I haven’t been on here for a bit because of school, but I wanted to run an idea past you guys. I have been fiddling with creating a Lord of the Rings setting for Genesys, but the elves are giving me problems. Primarily, they are just too good at everything.

Elves are said to all have inhuman grace and dexterity, so a 3 in Agility makes sense. But then the various subraces each seem that they would have something else with a 3, unique to them. The Noldor are impossibly skilled craftsmen, so they would have a 3 in Intellect, and Sindar are especially clever, making them have a 3 in Cunning. The biggest thing here is that the elves are not bad at anything. There is no characteristic that they could have 1 in. They are so good at everything that they would either have only 50-60 starting experience, or they would be overpowered. Does anyone have ideas on how to deal with this issue?

1 hour ago, Johan Marek Phoenix Knight said:

I haven’t been on here for a bit because of school, but I wanted to run an idea past you guys. I have been fiddling with creating a Lord of the Rings setting for Genesys, but the elves are giving me problems. Primarily, they are just too good at everything.

Elves are said to all have inhuman grace and dexterity, so a 3 in Agility makes sense. But then the various subraces each seem that they would have something else with a 3, unique to them. The Noldor are impossibly skilled craftsmen, so they would have a 3 in Intellect, and Sindar are especially clever, making them have a 3 in Cunning. The biggest thing here is that the elves are not bad at anything. There is no characteristic that they could have 1 in. They are so good at everything that they would either have only 50-60 starting experience, or they would be overpowered. Does anyone have ideas on how to deal with this issue?

For the subraces, you may want to consider expressing those bonuses in other ways. For instance, skilled craftsman could give them a rank in Eye for Detail

Second, You don't have to give them a 1 in another ability, but you do want to make sure you adjust their starting XP accordingly.

Brawn 1 isn't unreasonable.

Just a wild, out of the box thought here. Assuming your doing 3rd age or later, Tolkienian elves have a doom hang8ng over them. If you look at their history, all their greatest works turned sour in some way. The rings, the silmarils, even defeating Sauron ended in Isildur being a prick. Given that, how about they have some amount of threat added to major die rolls? With good stats they are much more likely to succeed in their rolls, but those successes will always be less than or tarnished in some way.

59 minutes ago, rogue_09 said:

Brawn 1 isn't unreasonable.

Maybe with other worlds, but in Tolkien’s world, the elves are generally as strong or stronger than humans. Glorfindel fought a freaking Balrog. Elves have literally gone toe-to-toe with being like Morgoth and Sauron. Brawn 1 might work with Warcraft or Warhammer elves, but definitely not with Tolkien’s elves.

29 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Just a wild, out of the box thought here. Assuming your doing 3rd age or later, Tolkienian elves have a doom hang8ng over them. If you look at their history, all their greatest works turned sour in some way. The rings, the silmarils, even defeating Sauron ended in Isildur being a prick. Given that, how about they have some amount of threat added to major die rolls? With good stats they are much more likely to succeed in their rolls, but those successes will always be less than or tarnished in some way.

That is actually a really interesting idea, and a great way of making sure everyone doesn’t make an elf character. I could also add something about their “fading” as well. Thanks!

I love the idea of doom hanging over them affecting their rolls. Other inherent elf weakness that could be played with is they have a world weariness that lingers over them as well that could play a part. They do seem strained at times. Also Elves are fairly racist. They don't really play nice with anyone that isn't some special snowflake like themselves so that could factor into some form of negative interactions or setbacks on social rolls with other races.

While an Elf may have a higher agility and it is true they are not inherently "bad" at anything skilled, they are bad at times at more narrative based things like getting along with "lesser beings" and trusting others. Strain damage I feel would be super important to elves.

16 minutes ago, Johan Marek Phoenix Knight said:

Maybe with other worlds, but in Tolkien’s world, the elves are generally as strong or stronger than humans. Glorfindel fought a freaking Balrog. Elves have literally gone toe-to-toe with being like Morgoth and Sauron. Brawn 1 might work with Warcraft or Warhammer elves, but definitely not with Tolkien’s elves.

Is this the case with all elves or the great heroes? That could easily be explained by lots of XP bumping up characteristics.

At some point you have to make concessions for the sake of game balance, whether it 100% fits the world or not. Brawn 1 works since a mere 20XP at character creation buys it up to a heroic level.

Alternative choice: Why not make elves the "default" species instead of humans? Make the baseline of 2s across the board indicative of elves being generally good at everything, then adjusting other species accordingly.

53 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Just a wild, out of the box thought here. Assuming your doing 3rd age or later, Tolkienian elves have a doom hang8ng over them. If you look at their history, all their greatest works turned sour in some way. The rings, the silmarils, even defeating Sauron ended in Isildur being a prick. Given that, how about they have some amount of threat added to major die rolls? With good stats they are much more likely to succeed in their rolls, but those successes will always be less than or tarnished in some way.

Maybe too harsh for this particular scenario, but the idea of exploding Despairs—like exploding Triumphs for supers—is intriguing.

31 minutes ago, Drig said:

Also Elves are fairly racist. They don't really play nice with anyone that isn't some special snowflake like themselves so that could factor into some form of negative interactions or setbacks on social rolls with other races.

Presence 1? If the general populate finds them insufferable, that's as good enough justification as any.

28 minutes ago, rogue_09 said:

Alternative choice: Why not make elves the "default" species instead of humans? Make the baseline of 2s across the board indicative of elves being generally good at everything, then adjusting other species accordingly.

Okay. This is some good out-of-the-box thinking. Unusual, but very clever.

49 minutes ago, rogue_09 said:

Is this the case with all elves or the great heroes? That could easily be explained by lots of XP bumping up characteristics.

At some point you have to make concessions for the sake of game balance, whether it 100% fits the world or not. Brawn 1 works since a mere 20XP at character creation buys it up to a heroic level.

While not all elves can fight Balrogs, they are still considered better then humans as a whole. An average elf is generally considered as good as 10 average men in a fight, partially from their skill and experience, but also partially because as a species they are just so much better than humans.

I understand that concessions have to be made. If I was being entirely realistic, then all elves would start with a ton of extra XP, as even “young” elves are generally a few hundred years old, and finding an elf younger than that is highly unlikely. Also, they would likely start out with 3s in all characteristics, as they are generally portrayed as better at pretty much everything.

I understand where you are coming from, but I know just a little too much about Tolkien’s world to feel right about changing things too much.

25 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

Presence 1? If the general populate finds them insufferable, that's as good enough justification as any.

Actually, people are generally entranced by the elves. They have an ethereal beauty that is almost magical in nature. Dwarves are pretty much the only people that don’t like elves. If anything, elves would have 3 Presence, not 1.

1 hour ago, Drig said:

I love the idea of doom hanging over them affecting their rolls. Other inherent elf weakness that could be played with is they have a world weariness that lingers over them as well that could play a part. They do seem strained at times. Also Elves are fairly racist. They don't really play nice with anyone that isn't some special snowflake like themselves so that could factor into some form of negative interactions or setbacks on social rolls with other races.

While an Elf may have a higher agility and it is true they are not inherently "bad" at anything skilled, they are bad at times at more narrative based things like getting along with "lesser beings" and trusting others. Strain damage I feel would be super important to elves.

The Doom will be important, as will their weariness for the world (they all long to leave Middle Earth and go to Valinor in the West), but the elves’s interactions with other races actually varies widely between elven cultures. The movies do a poor job of portraying how elves in Tolkien’s world interact with the other Free Peoples.

One thing that Genesis lacks is a system for costing disadvantages. It’s a big omission in comparison to most other generic systems. That would make it easier to balance other advantages and bring elves more in-line from a PC perspective.

In The One Ring RPG (which is fantastic, btw) elves have less Hope than other races, and that helps balance out their other advantages. The idea that either elves always upgrade the difficulty of a skill check, or maybe having a special table of threat results that are more impacting could potentially be a way of implementing this.

30 minutes ago, Johan Marek Phoenix Knight said:

58 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

Presence 1? If the general populate finds them insufferable, that's as good enough justification as any.

Actually, people are generally entranced by the elves. They have an ethereal beauty that is almost magical in nature. Dwarves are pretty much the only people that don’t like elves. If anything, elves would have 3 Presence, not 1.

Presence 1, but a species ability that grants auto advantage to all Charm checks?

I want to get my hands on The One Ring someday! That was definitely something I was thinking when I was considering playing some Genesys Lord of the Rings. It seems to need some extra mechanical system built into it like some form of corruption or hope as a measure similar to Force and Destiny and its Morality and the Obligation of Edge of the Empire. Honestly if I was going to homebrew some Lord of the Rings Elves for this system, their weakness would be tied to an extra setting specific mechanic like @dbm_ brought out in The One Ring. But that's going to be pretty tricky to get right feeling wise. Morality has always been controversial for the Star Wars line.

20 minutes ago, Johan Marek Phoenix Knight said:

The Doom will be important, as will their weariness for the world (they all long to leave Middle Earth and go to Valinor in the West), but the elves’s interactions with other races actually varies widely between elven cultures. The movies do a poor job of portraying how elves in Tolkien’s world interact with the other Free Peoples.

This is primarily what frightens me from trying to make character options for my players. My players like the movies but are not huge fans. I'm not super knowledgeable of every detail of Middle Earth by any means. When I saw the different subspecies and locational variations on races, it became a bit daunting to have to not only stat them out but explain them to the players. I was kind of hoping someone else would do the work for me lol. I'm torn though. How much will you break the elven races down? And will men be broken down as well? Hobbits? Could a player play an ent?? AGH!

I so wish FFG would do a LOTR setting book for Genesys because I think the narrative feel of Genesys and the social combat would just make for some great story opportunities in this setting.

18 minutes ago, rogue_09 said:

Presence 1, but a species ability that grants auto advantage to all Charm checks?

I would say Elves are just as likely to have a high presence as they would agility. They are very captivating. Especially the Noldor.

It would almost make sense to stat them at Bra 2, Agi 3, Int 2, Cun 2, Will 2, Pre 3. If i had to dock them on any ability, it would be cunning as they tend to not be open to new ideas but I still feel awkward about stating them at cunning 1 as a race. It doesn't feel right. You could give them these stats and simply dock their starting xp by 60 so that elves start xp is 60.

Then you could give them a boost die on some form of social interactions or crafting for more Noldor like elves or Nature interactions for Sindaran like elves and dock it another 10 to starting xp 50 and they are still averagely more powerful then men but have less potential out the gate? Jedi in Star Wars are more powerful but have a lot more xp sinks then any other character in the game to account for them being more powerful.

Their immortality is never going to come into play in-game so it doesn't seem like an ability that would need to be purchased as Hutts and Wookiees in Star Wars can live a very very long time and they don't have it factor into their stats.

Then if you add some form of Doom ability that has some form of drawback, you could have it give back some starting xp to whatever seems appropriate for how big of a drawback it is, but I don't feel it is necessary if these stats are simple enough.

As it stands though, they will only be able to boost one of their 2 characteristics to a 3 or one 3 to a 4. If they had 10 more xp available they could put two of their 2s at 3, putting them at the potential for four characteristics at 3 but that seems a bit too much. Hmm...

21 minutes ago, Drig said:

I want to get my hands on The One Ring someday! That was definitely something I was thinking when I was considering playing some Genesys Lord of the Rings. It seems to need some extra mechanical system built into it like some form of corruption or hope as a measure similar to Force and Destiny and its Morality and the Obligation of Edge of the Empire. Honestly if I was going to homebrew some Lord of the Rings Elves for this system, their weakness would be tied to an extra setting specific mechanic like @dbm_ brought out in The One Ring. But that's going to be pretty tricky to get right feeling wise. Morality has always been controversial for the Star Wars line.

This is primarily what frightens me from trying to make character options for my players. My players like the movies but are not huge fans. I'm not super knowledgeable of every detail of Middle Earth by any means. When I saw the different subspecies and locational variations on races, it became a bit daunting to have to not only stat them out but explain them to the players. I was kind of hoping someone else would do the work for me lol. I'm torn though. How much will you break the elven races down? And will men be broken down as well? Hobbits? Could a player play an ent?? AGH!

I so wish FFG would do a LOTR setting book for Genesys because I think the narrative feel of Genesys and the social combat would just make for some great story opportunities in this setting.

While the elven subraces sound complex, they are actually fairly simple, as half of the sub-races either have been absorbed into the other ones, or are all in Valinor, and thus won't appear in Middle-Earth. There are only three that would be available to players.

Mainly you would have the Noldor, the Sindar, and the Silvan Elves. The Noldor (Deep Elves) are the only High Elves remaining in Middle Earth, while the Sindar (Grey Elves) are basically halfway between High Elves and the lesser elves, and the Silvan Elves (Wood Elves) are a mix of the old Nandor and Avari elves, which are both lesser varieties. The Noldor are the most beautiful, as they have the Light of Valinor within them (which also gives them special abilities, like existing in both the Seen and Unseen worlds) and are the most skilled in craftsmanship, having made almost every cool magical item we see in Lord of the Rings. Elrond and Galadriel are Noldor, as are most of the elves of Rivendell. The Sindar are proud, and dislike the Noldor, often living as lords among the Silvan elves. Thranduil and Legolas are Sindar, as are most of the elves of Lindon/The Grey Havens. The Silvan elves are the closest to nature and love plants and animals. Most of the elves of Lorien and Mirkwood are Silvan elves.

As for Men, I would likely split them between Gondor, Rohan, and the North. Hobbits could remain separate or be split between Shire and Buckland hobbits. Dwarves likely wouldn't have subraces, as the three main dwarf clans have pretty much merged by this point, and the four other clans are way off in the east, beyond Rhun.

Ah! That's right! I used to have The Lord of The Rings Roleplaying Game years ago (one of my former player made off with it) and they broke the races down like that as well! I had forgotten! For my earlier example, you could just split the boost die bonuses of crafting, leadership, and nature among the three races as you mentioned them? Interested in seeing what you come up with.

Ignore this one, I changed my mind about it. Look at the next post.

Alright, what do you guys think about this so far? Its not quite finished, but I think its getting close.

Elves

• Wound Threshold: 10 + Brawn
• Strain Threshold: 8 + Willpower
• Starting Experience: 70 XP
• Fading of the Firstborn: Add a threat to all checks.
• Elven Grace: Elves do not suffer penalties for moving through difficult terrain.
• Keen Eyes: Elves see twice as far as other races, and when making skill checks, elves remove up to 2 setback dice imposed due to darkness.
• Immortal: Elves do not age, and are immune to all illness and diseases.

Noldor (Deep Elves)

• Special Abilities: Noldorin elves begin with one rank in Knowledge (Lore). You still cannot train their Knowledge (Lore) above rank 2 during character creation.
• Doom of Mandos: Once per session, when a Noldor character makes a skill check, the GM may spend a Story Point to add a Despair to the check.
• Beauty of the High Elves: Noldor decrease the difficulty of all Charm, Negotiation, and Leadership checks by 1.
• Light of Valinor: Noldor can see and interact with the Unseen World, dealing full damage to enemies with the Wraith quality. When beginning an encounter with a creature of evil, Noldor can force them to make a Hard Fear check as an incidental.
• Knowledge of the Noldor: Noldor add 1 bonus die to all Crafting and Knowledge (Lore) checks.

Sindar (Grey Elves)

• Special Abilities: Sindarin elves begin with one rank in (). You still cannot train their () above rank 2 during character creation.
• Lords of the Umanyar: Sindarin elves add 1 bonus die to all Leadership checks.

Silvan Elves (Wood Elves)

• Special Abilities: Silvan elves begin with one rank in Perception. You still cannot train their Perception above rank 2 during character creation.
• Elves of the Wood: Silvan elves add 1 bonus die to all Survival checks.

The “wraith quality” is an idea I had about creatures like Nazgûl, Barrow-wights, and the Oathbreakers, who cannot be harmed by mortal weapons.

Hmmm... That didn't translate over from GMBinder as well as it looked in the preview.

14 minutes ago, Johan Marek Phoenix Knight said:

Alright, what do you guys think about this so far? Its not quite finished, but I think its getting close.

Looks good! I do wonder about the balance of having so many abilities to start. Do they add up number wise as per the species creation section in Genesys? I like how doom came out. I also like that the starting exp is lower as well. I think some good play testing would prove if it makes an elf character stand out too much over other characters.

The threat to all checks is something I'm not sure is needed and is not really something that adds anything to the character at this point. There might be another way to represent their fading or maybe just as a narrative thing? Doesn't the fading mean that they are not as powerful as they used to be such as during the first age? So if that is true then they may be already faded in their current way you have built them. Again not super knowledgeable of LOTR, sorry.

Sindar elves could have sailing or whatever appropriate skill that would be? (Sorry don't have the book in front of me atm.) Is that not something that they are skilled at?

1 minute ago, Drig said:

Looks good! I do wonder about the balance of having so many abilities to start. Do they add up number wise as per the species creation section in Genesys? I like how doom came out. I also like that the starting exp is lower as well. I think some good play testing would prove if it makes an elf character stand out too much over other characters.

The threat to all checks is something I'm not sure is needed and is not really something that adds anything to the character at this point. There might be another way to represent their fading or maybe just as a narrative thing? Doesn't the fading mean that they are not as powerful as they used to be such as during the first age? So if that is true then they may be already faded in their current way you have built them. Again not super knowledgeable of LOTR, sorry.

Sindar elves could have sailing or whatever appropriate skill that would be? (Sorry don't have the book in front of me atm.) Is that not something that they are skilled at?

The threats was my attempt at finding a way to balance out how they have so many abilities.

The Sindar that live in Lindon would likely be skilled at sailing, but not those in other regions. The Falmari (a type of High Elf in Valinor) are the really great seafarers. The Sindar are predominantly known for their singing.

Something else to take into account when discussing just how overpowered the elves in LOTR can be is the age of most of the elves we see in the books and the movies. Most of these elves are extremely old by mortal standards and in rpg terms have lots and lots of experience points. Your average lotr elf isn't anywhere near a starting character.

2 minutes ago, ghatt said:

Something else to take into account when discussing just how overpowered the elves in LOTR can be is the age of most of the elves we see in the books and the movies. Most of these elves are extremely old by mortal standards and in rpg terms have lots and lots of experience points. Your average lotr elf isn't anywhere near a starting character.

True. There is only so much that can be done with that though. It’s the same problem we have with Clone Trooper characters in the Star Wars line of games. Their narrative experience doesn’t match up with their in-game experience.