Magic classes, part I

Now that Player's Handbook 2 is out it's time to think further at the classes for Middle-earth.

Martial classes are of course all ok, providing that the power descriptions are made less flashy and that one stays to the heroic tier - or possibly the paragon one for Silmarillion-era campaigns - epic characters are just too powerful for Arda.

For what matters magic, one can try to subdivide Middle-earth magic into three areas: the magic of elves, but also of dwarves, that more or less comes through the teaching of the Valar; the magic of wizards like the Istari like Gandalf and Saruman, whose origin is not linked to the Valar in any way, and the foul sorcery of Morgoth and Sauron, which comes from the evil that Morgoth imbuebed in the earth and that outlives his defeat.

To render this in D&D terms, and disregarding sorcery which is not for the heroes, the plan is to have two spell-casting classes: magician and wizard.

The magician will be fitted in the rules as a divine leader (although we will borrow also from elsewhere in the choice of powers), and could be appropriate especially for Noldor elves.
The use of implements for spells in Middle-earth is not universal, but there are attested cases (the elven rings, the magical powers granted by the elessar); in game terms, it's probably fair to say that any sort of small magic item can function as implement for magician spells.
It won't wear the heavy armor of the D&D cleric, and it will probably have access to a different selection of weapons (light blades are definitely more plausible than maces and morningstars)

A wizard will instead be an arcane controller. Story-wise, it could have been a student of Saruman or Gandalf, or have learned some arcane arts from ancient books from Numenor in Gondor libraries; even if no such character appears in Tolkien's works, it's not that unplausible.
Secondary roles could be either striker or leader, depends what will be the final power list.
Of course it will use a staff as implement, and will probably have access to most of the wizard's cantrip effects.

A very pleasant surprise from PH 2 is that the Bard class could work reasonably fine for some characters that want to thread the paths of Finrod Felagund or Luthien (at least in the heoric tier). Some changes are of course necessary: the implement should be changed from wand to something less visible (I'd say either an amulet or a musical instrument), powers that teleport creatures should make them shift or slide instead, and some powers might be unappropriate (e..g the "Misdirected Mark" at-will power), but many others are plausible enough at least in the Silmarillion times.

Very few devoted spellcasting characters are expected to be around in Middle-earth, but multiclass feats could be used to provide some magical powers to e.g. an elven warlord or ranger.

The next posts on this issue will hopefully contain the power lists for the magician and the wizard, and the Sindarin race (which won't be very far from the standard elf anyway), so that everything is ready for the campaign to begin.