Thread: New Mobs, Please

I was just thinking that some new mob types might refresh the game for some of our long-suffering players.

Since launch, we’ve gotten a smattering of new mobs here and there. Evendim gave us killer deer, Forochel gave us saber-tooths and mammoths, etc, etc...

Here are some of my ideas:

banshee – healing/dps mob kind of like RKs (ancient evil or the dead). Much more dangerous in a group with other mobs than solo 'cause they like to heal. Tactical damage. Should look female and vaugely ghost-like.

basilisk – CC-based, giant snake (*almost* dragon-kind, but still beast mob type). Uses roots & stuns to keep enemies at range. Largest ones can call smaller ones (three mob tiers down), and use a channeled skill to root players. Elite Masters call normals, Elites call swarms, Signatures and below can’t call adds. Lots of poison and status effects due to poison (stuns/roots etc…). Can spit venom at range (single target or AoE) or melee strike.

changeling – skin-changer (ancient evil or the dead). Starts out like a will-‘o-wisp or maybe a very pale goblin. You don’t know it’s a changeling ‘til it changes form. Changes form based on initial attack. Ranged attack --> melee mob, melee attack --> tactical or ranged mob, tactical attack --> melee mob. Higher tier changeling means larger/higher tier mob transformation. Bosses might be able to mirror one player in the group, cosmetically.

golem – tanky pet of another mob like an angmarim sorcerer (object mob type). Puppet without life of its own. Clay golem is the most common and least durable; Iron - champion-like golem; Mud - heals itself; Shadow - very resistant to any damage but light, lightning, or fire (precisely the light from the lightning and fire, not the lightning/fire itself); Stone - resists melee/ranged damage, very slow; Tar - slows players, very vulnerable to fire, and makes players more vulnerable to fire; Wood - similar to a wood troll. Generally, they're of a size with the smaller wood trolls. Rarely as large as normal trolls. Body form is similar to Olog-Hai trolls, just smaller.

taranis – grim or limrafn based on lightning instead of fire, frost, or shadow

werewolf/skin-changer – like the changeling, but only has two forms. (Beorn was a skin changer, and while he wasn’t evil, he did have a temper and would’ve killed the dwarves of Bilbo’s party if they had approached him in the wrong manner. Other skin-changers might not be so reasonable.)

different types of ghosts – dullahan: headless horseman from Irish mythology (mounted combat anyone?), ghosts with chains (chains used for cc), see banshee and changeling above.

Please, think up a mob type and post it here. Maybe we can get a semi-beastiary going for the devs to pick and choose from.

I dif. agree with the idea of new mobs, however it is important to impliment the most logical creations that adhere to middle-earth. Going back to the old paper/pen game some additional ideas can be used. There is room for new configurations though.

BANSHEE-questionable
GOLEM-agree
GHOSTS-agree

MY SUGGESTIONS

UNDEAD in general(vampiric, ghoulish, draconic, humanoid, beastial)
GOLLUM off-bred creations from the character from the story.
REPTILES humanoid mutations, giant specimens(geckos/monitor/elemental mutations/etc)
INSECTS giant variants of wasps/ants, mutated horror like creations that sauromon/sauron made
BEASTIAL korthaxx(morbid four legged beast the size of a cave bear that has spines, tusks, three eyes and a tail-also covered with thisck scales and fur)deep horror(a large fiendish beast with spider like legs and tentacles that can crawl on all surfaces)xerthon(bipedal beast that can only live in the dark(underground/night on surface)has claws,fangs, and two large white glowing eyes)I have many more ideas.
GARGOYLES-enuff said.
DARK DWARVES not just dourhand, but actual dwarves that appear as black/gray skinned with spec. traits and are completely evil. They actually look evil and warped.
DEMONS
OOZES/SLIMES
GIANT FUNGUS living humanoid mushroom beings/fungus that attacks PC's
BIRD HUMANOIDS creatures that look like the creatures from "dark crystal" that have caste lvls like mages, shamans, warriors.

The problem with this sort of suggestion is...LoTR is a mythology of Europe, and specifically of England. (The Shire "ultimately" is the English Midlands.) You need to keep the wildlife reasonably consistent with that.

Now, if you want to suggest, say, Irish Elk or Wooly Rhinoceros...be my guest.

As for...

Originally Posted by Thorrof

GOLLUM off-bred creations from the character from the story.

Gollum is an *individual*. He is an early Hobbit. He had no offspring. Who would have enough to do with him to bear him any kids?

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Originally Posted by whheydt

The problem with this sort of suggestion is...LoTR is a mythology of Europe, and specifically of England. (The Shire "ultimately" is the English Midlands.) You need to keep the wildlife reasonably consistent with that.

I agree wholeheartedly. There is a slight difficulty, since a lot of European mythology came straight out of Greece. And Greece got a lot of theirs from the middle east.

Most Celtic and Welsh mythology seems to be limited to four types of critters: spectral hounds, dragons, ghosts/spirits, and the fae. LotRO already has three types of dog mobs, a few types of dragons, and two or three different types of ghosts (i'm not counting the re-skinned mobs). The fairies could be construed as the maiar that remain in Middle Earth, and/or the Ancient Evil mobs. Even then, there are some types that we just can't bring into the game more than we already have, like the will-'o-the-wisp for various fairies that would lead travelers astray. Brownies? Nah. Little elves like cobbler elves? No. lol.

That's why I wanted to open up this thread to get more ideas going. I like the number of mobs we have, now. But we're gonna need more for Isengard... I'm really kind of tired of seeing the same four dozen mobs over and over... So, while the actual beastiary of Europe is one we should draw on, I think we really have to look at the mythology and legends as well, and draw from those a little more heavily.

Originally Posted by Thorroth

I dif. agree with the idea of new mobs, however it is important to impliment the most logical creations that adhere to middle-earth.

Originally Posted by whheydt

The problem with this sort of suggestion is...LoTR is a mythology of Europe, and specifically of England. (The Shire "ultimately" is the English Midlands.) You need to keep the wildlife reasonably consistent with that.
Old Used Programmer

Not necessarily true. Saber kittens, anyone? Or even Polar bears?


That said how ever, I don't agree that we need new mobs, especially ones that have new abilities (as opposed to having new mobs that act the same as some of the old ones). Except boss level ones, we mostly just mow through them lol.

Originally Posted by JeanCarlo

Not necessarily true. Saber kittens, anyone? Or even Polar bears?

Any kind of Pleistocene fauna! We already have mammoths and smilodons. Irish Elk have been mentioned. We have cave bears, sort of, though they're not called that.

We get some figures from Welsh mythology when we get to Enedwaith. Some of them will send a chill down your spine.

I don't think you could justify going back as far as the Paleocene for Gastornis and other killer birds. They did linger until about 2 MYA ago in the New World ... but LotR is an Old World setting. No killer birds. /sniff

Personally, I don't want new mobs nearly as much as I want more Lore-based activity.

For instance, the word "Enedwaith." Ened is the same word as "Ent", compare Sindarin Onod singular, Onodrim plural. Ent is also Old English (and therefore Rohirric) for "giant"; the Roman ruins that the early Anglo-Saxons saw everywhere in England, but could not possibly build themselves, were described as eald enta geweorc, "the old work of giants."

Now, "waith" is an archaic word, which according to the OED* means (1) "the action or practice of hunting or fishing," either legally or illegally according to context, or (2) "game obtained by hunting or fishing". The OED doesn't have a meaning "hunting/fishing grounds" for it, but meaning (1) can mean "the right to hunt game." From there to "hunting grounds" isn't too far a journey, and Tolkien might have felt justified in taking it.

So "Enedwaith" as a place name means something like "the Ents' hunting grounds" in Rohirric, which is as near to the Mercian dialect of Old English as makes no difference.

What, and why, do Ents hunt? Orcs, of course, the way humans hunt and destroy predators. Ents *seem* to live off air and water, like trees. But they aren't trees, not really; maybe they have to get some protein somewhere. The possibilities are intriguing ... and frightening. You'll remember that the Elves of Lorien warned the Company to stay away from Fangorn Forest.

Meanwhile, there don't seem to be any Ents left in Enedwaith. What evidence, other than linguistic, could we find of their having been there once?

Now, the Ents we meet in the books don't seem to build much --though Treebeard has a nice cave to shelter in. But what kind of buildings might the Ents have constructed long ago when there were more of them? Why would they have constructed buildings, seeing that they stand out in the rain for fun? Imagine coming upon the ruins of such a structure, with an Elf NPC that says, "No, these are none of ours, not even of the Hollin Elves who sought the Havens long ago. I have been studying them for weeks, and I still have no idea what their purpose was."

Failing that (I'm drawing on Janet Kagan's Hellspark here, and Michael Kurland's The Unicorn Girl), what kind of artifacts would Ents leave behind? Landscapes carefully sculptured (as by giant earth-moving machinery) to provide sunny slopes for trees that needed lots of light? Or, perhaps gigantic fruit-trees, old and no longer productive, planted in neat rows by the Entwives before they left?

I don't suppose we're going to meet actual Ents, barring the one in Eavespires, until Turbine is good and ready to let us into Fangorn Forest. And that could be a while. But to find a few Entish ruins, of whatever kind, would be nice. The part of Enedwaith we've already seen is, I suppose, fixed in place -- but once we get through that southern pass toward Isengard, we might see a few ancient orchards? Please?

_____
*It's just marginally possible, considering how late in the alphabet waith is, that Tolkien could have worked on that entry. His first job after getting out of the Army was to work on the last bit of the OED, and he mentions "wasp," "worm," "wiggle," and "wigwam" as entries he compiled.