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Aiden Harrison
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Lore question about Lindon

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 17:02

I'm working on a project to expand the character creation rules so cultures are not so cookie cutter (was a pet peeve of mine in 1e and its still there in 2e). I won’t go into details; it is still a work in progress but for reference there are three extra steps to character creation – Early Life, Social Class and Education.

Long story short:

I'm working on the Social Class part for my Elves of Lindon and I've called it Elven Lineage as describing Elven social class is a little tricky compared to the other cultures.
I need six categories, one category has a +1 better Standard of Living (Common for Elves of Lindon) and two categories have -1 worse standard of living (Poor for Elves of Lindon)

My six categories are:

Noldor Lord (Common)
Noldor Commoner (Frugal)
Sindar Lord (Frugal)
Sindar Commoner (Frugal)
Laiquendi Lord (Poor)
Laiquendi Commoner (Poor)

Now on to my questions

Is this Lore accurate? Are there still Laiquendi in Lindon at the end of the Third Age?
Is there a better word to use than commoner? Doesn’t feel too Elven, maybe citizen...? Not sure.
Anyone got any other suggestions for breaking Lindon Elves in 6 social classes I’d be happy to hear them.

(then I have to come up with 6 forms of Education... still working on that...)
 
Otaku-sempai
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 19:51

Some of the Laiquendi seem to have dwelt around Lake Nenuial during the Second Age, while others resettled east of the Misty Mountains to live among the Silvan Elves. Some of the Green-elves might very well have remained in Lindon and in East Lune between the Blue Mountains and the River Lune (at least until the Elves left East Lune due to the rise of Angmar). The movements of the Laiquendi just aren't well documented beyond the First Age.

If they've kept to their traditional ways, the Laiquendi would be much more like the common Wood-elves of Mirkwood and Lórien than the Sinda and Nodo Elves of Lindon and Mithlond. However, their Silvan language would have likely fallen out of daily usage in favor of Sindarin.
Last edited by Otaku-sempai on Wed 28 Jul 2021, 20:24, edited 1 time in total.
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gyrovague
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 20:05

I'll certainly leave it to the authentic Tolkien scholars to answer the OP's questions, but for me this raises what I think is a flaw in the "Standard of Living" as presented in the Alpha.

My first reaction to this was to think that players of Elves should just choose whatever SoL appeals to them for story reasons. The problem with that is that a higher SoL is just simply "better" than a lower one, so somebody with a character concept that would suggest a lower SoL is...well....S.O.L. (I could NOT resist that.)

I'd love to see SoL designed so that, as with armour, it's always a trade-off. Sure, a high SoL gets you X, but a low SoL gets you Y. Not sure exactly what Y is...I'm guessing something that Sam Gamgee would have...but you get the idea. I hope. (Lower-cased 'hope'. Not wasting a point on that.). Since Useful Items are so potent, Y could be something pretty compelling.

That would solve the general problem that, based on the current rules, higher SoL characters have a massive advantage over lower SoL characters. But it would also allow for each culture...not just Elves...to have a range, rather than a single predetermined SoL. Again, to support a greater array of character concepts. Maybe there are no Prosperous rangers, but surely every culture could have at least two choices?
 
Asgo
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 20:34

...

That would solve the general problem that, based on the current rules, higher SoL characters have a massive advantage over lower SoL characters. But it would also allow for each culture...not just Elves...to have a range, rather than a single predetermined SoL. Again, to support a greater array of character concepts. Maybe there are no Prosperous rangers, but surely every culture could have at least two choices?
yeah, a range would have advantages towards character diversity or as a starting difficulty bonus, however you want to see it.
I also would separate it from the cultures at least somewhat. I mean adventuring character no matter the culture likely are going to have more inclinations and requirements towards riches, compared to people staying at home.
The Fair Folk live in harmony with Middle- earth and have little or
no use for those things that others consider precious. They lack
nothing, and craft beautiful things using the richest materials,
but they don’t profit from their wealth the way other folks do.
Taking this blob from the Elves description, "Standard of Living" sounds more like a cultural stance towards money than actual living standard.
I mean based on that bandits robbing the party should get more value from robbing a frugal elf than a common hobbit.

Given the money abstraction they chose having some with more and some with less seems like a necessity, but not necessarily bound to cultures.

You could tie in the cultures more into what effect wealth has on a person from culture X instead of how much a char has at the beginning. Something like influence on shadow recovery, the shadow path of the callings or more personalized effects on cultures.
 
Mythicos
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 20:46

I'll certainly leave it to the authentic Tolkien scholars to answer the OP's questions, but for me this raises what I think is a flaw in the "Standard of Living" as presented in the Alpha.

My first reaction to this was to think that players of Elves should just choose whatever SoL appeals to them for story reasons. The problem with that is that a higher SoL is just simply "better" than a lower one, so somebody with a character concept that would suggest a lower SoL is...well....S.O.L. (I could NOT resist that.)

I'd love to see SoL designed so that, as with armour, it's always a trade-off. Sure, a high SoL gets you X, but a low SoL gets you Y. Not sure exactly what Y is...I'm guessing something that Sam Gamgee would have...but you get the idea. I hope. (Lower-cased 'hope'. Not wasting a point on that.). Since Useful Items are so potent, Y could be something pretty compelling.

That would solve the general problem that, based on the current rules, higher SoL characters have a massive advantage over lower SoL characters. But it would also allow for each culture...not just Elves...to have a range, rather than a single predetermined SoL. Again, to support a greater array of character concepts. Maybe there are no Prosperous rangers, but surely every culture could have at least two choices?

I agree it would be cool to have a range of SoL within a culture.

But as far as cross-culture goes, I think (without having any proof, so don't sue me) that SoL is part of the balance between the different cultures.

For example, Dwarves have 7 skills at rank 0, 5 at rank 1, 4 at rank 2 and 2 at rank 3. On average a skill has 1.05 ranks.
Men of Bree, on the other hand, has respectively 4-8-5-1. On average a skill has 1.17 ranks.

EDIT: Forget the following regardin Derived stats; obviously I'm unable to add...
Derived stats is STR+22, Heart+8, Wits+10 for Dwarves.
For Men of Bree, it's STR+20, Heart+10, Wits+10 (so +2 over Dwarves).
And so on. Certain cultures are stronger than others in certain aspects, and I think SoL is part of that, as does the Cultural Blessing, for example.

If you allowed Elves to have a better SoL, I think it would slightly unbalance them compared to other cultures.

One might not care about that (YMMV), but I think it's important to be aware of this.
Last edited by Mythicos on Thu 29 Jul 2021, 14:28, edited 1 time in total.
 
gyrovague
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 21:26

Of course the other solution is to leave SoL as it is, but give the cultures with low SoL something else meaningful, so that SoL isn't so compelling from an optimization point of view.

But I think I prefer the option that SoL itself is a trade-off.
 
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Harlath
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Wed 28 Jul 2021, 23:00

But as far as cross-culture goes, I think (without having any proof, so don't sue me) that SoL is part of the balance between the different cultures.

For example, Dwarves have 7 skills at rank 0, 5 at rank 1, 4 at rank 2 and 2 at rank 3. On average a skill has 1.05 ranks.
Men of Bree, on the other hand, has respectively 4-8-5-1. On average a skill has 1.17 ranks.

Derived stats is STR+22, Heart+8, Wits+10 for Dwarves.
For Men of Bree, it's STR+20, Heart+10, Wits+10 (so +2 over Dwarves).

And so on. Certain cultures are stronger than others in certain aspects, and I think SoL is part of that, as does the Cultural Blessing, for example.
I think all 6 cultures in the Alpha have Endurance/Hope/Parry base stats adding to 40. Admittedly you could debate which Endurance/Hope/Parry is most useful rather than evenly weighting all three. And it may indeed differ for different character types - an archer who hopes to spend a lot of time in Rearward might be less fussed about a high Parry.

Skills - I think the 6 Alpha cultures all have skills whose cost add to 29 using the costs on p46. It's just some cultures have spread things out, others have concentrated their allocation. I checked the maths on this a while ago, but not impossible I botched a calculation!

Standard of living - definitely an advantage early, but quickly levels off as PCs gain treasure. Easier for those with low SoL to raise it (takes less treasure), so they'll narrow the gap quickly.

I like the new standard of living - gives a mechanical reason to seek out treasure without counting gold pieces (not genre appropriate) or bogging things down.

Lindon (to address the OP's topic!) - could wait and see what High Elves look like in the Rivendell supplement? Although there's a lot to be said for cracking on and creativity! Or you could look to various Elf standards of living in the 1e books if you have access to them?

@gyrovague: as my hero JK Galbraith put it, "Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive" and I'm conscious of making poverty "noble". That said, could be a good avenue for creativity and some offsetting benefit from lower SoL might be genre appropriate? Frugal - could ignore a point or two of fatigue per journey? I'd be inclined to leave off any benefit of being poor, as at that point you're hungry and you've gone well past "Rugged Ranger".
 
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Aiden Harrison
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Thu 29 Jul 2021, 00:20

Part of what I'm doing is making standard of living variable as well as trimming back the standard skill package to 14 pts, your early life adds 5 more pts, you social class 5 more and your Education 5 more. Then you get the usual 10 to finish off. I've done 3 cultures, 3 to go.

Early life adds 5 skill points and tweaks your Endurance, Hope, parry slightly and adds an extra favoured skill to choose from.
Social class is slightly different, if you get the +1 standard of living you only get 4 skill points, if you have the -1 standard of living you get 6 skill points and 5 skill points if normal standard of living.
Education gets 5 pts of skills and set whether you can improve your combat skills with the 10 skill points.

So far it looks pretty balanced, Ill post in full when I finish the other 3 cultures.

Standard of living and class structure are weird topic for Elves. Do they have merchants for example, or coins... I think they have coins. There are Elven Lords but how do they relate to 'normal Elves? Are there lower class elves... Not in the same way as cultures of Men of Dwarves or Hobbits.

So I've split them on lineage.

I need 6 results and they way I've split them sorta works Lore wise as far as I can see.
Last edited by Aiden Harrison on Thu 29 Jul 2021, 17:08, edited 2 times in total.
 
Otaku-sempai
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Thu 29 Jul 2021, 02:56

Standard of living and class structure are weird topic for Elves. Do they have merchants for example, or coins... I think they have coins. Their are Elven Lords but how do they relate to 'normal Elves? Are there lower class elves... Not in the same way as cultures of Men of Dwarves or Hobbits.

So I've split them on lineage.

I need 6 results and they way I've split them sorta works Lore wise as far as I can see.
.
I not sure that the Elves of Middle-earth mint or use coinage among themselves, though they are at least familiar with the concept from dealing with Men and Dwarves. Differences in social class among the Elves might come down more to the attitudes of individuals where some Elf-lords might be particularly haughty while others don't put on airs so much but still expect to be treated with respect (while realizing that even the lowliest raftsman deserves respect in kind). I'm imagining the difference between meeting Fëanor and taking counsel with Elrond or even Thranduil. However, it's been some time since I've looked into this subject at all and my assumptions could be a bit off.
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Themadviolinist
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Re: Lore question about Lindon

Thu 29 Jul 2021, 03:57

Going to the text of the legendarium, I cannot think of anywhere that specifically deals with how Elves interact with wealth or social class, except for individual cases of inappropriate focus on this, such as Thingol coming under the cursed treasure horde of Nargathrond, or Thranduil's odd focus on the Dwarvish treasure in the Hobbit. AS a rule, we don't really see Elves of the servant class, except perhaps the butler and raftsmen from Thranduil's household. Rivendell must have people who bake the bannocks etc, but we don't meet them.
The focus on treasure is more apparent among men and dwarves, even in LotR where Gimli's ability to rise above the gold lust of his kindred is shown as exceptional.
I don't know what all this means for the topic of this thread, other than to support that Elves seem to have a different relationship with wealth than other inhabitants of Middle EArth, though as with Feanor, they can love too well the works of their hands.

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