I kind of understand their reasoning for this but there are no stats for Beorn in human form or Radagast at all or am I missing something? I'd still love to have stats for these 2. I know there are stats for Beorn in bear form.

Why? Radagast is an Ishtari, so you really don't need stats for him, he is more of a plot device. And the only time you would actually need Beorn's stats is if he is in bear form helping you put down an army...but to each their own I guess...

I understand your concern, daddystabz. I'm also very fond of having everyone less than Sauron or the Valar stated up, just for the sake of FUN ; )

Even if I'm not going to use any of these stats, there are people who enjoy reading through an NPC sheet.

I'm a little tired of the statement of PLOT DEVICE. Everything in the hands of the Loremaster is plot device, stated up or not.

Though I'd love to see canon characters stats, I have no problem with the original design avoiding this approach (I totally understand why). =)

I understand what you are both saying, and if you were to decide to stat up these individuals that would be your choice and a suspect more than a few people would find it quite entertaining.

I think the big thing is that a lot of Loremasters would prefer that such characters were not statted officially, because as soon as you do that, suddenly they are killable and you no longer have as much scope with them. They become limited.

At the end of the day however, there is no right or wrong way.

E

Yeah, even I who'd love to see everyone stated up probably will never be doing it, because I prefer to use them as plot devices ; )

Trying to convert them from CODA probably wouldn't be a good idea, though in my opinion the canon NPCs sheets actually work pretty well if you can play with those rules.

It is true that everything can be a plot device in the hands of the Loremaster. However, when you try to model something in mechanics, not all mechanics are suited to the task.

Using the TOR system, how many dice would you be rolling if you were trying to model the First Age battle of Gondolin where Ecthelion slew Gothmog? 50? 100? more?

If your focus is say, complete world emulation, then you would try to develop mechanics that could encompass anything you wanted to do in that world. In the case of MERP, this is what they tried to do, and the rules can be used to stat up Melkor as well as Bill Ferny. (It is worth mentioning that statting up Melkor is what lost them the license as they had no legal right to do so.)

C7 isn't focused on that expansive a model, this is by design due to the restrictions of the license. Since they are stuck with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, they use those two books as literal bookends of time and focus on a tightly-wound narrative concerning the 70 years in between. Quite a brilliant move I think, in that they inherently avoid the pitfalls other game companies have fallen into with the Tolkien license.

The flipside of that coin is that by focusing the mechanics on delivering a specific experience there are going to be things in Middle-Earth that are just too powerful to adequately model in the rules. The Istari would be one of them. Now, you could stat up Gandalf, but it would be Gandalf cloaked, his true power and fana hidden. If he was in a situation where his physical form was about to be beaten, he could reveal his fana as Olorin, Maiar and servant of Manwe, as he did to defeat Durin's Bane. However, such an open display of power was forbidden to the Istari.

One thing I'm very interested in is how the power levels will scale as the new sets take us towards the War of the Ring.

Beorn in Beorning form I would like to see at some point, even if I never use him mechanically just because I think such things help Loremasters develop their own NPCs. If I see how the designer of the system deals with representing a known character, that helps me figure out how to design my own.

@ Krueger - You've just made some brilliant observations here, my friend. I agree with everything you just said.

I don't have any problems with the game not being able to emulate a fight between Ecthelion and Gothmog like you said, I'm perfectly fine with it as I understand the game's niche.

This is also one of my major curiosities, since we have characters that can easily live through all the 3 corebooks, like elves and dwarves.

Guess it's all too early for these concerns, and we'll all have to play a lot until we have some hints about it.

Statting up Melkor had nothing to do with ICE losing the Middle Earth license. When they declared chapter 11 bankruptcy Tolkein Enterprises took the opportunity and revoked it. They had been waiting for a chance to do so for a long time as royalties had been steadily decreasing over the years.

All the gory details are here
http://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistory/briefhistory9.phtml

Saul Zaentz figured they could get more money for the license due to the announcement of the upcoming movie trilogy. ICE was trying to get money to pay off SZ, but even if they had found a money source to pay of Zaentz completely, SZ still could have yanked the license claiming violation due to covering the First Age, which was not included in the initial license agreements. SZ had let it go since the royalties were profitable, but since they wanted to shop the license around no matter what ICE did, that was really the nail in the coffin. It was a hammer they didn't have to use.

Also behind the scenes was the contention between Saul Zaentz and Christopher Tolkien. CT was trying to stop the movies from being made, and if SZ hasn't grabbed the license back from ICE, then CT could have used the violation of Silmarillion copyright to tie up SZ in court over the license to the Tolkien properties.

ICE could have been rolling in cash, but basically it was publishing First Age material that doomed them to lose the license no matter what.