Questions concerning 1e

[manikus]

I haven't gotten there yet, but what? Paladins a subset of Caveliers? That's ridiculous. Just plain goofy.

[Uatu]

Did I mention I never liked cavaliers much?

(I think that Gygax (may he rest in peace) really liked knights, essentially They were pretty powerful in his other game, Lejendary Adventure, as well.)

[manikus]

I like Caveliers just fine - as the level 7 title for Paladins.

I'm not surprised to hear that about Gygax. I think many of the old school miniatures' gamers were either into knights or Napoleon (or both).

[Uatu]

Well, that is just my (educated?) guess, of course.

But in the Lejendary Adventure game, having the Chivalry skill not only gave you knowledge of noble manners and such, it also gave rather large attack/damage bonuses for combat!

(I guess that non-nobles would have to resort to ignoble tactics like using bows/crossbows/slings/staff slings, traps, or trickery to defeat nobility! Or perhaps a heat metal spell would work very well instead )

[manikus]

I recall reading that he was a big fan of the Arthurian legends.

You know, thinking about Gygax and this topic, I'm kind of surprised that Tolkein didn't have knights in his tales. I know that his stories are about the common "man" as hero, but you would think that there would be a knight as support, or a knight gone bad...

[Uatu]

Hmm - well, I guess that the various armed men of the various nations were knights, of a sort - not quite Arthurian, but... And then we had those dark "bad knights," as well (they had armor, didn't they?)...

But yeah, I guess a Tolkein-based AD&D world would not really have cavaliers as a choosable class. I guess we could choose from:

Fighter
Ranger (Aragorn, etc.)
Magic-user/Illusionist (Gandalf, etc.)
Thief (Bilbo, etc.)

Of course, normal humans/elves/dwarves/hobbits would really only be able to choose from fighter or thief (mostly just fighter), really (seeing that you had to have special bloodlines or special origins to be the more magical classes).

[manikus]

I think that if everyone in your army has armor, you're not a knight, you're a soldier.

I think maybe the Nazgul could be Anti-Paladins. Boromir and Faramir are the closest things to knights, even if Faramir is also the head of the Southern Rangers. (Faramir is kind of a Ranger/Cavelier multi-class.)

I think the elves are fairly magical - not that all of them are magic-users, but that some of them are, certainly all of the leaders and elders.

I'd never really thought about knight's or the fool's errand in regards to Tolkein before, but it seems that Bilbo/Frodo is the corollary (not perfectly) of Parcival. Gandalf and Merlin are easy to tag. There is no direct corollary between Arthur, Lancelot or Guenevere - I would say that Aragorn is more like Sir Gawain.
Hmmm, someone must have written about this, considering how famously Tolkein talked about creating a new myth for the ages. I guess I have some research to do and blog posts to write.

[Uatu]

It is surely an interesting subject to muse over

Not sure how much magic the elves had in Tolkein's myths - only Gandalf, Radagast, and Saruman actually seemed to have usable magic power...

[manikus]

The elves forged magical rings (so did the dwarves). Elrond could heal and was clairvoyant, clauraudient and pescient. Galadriel had all kinds of charm and command magic going on. Though, I will admit that I don't know how much was them and how much were the rings of power that they wore. There were all kinds of magical abilities inherent to elfdom as well - the far-seeing, passing without a trace, etc. Not overtly magical, but definitely so by AD&D standards. What about the elven-made cloaks and waybread?

[Uatu]

Well - yeah, the elves and dwarves could forge magical things (although they had help), and the elves were sort of enlightened, which I guess gave them heightened senses/empathy/etc., but...