What's at the heart of every roleplaying game (RPG)? The characters. Your party of heroes is central to the story and the strategy of the game … as well as how you choose to make them evolve.
Leveling up your characters is a standard of the genre, but it's also a standard that can make or break the game. If it's too rigid, you don't feel as if you have enough control, but if it's too loose, you can break the game for yourself by inadvertently weakening your characters (by causing them to go in a direction their class wasn't initially designed for). The Lord of the Rings™: The Third Age™ strikes a bit of a balance between the two, with each character having branching paths and yet still retaining a specific focus. That being said, it's still important to keep a keen eye on your decisions every time you level up.
It's good to be saved by an elf maiden.
The most active role you have when leveling up is determining which attributes you want to improve. Each level brings a couple points to play with, and how you spend them will fundamentally alter your character. The best bet is to determine a long-tem focus for each character. For example, Berethor is an all-around warrior, but he's also the only one in the party with Leadership abilities. Perhaps you'll find yourself using those abilities just as much as standard attacks. In this case, it may be beneficial not to focus solely on his ability to hit and deal damage, but also on the rate at which this character acts. Either way, properly understanding the purpose of each attribute is key. Here's a quick breakdown:
Strength: To put it bluntly, Strength simply determines how hard you hit things. If you want to do some serious damage, Strength is your friend.
Spirit: This determines both the power of your spells and the sheer amount of action points you have. Even if you don't cast spells, putting a few points in Spirit to bump your total action points would be advisable.
Constitution: Constitution is a bit of a far-reaching stat. It alters the amount of damage you can do (just a little though) and determines how resistant you are to different types of attacks. It also alters the amount of Action Points you can have, but it mostly determines how much health and how many hit points you'll have.
Speed: If you want to dodge attacks, Speed is where it's at. It improves both your ranged and melee defenses.
Dexterity: Dexterity determines how accurate you are with either ranged or melee attacks. Like Speed, it also helps in ranged and melee defense.
Argh! Orc stench on my map!
You've Got to Have Skills Each character has a variety of different skill categories that he can learn from. As you progress through the game, different skills are unlocked and available to learn. However, you can only learn one at time in each category, so the key is choosing which one you want to learn next. For example, Elegost has a Bowcraft skill set, and currently within that, I have three unlocked skills. They are Crippling Shot, Creature Bane, and Pierce Will. All three offer great abilities, but I can only choose one right now. Creature Bane will allow me to do more damage to animals (filthy Wargs!), but Berethor has already learned a similar ability. Pierce Will enables me to lower an enemy's Spirit Defense, and Crippling Shot will do damage and slow the enemy down. I've already have a bunch of enemy-stat-altering Bowcraft abilities, so I've decided on Crippling Shot.
It's these types of choices that you'll have to make for a variety of different categories for each character. I like a well-rounded party, so I try not to have characters with overlapping abilities. But, then again, there's nothing wrong with specializing in a certain style of combat. Having each character able to slow or paralyze or put to sleep an enemy could make for a formidable force.
Also, you learn your abilities over time as you use other abilities within the same category. For example, if I'm in the process of learning the Uruk-Hai Bane Swordcraft ability for Berethor, I'll only be able to learn it if I use other Swordcraft abilities in combat. The less you use those abilities, the longer it takes to learn. So, when you're choosing an action in combat, you may want to think about which ability you want to learn fastest and which category it's in.
Choosing how to improve your characters is a freedom given to you by almost all RPGs. If you want to do it right, though, you have to understand the system and how each part relates to the others. You'll also need a decent plan for where you want your party members to end up ability wise. With those two things nailed down, you'll do just fine.
