Redpill me on MERP, is it really that good or do people view it with rosy nostalgia goggles.
MERP is to Tolkien like Marvel's Thor is to Norse Mythology. Shit shares some names but that's about it. The crit charts were always amusing, no one dies of HP loss in MERP they get some awful crit that ruins them forever. Also the pithy commentary with some of the crits is pretty amusing.
>>98193732Ah, I thought it's more in line with the source material. What tabletop would you say is true to Middle Earth.
>>98193756That IS in line with the source material. Smaug didn't give a shit about anything they threw at it until that one bastard got lucky with his probably magical black arrow.Boromir was fighting a small horde of orcs without giving a fuck about the "many arrows" sticking into his chest. He was still alive when they found him a while later (no crits here, simply death by a ridiculously long battle grinding out his HP). In the movie, the third arrow is a crit.The Witch King gets killed in one hit.Sam survives a duel against a giant spider that is also the daughter of either an otherworldly abomination from the void, or one of the minor divinities that created the world and on par with Melkor, depending on how you interpret things, with a shining sword and a flask of water. He also didn't do shit, the spider fumbled and impaled itself on the blade while trying to crush Sam.Bilbo made it through the entirety of the Hobbit shrugging everything off, then got one shot by a stone to the head before the final battle. Aragorn and the hobbits fight the Nazgul just fine. Frodo gets critter in one hit.Whenever someone dies without an obvious crit, they're described as having suffered innumerable wounds before succumbing (Boromir, Bjeorn the bear man...)Melkor fights a duel with a very angry elf and gets hit seven times, doesn't really care. Gets critted once, has foot pain forever. Sauron wrecks an army. Gets critted and loses his finger with the ring, loses all his power.The dramatic turn of fortune in a single hit is peak Tolkien narrative.
>>98193474>men wearing dresses and skirtsWoke garbage. Do not play.
>>98195083>Gets critted and loses his finger with the ring, loses all his power.That's Hackson movie bullshit. In the book Gil-galad and Elendil kill Sauron at the cost of their own lives and Isildur cuts the ring off his corpse because he's a loot ninja.
>>98193474It was that good, provided it's what you wanted.Problem with DnD is that it can feel a lot like roleplaying a miniature wargame. On the other hand, if you go to the traditional skill-oriented games like Runequest or Traveller, it's much more immersive but it takes away a lot of sense of wonder.Rolemaster, MERP, Against the Darkmaster, they're somewhere in between. They're still tactical adventure games like DnD, they still keep part of that sense of adventure, but at the same time they're more immersive and less miniature wargame like.It was good? If what you wanted was a middle point between epic DnD and immersive Runequest, that was it.
>>98195083Wait, Beorn died?
>>98195723Boromir, not Beorn.Wrong book.Remember, they had a spare Aragorn for the stint between Rinvendell and the other side of Moria?, but he was a bad Aragorn who tried to steal The Hobbits Lucky Charms?And he dieded and there was big sad because he said sowwy?
I never liked how spells worked in it and Rolemaster. You needing to do rolls to learn spells after a level up and then needing a bunch of useless spells until you can do something made playing a wizard a chore unless your GM lax the rule.
>>98195083Doesn't MERP have rangers blasting fireballs?
>>98193756The One Ring is the only one that at least tries.
>>98197357No, Rangers only get Ranger spell lists and the Open Channeling spell lists which don't include a lot of offensive options. It does have everyone having the chance to learn spells, most offensive spells are restricted by level limits to Mages and Animists.
>>98197659>Ranger spell listsWhy the fuck
>>98197670Because Rangers get spells in muh DnD. On the positive side the Ranger Spell lists is stuff like boosts to Pathfinding and Outdoor skills, the flashiest things on it are walking on water (level 5/10) and speaking to animals (level 10/10).
>>98197895>Because Rangers get spells in muh DnD.That's the point. A game this retarded shouldn't be touched, and it shouldn't have been even back then.
>>98197670Rangers are magical
>>98197670Aragorn literally has healing magic.
>>98197497Does it just try or is it successful?
>>98197986Yes, because he's fucking Elros reincarnated, or appears to be like all the good shit the Numenoreans did in one person. He's not your average ranger, nor his abilities are supposed to be common (at least because he's so well-traveled).That being said: Tolkienian magic is absolutely not "do whatever, it's magic bro". While the "low magic ME" crowd is retarded as fuck, it is true that in almost any case in the third age magic is pretty subdued realtive to, say, dundee shit - Gandalf big weapon is, like, talking really well.So... even Aragorn being really good at healing people with athelas, wich is a magical power indeed, is not him walking on water like he's friggin' Jesus. Hell, between the two abilities, the talking with animals makes more sense, if anything.(well, there is Legolas and snow, I can concede that was pretty random)>>98198015My experience with it is almost non-exhistant at the moment, so I'm not gonna say if the system is good or not. It does seem pretty well tought.Setting-wise tough, it's spot on.
>>98198050Your "average" ranger is a dunedain, one of those long-lived semi-mythical men directly descended from not!atlanteans.
>>98198094And, from what we see, not athelas-using healers. I tend to think it's pretty clear he's the best of the best from the Dunedain, considering the Hunt for Gollum thing - your guess is as good as mine if that is supposed to be because he's "magical" as the last numeroean (of sorts), because he's the best of all the duneadains (meaning those other guys would be pretty OP anyway) or because he's VERY experienced. Personally I would say a and c, because the other dunedain coming from the North don't seem THAT cool (his peers in battle are Eomer and Imrahil).Note the theme of degeneracy in Arnor, in more general terms- we can't gauge other rangers, of course, but I wouldn't expect them to be Glorfindel's equals, just really good "militarized" woodsmen. Nothing clearly supernatural, but then, I don't picture the average ELF to be.Nevertheless... this is pretty non-consequiential. I pointed out that his powers are "non-flashy": even if we would assume (clearly wrongly, I'd say) all the Dunedain had athelas-using powers, that wouldn't make the case for them imitating Jesus.
