
I’ll implement that then. Thanks.
Yeah, 5 dice is a solid number considering:
- ForKs
- Help
- Traits
- Working Carefully
- Artha
I would expect to see a player who knows how to use all of the above to pull 8-10 dice reliably.
I’m interested in this concept of reduced LP for elves and dwarves: while this makes some sense in some cases (fellowship of the ring has a noticably young elf and dwarf --legolas/gimli, accompanying the humans and hobbits) where the Demihuman is kind of in a “wanderlust” phase, it would seem odd to keep this concept in a game of Lords and Numenorian high men where one would expect the elves to be of equal social stature which requires them to be physically more powerful.
Or at least the lower status elves should at least have some explanation for why an elf captain is paling around with a human marquis. Grief should in someway be the game balancer, not I think, life paths (outside of a fellowship of the ring type group).
Equal social stature says absolutely nothing about physical power. If you take a bunch of +1M LPs you just won’t be that strong, even as an Elf or Dwarf; a young human with all +1P will out-might you.
Also note that you can reach peak social standing in most settings in 4 LPs and in any setting with 5 LPs. Once you have princes all around the extra LPs are more about experience, and yes, racking up some more of those +1M and +1P bonuses than about standing.
So, both Legolas and Gimli are older than your average 4LP characters. Legolas is significantly older. Gimli himself is a middleaged dwarf - Tolkien’s dwarves live up to 250 years. So Gimli is about 35, in human years.
BW captures the feeling of Middle-Earth very well, but it isn’t Middle-Earth. Its Dwarves live much longer. Its Elves can live as long, but in practice most BW Elves burned with LPs are just a few hundred years old, nothing like the millennia lived by many of Tolkien’s Elves.
I’d say you get roughly the right aging if you halve BW Dwarves’ ages. For Elves you need to multiply by a factor of whatever you want, as long as it’s large. 10-50x would be reasonable.
I think dwarves would live a lot longer than 250 - nearly every one in Tolkien canon died in battle. Thorin Oakenshield was about 200, Balin was 230ish, Dain Ironfoot was over 250, etc. Gimli was over 230 when he went to live with Legolas in the Elven Lands, and I don’t think he was supposed to be decrepit either.
Eh, maybe. Wiki says that dwarves live about 250 years. Maybe their magical connection to the earth gives them vigor powers.
I’d have to go digging for sources, but from my recollection 250 is about right. Dwalin is one of the oldest Dwarves ever to live at about 350. Dáin II Ironfoot is still a prodigious warrior when he dies just a few years past 250, but he’s noted to be quite old even then. I think 250 is about right, with Dwarves tending to remain quite vigorous right up until they keel over.
Well, the exact age transfer to BW doesn’t really matter. My point was - neither Legolas nor Gimli are young by the standards of their races.