Beornings and Skin-changing?

[Blubbo Baggins]

Actually guys, becoming a Were-bear is quite possible, if unlikely.

Darkening of Mirkwood has a scenario where the spirit of the Werewolf tries to possess your PC. If it does, you get several abilities that creatures & Beorn himself have (like being able to Spend Hope to increase your damage or decrease End loss).

If you go on the Quest of Beorn, or something like that, you can get the spirit removed, but you keep the abilities.

I'd say if you have that AND you've taken "Night-Goer" and "Brothers-to-Bears" you're a shapeshifter.

P.S. In the first TOR campaign I ever played, one of our players had a PC Beorning with Night-goer and happened to be in Bear form when the Troll in "The Marsh Bell" attacked. She fought as a bear, never got hit, and just by chance happened to roll a piercing blow with her 1d Dagger skill and killed the troll. So yes, bears can be in combat and can kill trolls, even with the basic version of the ability... albeit it is very ineffective.

[kdresser]

Actually guys, becoming a Were-bear is quite possible, if unlikely.

Darkening of Mirkwood has a scenario where the spirit of the Werewolf tries to possess your PC. If it does, you get several abilities that creatures & Beorn himself have (like being able to Spend Hope to increase your damage or decrease End loss).

If you go on the Quest of Beorn, or something like that, you can get the spirit removed, but you keep the abilities.

I'd say if you have that AND you've taken "Night-Goer" and "Brothers-to-Bears" you're a shapeshifter.

P.S. In the first TOR campaign I ever played, one of our players had a PC Beorning with Night-goer and happened to be in Bear form when the Troll in "The Marsh Bell" attacked. She fought as a bear, never got hit, and just by chance happened to roll a piercing blow with her 1d Dagger skill and killed the troll. So yes, bears can be in combat and can kill trolls, even with the basic version of the ability... albeit it is very ineffective.

I've read about these two abilities in the rulebook. Can someone explain the context, from a role-play standpoint? Why would the Beornings, as discussed earlier, bear (pun intended) any of these abilities considering they are merely men who follow Beorn?

[zedturtle]

Actually guys, becoming a Were-bear is quite possible, if unlikely.

Darkening of Mirkwood has a scenario where the spirit of the Werewolf tries to possess your PC. If it does, you get several abilities that creatures & Beorn himself have (like being able to Spend Hope to increase your damage or decrease End loss).

If you go on the Quest of Beorn, or something like that, you can get the spirit removed, but you keep the abilities.

I'd say if you have that AND you've taken "Night-Goer" and "Brothers-to-Bears" you're a shapeshifter.

P.S. In the first TOR campaign I ever played, one of our players had a PC Beorning with Night-goer and happened to be in Bear form when the Troll in "The Marsh Bell" attacked. She fought as a bear, never got hit, and just by chance happened to roll a piercing blow with her 1d Dagger skill and killed the troll. So yes, bears can be in combat and can kill trolls, even with the basic version of the ability... albeit it is very ineffective.

I've read about these two abilities in the rulebook. Can someone explain the context, from a role-play standpoint? Why would the Beornings, as discussed earlier, bear (pun intended) any of these abilities considering they are merely men who follow Beorn?

So this is one of the tricky bits of gaming as it relates to Tolkien, and one that there can be sharp opinions about... I should note up front that no one is necessarily wrong, but I do have strong feelings about this and how it relates to gaming in Middle-earth.

For me, it breaks down to something that I'll call prescriptive versue descriptive. A prescriptive approach says that only the things that we see in the original source material are possible. So Gandalf is able to do magic, Beorn is able to turn into a bear, etc. But since it's not explicitly stated that Men can learn magic*, then your character can't learn magic, or it's not explicitly stated that other men can turn into bears then your character can't turn into a bear (or other animal).

A descriptive approach says that the action in the source material are examples of what can be achieved, but not the only things possible. So it's possible for some Men to learn songs strong enough to magically heal their companions while other Men learn from one of their own the ways of communing with nature and sending forth their spirit in the shape of a bear. This is, of course, the approach that The One Ring takes, and that I greatly prefer.

When a player selected Night-Goer for his Beorning, Beorn himself took the hero to the top of the Carrock at midnight and spent the whole hike up talking to him about secret things (i.e. we never said in the game what was spoken of, just that they talked). When he activated the ability, he gave me general guidelines for what he was trying to accomplish and then I narrated his bear experience. That helped to preserve the mystery and the magic of the ability.

— • — • — • —

* I am very much simplifying this, there are several counter examples, found in the usual places.

[Angelalex242]

In theory, an actual Skinchanger/Werebear as a PC would have to be balanced against the 'High Races', the Dunedain and Noldor. The ability to become a bear can't be any more powerful then what the other high races can achieve.

If, however, the bear form just grants automatic armor and an automatic weapon to go with it:

In Bear form, you have 3D Armor and a claw that hits like a basic spear:

Then the bear form isn't doing anything equipment doesn't do, it's just eliminating the encumbrance for not having the carry it.

[DavetheLost]

To me Night Goer and Brother to Bears give the Beorning culture a shamanic feel. It is part of what makes them distict to other Mannish cultures.

As for Grimbeorn he may well have half-siblings of either mannish or bearish stock, but they don't seem to have been acknowledged by their sire.

[Otaku-sempai]

As for Grimbeorn he may well have half-siblings of either mannish or bearish stock, but they don't seem to have been acknowledged by their sire.

Out of respect for Professor Tolkien, I refuse to consider the idea of Beorn siring cubs (skin-changers or otherwise) with a she-bear. And in game-terms, it seems clear that Grimbeorn is supposed to be Beorn's oldest child, if he sired any others at all. I also reject the possibility that Beorn sired any children out-of-wedlock without some evidence to the contrary. If someone else likes the idea, well: their table, their rules.

If I were running a game of MERP then I might very well allow an experienced player to have a Beorning skin-changer. But the Beornings of earlier in the Third Age are distinctly different from the culture of Beornings that arose after the Battle of Five Armies. In a game using MERP's default setting of TA 1640 I would not even call them Beornings but would instead substitute one of the suggested alternatives of Beijabar or Bajaegabar (the Beornings, after all, derived their name from Beorn, their first chieftain).