How would you create a Tolkien-esque magic system?

How would you create a Tolkien-esque magic system?

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Any magic system + only angels and gods can do it

PCs can't play magic classes.

Bull, Elves can do it, but it's more like high skill creates magic. Like making a knife so fine it can cut space.

I'm going to assume that's what the OP is after.


Personal GURPS Answer:

I'm going to use Ritual Path Magic as the base, figure out the energy cost for the spell.

Instead of gathering power as in RPM, the 'energy cost' if paid off with skill rolls.

Say the spell costs 23 points. In game terms, you tell the GM what you want to do, the GM figures out the cost, and if it's close to what you've done before, the GM tells you a ballpark figure.

The GM does not tell you if you can succeed or not, you can only try.

Even if you're not attempting anything special, if you have a high enough skill level and have a crit success in creation the GM may tell you that you feel a bit of...something in your work.


Anyways, 23 points, That's your penalty to the crafting skill--what? You thought I meant like professional level high skill? No, epic level. Madness level. It is encrusted with mithral, it is studded with gems, and given a chance it will menace with spikes.

You get bonuses for equipment and materials of course, and time.

Successes with that penalty go towards paying off the 'energy cost.' Make rolls as normal for creation, one 'energy gathering' per day, best roll, any failure negates progress for that day.

RPM gathering rules and penalties apply per day.

Tolkien magic is basically enhancing what things normally do

Bread that is extremely nourishing and Doors that are supernaturally hard to break past or unlock

No PC elves either

You know all these "I rolled a d20" stories on Veeky Forums? Make them an actual part of the rules.

I’d just handwave whatever bullshit I want to happen and say “it’s magic”

The only right way. Play MERP

all totally wrong.

This guy gets it. Elves, Anuir, and whatever your setting equivalent is just has ridiculously high levels in mundane crafts and fighting. Sauron is an immortal engineer that had time to learn his craft, as was Feanor, Galadriel just had absurdly high wisdom and perception from being older than the sun and moon. In general Tolkien magic is just craft or martial skill of such caliber that it goes well beyond what you would imagine the upper ceiling would be, with a bit of true naming and rune magic that works by talking directly to the matter or animal you want to control in a language its familiar with, and a bit of beseeching gods to intervene on your behalf that is answered in rare circumstances. By and large Tolkien magic isn't a short cut, its just as much work if not more than the mundane equivalent, but it yields vastly superior results. When it does give a short cut around a mundane solution it's value over that solution is really only that brevity.

As an example, Gandalf used wards on a door to keep the balrog out, and it was about as effective as a lock in the face of the Balrog's counterspell, but would have been sufficient to bar mundane attack much like barricading the same door. With a squad of Dwarven, Elfish, of Numenorean masons you might be able to get a door or barricade sufficient to repel all but a dedicated, methodical dismantling by Durin's Bane, but it would take a matter of months at least, and lots of resources.

This + instantaneously setting pines on fire to throw at wolves.

> ridiculously high levels in mundane crafts and fighting.

Now, using your theory, explain to me the Palantir.

or the rings

Alternitively all PCs play anuir

Dry pinecones are good fire starters.

youtube.com/watch?v=7Sg9dAIxLRw

The Rings and Palantir are some of the only truly “magical” things in Middle-earth, which is of course why Gandalf considers them dangerous for mortals to use.
The Rings were made by the greatest craftsman of the elves, who used principles taught to him by Sauron to elevate his craft to levels previously unreachable, in effect being the only elf who ever learned to not just make an object that functioned almost mystically well but also was straight-up magical.

The Palantir we actually don’t have a lot of solid info on where they came from, but even an elven master craftsman would find them impossible to replicate.

MERP and RoleMaster are better, but still have fireball and fly spells.

Only allow Healers and Rangers as spell users.

Is Elrond getting his ring from Gil-Galad canon?

Think of something you can do normally, then just speed it up. Tolkien's magic was about subtlety and being able to perform "art" at such a level that you can do things others find miraculous but is actually within their own abilities if they had the time for it.

All magic is rings.

Beorn didn't gain the ability to turn into a bear by practicing acting like a bear for centuries

No he was given the ability to Sing like God. Or close enough.

There's a shitton of lesser rings, though.

Crafting rings with such skill the intent for those rings is crafted within them.

Pouring your feelings into an item of artifice gives it something literal to the item.

With difficulty. Magic in Tolkien is inversely powerful to the number of reliable witnesses around to see it. It is quite literally a narrative device in the fictional narrative of the Red Book of Westmarch. That sort of thing doesn't translate well into a game.

The Palantiri were constructed in Valinor, and almost certainly by Elves.

If you can come up with a definitive definition of "canon" where Tolkien is concerned, I can answer that.

The guy who talked about craft being magic is correct.

Basically, magic is simply the application of one's will to create or shape something.

In more direct terms, it was Gandalf wishing to create fire to ward off the Wargs and such.

But it applies to everyone, Great Smiths could create great items and poor their will and desires into said items, imbuing them with great power.

People wishing to craft items of beauty created things like Silmarils.

In Short, Magic in Tolkien's work is to shape the world around you, sort of like how the entire world's setting is a song shaped by the gods.

Which neatly brings us on to songs and words of power, which for some reason no one has mentioned. Arda was literally sung into being, writing and utterances hold tangible power, not just Gandalf's words of command or Saruman's Voice, or Sauron's mastery of gothic metal, but Isildur being able to curse an entire people into being unable to pass on by Eru's gift until they've helped fight Sauron at some point in the future.

Is there anything in the Simarrillion/the Letters etc. that indicates this is how Elrond got his ring friend?

You take Brbarians of Lemuria alchemy, raise the requirements, add some recipes, remove some, done.

Honestly I wish more settings did this.

Magic is much better when it is not some unfathomable force, but the metaphysical idea of craft-work and creation.

To me a Wizard should be an old man in his tower, pouring over Tomes that are recreations of tombs to find the right words of power to call forth what spell he wishes.

Less a Magical Scientist and more of a Magical Historian.

>Palantir
An excessive series of mirrors and a loose definition of light.

I'm certain it's not mentioned in the Silmarillion. I can't think of it being raised in the Letters, but I don't have those down nearly as well as the Silm, so there might be an instance that I just forgot.

All the "tracing" as to how the Three got into the hands of their possessors by the time of LoTR proper is in the various notes Tolkien had concerning Galadriel and her movements in the second and third ages.

Not directly relevant, but I'm curious as to why you'd consider the Silmarillion better canon than other material with the same pedigree? The Silm is, after all, just Christopher Tolkien taking an umber of mostly contradictory poems and stories from JRR's notes and hammering them into a narrative.

Such as?

Don't their seeds only germinate after forest fires?

You know how a magnifying glass can focus light into a point? Rings do that with power.

Palantir are a combination of telescopes and telephones.

Explain the mind control abilities through them.

Enhanced persuasion/suggestion.

Tolkien doesn't have a magic system. It works based on plot, like in myths.

Not the original commenter but it is heavily implied when Gandalf doesn't immediately think Bilbo's ring was a ring of power.

>but even an elven master craftsman would find them impossible to replicate
which fits with their origins, being devices made by Feanor. In general Feanor had a godlike skill at lens making and optics, and the way I've always imagined the palantir is that they're to lenses what spheres are to circles, essentially catching and focusing light and producing coherent images from far beyond what is actually visible. The Silmarils work on the opposite principle, being a translucent material 'silma' that catches and holds light indefinitely and is physically indestructible.

Saruman and Sauron never use mind control, they're just superhumanly convincing and masters of rhetoric an willpower. It isn't a magical shortcut to control someone, its a superlative level of skill at manipulation.

The Palantir were exceedingly valuable and rare though. Arnorians built a fort in weathertop just to house one there.

It wasn't like you could go order one from an elf smith and a set of horse shoes.

That's not something that stems out of being a really good magnfication effect.

No, mind control very much does exist in Tolkien.

timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/the_letters_of_j.rrtolkien.pdf Letter 181

>But since in the view of this tale & mythology Power- when it dominates or seeks to dominate other wills and minds (except by assent of their reason) is evil, these 'wizards' were incarnated in the life-forms of Middle-earth, and so suffered the pains of both mind and body. They were also, for the same reason, thus involved in the peril of the incarnate: the possibility of 'fall', of sin if you will. The chief form this would take with them would be impatience, leading to the desire to force others to their own good ends, and so inevitably at last desire to make their own wills effective by any means. To this evil Saruman succumbed.

Or letter 246

>Frodo had become a considerable person, but of a special kind: in spiritual enlargement rather than in the exercise of physical or mental power; his will was much stronger than it had been, but so far it had been exercised in resisting, not using the Ring, and with the object of destroying it. He needed time, much time, before he could control the Ring or (which in such a case is the same) before it could control him; before his will and arrogance could grow to a stature in which he could dominate other major hostile wills. Even so for a long time his acts and commands would still have to seem 'good' to him, for the benefit of others beside himself.

No, that comes from the person using it. Pippin isn't mind controlling anyone with a Palantir.

Pippin is incapable of mind controlling anyone, with or without a Palantir. But I suppose I wasn't precise; the Palantiri do not directly control minds; rather, they put one mind in contact with another mind, and leave them ripe for controlling influences.

Considering user here is claiming that magic is just an extension of "doing things really well", and that Palantiri are a combination of telescopes and telephones, the ability to mind to mind mentally contact and possibly control should not be part of that package, but it most definitely is.

Very carefully.