Fria Ligans forum

Minor Correction: Losing an arm, not loosing. Different words.

Fellow TOR Loremasters,

allow me to ask for your opinion on the following matter:
in some months my TOR-group (three player-heroes: Lindon elf, Durin dwarf and a Ranger of the North) will go on the acclaimed adventure "Raiders of the Obsidian Keep", which is meant to be played with an Old School Essentials system but will be adapted by me to suit Middle-earth. I have read so many great reviews about that adventure, that I really would like to have the said heroes (and me, i.e. their Loremaster) experience it and with some creativity concerning the setting, that will work just fine. We are in the middle of the awesome "Tales from the Lone Lands" campaign and played two landmarks from "Ruins of the Lost Realm".
However, at the very end of the Obsidian Keep adventure, it is mandatory that one hero looses an arm (because the arm needs to be put into the mouth of a monster that demands this as a reassurance for allowing certain things to happen - and if the heroes make the right choices, the monster`s plans will be crossed and it will vanish - but not without the arm!).
So if the arm-loosing hero survives this terrible wound, the question will surely arise, how this character continues: as a "one-arm-hero", being severely hampered in all fighting with only one arm (maybe ill-favoured in all combat proficiencies and not being able to use bows anymore?), or should he even retire?
Or is there any thinkable solution, how the hero could get his arm back / grow a new one? I guess in D&D he would simply drink a magic potion and then his arm is back with him, but not so in Middle-earth. How about Elrond`s abilities as great healer? Or a spell form a mighty wizard like Saruman? This might even be an adventure on its own to get an arm and involve the said half elf and the wizard...
For any ideas / critique / funny comments I should be most grateful. And even while I would love to find a creative solution for the hero to continue his heroic life adventuring forth and fighting the shadow, I absolutely do not want to bend the Tolkien canon to a degree that makes the whole game ridiculous by inventing overly fantastic deeds like planting a new arm from scratch on the respective hero...

Fellow TOR Loremasters,

allow me to ask for your opinion on the following matter:
in some months my TOR-group (three player-heroes: Lindon elf, Durin dwarf and a Ranger of the North) will go on the acclaimed adventure "Raiders of the Obsidian Keep", which is meant to be played with an Old School Essentials system but will be adapted by me to suit Middle-earth. I have read so many great reviews about that adventure, that I really would like to have the said heroes (and me, i.e. their Loremaster) experience it and with some creativity concerning the setting, that will work just fine. We are in the middle of the awesome "Tales from the Lone Lands" campaign and played two landmarks from "Ruins of the Lost Realm".
However, at the very end of the Obsidian Keep adventure, it is mandatory that one hero looses an arm (because the arm needs to be put into the mouth of a monster that demands this as a reassurance for allowing certain things to happen - and if the heroes make the right choices, the monster`s plans will be crossed and it will vanish - but not without the arm!).
So if the arm-loosing hero survives this terrible wound, the question will surely arise, how this character continues: as a "one-arm-hero", being severely hampered in all fighting with only one arm (maybe ill-favoured in all combat proficiencies and not being able to use bows anymore?), or should he even retire?
Or is there any thinkable solution, how the hero could get his arm back / grow a new one? I guess in D&D he would simply drink a magic potion and then his arm is back with him, but not so in Middle-earth. How about Elrond`s abilities as great healer? Or a spell form a mighty wizard like Saruman? This might even be an adventure on its own to get an arm and involve the said half elf and the wizard...
For any ideas / critique / funny comments I should be most grateful. And even while I would love to find a creative solution for the hero to continue his heroic life adventuring forth and fighting the shadow, I absolutely do not want to bend the Tolkien canon to a degree that makes the whole game ridiculous by inventing overly fantastic deeds like planting a new arm from scratch on the respective hero...

...

Hi Runang, Otaku Sempai and Linklite have brought some excellent ideas as usual. Replacing an arm can be done as Otaku explains. Or you can do as you say, the hero gives an eye in place of an arm. However, Linklite brings up an excellent and interesting idea in his explanation that immediately gave me an idea.

What if there is a formula in Sauron's arcana to create an arm that exists between the visible and invisible worlds, an arm neither dead nor alive (like the nine Nazgûl or Ringwraiths)? So it would be an immaterial arm that could have supernatural qualities but also elements with a special Shadow Path. Now we're getting into something interesting.

Arthur.

Fellow TOR Loremasters,

allow me to ask for your opinion on the following matter:
in some months my TOR-group (three player-heroes: Lindon elf, Durin dwarf and a Ranger of the North) will go on the acclaimed adventure "Raiders of the Obsidian Keep", which is meant to be played with an Old School Essentials system but will be adapted by me to suit Middle-earth. I have read so many great reviews about that adventure, that I really would like to have the said heroes (and me, i.e. their Loremaster) experience it and with some creativity concerning the setting, that will work just fine. We are in the middle of the awesome "Tales from the Lone Lands" campaign and played two landmarks from "Ruins of the Lost Realm".
However, at the very end of the Obsidian Keep adventure, it is mandatory that one hero looses an arm (because the arm needs to be put into the mouth of a monster that demands this as a reassurance for allowing certain things to happen - and if the heroes make the right choices, the monster`s plans will be crossed and it will vanish - but not without the arm!).
So if the arm-loosing hero survives this terrible wound, the question will surely arise, how this character continues: as a "one-arm-hero", being severely hampered in all fighting with only one arm (maybe ill-favoured in all combat proficiencies and not being able to use bows anymore?), or should he even retire?
Or is there any thinkable solution, how the hero could get his arm back / grow a new one? I guess in D&D he would simply drink a magic potion and then his arm is back with him, but not so in Middle-earth. How about Elrond`s abilities as great healer? Or a spell form a mighty wizard like Saruman? This might even be an adventure on its own to get an arm and involve the said half elf and the wizard...
For any ideas / critique / funny comments I should be most grateful. And even while I would love to find a creative solution for the hero to continue his heroic life adventuring forth and fighting the shadow, I absolutely do not want to bend the Tolkien canon to a degree that makes the whole game ridiculous by inventing overly fantastic deeds like planting a new arm from scratch on the respective hero...

...

Hi Runang, Otaku Sempai and Linklite have brought some excellent ideas as usual. Replacing an arm can be done as Otaku explains. Or you can do as you say, the hero gives an eye in place of an arm. However, Linklite brings up an excellent and interesting idea in his explanation that immediately gave me an idea.

What if there is a formula in Sauron's arcana to create an arm that exists between the visible and invisible worlds, an arm neither dead nor alive (like the nine Nazgûl or Ringwraiths)? So it would be an immaterial arm that could have supernatural qualities but also elements with a special Shadow Path. Now we're getting into something interesting.

Arthur.

Hello Arthur,
this is why I enjoy reading this forum so much: the human genius that unfolds once creative minds (here: Linklite, Otaku-sempai and Arthur-Dallas) brainstorm together about (literally) fantastic TOR matters. No AI could deliver this, I believe. Thank you very much for your brilliant input, this idea is so cool - if I were on the developer team with Free League, I would dive deeper into this "Quest for an Arm" and attempt to create a commercial adventure from this.
I will go with your idea of the "immaterial arm [or I might still go for an eye] that could have supernatural qualities but also elements with a special Shadow Path" and I am really excited to create a respective Quest for our TOR group. This might take a while, but once we did that, I will post the impressions here.