how would you stat gandalf the superhero?!

[muminalver]

Hi, I had this idea/ concept of running a Brp goldenbook middle earth-ish campaign with 2 power systems, superpowers for Sauron, gandalf, Elrond & C;o and Sorcery for low simple magic. But how would you stat the superpowered heroes and villans as: the Barlog, Galadriel, mighty Radagast etc, etc?

 

[muminalver]

Still playing around with the golden book. I think Gandalf the Grey would have heat control, heat projection, several levels of resistances,heat, cold etc and finally super skills ( due to his longvivity.) Sauroman would have weather control, elèctric projection.

[Atgxtg]

There have been a few attempts to do a BRP Middle Earth campaign.

For Gandalf, the thing is that he isn't really a human, but a Maia (a spirit or Angel). So most of his stats would be higher than the typical human range. I could do up a conversion from ICE's MERP or Decipher's LOTR write-ups, if it would help. 

Edited September 7, 2016 by Atgxtg

[g33k]

Gandalf -- like all the "Istari," or wizards -- is one of the Maiar.  But they have accepted limitations (just how much isn't clear, but pretty hefty) on their ultimate powers and abilities.

Sauron is also a Maia -- but he is a follower of Melkor/Morgoth (one of the Ainur/Valar, even higher-power beings; like a Seraph, in classical angelology...) .   Sauron's master imposes no limits on his powers to live in Middle Earth.

The Maiar, in the fullness of their power, are about as far beyond Elrond in power, as Elrond is beyond the average Man.

 

[Atgxtg]

I kinda get the feeling that some of the limits can be exceeded somewhat, but that the Istari have to justify it. For instance Gandalf could probably use more of his abilities against the Balrog or the Witchking, than he could against a common man or orc. 

And I thing Sauron also has some limits imposed on him. For example, after the faill of Numenor he loses some of his shape shifting abilities. So it seems likely that his powers are capped at some level below his full abilities. He also doesn't seem to do very well in battle, so he's probably not beyond man or elf as far as combat abilities go. 

In general the powerful beings get weaker on Middle Earth during the latter ages. The dragons are a lot smaller, and even the elves are "faded".

 

[muminalver]

The reason I started toying with the superpowers was the fact that Gandalf and company, are so much superior to "normal" humans. So make them superheroes and the rest talented humans. Sorcery to represent "low" magic. I do think you could use humans as base, add super stats and skills to make them other species.. And I'm not making a serious middle earth game.. Only playing with brp possibilities

 

 

[muminalver]

Could make other supers weaker against the powers they can project. Ordenary humans resistent.

 

[Atgxtg]

Well, in that case you just have to decide on how powerful the big baddies, such as Balrogs and Dragons are supposed to be, and then work in a sort of power hierarchy. In most ways, magic in Middle Earth is subtle, so you probably won't have a lot of levels of superpowers. And it does seem like a lot of the Istari's powers are held in reserve for times of need. Either by by thier own choice or by some sort of divine law. Probably a bit of both. 

 

A good bit of difficulty lies in the fact that we don't really see any of the more powerful beings go all out. We only get hints of their true power.  You don;t even find out that Gandalf is a Maia unless you read through the appendix in LOTR and go through some of the supplementary material. Tolkien put a lot of stuff "off stage". 

But I'd probably start off by looking at dragons and deciding if they needed to be buffed up a bit. Maybe even look at dragons in MERP, LOTR, and TOR to see how big they are in comparison to RQ dragons and possibly scale up RQ dragons a bit. The look at Balrog stats to see how the compare to dragons (and men) and try to get something about the same relative ranking in BRP. 

 

F

[Khedrac]

 

On 07/09/2016 at 4:52 PM, g33k said:

Gandalf -- like all the "Istari," or wizards -- is one of the Maiar.  But they have accepted limitations (just how much isn't clear, but pretty hefty) on their ultimate powers and abilities.

Sauron is also a Maia -- but he is a follower of Melkor/Morgoth (one of the Ainur/Valar, even higher-power beings; like a Seraph, in classical angelology...) .   Sauron's master imposes no limits on his powers to live in Middle Earth.

The Maiar, in the fullness of their power, are about as far beyond Elrond in power, as Elrond is beyond the average Man.

 

Yes, and again no.

In Tolkein's Middle Earth the Maiar (and to an extent the Valar) are not beyond 'mortals' in power.  They are beyond most in power, but not all.

Sauron (when he had all of his power) turned himself into a werewolf in order to fight a dog and lost.  Yes, he was beaten by a dog, OK one that was foretold to lose to the greatest wolf ever, but still.  For that matter this implies that said wolf (which Morgoth had raised) was also tougher than Sauron...

Elrond is probably a better healer than Gandalf (OK Gandalf definitely is limited in what he can do) - but so probably is Aragon.

Morgoth came very close to losing when he dueled an elf king (I forget which - Fingolfin?)

Feanor created things beyond the ability of any of the Valar.

All that said, I agree that magic is usually "off stage" in Tolkein's Middle Earth which makes it hard to balance in a game.  Most magic is the fashioning of items (from the Silmarils through the rings of power down to the Arnor daggers from the barrow)  There is very little actual casting of spells.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah. One thing about Sauron is that he gets defeated in every fight that he enters. Its one of the reasons why he doesn't really appear in LOTR. 

What Middle Earth RPGs that exist tend to stat out Gandalf at very good human or slightly better, in BRP terms, high teens to mid 20s. And with the way BRP works, someone like Sauron could have very good stats, and still get taken down by a critical hit.