# Was Gandalf Just A 5th Level Magic User?



## ghostofchristmaspast (Mar 16, 2016)

This doesn't belong in 5th edition thread.


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## Polyhedral_Columbia (Mar 16, 2016)

Bill is pretty much right, from the perspective of the D&D game system, as such.

But the D&D system and world is its own beast, which is amalgam of a bunch of different fantasy tropes (i.e. Appendix N). Some of the settings which are source material for the D&D Universe are filled with flashier magic, and so if we use the D&D Multiverse as a measuring stick, of course Middle-earth is "low magic."

Even the things which Gygax directly adapted from Tolkien are "translated", "tweaked", "gonzoified" (and even a bit "flattened") on their way into the D&D Multiverse.  

It will be interesting to see how C7 does magic.

Just to point out two options:

1) One route would be to try to make the spell-casting system as similar to D&D as possible--even keeping the same spell levels, for cross-world compatibility's sake. This would result in what Bill Seligman describes. Basically a 7th- or 12th-level level cap.

2) Another route would be to make Middle-earth magic traditions completely different than magic in the D&D Multiverse. In this case, Middle-earth would cap out at the usual 20th level, but spell progression would be slower. The downside is that a 5e Middle-earth Magician would not be able to hold her own when playing in a cross-world D&D game.


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## Morrus (Mar 16, 2016)

ghostofchristmaspast said:


> This doesn't belong in 5th edition thread.




It certainly does; it's prompted by the announcement of a 5E compatible Middle Earth. Plus, it's my website, which is always a bonus.


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## Jabborwacky (Mar 16, 2016)

Morrus said:


> It certainly does; it's prompted by the announcement of a 5E compatible Middle Earth. Plus, it's my website, which is always a bonus.




If its D&D compatible, can we nickname it Middle Oerth? 

Edit: This is of such incredible importance, I should make a forum poll for this! No, wait. I promised myself to avoid the crazy sauce for a while.


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## Polyhedral_Columbia (Mar 16, 2016)

P.S. There is probably a 3rd way - of making a D&D Magician class which has enough class features (even non-magical features, such as drama-based abilities which effect the story) whereby it would stand up to an equivalent 20th-level D&D Wizard (or Sorcerer or Warlock), even though it has less flashy spells.

The non-magical classes such as Warrior, Burglar, and Ranger could also be equivalent in power to D&D Fighters, Rogues, Rangers all the way to 20th level. Though they would need to be re-flavored to match what the characters actually do in the stories. Even for these classes, the more gonzo non-magical abilities could be replaced with something more subtle.


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## The Grassy Gnoll (Mar 16, 2016)

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.

So in a very low magic setting, a 5th level caster is a big deal.

He's probably a Wizard 5/magic initiate (druid).


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## TerraDave (Mar 16, 2016)

He was better in melee combat then a wizard would be. He must have 1 or 2 levels of fighter as well.


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## Plane Sailing (Mar 16, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Some folks I hear discussing this topic these days take the position that Gandalf is actually a paladin.




I remember quite a bit of debate back in the day that Gandalf was a cleric in D&D terms!

(I always rather fancied the idea of Aragorn as a Paladin (even though he was the prototypical D&D ranger for sure).


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## Tony Vargas (Mar 16, 2016)

A couple years ago I designed a faux Fellowship for a convention game using 1e, 3e & 4e rulesets.  In the spirit of that old arcticle (or mocking it, perhaps) I made everyone 5th level ... sorta.

The Gandalf Clone, 'Vancegulf Mythreindeer' was:

1e:  Human character-with-two-classes 9th level Fighter / 5th level Magic-User (yep, no experience anytime he drew his sword, 'Glamthing') 
... oh, and psionic with enough psionic strength to pretty thoroughly smack down a Type VI demon in psionic combat.  
But 'only' a 5th level magic-user - with a Staff of the Magi and Ring of Fire Elemental Command.  ;P

3e:  Half-Celestial 5th level Wizard, with the afore-mentioned magic items, of course.  But 'only' a 5th level magic user - with a +5 LA template. 

4e:  Deva 5th level Wizard(Arcanist).


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## Morrus (Mar 16, 2016)

The Balrog issue is important. That's a Balor. He's roughly equal to or slightly more powerful than a Balor.


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## Shasarak (Mar 16, 2016)

I always figured Gandalf to be a low level Druid myself.


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## Curmudjinn (Mar 16, 2016)

So, what if C7 ends up doing D&D better than WotC?


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## Zardnaar (Mar 16, 2016)

Gandalf could be a 10HD NPC with spellcasting equal to a 6th level caster (AD&D).

 In 1E a balor had 8+8 hit dice. Gandalf with 10HD is tougher than a balrog in that way, throw in some spellcasting power and outsider type abilities he is fine. Middle Earth is very low magic by D&D terms.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

I appear to be in close agreement with Tony.

In D&D terms, approximately speaking:

1e: Gandalf is an Agathion in human form with 6 additional levels of M-U (because he's an unusually powerful and knowledgeable member of his race) or perhaps simply the ability to cast spells as a 6th level M-U.   
3e: Gandalf is a 6th level Wizard with the Half-Celestial template.  

In both cases "Gandalf" is actually Olorin is a servant of the Solar Varda, who is ruling middle-earth jointly with her spouse Manwe, in vassalage to Illuvatar (the only being with true divine rank in the setting).

Gandalf is known to use the following arcane spells: affect normal fires, light, hold portal, knock, shatter, lightning bolt, fireball, produce flame, pyrotechnics, 'Gandalf's minute meteors' (as Melf's spell of the same name), invisibility, and phantasmal forces.  He also probably knows a number spells related to light, shadow, illusion, and sound not directly disclosed by the text, but all presumably of 3rd level or less.  

Gandalf is armed with a unique staff +3 which is the symbol of his divinely appointed office and thus the source of his magical power.  It acts as the material component for all his spell-casting and his spellbook, but it is not as far as I can tell as potent as a Staff of the Magi.  He also has been known to carry a sword +2 goblin-bane, named Glamdring, and he has a unique artifact, a Ring of Elemental Command (Fire), named Narya.  Narya vastly increases his ability to make things burn in a pinch, but he avoids doing it because using its powers has negative consequences - perhaps alerting Sauron to his location.  The ring also appears to have some additional powers above and beyond a ring of elemental command, primarily related to instilling courage and cheer in others - probably the ability to cast Emotion or something like it a few times day.  These powers he uses more freely, so its possible they - not being the sort of things Sauron is interested in - are untainted.


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## SouthpawSoldier (Mar 16, 2016)

Since Gandalf was a Maiar, I've often seen him statted as an Outsider with a few levels Fighter; spells are more racial abilities.


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## Polyhedral_Columbia (Mar 16, 2016)

I like your succinct summary.

Where was Invisibility though?

He also did a kind of exorcism on Theoden.


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## ccooke (Mar 16, 2016)

Of course, you could make a very powerful wizard in 5e with no more than 3rd level spells - you could make a rather nice 5e Gandalf-like with, say, Wizard 5/Druid 5/Fighter 1. Powerful cantrips, the equivalent slots of a 10th level caster but only third level spells. Lots of choice for powerful and thematic ones for Gandalf, though - fireball in a 5th level slot is nothing to be sneezed at, unless you're allergic to bat guano.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 16, 2016)

I never bought into the 5th level thing.  At best, it was an artifact of the story JRRT told being short on magic being used often and obviously- for reasons not fully revealed- being compared to a system in which (increasingly with each progressive edition) many people played spellcasters who used (relatively flashy) magic first and unto depletion in (virtually) every situation.

IOW, apples & oranges.


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## FormerlyHemlock (Mar 16, 2016)

ccooke said:


> Of course, you could make a very powerful wizard in 5e with no more than 3rd level spells - you could make a rather nice 5e Gandalf-like with, say, Wizard 5/Druid 5/Fighter 1. Powerful cantrips, the equivalent slots of a 10th level caster but only third level spells. Lots of choice for powerful and thematic ones for Gandalf, though - fireball in a 5th level slot is nothing to be sneezed at, unless you're allergic to bat guano.




It's almost indistinguishable from Fireball III.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 16, 2016)

The thing is that Gandalf technically has tremendous power but (except against the Balrog) is forbidden to use it. So I think it's accurate to say that (except for that one battle, where he throws lightning and stuff around for ages) he never does anything that a 5th level wizard couldn't do - but not that he actually _is_ one.

Also, putting Sauron at 7th-8th level doesn't allow enough room for the power scale that exists between the characters.

That article was written back in the "name level" days when 9th-10th was very exceptional. Using that scale I'd suggest something like this...

Sauron - 15+ [he is overwhelmingly more powerful than any other being in Middle-Earth in the Third Age]
Gandalf/Saruman - 9 [but doesn't use most of it, as stated above]
Galadriel - 8
Elrond - 7
Aragorn - 7 [end of ROTK; 5-6 at the beginning of FOTR]
Boromir - 4
Frodo, Sam - 3 [end of ROTK; 1 at the beginning of FOTR]

For later editions, where levels tend to go higher, these should increase somewhat... for example...
Sauron - 21+ [only 'epic' character in the Third Age]
Gandalf/Saruman - 14
Aragorn - 11-12 [end; 8-9 at beginning]
and so on.


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## Flamestrike (Mar 16, 2016)

LG Aasimar Lore Bard 13/ Paladin 2. Dual weilder feat [movie version] would be the closest approximation.

'Wizard' though is his title, not a statement of his class. Its the colloqual name for the 5 'Wizards' who entered ME to combat Sauron (one of whom is almost certainly a Druid, and the other most likely an Enchanment specialist).

Tolkien had this to say:

_Wizard is a translation of Quenya istar (Sindarin ithron): one of the members of an "order" (as they call it), claiming to possess, and exhibiting, eminent knowledge of the history and nature of the World. The translation (through suitable in its relation to "wise" and other ancient words of knowing, similar to that of istar in Quenya) is not perhaps happy, since Heren Istarion or "Order of Wizards" was quite distinct from "wizards" and "magicians" of later legend; they belonged solely to the Third Age and then departed, and none save maybe Elrond, Círdan and Galadriel discovered of what kind they were or whence they came_.

From a mechanical standpoint, he is a Lore Bard. Expertise in persuasion, history, arcana, and insight. Cutting words and inspiration (he's famous for both - scolding people and spurring them into action; its noted in the apocryhpia that his main power was 'inspiring the fires in the hearts of men to action'. This power was amplified by the Elven ring of power he wore [Narya from memory]). He is also depicted as knowing a little bit of everything, and is even introduced into the story singing a song (he sings a few), often recites poetry and tidbits of ancient lore.

To your average inhabitant of ME, he's a mysterious 'Wizard'. To someone more knowledgable he is one of THE Wizards, an ancient order who live on ME. To anyone looking at his character sheet, he's a Lore Bard.

He can easily be fluffed from the movies and books as casting fireball [pinecones], lightning bolt [nazgul], light [moria], thaumaturgy [dont mistake me for a conjurer of cheap tricks!], shield [balrog], counterspell and telekinesis [battle with sauroman] summon animal [giant eagles], dispel magic [removing Saurons curse of Theoden] thunderwave [slamming his staff into the ground and knocking back foes], pyrotechnics [fireworks], arcane lock [magically locking the door in moria], detect magic [here is the magic door to Moria], several subtle and potent divination and enchantment effects, summon steed [shadowfax] and others.

He also has a few levels of Paladin. His divine sense allowed him to sense the Balrog before the others. He prefers to use his slots for divine smite [with Glamdring and his staff] instead of on overt shows of magical power.


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## Sunseeker (Mar 16, 2016)

TerraDave said:


> He was better in melee combat then a wizard would be. He must have 1 or 2 levels of fighter as well.




I think it's even talked about, at least off-handedly, that Gandalf actually isn't that great of a Wizard.  But as people have pointed out, when everyone else is a level 1 or 2 fighter or rogue, then a level 5 wizard is a BFD.

@OP: Gandalf is hard to qualify, particularly when you realize that he's not even human.  For all we know, Gandalf might have NO levels in anything, or maybe has a ton of levels in his racial class and just appears in human form.  I mean, whats the level adjustment for being an angel these days?


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## Mike D (Mar 16, 2016)

I like to make the argument that in Middle-earth, there is actually no "magic" at all. By magic, I mean the ability to manipulate matter and energy in the way an arcane D&D spellcaster does. In Middle-earth, anyone or anything that is "magical" traces its sources to Aman, which in Tolkien's world is divinity. Gandalf, Sauron, Balrogs, the Noldor elves and all they created . . . all of them have have connections to Aman and the Valar. Anything not connected to Aman does not possess magical characteristics . . . hobbits, dwarves, and men, for instance.


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## Psychometrika (Mar 16, 2016)

Hmm...I would build Gandalf the Grey as a powerful outsider approximately on the level of a Balor with spells per day that match the feats in the book. He is functionally the equivalent of an "Angel" (Maia are spirits not ordinary mortals) in the lore anyway, so I don't think classes really fit him well crunch or fluff-wise.


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## Maxperson (Mar 16, 2016)

I've never understood why people are so quick to assume that an Angel and head of the order of Istari (wizards) is low level just because he didn't cast high level spells.  He very easy could have chose not to, and indeed that is the truth of the matter.  He was instructed not to use his full power by the Valar.  He is much more powerful than the token magic he did in the books.  This is further evidenced by Gandalf single handedly killing a Balrog (Balor in D&D).

Show me a 5th level wizard who can kill a Balor one on one.


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## Maxperson (Mar 16, 2016)

Mike D said:


> I like to make the argument that in Middle-earth, there is actually no "magic" at all. By magic, I mean the ability to manipulate matter and energy in the way an arcane D&D spellcaster does. In Middle-earth, anyone or anything that is "magical" traces its sources to Aman, which in Tolkien's world is divinity. Gandalf, Sauron, Balrogs, the Noldor elves and all they created . . . all of them have have connections to Aman and the Valar. Anything not connected to Aman does not possess magical characteristics . . . hobbits, dwarves, and men, for instance.




Except the books say you are wrong.  Gandalf says this outside the doors of Moria.

Gandalf: "I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves… Men… and Orcs."


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## Mike D (Mar 16, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Except the books say you are wrong.  Gandalf says this outside the doors of Moria.
> 
> Gandalf: "I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves… Men… and Orcs."




I am aware of that quote, at the entrance to Moria . . . but that is the only reference I am aware of to anything of the sort. I could argue that was more of a turn of phrase for Gandalf than an actual reference to any such magic. There is nothing else in any of the other trilogy books, or the Silmarillion, that I can recall that supports his statement there.

I still stand by my statement - but I'll clarify it in light of that quote - in the LOTR (and Silmarillion), anything overtly and expressly magical can be traced to Aman and/or the Valar, thus making Middle-earth magic a divine art, not an arcane one.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Show me a 5th level wizard who can kill a Balor one on one.




First of all, he slew a Balrog, not a Balor.  And he died doing it.  

Secondly, the 1e Type 6 demon (of which, Balor, was a named individual) that was so obviously inspired by the Tolkien Balrog was an 8+8 HD monster.  It needs relatively little boosting on account of race for a 5th or 6th level wizard to match an 8HD outsider.  For example, taking Gandalf to be closest to a 1e Agathion would give Gandalf 7+7 HD plus the spellcasting ability, plus clerical ability, plus psionics.  He's very much a match for the Type 6 demon entry in the 1e MM with those sort of stats.  If anything, Gandalf as an Agathion with 6th level M-U ability might be over powered.

The 3e Balor with its 20HD is a product of the same sort of inflationary mindset that the article is speaking out against and which has been plaguing D&D for years now.  But a 6th level wizard with a half-celestial template is about an 11th level character, and an 8HD evil outsider would be a quite serious challenge.

The stat blocks I've provided account for pretty much everything Gandalf does on screen and is implied to do off screen (such as in the fight with the Balrog, or the fight against the Ringwraiths on Weathertop).  And making Gandalf a relatively low level character explains a lot of things that would otherwise be difficult to explain, such as the fact that the party is in fact threatened at least some by 1 HD orcs.

And I've also explained the upper end of the power scale here pretty well.  With Manwe and Varda as Solars, the rest of the Valar as something like Planatars, Gandalf as an Agathion with 6 extra caster levels fits about right.  Sauron is a of the first rank of the Maiar, originally Morgoth's lieutenant, so Gandalf is not so powerful that Sauron is directly threatened even if Gandalf were uncloaked.  But conversely, Sauron is not so powerful that his moving mere orcs about makes no sense compared to his personal power, as armies of mooks are quickly annihilated in high level D&D in the way sending mooks against the Justice League is pointless.  Sauron might be in 1e terms the equivalent of a fiend lord.  Remember, Gothmog - a balrog of largest size - was Sauron's peer.  Sauron might be adequately represented in 3e terms something like an 11th level were-wolf ghost sorcerer with the half-fiend templates.  In 1e terms, you'd probably stat him up like a fiend lord (something comparable to the 1e Amon stat block would work well).  

Based on what he's shown to do, Gandalf is in no fashion nearly as high of level as characters like Fingolfin, Feanor, or Luthien .  Those characters were sufficiently high level that taking on Sauron one on one wasn't out of the question.  By making Gandalf merely a 6th level Wizard, you can have Fingolfin or Luthien as say an 18th level character rather than something near 30th level.  And you still have room above their heads for the Valar without getting ridiculous.  

Is this the only way to do things?  No, obviously this is somewhat arbitrary.  The books weren't written with a game system in mind.  But it's a very solid coherent way of looking at the issues, and I think it's a very healthy way for a GM to look at it.  In D&D, by the time you hit 8th level, you are dealing with Capes with swords.  You already have the tools for some pretty epic stuff.  It's a low powered Supers game by that point.  Middle Earth is much lower than powered than that on the whole (at least, if we aren't talking about the legends of the first age).


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## Kite474 (Mar 16, 2016)

Yeah, I can buy that he isn't really all that powerful of a wizard in terms of D&D. But ,now please forgive me as I only have knowledge from the movies, the Istari are supposed to be high angels right? So does that mean in his "true" form can he pull off Exalted level shiz? From what I hear about The Silmarillion it had some pretty high magic stuff going on. Including some dragon that used mountains as hand rests.


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## Morrus (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> First of all, he slew a Balrog, not a Balor.  And he died doing it.




Well, a Balor is a Balrog is much the same as saying a Halfling is a Hobbit or a Treant is an Ent. TSR changing the names because they got some nasty letters from some lawyers doesn't really factor in. 

And yep, of course the stats changed throughout D&D editions. Which is why you'd need to also change Gandalf's stats through editions.


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## Byakugan (Mar 16, 2016)

Clearly Gandalf's DM was a visionary who was using E5 rules(not 5E). 

5th level magic was the best anyone could get, but he had enough HP to go toe to toe with a Balrog because he had several lifetimes worth of hitpoint gains. 

The highest level spells we saw were probably Hallucinatory Terrain, a weak Telekinesis, Dispel Evil, and Control Water. All roughly 4th level magic, making it extremely powerful in context. Elrond used what was something between Dispel Evil and Heal on Frodo, but it was essentially a long term ritual spell cast by one of the 3 most ancient Elves on the planet.


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## rgoodbb (Mar 16, 2016)

When you have such a multitude of spells including healing types and remove curses, Druidic spells such as animal messenger, speak with animals and daylight with thunderwave as has already been said, Bard is the way. 

You also take Find Shadowfax from the Paladins list and either shield of faith or shield with magical secrets (an apt name for Gandalf) 

Not sure 5th level would, as people are saying, defeat the balrog but Gandalf is low to mid levels in a low magic campaign for me


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## Zardnaar (Mar 16, 2016)

The article also dates from a time where 10th level was epic level.


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## Flamestrike (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> The stat blocks I've provided account for pretty much everything Gandalf does on screen and is implied to do off screen (such as in the fight with the Balrog, or the fight against the Ringwraiths on Weathertop).  And making Gandalf a relatively low level character explains a lot of things that would otherwise be difficult to explain, such as the fact that the party is in fact threatened at least *some *by 1 HD orcs.




_Some _Orcs?

View attachment 75527

Bounded accuracy is a bitch.




> Based on what he's shown to do, Gandalf is in no fashion nearly as high of level as characters like Fingolfin, Feanor, or Luthien .  Those characters were sufficiently high level that taking on Sauron one on one wasn't out of the question.




Fingolfin managed to strike Morgoth seven times before getting crushed by Grond. He was clearly a 20th level EK using action surge. He missed with his 8th attack.



> By making Gandalf merely a 6th level Wizard, you can have Fingolfin or Luthien as say an 18th level character rather than something near 30th level.  And you still have room above their heads for the Valar without getting ridiculous.




I have Gandalf the Grey as a LG  Lore Bard 13/ Paladin 2. He levels up as Gandalf the White to 18th level, tacking on 2 more of Bard and 1 more of Paladin.

Aragorn is a NG Spell-less Hunter Ranger 7/ Champion fighter 3 when we first meet him. Boromir is a LN [shield master feat] champion fighter 9. Gimli is also a Champion fighter 7. Legolas is a Rogue 2 [cunning action, expertise in perception and acrobatics], Spell less hunter ranger 5. The Hobbits are all 1st level (rapidly shooting up to 3rd level) Rogue [Thieves]. Merry and Pippin later both MC as Fighters.

The Balrog of Moria is an up CR'd Balor [huge size]. As a named demon lord (and only 7 in existence), they are expressly more powerful than DnD 'common' Balors. CR 24 ballpark [OotA demon lord levels of power]. As a Fiend Gandalf was able to smite the crap out of it with divine smite [lucky he saved those spell slots fighting the Orcs previously]

Saurons power is somewhere between fallen Planetar and Deity. CR 30+ Tiamat+ levels of power. And thats his weakened form without the Ring.


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## S'mon (Mar 16, 2016)

In 5e Gandalf is clearly a Valor Bard. 
I'd probably want to make him at least 10th level, but much higher if I want to use 5e Balor stats for Balrogs.


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## Flamestrike (Mar 16, 2016)

S'mon said:


> In 5e Gandalf is clearly a Valor Bard.
> I'd probably want to make him at least 10th level, but much higher if I want to use 5e Balor stats for Balrogs.




Lore Bard MC'd with Paladin for mine. Dual weilder feat [movie version].


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## Redthistle (Mar 16, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Well, a Balor is a Balrog is much the same as saying a Halfling is a Hobbit or a Treant is an Ent. TSR changing the names because they got some nasty letters from some lawyers doesn't really factor in.
> 
> And yep, of course the stats changed throughout D&D editions. Which is why you'd need to also change Gandalf's stats through editions.




As I recall, the books never explained specifically how Gandalf killed the Balrog. What we know is that Gandalf destroyed the stone bridge, plunging both himself and the demon into the chasm.

Might the monster's and the wizard's deaths have been simply the result of falling damage? Poor beastie had no powers of flight, apparently.

Doesn't take a lot of magic for that, and slamming his staff against the bridge tells us a magic item played a role in the action.

One things is for sure: Gandalf sacrificed himself to do it. The emotional wallop that delivered was more powerful than any magic involved.


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## Xethreau (Mar 16, 2016)

I for one am usually against trying to cram extraordinarily complex and creative concepts into a non-custom D&D class. Even so, aside from the provocative title, I don't think this article is that revolutionary (thought admittedly it probably was at the time). To me this article is about how to effectively use the D&D rule-set to represent what we actually know from the story instead of just making something up. 

That is to say, I think this article is about game/campaign design. The most important concept it conveys is to use the rules to help arbitrate the story--and not the other way around. We don't have to know how to simulate everything from the books to understand that rolling Gandalf as a 5th-level magic-user wouldn't be a bad design choice (for that edition).


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Redthistle said:


> As I recall, the books never explained specifically how Gandalf killed the Balrog.




Gandalf recounts the battle after returning, though he begs permission to be brief given the stress the memories cause for him.  After destroying the bridge, Gandalf ends up in a grapple with the Balrog.  They plunge thousands of feet but land in ice cold water, putting out the Balrog's fire.  For a while, the Balrog tries to win the grapple, but eventually realizes that he's overmatched and flees.  They both climb a staircase that runs from Moria's lowest level to the top of the mountain.  When Gandalf arrives, the Balrog rekindles his flame and they engage in a spell duel - the Balrog's fire versus Gandalf's wizardry that wrecks the top of the mountain, causing landslides and avalanches.  Gandalf ultimately wins, being presumably better able to penetrate the Balrog's fire resistance and spell resistance than the Balrog is his, and slays his foe but then lays down and dies of his wounds.  His spirit returns to Aman, where he is judged by the Valar that sent him.  They proclaim him a worthy and faithful servant and bid him return.  His spirit returns to his body, where it is found by a friendly Eagle sent by Celeborn and Galadriel to investigate the battle on the mountain.  Gandalf at this point has zero hit points, so he's taken to Galadriel who heals him.



> Might the monster's and the wizard's deaths have been simply the result of falling damage? Poor beastie had no powers of flight, apparently.




No.  Both parties survive their fall.



> Doesn't take a lot of magic for that, and slamming his staff against the bridge tells us a magic item played a role in the action.




It's the likely source of the 'retributive strike' power of D&D's Staff of the Magi, but again I'm not sure that the D&D mechanic is particularly faithful to the scene.  Neither Gandalf nor the Balrog appear to have been seriously hurt by Gandalf's act - only the bridge.  Gandalf's staff breaking isn't clearly explained but does clearly illustrate the self-sacrificial nature of his act, and an apparent renunciation of his further duties as an Istari.   However, this is contraindicated by the fact that the bridge does not break under his own feet, and he only goes over the edge because of the Balrog's spiteful retaliatory attack with the whip.

In any event, I agree that it makes for one of the most powerful scenes in all of literature.


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## UngeheuerLich (Mar 16, 2016)

If you use 3.5e maybe E6 is a good approximation of the power curve. Gandalf is epic with 6 levels of wizard.

With DnD 5e i guess you can combine several classes none of which surpass 5th level. Fighter does not fit that well because he does not use armor. But with some strength and universal proficiency bonus it is unnecessary. 
So my combination would encompass 5 levels of evoker. Maybe magic adept for thaumaturgy. Maybe a level or two of druid, maybe a bit of lore bard.
The great thing about 5e: Though he can't cast higher level spells than 3rd he is a fabulous fighter, and he can cast a hell of a lot of wizard spells of 3rd and lower levels.


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## Maxperson (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> First of all, he slew a Balrog, not a Balor.  And he died doing it.




So did the Balor.  The Balor is the D&D version of the Balrog.  Gygax patterned it after the Balrog and gave it the power that it has.  That means that D&D Gandalf killed a D&D Balor one on one.  



> Secondly, the 1e Type 6 demon (of which, Balor, was a named individual) that was so obviously inspired by the Tolkien Balrog was an 8+8 HD monster.  It needs relatively little boosting on account of race for a 5th or 6th level wizard to match an 8HD outsider.  For example, taking Gandalf to be closest to a 1e Agathion would give Gandalf 7+7 HD plus the spellcasting ability, plus clerical ability, plus psionics.  He's very much a match for the Type 6 demon entry in the 1e MM with those sort of stats.  If anything, Gandalf as an Agathion with 6th level M-U ability might be over powered.




Ahh, so you're admitting that he is not a level 5 wizard, but something much more powerful.  In any case, in Middle Earth he was instructed to highly limit his use of his magical powers, so he is more powerful than 6th level as a wizard, and simply didn't show it.  When you limit yourself to beneath your potential, what you do show cannot be the most you can do.



> The stat blocks I've provided account for pretty much everything Gandalf does on screen and is implied to do off screen (such as in the fight with the Balrog, or the fight against the Ringwraiths on Weathertop).  And making Gandalf a relatively low level character explains a lot of things that would otherwise be difficult to explain, such as the fact that the party is in fact threatened at least some by 1 HD orcs.




What Gandalf did is irrelevant.  What he did was all done with him intentionally highly limiting himself.  That means that since what he showed was about 6th level, he must be much higher than that in reality, but simply did not use his power to the fullest.



> And I've also explained the upper end of the power scale here pretty well.  With Manwe and Varda as Solars, the rest of the Valar as something like Planatars, Gandalf as an Agathion with 6 extra caster levels fits about right.  Sauron is a of the first rank of the Maiar, originally Morgoth's lieutenant, so Gandalf is not so powerful that Sauron is directly threatened even if Gandalf were uncloaked.  But conversely, Sauron is not so powerful that his moving mere orcs about makes no sense compared to his personal power, as armies of mooks are quickly annihilated in high level D&D in the way sending mooks against the Justice League is pointless.  Sauron might be in 1e terms the equivalent of a fiend lord.  Remember, Gothmog - a balrog of largest size - was Sauron's peer.  Sauron might be adequately represented in 3e terms something like an 11th level were-wolf ghost sorcerer with the half-fiend templates.  In 1e terms, you'd probably stat him up like a fiend lord (something comparable to the 1e Amon stat block would work well).




Sauron was much weaker originally.  His increased power that we see in the movies comes from the ring and what it did to him.



> Based on what he's shown to do, Gandalf is in no fashion nearly as high of level as characters like Fingolfin, Feanor, or Luthien .  Those characters were sufficiently high level that taking on Sauron one on one wasn't out of the question.  By making Gandalf merely a 6th level Wizard, you can have Fingolfin or Luthien as say an 18th level character rather than something near 30th level.  And you still have room above their heads for the Valar without getting ridiculous.




I agree.  Fingolfin and Feanor would be majorly epic level PCs.  Luthien was only half-maiar and she didn't have to limit herself.  Gandalf did have to limit himself.  Also, the Valar are waaaaay above Solars in power.  Solars could not have created the universe like the Valar did.  Nor could a Solar create an entire race like dwarves.  The Valar ARE ridiculous and would be the equivalent to lesser to greater gods depending on which one you are talking about, with Eru being Ao in Toril.


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## Maxperson (Mar 16, 2016)

Kite474 said:


> Yeah, I can buy that he isn't really all that powerful of a wizard in terms of D&D. But ,now please forgive me as I only have knowledge from the movies, the Istari are supposed to be high angels right? So does that mean in his "true" form can he pull off Exalted level shiz? From what I hear about The Silmarillion it had some pretty high magic stuff going on. Including some dragon that used mountains as hand rests.




No, it means in his current form he could pull off exalted level shiz.  All the Istari did was take the form of a man. T hey took none of the rest of the limitations, so they still had all of their powers.


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## Pauper (Mar 16, 2016)

The point of the article is to illuminate that Gandalf is considered powerful based on reputation, when the things he actually does in the story aren't terribly powerful by D&D's method of measurement, save for a few exceptions where the abilities used can be attributed to Gandalf's magic items rather than his innate abilities. Gandalf's demonstrated abilities become the baseline we use to establish the power level of entities in Middle Earth. For those who claim that Gandalf goes through the whole epic deliberately using underpowered abilities, I have to ask, isn't there any situation where he'd be inclined to let loose if he could? When his own life is in danger when fighting the balrog? When helping to fight the assault on the gates of Minas Tirith? When his own safety or the safety of those he cares about are on the line, don't you have to assume he's using the best abilities he can?

From there, I'm more inclined to agree with those who say 'a balrog can't be that powerful, since it can barely defeat a 5th level magic-user while dying itself'. Likewise, neither Frodo nor Bilbo have any experience before setting out on their own adventures. Both hobbits rely heavily on the magic sword Sting for their combat prowess, such as it is, rather than any inherent fighting skill.

So basically, JRR Tolkien was a Monty Haul DM.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Flamestrike said:


> _Some _Orcs?




I take no notice of anything from those movies.  I do however agree that 5e's bounded accuracy mechanic and generally lower power level in higher level spellcaster's allows you to up the character levels of the party members while still capturing the zeitgeist of the books.  In 5e, Gandalf is perhaps 9th to 11th level.  I agree with those that treat him under 5e as a variant Bard, since the Bard's origin in the Kalevala is very much also to be counted as source material for the Tolkien universe.  However, in the books (as opposed to the movies), Gandalf is very much more 'wizardly' than 'druidic', as opposed to his cousin Radaghast who seems more druidic than wizardly.  Gandalf, as a vassal of Varda and with special gifting for wise words and council, make I think a good Lore Bard in 5e.  Obviously, unlike Bombadil, who is much more overtly bardic in his magic and acts very much like a character in the Kalevala, Gandalf doesn't sing to cast his spells but rather uses 'words of power', but that's just the drapes.  Mechanically it's a pretty good fit overall, and you could probably tweak the build with a bit of multi-classing.



> Fingolfin managed to strike Morgoth seven times before getting crushed by Grond. He was clearly a 20th level EK using action surge. He missed with his 8th attack.




I don't see how that necessarily follows.  The text implies that the fight was very lengthy, and that Fingolfin was winning by using a 'fight defensively' strategy to avoid Morgoth's blows and that the fight went on for perhaps hours.  Morgoth starts to get the better of it, smashing Fingolfin with Grond three times but is unable to finish him.  Finally, the fight is decided when Fingolfin fumbles and fails a reflex save, falling backwards into one of the many pits torn into the earth by Grond's falling.  Seeing that his foe is about finished, Morgoth delivers the killing attack with his foot, snapping Fingolfin's neck.  However, this draws an attack of opportunity which Fingolfin uses to deliver one final critical hit to Morgoth's heel, permanently maiming Morgoth (who by this point has given up is spirit form in favor of a stronger permanent physical body the better to manipulate the physical world).



> I have Gandalf the Grey as a LG  Lore Bard 13/ Paladin 2. He levels up as Gandalf the White to 18th level, tacking on 2 more of Bard and 1 more of Paladin.
> 
> Aragorn is a NG Spell-less Hunter Ranger 7/ Champion fighter 3 when we first meet him. Boromir is a LN [shield master feat] champion fighter 9. Gimli is also a Champion fighter 7. Legolas is a Rogue 2 [cunning action, expertise in perception and acrobatics], Spell less hunter ranger 5.




All of that is relatively coherent.  A rough calculation of Boromir's level could be made by how many orcs he could reasonably be expected to slay.  In 1e, he's probably less than 9th level, but not less than 6th.  In 5e he could well be higher level, reflecting the space opened up by making Wizards relatively less powerful and the bounded accuracy mechanic.  



> The Hobbits are all 1st level (rapidly shooting up to 3rd level) Rogue [Thieves]. Merry and Pippin later both MC as Fighters.




I don't feel any of the Hobbits with the exception of Bilbo, who was hired as a 'burglar' and appeared to try to fit into this role, make for good thieves.  In 1e terms, Merry and Pippin make better 0th level Cavalier squires than thieves - they certainly have the social background for the class.  In 3e terms, they all appear to have NPC classes initially with a non-adventurous background, and all multiclass into fighter or perhaps ranger (or even possibly Bard).  They are not particularly known for their stealth, and to the extent that they are good at it, it could easily be explained as a combination of racial ability and magic items (those cloaks of elvenkind).  Gollum however is best represented as a Rogue, and probably a quite high level one.  



> The Balrog of Moria is an up CR'd Balor [huge size]. As a named demon lord (and only 7 in existence), they are expressly more powerful than DnD 'common' Balors.




I believe you have this reversed.  In D&D, the original flavor text for the Type 6 demon suggested only a few existed.  In Tolkien lore, there appear to have been dozens of Balors at one point - part of the ainur vassal host of Morgoth, probably snared from the fire loving host of Aule.  The balrog of moria is presumably of the common variety, as opposed to a balor lord like Gothmog.  The balrogs of Tolkien are expressly less potent than the balor of D&D in any of their recent incarnations, and while fantastically more powerful than the party, there is no reason to suppose that the balrog of Moria is a particularly exceptional one of its kind other than having survived the sacking of Thangorodrim, presumably by hiding deep within the earth.  



> Saurons power is somewhere between fallen Planetar and Deity. CR 30+ Tiamat+ levels of power. And thats his weakened form without the Ring.




I think that's reasonably coherent, except for your last statement.  It's clear from the text that without the ring, he's unable to take the CR 30+ form he'd like to take, and is forced to a more ghostly form.  This explains in part why Sauron is so cowardly and is mainly able to threaten Middle Earth through his vassals at this point.  Tiamat doesn't need an orc army to destroy a city.  She just can.  Sauron's physical powers are far more limited at this point in Middle Earth's history.  I think it would be sufficient to have Sauron in the low 20's to have him capable of daunting pretty much anyone on Middle Earth at the time, with the possible exception of Glorfindel who is probably the highest level character in middle earth other than Sauron.  Obviously, with the ring, Sauron recovers his full CR 30+ powers and returns to the potency he had during the first age as Morgoth's chief lieutenant.  In 3e or early terms, I think you need only have about 2/3rds that power level.  A party of 15th level characters is fully capable of taking on most or all of the fiend lords in 1e, for example.


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## collin (Mar 16, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Well, a Balor is a Balrog is much the same as saying a Halfling is a Hobbit or a Treant is an Ent. TSR changing the names because they got some nasty letters from some lawyers doesn't really factor in.
> 
> And yep, of course the stats changed throughout D&D editions. Which is why you'd need to also change Gandalf's stats through editions.




Very good.  I was going to add something along these same lines.  After TSR started getting nasty letters from the Tolkien estate, Gygax et al. tried to distance themselves from LotR and The Hobbit as much as possible. I seem to recall an interview with Gygax around this same time (early-to-mid 1980's maybe?) where he tried to distance DnD from the Tolkien mythos by saying something similar to what the author of this article said: that in DnD, Gandalf would only be an x-level wizard and therefore the similarities between DnD and LotR was very minimal.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> So did the Balor.  The Balor is the D&D version of the Balrog.  Gygax patterned it after the Balrog and gave it the power that it has.  That means that D&D Gandalf killed a D&D Balor one on one.




Again, Gygax's Balrog only has 8+8 HD.  If we are going by the strict D&D interpretation, Gandalf only needs to have a Staff of the Magi to run the scene - Gandalf does a retributive strike, they both die, the rest is color.  Hence, presumably Gandalf need only be a 5th level wizard.



> Ahh, so you're admitting that he is not a level 5 wizard, but something much more powerful.




No, not quite.  I suggest he's more powerful than a 5th level wizard, but still a 5th level wizard (I prefer 6th, giving him multiple 3rd level spell slots, which I believe can be sustained from the text).  I believe that it is somewhat wrong to say that Gandalf is only a 5th level wizard, as he is clearly not of mere mortal race.  But, in terms of his arcane abilities, I concur with the original essay that the evidence of the text suggests he can cast no more than 3rd level spells in D&D terms.  Thus, as the original essayist points out, he's better treated as a 5th level wizard (or in my opinion a 6th level wizard) than anything of higher level.  A 13th level wizard for example, has abilities that vastly exceed anything Gandalf appears capable of, and such a high level would not explain why Gandalf has some of the difficulties he has or why he tries to resolve them how he does.  

The stats I suggest for Gandalf means that he is a 6th level wizard, but that he has some other abilities as well.  Those other abilities however, while broad, are not significantly beyond what we'd expect of a 6th level character.  For example, if we assume Gandalf is a powerful Agathion with the ability to cast 3rd level arcane spells, we have a character with just 7HD with the powers of roughly a 7th level psionic fighter, 7th level cleric, and 6th level wizard combined.  That means Gandalf is more than just a 5th level wizard, but does not imply that in any fashion Gandalf is a high level wizard or that he could use higher level spells but is just choosing not to.



> In any case, in Middle Earth he was instructed to highly limit his use of his magical powers, so he is more powerful than 6th level as a wizard, and simply didn't show it.




That doesn't follow either.  Most of the time Gandalf acts like he's merely a 1st level wizard.  When Gandalf occasionally does 'real magic', it's something akin to fireball or lightning bolt.  I agree that the text is easiest to explain if Gandalf is more powerful than a human 6th level wizard, but I don't agree that makes Gandalf more than about a 6th level wizard.  His other abilities are best explained as either racial abilities, or of the powers of the minor artifact (Narya) that he carries, which I assume are roughly equivalent to a Ring of Elemental Command (Fire) with a couple of bonus abilities and drawbacks.  This would mean that Gandalf's highest level spell is a 'Flamestrike', which is again, very much in line with everything we either see Gandalf doing or Gandalf is implied to be able to do off camera.



> What Gandalf did is irrelevant.  What he did was all done with him intentionally highly limiting himself.  That means that since what he showed was about 6th level, he must be much higher than that in reality, but simply did not use his power to the fullest.




Again, that doesn't follow.  Gandalf highly limiting himself in the text is Gandalf not showing off that he's actually a 6th level wizard capable of doing things like fireball.   Gandalf treats fireball and lightning bolt as things he needs to conceal.  Gandalf particularly treats his possession of Narya as something he needs to conceal, and its from Narya that we know he gets most of his command over fire.  Most people think of Gandalf as a simple travelling loremaster or even a vagrant.  That he's more than a 1st level wizard with a few simple tricks and great fireworks is something he conceals the majority of the time.  The Gandalf we see blasting the wolves with fire is Gandalf the Grey uncloaked.  There is no evidence in the text that Gandalf can cast 5th or 6th level spells even if he needed to or wanted to, and in particular Saruman has renounced his vows to conceal his power and yet does not appear to be more than a 6th or 7th level wizard.  So there is no reason to expect that Gandalf is actually 15th level or anything, but pretending to be 6th level.  The text is much more easily explained if Gandalf is 6th level but pretends to be 1st level, and also conceals his racial heritage as an Ainur and his possession of one of the rings of power.



> Sauron was much weaker originally.  His increased power that we see in the movies comes from the ring and what it did to him.




The movies again...  

Sauron Lord of Werewolves was originally Morgoth's chief lieutenant.  He was a peer to and senior in rank to Gothmog lord of Balrogs and to Ancalagon the Black, a flame breathing dragon of the largest possible size.  Sauron's ring of power that he later forged does greatly increase his CR, but he's already without it more dangerous presumably than a 10HD red dragon.   In 1e terms, he's roughly comparable to a Duke of Hell or a Demon Lord.  Morgoth's power is presumably comparable to a Lord of Hell or a Demon Prince (Asmodeus, Grazzt, Demogorgon).  



> I agree.  Fingolfin and Feanor would be majorly epic level PCs.




Epic level is variously defined by the different editions.  In 1e, anything above name level (9th) could reasonably be described as epic level.  Luthein is a high-level bard in 1e terms, probably equivalent to about 17th level.  In 3e she is a high level bard with the half-celestial template, possibly 20th level.



> Also, the Valar are waaaaay above Solars in power.  Solars could not have created the universe like the Valar did.




The Valar did not create the universe.  Only Illuvatar was capable of creating the universe.  The Valar were made responsible for shaping the universe from the raw material Illuvatar provided, which the text makes clear was an act of labor for them.  They simply could not will it into being and presumably spent thousands of years on the task.  This is within the power of a Solar.  



> Nor could a Solar create an entire race like dwarves.




Nor could the Valar for crying out loud!  Again, the creation of the dwarves specifically required the intervention of Illuvatar.  Aule only shaped them out of stone and was playing with them like dolls using something akin to Animate Object, when Illuvatar caught him.  Aule acted very much like a guilty child and confessed that he'd been vain gloriously pretending to be able to create life, something that was well beyond his station and ability.  Read the text for crying out loud.

There is just no reason to inflate numbers and stats just for the sake of having big numbers.  You only need such numbers as would explain the story.  Inflating something up for the sake of shock and awe just requires you to inflate everything else up as well, which creates more problems than it solves.  That's the theme of the original essay.


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## delericho (Mar 16, 2016)

Didn't we have this conversation fairly recently?

My own take, then and now, is that Gandalf _should be_ somewhere in the top end of the level scale (probably 17th at the start of LotR, at least in 5e terms; I would go for 13th in 3e or 21st in 4e), but the existing classes actually do a fairly poor job of reflecting that - either the classes make him way too powerful or he's left at a level where he has no chance against the Balrog.

However, my _real_ answer is that I'd prefer the designers of a game to look at the sorts of things the game is trying to model (so probably Conan, Elric, Lankhmar, and LotR for D&D), assign levels to the key characters and creatures, and _then_ build the game accordingly.


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## delericho (Mar 16, 2016)

Curmudjinn said:


> So, what if C7 ends up doing D&D better than WotC?




It's not really an issue - there's considerably more to D&D than just Tolkien, and indeed Gygax notes in the 1st Ed DMG that Conan, Elric, and Lankhmar were much more significant influences. So I'd fully expect the C7 LotR game to do a better job of modelling Tolkien but I'd equally expect it not to be D&D as we know it.


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## Hand of Evil (Mar 16, 2016)

Gandalf went toe to toe with a Balrog got to think that shows he was a bit more than 5th level


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Hand of Evil said:


> Gandalf went toe to toe with a Balrog got to think that shows he was a bit more than 5th level




Again, depends on what stats you use for a Balrog.  Sure, if by Balrog you mean the 3.5e D&D Balrog, then Gandalf has to be more than a 5th level wizard.  But the 3.5e D&D Balrog is very much an example of the sort of thinking that the original poster is attacking.  If we don't inflate the Balrog's abilities, then we don't have to inflate Gandalf's abilities.  The 3.5e Balor's abilities were meant to challenge high level D&D characters, not Gandalf, and were inflated from the 3.0e, 2e, and 1e stats of the monster as part of the perpetual power creep that this sort of thinking causes.  

Assuming that the Balrog of Moria was a 20HD monster requires us to start assuming things like orcs of Moria were all 4HD, which then means that Sam Gamgee is like a 5th level fighter by Moria, and so on and so forth.  It's very much the thinking the original essay is asking you to question.


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## Umbran (Mar 16, 2016)

Morrus said:


> What do you think? Is Gandalf a 5th level magic-user? What about in 5th Edition, given the upcoming Middle Earth release? I'm sure Cubicle 7 will tells for certain this summer, but until then...




5th level wizards don't generally spontaneously come back from the dead.  Or last more than a moment against (in 3e) a CR 20 Balor/Pit Fiend (or, generally, a creature capable of depopulating a major dwarven city on its own).  I think that looking merely at the things we can identify as analogous to spells cast really helps us fix the level of the character.


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## Morrus (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Again, depends on what stats you use for a Balrog.  Sure, if by Balrog you mean the 3.5e D&D Balrog, then Gandalf has to be more than a 5th level wizard.  But the 3.5e D&D Balrog is very much an example of the sort of thinking that the original poster is attacking.  If we don't inflate the Balrog's abilities, then we don't have to inflate Gandalf's abilities.  The 3.5e Balor's abilities were meant to challenge high level D&D characters, not Gandalf, and were inflated from the 3.0e, 2e, and 1e stats of the monster as part of the perpetual power creep that this sort of thinking causes.




If we change the game system, we have to change the stats to match it. The discussion doesn't even make sense otherwise - if we're (hypothetically) thinking about his 5E stats, then we need to use a 5E Balrog/Balor. Whether or not the article writer approved of later game systems having different stat scales isn't particularly material to the question of Gandalf's (hypothetical) stats in various editions.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

delericho said:


> Didn't we have this conversation fairly recently?




It's one of those ever-green conversation starters.

Like which was the best Star Trek, original, TNG, or DS9?  

Does the Balrog have wings?

Which Doctor was the best?

Is Pluto a planet?

DC vs. Marvel?

Star Wars or Star Trek?

Kirk or Picard?

Or, if you want a real flame war, pick a geek book.  Is the movie based on it any good?


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> I believe you have this reversed.  In D&D, the original flavor text for the Type 6 demon suggested only a few existed.  In Tolkien lore, there appear to have been dozens of Balors at one point - part of the ainur vassal host of Morgoth, probably snared from the fire loving host of Aule.




Who knows? Tolkien changed his mind on this, and it's not entirely clear what was 'final'.

In the earliest versions, Balrogs were a 'created race' made by Morgoth [as were the Orcs]; quite numerous - a thousand showed up at one First Age battle - and, while terrifying, quite mortal (dozens died at the Fall of Gondolin).

When Tolkien decided Morgoth shouldn't have the ability to create life, the Orcs became corrupted elves and the Balrogs became fallen Maiar.

At one point in the 50s, Tolkien decided on '3 or at most 7' Balrogs total, but this was never incorporated into any of the 'Silmarillion' texts, so was it his final decision? Who knows?





> It's clear from the text that without the ring, he's unable to take the CR 30+ form he'd like to take, and is forced to a more ghostly form.




Sauron is _less powerful_ without the ring, but he has a physical form at the time of LOTR in the books (though not in the movies).

Gollum was tortured by/in front of him, and he refers to Sauron having nine fingers.

Furthermore, Tolkien's Letter 246:







> in a tale which allows the incarnation of great spirits in a physical and destructible form their power must be far greater when actually physically present. Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic.







> I think it would be sufficient to have Sauron in the low 20's to have him capable of daunting pretty much anyone on Middle Earth at the time,




I agree, Sauron is the only 'epic' being in Middle-Earth at the time of LOTR.



> with the possible exception of Glorfindel who is probably the highest level character in middle earth other than Sauron.




I'd argue that Galadriel is higher level than Glorfindel. She and Feanor are "the greatest of the Eldar of Valinor".


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## delericho (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> It's one of those ever-green conversation starters.




Yeah, but doesn't it usually take more than two months to cycle around?


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Morrus said:


> If we change the game system, we have to change the stats to match it. The discussion doesn't even make sense otherwise - if we're (hypothetically) thinking about his 5E stats, then we need to use a 5E Balrog/Balor. Whether or not the article writer approved of later game systems having different stat scales isn't particularly material to the question of Gandalf's (hypothetical) stats in various editions.




Sure.  But as the game system evolves away from the source material, we have to acknowledge that parts of it - even those that took a bit of kludging to make work in the source material to begin with - no longer work at all.  The 3.5e Balor wasn't altered to make it fit better within the Tolkien legerdemain.  By that point, D&D had become self-referential.  The stat block was created to serve a purpose within the game itself with no attention being paid even in the imagination of the designer as to whether this Balor was a good fit for the Balrog of Moria that likely originally inspired the concept (ape-like, may have wings, flaming sword, multi-tailed whip, immolates).  Arbitrarily trying to fit Gandalf to the 3.5e Balrog and making it the point we take a the fixed frame of reference from which we derive all the rest of stats in Middle Earth makes absolutely no sense.   Even within 3.Xe, Gandalf still appears from the text to be not much more than a 6th level Wizard.  Why flex Gandalf and everything else around the Balrog, when we could just as easily use that as the fixed point of reference and adjust the Balrog of Moria to scale?


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## MechaTarrasque (Mar 16, 2016)

It seems to me that a high level eldritch knight is a good approximation for Gandolf.  It would cover the spells he uses and the martial aptitude.


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## Faenor (Mar 16, 2016)

This was published in March, 1977.

The Silmarillion was published in September, 1977.


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## Polyhedral_Columbia (Mar 16, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Well, a Balor is a Balrog is much the same as saying a Halfling is a Hobbit or a Treant is an Ent. TSR changing the names because they got some nasty letters from some lawyers doesn't really factor in.
> 
> And yep, of course the stats changed throughout D&D editions. Which is why you'd need to also change Gandalf's stats through editions.




I agree that, as a rough beginning, it's useful to point out the Tolkienian sources in D&D.

But the Middle-earth "equivalents" (hobbits, dwarves, treants) were flattened and warped as they passed through Gygax's mind. That's fine - they became one more gonzo-ified ingredient in the D&D Multiverse. But they are no longer really Middle-earth in flavor, or in detail.

For example, Gygax got the traits of the three Hobbit breeds mixed up when adapted them for D&D. In Middle-earth, the Stoors are the "Man-friends" and the Harfoots are the  "Dwarf-friends". While in D&D, the "Stouts" became the "Dwarf-friends", not the Hairfoots, as would be expected. Since the Harfoots/Hairfoots are the most numerous/ordinary breed in both worlds, D&D depicted them as having an affinity with the most numerous/ordinary race in D&D - humans. But in Middle-earth the Harfoots are the Dwarf-friends.

And the Hobbit racial abilities were never fully translated into the D&D Halfling. Here are a list of Hobbit traits, taken straight from a close reading of the books and JRRT's letters:



Very Small Physical Power
 
Nimble and Deft in their Movements 
Inclined to be Fat 
In Touch with Nature; Close Friendship with the Earth   
Skilled in Crafts and Tools   
Quick of Hearing   
Sharp-eyed/Keen-eyed   
Difficult to Daunt   
Difficult to Kill   
Curiously Tough; Tough as Old Tree-Roots; Survive Rough Handling by Grief,  Foe, or Weather; Recover Wonderfully from Falls and Bruises   
Free from Ambition   
Free from Greed of Wealth   
Slow to Quarrel 
Hospitable 
Elusiveness; The Art of Disappearing; Hide Easily   
Move Very Quietly   
Doughty at Bay; Amazing  and Unexpected Heroism "At a Pinch" 
Handle Arms 
Pretty Fair Shot; Aiming and Throwing; Sure at the Mark (stones, quoits, dart-throwing,  shooting at the wand, bowls, ninepins) 
Used to Tunneling 
Sense of Direction Underground   
Work Like Bees   
Fund of Wisdom and Wise Sayings 
Vices of Sloth and Stupidity
Pettiness; Unimaginative, Parochial 
Blowing Smoke-Rings 
Cooking 
Asking Riddles 

Here are the source quotes: https://sites.google.com/site/thereandbackadventure/hobbit-traits

Some of these made it into D&D, but many were overlooked, such as "Sense of Direction Underground."

Unfortunately, many of these traits were never modeled in the Middle-earth RPGs either - MERP, CODA, and TOR.

Another example:_ The Hobbit_ text gives the relative speeds of Hobbits, Dwarves, and Goblins:

_"poor Bilbo could not possibly go half as fast-dwarves can roll along at a tremendous pace, I can tell you, when they have to [...]
Still goblins go faster than dwarves."

_This is not fully modeled in D&D, or in the existing ME RPGs, AFAIK.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> Who knows? Tolkien changed his mind on this, and it's not entirely clear what was 'final'.




Ahh, it's good to have someone else that speaks the language.



> When Tolkien decided Morgoth shouldn't have the ability to create life, the Orcs became corrupted elves and the Balrogs became fallen Maiar.




And all the early text where it mentioned balrogs were rewritten as 'trolls', which in D&D terms are better thought of as ogres than the leathery long nosed green skinned regenerating things of D&D.  



> At one point in the 50s, Tolkien decided on '3 or at most 7' Balrogs total, but this was never incorporated into any of the 'Silmarillion' texts, so was it his final decision? Who knows?




It is implied Feanor and the other 'advance' parties of the Noldor host are attacked by more than 3 Balrogs in the most stable copies of the text.  How many is 'many' is a matter of debate.  When I read the text I imagined 1 or 2 dozen, in part because those sorts of numbers for me better explain Morgoth having drawn off a large portion of the Ainur host to his cause.  If we don't imagine several dozen Balrogs, we start having problems with assigning roles for the sort of numbers of Ainur vassals Morgoth presumably has, not only his own, but those he drew from Aule and other sources as well.

But yeah, once we get into Tolkien's later years, Tolkien begins attacking the underpinnings of almost all of his early assumptions (and reducing the quality of his story).  I think Orson Scott Card is a parallel case.  Both authors I think become emotionally burdened by the seriousness with which their fans begin taking their fiction, and being deeply religious persons both begin to question whether their text is teaching the right lessons.  Fortunately, Tolkien left his masterpiece alone: we could be in a situation like OSC where he knocks holes in his own stories with his own stories.  For that matter, I'm beginning to feel that Star Wars is in a similar position, with later writings about the beloved setting undermining the originals again and again.



> Sauron is _less powerful_ without the ring, but he has a physical form at the time of LOTR in the books (though not in the movies).




I'm aware of that, but nonetheless, that form is a weakened, injured version of his former self, which he can only fully restore if he recovers the ring.  Some of his former selves have probably died unrecoverably.  He can probably never again assume the form of the Lord of Gifts that he tricked Celebrimbor with.  His form of the Dark Lord of the Tower or of the Necromancer, while physical is still not I think equivalent to high epic level.  Epic perhaps, but not high epic.



> I'd argue that Galadriel is higher level than Glorfindel. She and Feanor are "the greatest of the Eldar of Valinor".




It's an interesting question as to whether Galadriel is a higher level than Gandalf.  Certainly they are at the least peers.   I would tend to go with the interpretation that Galadriel is higher level than Gandalf, but roughly equivalent once you account for Gandalf's level adjustments from race or template.  Whether she is higher level than Glorfindel is an even more difficult question, because it depends on how you think of 'greatest'.  In D&D terms, greatest is usually understood to be the ability to win a fight.

But if that is your standard, that would make Eonwe, the greatest warrior of Aman, higher level than most of the Valar.  Tolkien tends to define 'greatest' in terms of authority.  It's heavily implied that most of Sauron's power comes from his misused but still inherent authority.  For example, the biggest problem in overthrowing Sauron using the ring would be that, given his inherent authority, and given that he is the rightful owner of the ring, if he asked you to give him his ring you'd be pretty much compelled to do so unless you had great authority yourself or had trained your will to be a weapon and made yourself cruel and hard.

I would tend to in D&D terms put Glorfindel higher level than Galadriel.  He is a guy who afterall can slay Balors on his own as an act of prowess, and by similar means drive off the Nine.  But the magic of Galadriel suggests she has more authority than Glorfindel has, and thus can more easily make the universe bend to her will especially at a distance.  Exactly what she is capable of doing though isn't entirely clear.  Like Elrond, she seems to be a potent artificer, and appears to have considerable magic, but we don't get to see a lot of it.   In 5e terms, much of what she and Elrond can do seems to be best described as Lair powers.  Gandalf as I've described him is level adjusted about 11th level, but limited to 6th level caster ability.  By that standard, Elrond and Galadriel are both about 11th level as well, probably multi-classed.   Glorfindel is probably about 15th level.   However, this just shows the limitations of trying to apply game concepts to literature that wasn't created to conform to game concepts, and something that expressly appalled Tolkien when people tried to do so.


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## jsaving (Mar 16, 2016)

My recollection is that Gandalf has generally been statted as a bard rather than a wizard due to his preeminent knowledge of lore, notably weak evocation spells and signature gift of inspiring others.


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## Polyhedral_Columbia (Mar 16, 2016)

Gandalf = 20th-level in a single class.

Surely, in the actual Middle-earth 5e game, Gandalf will have a single class. The Middle-earth 5e RPG will be based on the archetypes which exist within that world -- not based on the existing class archetypes of the D&D Multiverse. Yes, if Gandalf were transported into the D&D Multiverse, he might be re-statted rules-wise into a 7th-level Wizard/Fighter/Bard/Paladin or whatever.

But within the stand-alone Middle-earth milieu, Gandalf - and whatever he does - is the archetypal wizard and magician.

And as far as his Stature (class level), Gandalf the White, after the fall of Sauron, has the highest Stature of any persona in Middle-earth (along with Tom Bombadil), and so would be 20th-level at the moment of leaving for the Other Shore. He characterized himself as the counterpart to Sauron.

As for which single class he'd have 20 levels in? Well, though the Istari are a unique kind of being, they function in Middle-earth as "Magicians." I realize that JRRT explicitly distinguished the "Wizards" from "magicians" and "sorcerers", but rules-wise, role-wise, and class-wise, they function as the archetypal Magician in Middle-earth. The Wizards are essentially Magicians who happen to also be Angels, so that their Magic/Spells are enhanced by their preternatural wisdom and insight. But still basically following the same "profession" as mannish Magicians. I mean the Three Magi of Biblical legend are surely one inspiration for the Five Wizards.

And so, being that Gandalf the White was 20th-level, but still didn't often wield flashy spells, then the Magician profession in Arda is very distinct from the magic-using classes and schools of the D&D Multiverse, and progresses at a more subtle rate, in regard to "spell slots." The Magician might also have other class abilities which are not spells. Wielding a sword ought to not be a hindrance.

As for Gandalf's "race", AFAIK, the name "Istari" and "Maia" can't be used by licensees, since they don't actually appear in the LotR or _The Hobbit_. Decipher used a circumlocution, something like (AFAIR) "The Kindred From Beyond the Sea." I suggest simply: "Angel" or (Greek) "Angelos":

_"But G. is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit). There are naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I wd. venture to say that he was an incarnate 'angel'– strictly an 'angelos'."_

-JRRT Letter #156

I'd say Gandalf, at the end of the LotR, is an *Angelos 20th-level Magician*.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

delericho said:


> Didn't we have this conversation fairly recently?




I missed it the last time, or I'd probably be bored with it now.



> My own take, then and now, is that Gandalf _should be_ somewhere in the top end of the level scale (probably 17th at the start of LotR, at least in 5e terms; I would go for 13th in 3e or 21st in 4e), but the existing classes actually do a fairly poor job of reflecting that - either the classes make him way too powerful or he's left at a level where he has no chance against the Balrog.




I think the big problem is that the Balor wasn't faithfully translated from the 1e stats.  If the 3e Balor had been an 8 or 10HD outsider, there would not be this problem.  Instead they took the 8HD balor and made a 20HD version the baseline model.  They took the 13HD pit fiend and made it 20HD.  They took the (effectively) 17HD ancient red dragon of largest size and doubled it up to 34HD or more.  But there was IMO little need for that save to support numbers inflation.  It's easier to scale things up when you need to do so than it is to keep perspective.

If we were playing at high paragon or low epic level, we could just double or triple the HD of the baseline balor to produce a 'Gothmog' and be done.  Without the assumption that the Balor is a CR 20 creature, we no longer have the problem that the classes make Gandalf too powerful once he is of a level to challenge the Balrog.


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## Polyhedral_Columbia (Mar 16, 2016)

Something very important for sales:

I prefer that ME 5E is rules-wise 100% compatible with D&D - even to the extent that characters could theoretically multiclass with regular D&D classes.

I strongly suggest NOT making the core mechanics "slightly different" like Wheel of Time d20 (or Star Wars d20) vis-a-vis D&D3e. No Vitality Points and other snags.

However, re-languaging the terms to match the aesthetic of Middle-earth would be fine and good.

Class > Profession (_"Thorin and Company to Burglar Bilbo greeting! For your hospitality our sincerest thanks, and for your offer of* professional* assistance our grateful acceptance."
 "All the same, I should like it all plain and clear," said he obstinately, putting on his business manner (usually reserved for people who tried to borrow money off him), and doing his best to appear wise and prudent and *professional* and live up to Gandalf's recommendation."_ —The Hobbit

Level > Stature (_"In his [Sauron's] actual presence none but very few of equal *stature* could have hoped to withhold it [the Ring] from him._" —Letter 246)

Strength ok, or Might
Dexterity > Nimbleness
Constitution > Hardihood
Intelligence > Wits
Wisdom > Perception
Charisma > Bearing

(Doing a word-search of the LotR and Hobbit texts found that these were the most common synonyms for the D&D attributes.)

I have some other notes and suggestions here (though not specifically about 5E): https://sites.google.com/site/endorenya/ultimate-hobbit-rpg


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 16, 2016)

I hate to be a grumpy old cuss* but Gandalf was not a 5th level Magic-user, nor a high-level Cleric, nor a Deva sent to the Prime Material Plane.  He was a character in a fictional novel.  Any and every attempt to map him to game rules is going to be fatally flawed.  That way lies madness.

*And I lied.  I _love_ being a grumpy old cuss.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 16, 2016)

As a side note, it's entertaining to see the competition to be Most Knowledgeable Tolkien Scholar erupt in yet another forum.


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## Umbran (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Again, depends on what stats you use for a Balrog.




The Balrog of Moria was sufficient to *wipe out Moria*.  The thing, in essence, took out the population of a city.  Stats should be implied from that, no?  And can a 8 or 10 HD monster take out an entire city?


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> And all the early text where it mentioned balrogs were rewritten as 'trolls',




I believe at least some of that was done by Christopher Tolkien when he created the published Silmarillion (from material spanning about 50 years of evolution in Tolkien's mind - for example the Fall of Gondolin was never re-written after the Book of Lost Tales in 1918 or so).

Trolls were originally from the Hobbit [which was not originally planned as part of the same world as the Silmarillion material] and brought into the same world with LOTR. But I don't think JRRT himself went back and put the trolls into the Silm. material. [Which is probably why there is no Silm. origin story for them unlike the Ents & Eagles, Dragons etc.]



> It is implied Feanor and the other 'advance' parties of the Noldor host are attacked by more than 3 Balrogs in the most stable copies of the text.




Oh - definitely. I don't personally think the '3 or at most 7' bit is definitive, but I figured I had to bring it up.



> How many is 'many' is a matter of debate.  When I read the text I imagined 1 or 2 dozen, in part because those sorts of numbers for me better explain Morgoth having drawn off a large portion of the Ainur host to his cause.




That sounds about right - them existing in thousands doesn't work if they are all as powerful as the Moria Balrog, but I think to avoid changes in the First Age stories you need at least a dozen at the beginning, especially since some get killed off in the War of the Powers before Elves even enter the picture.



> But yeah, once we get into Tolkien's later years, Tolkien begins attacking the underpinnings of almost all of his early assumptions




Yeah, the "Myths Transformed" stuff published in Morgoth's Ring. 



> Some of his former selves have probably died unrecoverably.  He can probably never again assume the form of the Lord of Gifts that he tricked Celebrimbor with.




He can't, but I don't think his different forms are separate entities to the degree that they 'die' as such. In the Silmarillion he quickly shapeshifts between different forms.

At the Fall of Numenor he lost the ability to assume an attractive form, hiding his evil nature -- even with the Ring.



> His form of the Dark Lord of the Tower or of the Necromancer, while physical is still not I think equivalent to high epic level.  Epic perhaps, but not high epic.




Hmm, yeah, I think I'd agree with that. Sauron might be (in 5E terms) maybe CR 22 without the Ring but CR 30 with it.

In the OD&D scale used by the original article where 9th-10th is 'name level' I'd say maybe 15th level without, 20th with.


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## ChrisCarlson (Mar 16, 2016)

Umbran said:


> And can a 8 or 10 HD monster take out an entire city?



Depends. City of what (mechanically speaking)? And which system/edition matters greatly as well.


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## Sadras (Mar 16, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Like which was the best Star Trek, original, TNG, or DS9?




Hmmm, did you leave out Voyager and Enterprise on purpose?


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## mflayermonk (Mar 16, 2016)

Rating magic spells from the books seems silly when you consider Cugel (a rogue) casts both (9th level spells) Freedom and Imprisonment on the same day while reading from a spellbook.


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## Celebrim (Mar 16, 2016)

Umbran said:


> The Balrog of Moria was sufficient to *wipe out Moria*.  The thing, in essence, took out the population of a city.  Stats should be implied from that, no?  And can a 8 or 10 HD monster take out an entire city?




Absolutely it can.

If you assume that magic items are pretty rare...
That most NPCs are 1st level characters...

Then sure, a genius level creature with a fear gaze attack that most characters are going to need like a 17+ to resist, and the ability to create an aura of fire that does like 3d6 damage to everything near you, and a high AC, and a 70% magic resistance that basically means it can always shrug off spells from any caster 4th level or lower, and strong resistances and immunities can pretty easily run riot through a city.  Oh yeah, and the ability to employ a die no save Symbol of Death that takes out 120 hp worth of foes.  Yeah, it can definitely destroy a city.

If you assume Durin VI was about a 9th level character with his ancestor's magic axe, then maybe he can give the Balrog a tough fight.  But the implication is that Durin gets ambushed and killed early on in the contest, and without their champion (and with Durin I's axe, the 'Axe of the Dwarvish Lords', now missing) his people are eventually routed.  

Now if you assume that magic items are common, and that your average dwarf is a 6th level fighter, then no, of course not.  But those assumptions are D&Disms that reflect how D&D is commonly played in practice, with high level characters that require high level challenges, and they don't reference or attempt primarily to reference any particular story but deal with the powers of PCs as they actually can appear in the game.  

However, you can find stories that do reference 1e AD&D's explicitly.  For example, Elizabeth Moon's "Deed of Paksenarrion" very explicitly follows the career of a 0th level fighter in a mercenary company straight out of the 1e DMG, up through the levels, through the adventures in T1: Village of Hommlet, until she becomes a high level Paladin.  However this story wasn't based on AD&D as it was actually played, but on AD&D and its world as how it was described by Gygax.

Conversely, Raymond Feist's Riftwar Saga or Hickman and Weis's Chronicles of the Dragonlance are based on AD&D as it actually was played in practice, and as such the characters in it are very much clearly high level.  Raistlin and Pug are much more powerful in absolute terms in their stories than Gandalf is shown to be in his story.  But I think The Lord of the Rings is much closer in its idea of what mighty means or in its power scale to Deed of Paksinarion, than it is to Chronicles of the Dragonlance.  In a world were most everyone is 1HD, a 9th level Paladin is an epic hero and you'll hardly find anyone more powerful.  In the Forgotten Realms, it's the relatively common captain of the town watch of a pretty small rural village, and anyone who is anyone is like 18th level or higher.


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## Elderbrain (Mar 16, 2016)

I second what SouthpawSoldier said... as a Maiar, Gandalf's spell-like powers are probably innate rather than being the result of taking levels in a class. Just because the common people of Middle-Earth call the Istari "wizards" doesn't necessarily make that identification correct. (Gandalf doesn't seem to have a spell-book, for one thing... though his staff certainly seems to be a magic item.) Likewise with Sauron. And Gandalf's effective power level can't be gauged just based on what spells he cast in the books; does a 20th-level D&D Wizard bother to use his best spells against low-level opponents? That said, there's no reason there couldn't be mortal spell-casters in Middle-Earth. 

I'm interested to see what they do with elves, orcs, etc... do they use the ones in the PH, or offer up new Middle-Earth variants?

Whatever they do, I hope 1) that it's a nice thick book, with stats for major characters and monsters (i.e. Balrog), and 2) it's fully compatible with normal 5e material. I should be able to take stuff from the LOTR book and plop it down in my homebrew campaign (or a pre-made campaign setting), and visa-versa IF I so choose.


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## Zardnaar (Mar 16, 2016)

ChrisCarlson said:


> Depends. City of what (mechanically speaking)? And which system/edition matters greatly as well.




This. In 1E Lolth has 66 hit points, a Balor averaged 44 and level 10 was in effect epic levels. 

LotR makes perfect sense when most of the heroes were level 1-4 with maybe Aragorn being level 8 or 10 and the majority of the population is 1HD.

2E gave the demographics of a generic D&D world (High Level Campaign book). Level 18 was 1 in a million. To put it into perspective.

The city of Rome in the 1st century would have had 1 level 18 character. Italia overall would have had 4-5. The whole empire maybe 30 such characters.
In 1492 Castlle would have had 5 such characters. Aragon would have had 1, France 15-30 (depending on the date) 
1700 England would have had 5 such characters, Scotland 1.
1776 the USA could have had 4.
Ottoman Empire at its height could have had 20-30 such characters.

 Most of them would have been thieves as well going by the xp tables. That was also the upper limit of such characters doesn't mean they will actually exist.


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## BookBarbarian (Mar 16, 2016)

These threads always make me think of DM of the Rings. If you haven't seen it check it out here http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 
Gandalf is clearly a high powered, kill stealing DMPC.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 17, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Absolutely it can.
> 
> If you assume that magic items are pretty rare...
> That most NPCs are 1st level characters...
> ...




I dunno... the original article is old enough that OD&D assumptions probably apply. 

The OD&D "Monsters and Treasure" book tells us that NPC/monster Dwarves are 1 HD, but 1 in 40 is a fighter of level 1d6 (outside the lair) or level 3-6 (in the lair).

Moria should count as a lair. I don't know what the population of Moria was, but it was a city, so even in the rather less populated world of Third Age Middle Earth it should be in the thousands. But even 2,000 dwarves means 50 fighters of 3rd-6th level... I think they could take down one 8+ HD monster, though with some losses.


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## Maxperson (Mar 17, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> I don't see how that necessarily follows.  The text implies that the fight was very lengthy, and that Fingolfin was winning by using a 'fight defensively' strategy to avoid Morgoth's blows and that the fight went on for perhaps hours.  Morgoth starts to get the better of it, smashing Fingolfin with Grond three times but is unable to finish him.  Finally, the fight is decided when Fingolfin fumbles and fails a reflex save, falling backwards into one of the many pits torn into the earth by Grond's falling.  Seeing that his foe is about finished, Morgoth delivers the killing attack with his foot, snapping Fingolfin's neck.  However, this draws an attack of opportunity which Fingolfin uses to deliver one final critical hit to Morgoth's heel, permanently maiming Morgoth (who by this point has given up is spirit form in favor of a stronger permanent physical body the better to manipulate the physical world).




That doesn't follow, either.  Nothing says Fingolfin was fighting defensively.  Elves are just hard to hit in Middle Earth due to their amazing agility.  He wounds Morgoth 7 times before he grew weary and Morgoth smashed Fingolfin with his shield, not Grond.  There were also no pits.  The earth was pitted.  It had holes in it, probably from Morgoth missing with Gond.  Fingolfin then fails to fall into a pit that isn't there and instead trips due to a hole in the ground and falls backwards.



> I believe you have this reversed.  In D&D, the original flavor text for the Type 6 demon suggested only a few existed.  In Tolkien lore, there appear to have been dozens of Balors at one point - part of the ainur vassal host of Morgoth, probably snared from the fire loving host of Aule.  The balrog of moria is presumably of the common variety, as opposed to a balor lord like Gothmog.  The balrogs of Tolkien are expressly less potent than the balor of D&D in any of their recent incarnations, and while fantastically more powerful than the party, there is no reason to suppose that the balrog of Moria is a particularly exceptional one of its kind other than having survived the sacking of Thangorodrim, presumably by hiding deep within the earth.




You assume a lot.  There are no common Balrogs.  They are all of varying power levels based on the power level of the fallen Maia.  Gothmog was simply the most powerful of them.  Nothing says that the Balrog of Moria wasn't nearly that powerful.


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## Maxperson (Mar 17, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Again, Gygax's Balrog only has 8+8 HD.  If we are going by the strict D&D interpretation, Gandalf only needs to have a Staff of the Magi to run the scene - Gandalf does a retributive strike, they both die, the rest is color.  Hence, presumably Gandalf need only be a 5th level wizard.




Oh!  I can play this game.  Gandalf needs only have a nuclear bomb and set if off, they both die and he can be 0 level.  There's nothing that says the staff is anything more than a focus for Gandalf's spells.  



> No, not quite.  I suggest he's more powerful than a 5th level wizard, but still a 5th level wizard (I prefer 6th, giving him multiple 3rd level spell slots, which I believe can be sustained from the text).  I believe that it is somewhat wrong to say that Gandalf is only a 5th level wizard, as he is clearly not of mere mortal race.  But, in terms of his arcane abilities, I concur with the original essay that the evidence of the text suggests he can cast no more than 3rd level spells in D&D terms.  Thus, as the original essayist points out, he's better treated as a 5th level wizard (or in my opinion a 6th level wizard) than anything of higher level.  A 13th level wizard for example, has abilities that vastly exceed anything Gandalf appears capable of, and such a high level would not explain why Gandalf has some of the difficulties he has or why he tries to resolve them how he does.
> 
> The stats I suggest for Gandalf means that he is a 6th level wizard, but that he has some other abilities as well.  Those other abilities however, while broad, are not significantly beyond what we'd expect of a 6th level character.  For example, if we assume Gandalf is a powerful Agathion with the ability to cast 3rd level arcane spells, we have a character with just 7HD with the powers of roughly a 7th level psionic fighter, 7th level cleric, and 6th level wizard combined.  That means Gandalf is more than just a 5th level wizard, but does not imply that in any fashion Gandalf is a high level wizard or that he could use higher level spells but is just choosing not to.
> 
> That doesn't follow either.  Most of the time Gandalf acts like he's merely a 1st level wizard.  When Gandalf occasionally does 'real magic', it's something akin to fireball or lightning bolt.  I agree that the text is easiest to explain if Gandalf is more powerful than a human 6th level wizard, but I don't agree that makes Gandalf more than about a 6th level wizard.  His other abilities are best explained as either racial abilities, or of the powers of the minor artifact (Narya) that he carries, which I assume are roughly equivalent to a Ring of Elemental Command (Fire) with a couple of bonus abilities and drawbacks.  This would mean that Gandalf's highest level spell is a 'Flamestrike', which is again, very much in line with everything we either see Gandalf doing or Gandalf is implied to be able to do off camera.




He can't be 6th level.  He was instructed in Aman not to use his full power, so if you are correct and he used his full power, he's a fallen Maia who rebelled against Aman.  Since we know that isn't the case, he's has to be more powerful than the magic that he shows.



> Sauron Lord of Werewolves was originally Morgoth's chief lieutenant.  He was a peer to and senior in rank to Gothmog lord of Balrogs and to Ancalagon the Black, a flame breathing dragon of the largest possible size.  Sauron's ring of power that he later forged does greatly increase his CR, but he's already without it more dangerous presumably than a 10HD red dragon.   In 1e terms, he's roughly comparable to a Duke of Hell or a Demon Lord.  Morgoth's power is presumably comparable to a Lord of Hell or a Demon Prince (Asmodeus, Grazzt, Demogorgon).




Ancalagon wasn't a 10 hit die red dragon.  He was unique and more powerful than Smaug, who might be a 10 hit die red dragon.  Ancalagon broke mountains when he fell.  No 10 hit die red dragon is going to do that. 



> The Valar did not create the universe.  Only Illuvatar was capable of creating the universe.  The Valar were made responsible for shaping the universe from the raw material Illuvatar provided, which the text makes clear was an act of labor for them.  They simply could not will it into being and presumably spent thousands of years on the task.  This is within the power of a Solar.




Eru only played conductor.  The Ainur brought the universe into being and shaped it via their song to the plan of Eru.  The Valar doing the brunt of that work.  No Solar could do that.



> Nor could the Valar for crying out loud!  Again, the creation of the dwarves specifically required the intervention of Illuvatar.  Aule only shaped them out of stone and was playing with them like dolls using something akin to Animate Object, when Illuvatar caught him.  Aule acted very much like a guilty child and confessed that he'd been vain gloriously pretending to be able to create life, something that was well beyond his station and ability.  Read the text for crying out loud.




They were alive and breathed, even if puppets.  They just didn't have minds and will.  No Solar could do even what you describe, let alone what actually happened.


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## Maxperson (Mar 17, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> Absolutely it can.
> 
> If you assume that magic items are pretty rare...
> That most NPCs are 1st level characters...
> ...




Middle Earth dwarves were very strong and hardy.  They made weapons and armor better than the elves, and elven weapons were mighty.  There's no way at all that an 8+8 hit die monster can take a city of dwarves.


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## Zardnaar (Mar 17, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Middle Earth dwarves were very strong and hardy.  They made weapons and armor better than the elves, and elven weapons were mighty.  There's no way at all that an 8+8 hit die monster can take a city of dwarves.




It can if +2 or 3 weapons are mega rare and no one can hurt it.


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## Maxperson (Mar 17, 2016)

Zardnaar said:


> It can if +2 or 3 weapons are mega rare and no one can hurt it.




They weren't rare at all.  Dwarves in Middle Earth made magic weapons.  Elves made powerful magic weapons and the dwarven weapons and were better.  Khazad Dum not only had those sorts of weapons, it had mithril, which means mithril weapons and armor.  Mithril is better in Middle Earth than it is in D&D.  Khazad Dum had sufficient magic weapons, armor and strong dwarves to use it to waste any 10 8+8 1e Balors.  

The Balrog of Moria was something much, MUCH more powerful than a 1e Balor.


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## pming (Mar 17, 2016)

Hiya!

 Has anyone pointed out that in a _White Dwarf_ magazine (I can't remember the number...it's at my parents place right now)...they had Gandalf as a _cleric_! I guess it was all the healing, light spells, and talking to animals and whatnot. I think they also placed him at 5th level, iirc. I'll have to check and get back to you guys unless someone has that WD on hand.

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## DQDesign (Mar 17, 2016)

Hi! What about a full-custom 5E Istari class?
I posted one here http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?365690-New-Class-Istari some months ago.
Sorry for necroposting and self-promotion... but maybe someone can find it useful.


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## delericho (Mar 17, 2016)

I thought it was a Balrog _and a veritable army of goblins_ that took down Moria?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 17, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> They weren't rare at all.  Dwarves in Middle Earth made magic weapons.  Elves made powerful magic weapons and the dwarven weapons and were better.  Khazad Dum not only had those sorts of weapons, it had mithril, which means mithril weapons and armor.  Mithril is better in Middle Earth than it is in D&D.




The fact that Dwarves and Elves made magic weapons says nothing about their rarity.

The fact that someone has Mithril does not mean they possessed it in abundance.


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## Faenor (Mar 17, 2016)

How I read the powers of the Maiar and Valar is that each had a finite power reservoir. Their essence or Angel energy. They could choose to invest that power according to their interests. Balrogs as 'spirits of fire' were like elementals. The dragons created a body that also had a breath weapon. That body was incredibly powerful, except that it was biological and therefore could be killed with a well placed arrow. Ungoliant invested in a spider form that could absorb energy, which was powerful except that it could be starved and made.it hungry for more constantly. Yavana (was it yavana with the trees?) Invested her power in green growing things, but then sank it all into the trees which could then be destroyed. Sauron's interests were power over people, so he invested his power in a biological form with a high charisma, control over lots of minions, and then he sank lots of his power into the rings, but mostly his power went into the one ring, which was still his power as long as he had the ring. Then, when his body was destroyed in Numenor's destruction, he didn't have enough power to create a new charismatic body. For Saruman, same thing but with a lower level of Angel power. Saruman created his own biological body, then he sank his power into minions and mind control power. Gandalf invested his power in his body, but then because he worked through the goodness of men, elves, and hobbits, and played on the greed of dwarves, didn't need mind control powers. So he could invest his energy into what d&d would call evocation powers, plus healing powers, and generally just minor effects here and there. Then because he had Narya and a magic sword, he could beat the Balrog, which had only fire powers.


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## Uchawi (Mar 17, 2016)

D&D is not a good fit for middle earth, unless you revamp all the classes and magic. You would need to take the champion fighter as the lead and dumb down everything else to match. Even a class like a warlock (as a simple caster) is too complex for middle earth. Even if you re-fluff it. I believe that is a hint to why every D&D movie is a disaster, i.e. too much magic and no way to tone it down and at the same time be true to the game.


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## Maxperson (Mar 17, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The fact that Dwarves and Elves made magic weapons says nothing about their rarity.
> 
> The fact that someone has Mithril does not mean they possessed it in abundance.




The elves made many such weapons.  The dwarves also made weapons of unsurpassed quality and sold them to the *armies* of the elves.  There's no reason to think the dwarves fell prey to a disease that reduced them to imbeciles and they suddenly stopped making weapons like that in quantity.


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## Maxperson (Mar 17, 2016)

Faenor said:


> How I read the powers of the Maiar and Valar is that each had a finite power reservoir. Their essence or Angel energy. They could choose to invest that power according to their interests. Balrogs as 'spirits of fire' were like elementals. The dragons created a body that also had a breath weapon. That body was incredibly powerful, except that it was biological and therefore could be killed with a well placed arrow. Ungoliant invested in a spider form that could absorb energy, which was powerful except that it could be starved and made.it hungry for more constantly. Yavana (was it yavana with the trees?) Invested her power in green growing things, but then sank it all into the trees which could then be destroyed. Sauron's interests were power over people, so he invested his power in a biological form with a high charisma, control over lots of minions, and then he sank lots of his power into the rings, but mostly his power went into the one ring, which was still his power as long as he had the ring. Then, when his body was destroyed in Numenor's destruction, he didn't have enough power to create a new charismatic body. For Saruman, same thing but with a lower level of Angel power. Saruman created his own biological body, then he sank his power into minions and mind control power. Gandalf invested his power in his body, but then because he worked through the goodness of men, elves, and hobbits, and played on the greed of dwarves, didn't need mind control powers. So he could invest his energy into what d&d would call evocation powers, plus healing powers, and generally just minor effects here and there. Then because he had Narya and a magic sword, he could beat the Balrog, which had only fire powers.




That theory is not backed up by the books.  You're taking the tendency for fallen Maia and other evil supernatural entities to be tied to their form and thereby become limited in power by that form and trying to apply it to the Valar and unfallen Maia who do not have that problem.


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Oh!  I can play this game.  Gandalf needs only have a nuclear bomb and set if off, they both die and he can be 0 level.  There's nothing that says the staff is anything more than a focus for Gandalf's spells.




I agree that there is nothing that says that Gandalf's staff is anything more than a focus for Gandalf's spells, and said so in my write up.  But it is important to note that the original essayist did not make that assumption.  Rather, the original essayist and many of his readers would have assumed that Gandalf has a Staff of Power.  The essayist mentions that on account of the staff and the ring, it would be possible that Gandalf is less than 5th level, since both would have in and of themselves explained Gandalf's ability to cast the spells he does.  Certainly it would appear to me that the idea of the retributive strike comes from the scene of Gandalf breaking his staff on the bridge of Khazad-dum, although I would have to check 'Playing at the World' to verify if this is true.  Nonetheless, this gives plenty of ability for a player from a oD&D or AD&D perspective to imagine a 5th level Wizard beating a Balrog, and that is sufficient along with all the other evidence to suggest Gandalf could have been a 5th level Wizard.

It's self-evident why it is more reasonable to assume Gandalf has a Staff of Power rather than a nuclear bomb.



> He can't be 6th level.  He was instructed in Aman not to use his full power, so if you are correct and he used his full power, he's a fallen Maia who rebelled against Aman.  Since we know that isn't the case, he's has to be more powerful than the magic that he shows.




Once again, you are misremembering the text and relying on a loose summation of a passage rather than the text itself.  They were commanded not to use their power to dominate the free peoples, nor to attempt to overcome Sauron's power by power.  Gandalf normally conceals his full power as a 6th level wizard so as to not overawe the free peoples, because in Tolkien's world a 6th level wizard is incredibly powerful awe inspiring worker of miracles capable of doing things far beyond what is possible for ordinary people, but Gandalf is perfectly free in a pinch or in private or when away from observation to use his full power in self-defense or to protect those same free peoples provided his purpose in doing so is not dominating the free people, nor with the ultimate aim of defeating Sauron by his own power.  When Gandalf does his fireball type thing against the phantom wolves, or uses lightning bolts against the goblins, or both against the Nazgul on Weathertop, there is no reason to suppose that he is not using his full power.  After all, Gandalf rarely chooses to do even that much.  And there is certainly no reason to suppose that Gandalf is breaking the command of the Valar to do so. 

Gandalf differs from Saruman not in that Saruman had decided to reveal his full power as a 18th level wizard (or some other crap), because there is certainly no evidence Saruman had any such power, but in that Saruman had decided to rule over the free peoples and defeat Sauron in a direct contest of power.  Saruman himself was probably not more than a 7th level wizard, plus whatever other racial powers Gandalf had, themselves no more potent than what would be expected of a character of about 6th or 7th level.  Any big difference in the power level of Gandalf and Saruman appears to be related to what magic items they each had access to.  Gandalf of course had Narya, as a gift from clear eyed Cirdan, and this is probably the ultimate source of Saruman's jealousy and eventual fall.  Saruman finds the Palantir in Orthanc and so has powers of observation and action at a distance that Gandalf lacks.  But neither acts in the way a high level wizard in D&D acts, despite the fact that Saruman is disregarding the commands of the Valar.  That in itself ought to be sufficient to show that when Gandalf is concealing his power, it's concealing that he's a 6th level wizard and an ainur, and not that he's concealing that he's an 18th level wizard.

Now, there is an important point to be made here.  Fireball is actually more powerful than anything Gandalf can actually do.  The text makes perfectly clear that Gandalf cannot make fire in midair or set alight anything that cannot burn.  There is good reason to suppose that fireball is a more powerful spell than anything Gandalf can actually do on his own.  However, as with almost everything else in D&D, it's both absolutely certain from the historical evidence that the spell Fireball is intended to represent the power of Gandalf, and also its equally clear to any Tolkien scholar that just like almost everything else ported from Middle Earth to D&D it's a pretty poor translation.  So while a very faithful Middle Earth RPG probably wouldn't have fireball in it, within the context of D&D Gandalf casts fireballs.   A similar comment applies to Gandalf's staff.  While it's pretty darn certain that Gandalf's staff in Middle Earth was not what D&D players call a Staff of Power or a Staff of the Magi, it's likewise pretty clear to me that the idea of the Staff of Power comes from Saruman's banter with Gandalf when he asked if Gandalf wanted to have the Staffs of the Five Wizards and boots of a larger size, and that the retributive strike is likewise an interpretation of why Gandalf broke his staff and what it meant when he did so.   

Most of what is in D&D is in one way or the other, all disclaimers aside, inspired by Tolkien's works.  Often it is based on the reader's lack of clarity regarding the text or wrong imagination of the scene, as for example with the fireball spell or any number of other things, be it elves (who don't need to sleep), elvish chainmail, goblins, ents, or mithril.  To say then that the mithril of Middle Earth is far more powerful than the mithril of D&D is on some level ridiculous.  The mithril of D&D is intended to be the mithril of middle earth.  And unlike say fireball, there is no reason in the text to believe that it's not a reasonably faithful interpretation of what the text reads.  You might be able to reasonably claim that over time mithril has become more ubiquitous in D&D than it was in Tolkien's world, where it was rare in the extreme and so more valuable.  But that's a later innovation in how the game is played, not something that existed or was intended in 1977.

To the extent that we know the original essayist got some details wrong, it's not his fault but simply the result of us having the Silmarillion to examine - and he didn't.  Thus he could not be nearly as clear on the fact that Gandalf was an angel as we are, and so had no firm reason to think Gandalf was anything other than he appeared to be to the free peoples of middle earth - a wizard, perhaps human, or perhaps once you realized he didn't age, then of some elvish origin (hence "Gandalf", "Staff Elf").  And if you are to assume that Gandalf's powers are only that of a wizard, there is no reason to assume that he is anything more than a 5th or 6th level wizard.  And, even if you do know that Gandalf is actually an angel concealing his true form and power, there is still no reason to assume that Gandalf is capable of casting more than 3rd level arcane spells using his own lore.  Indeed, the original essayist is quite right to believe that it is possible that Gandalf, at least as it involves fire spells, might not have been capable of that much without having a Ring of Power as Gandalf was not in his native authority a master of fire.



> Ancalagon wasn't a 10 hit die red dragon.  He was unique and more powerful than Smaug, who might be a 10 hit die red dragon.  Ancalagon broke mountains when he fell.  No 10 hit die red dragon is going to do that.




Why not?  Exactly what a dragon breaks when it falls is pretty much entirely up to the DMs license, and indeed even the term 'broken mountains' involves a bit of literary license to decide what is meant by that.  The basic problem you seem to have is that you know that in 3e there are 34HD dragons, and so 10HD doesn't seem very potent to you.  But a 10 HD ancient red dragon in 1e has 80 hit points, and saves as and probably should be treated as for the purpose of XP a 17HD monster.  And a monster with 80 hit points and effectively 17HD is enormous and epicly powerful in 1e D&D.  Keep in mind that the attack table only goes up to 16HD.  But ok, even if we assume Ancalagon was a unique dragon and not simply the largest possible size of firebreathing dragon which I don't agree that we should, then he is no more than the Tolkien universe's equivalent to Tiamat - and 1e Tiamat only had like 133 hit points.  



> Eru only played conductor.  The Ainur brought the universe into being and shaped it via their song to the plan of Eru.  The Valar doing the brunt of that work.  No Solar could do that.




The Ainur did not bring the universe into being with their song.  The Ainur brought the idea of the universe into being, although obviously, even this idea was beyond their ability to create on their own.   It required Illuvatar's word and the power of the flame imperishable that belongs to Illuvatar alone to make the idea of the universe actually become real.  Read the scene again.  The world only stops being an idea not when the song is sung, but when Illuvatar declares that the song should become real.   As for the ability of a Solar to do the work, Solar's can cast both Wish and Miracle.  So yeah, I think it's reasonable to believe that a being that mighty can as a work of labor shape the raw material of the world into form over the course of countless eons.

And in any event, we know from external sources that the Tolkien cosmology explicitly parallels the Catholic faith.   As such, there is no reason to suppose at all that anyone but Illuvatar has actual divine ranks, or that the Valar are anything other than explicit parallels to archangels.  



> They were alive and breathed, even if puppets.  They just didn't have minds and will.  No Solar could do even what you describe, let alone what actually happened.




A solar can easily cast Animate Object, which is afterall only a 6th level clerical spell, and which would allow an object to appear to be alive - though actually mindless.  The SRD says of the spell: "You imbue inanimate objects with mobility and a semblance of life."  I believe that it is compatible with the idea of a semblance of life for a statue to move and breathe and appear alive.  The Silmarillion text explicitly says that everything the Dwarfs were doing prior to Illuvatar's intervention was simply Aule animating them according to his will, and they wouldn't have moved at all if he had not continually willed it.  So if anything, Aule had less power than Animate Object appears to confer, although obviously we can't be sure how Animate Object actually works.

Fundamentally, you are repeating the error the original essayist is speaking out against.  The idea that the Valar have to be greater gods or that Ancalagon can't simply be the largest possible firebreathing dragon or that Gandalf can't be a 6th level wizard or that the Balrog of Moria cant' be an ordinary Balor involves mentally diminishing what those things actually are, and making them in your imagination small and trite things.  But not only is that contrary to the intention of the original author of those things which intended those things to not only represent the very things you claim they can't be and who likewise intended them to be awesome, but in doing so you are unnecessarily crapping on your own game world by making your PC's small things of little worth, your stories smaller things than the game intended them to be, your setting more trite than it was intended, and your gameplay slower and more complicated than was intended simply because you are insisting on multiplying all the numbers by some factor just to make them feel extraordinarily large to you.  But if you look at the text, that's ridiculous.  Balors and Solars are intended to be so rare and powerful as to be countable things in the entire multiverse.  It's not the original conception that is small - it's what DMs have done with them since then.


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

delericho said:


> I thought it was a Balrog _and a veritable army of goblins_ that took down Moria?




The original essayist and most readers would have made that assumption.  And they really couldn't make any other assumption, since at the time they only had the text of the Lord of the Rings to work with.

But it appears from Tolkien's notes that the Balrog really did empty Moria on its own, and then only later took command over the orcs that began to spread through the Misty Mountains under the direction of the reawakening Sauron.  Thus, the situation in Moria was actually more desparate when Balin tried to retake the city, than when Nain lost it.  Balin's expedition was doomed from the start.


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

Uchawi said:


> D&D is not a good fit for middle earth, unless you revamp all the classes and magic. You would need to take the champion fighter as the lead and dumb down everything else to match. Even a class like a warlock (as a simple caster) is too complex for middle earth. Even if you re-fluff it. I believe that is a hint to why every D&D movie is a disaster, i.e. too much magic and no way to tone it down and at the same time be true to the game.




If you understand that a typical D&D game plays out more like a Marvel Super Hero movie than it does a traditional fantasy, then you have your template for how such a movie should be made.


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## aka_pg (Mar 17, 2016)

Recently re-discovered this article after reading the variant E6: the Game Inside D&D.  I was looking for a way to slow advancement as I favor a more gritty game.  Wonderful, in-depth conversations here, but the article works for me.


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> They weren't rare at all.  Dwarves in Middle Earth made magic weapons.




I'm sure they did, but this doesn't mean that other than something like Durin's Axe, weapons sufficient to harm the Balrog were in any way common.

Again, I think you are fundamentally misreading the setting based on later D&D assumptions about prevailing power levels and the commonality of magic.  A dwarf with as much as a +1 battleax would have been rare.   Most of the dwarven weapons were actually no more than masterwork quality items.  

Indeed, it could be argued that a faithful Middle Earth setting has no magic at all, merely technology.  The elves themselves have no word for 'magic', and didn't clearly understand the term.  They would have understood the important medieval term goetia, but found magic bafflingly imprecise.  A key scene in Lord of the Rings is when Sam is inspecting the rope that the elves have provided, and he asks, "Is it magic?"  The elf on hand laughs and says, "I'm sure I don't know what you mean.  Certainly it is well-made...Had we known the craft delighted you, we could have taught you much."  In other words, the item that appears magic to Sam, is not magical at all, but simply good technology which Sam - having no aptitude for what a reader would call 'magic' - could have been taught to produce.  The vast majority of the weapons, armor, and so forth of the elves and dwarves are of this nature.  They are not magical in the D&D sense, but simply extraordinarily well made.  That is not to say that dwarves and elves couldn't produce things that are 'magical' in the D&D sense, by weaving spells into their construction, but this labor required an individual of extraordinary personal authority and deep lore.  It certainly not the case that Moria would have been filled with such items.  Magical items in middle-earth are rare - so rare that they are generally famous.  Middle Earth is not filled with unnamed +1 magic weapons.  They are rare and tend to have histories.  

No one is going around middle earth wearing the Christmas tree.  The Fellowship, despite being a collection of the mightiest mortal figures of Middle Earth, isn't exactly overflowing with magical weapons.  They have Sting, the ancient dagger of Gondolin, and Gandalf's Glamdring.  They have the newly reforged Anduril.  And arguably that's it.  Boromir's newly forged elvish blade might have been magical, or it just might have been a masterwork elvish blade.  There is good evidence that it is not magical because it is unable to damage the troll that tries to enter the chamber of Marzarbul, though Sting's bite is deep.  Legolas eventually acquires a bow from Galadriel that is probably a magic bow, but again it could have just been masterwork.  Gimli, despite being a cousin of the King and the son of King's chief chancellor, certainly does not appear to carry a magic weapon, nor did Thorin appear to have a magic weapon before acquiring Orcrist, nor is any weapon in Smaug's horde apparently its superior.  This is I think very much sufficient to prove that magic weapons, much less potent ones, are not common in Dwarf kingdoms.


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## inkhorn (Mar 17, 2016)

Thanks for finding this. I knew there was an early Dragon Magazine with an article like this! 

We all know the real secret is he is 5e multi class bard, magic user who likes to cast the Light and Phantasmal Force at higher levels because it is ironic, and uses the fireworks and pipe as his instrument .


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 17, 2016)

Ah finally! Another one, and this time i'm around to participate 
Welcome fellow Tolkienites! 

Now where to start. So many of you fine gentlefolk have already made most of the best points. I can only full heartedly agree with most of those. Yes Gandalf is neither human nor a mage in DnD terms. Although he is familiar and proficient in some spell casting (as already quoted on this forum), most of his power (and i dare say the greatest part) doesn't come from his spells, but rather from his nature and "jurisdiction". How can we best translate this amalgam of abilities into a DnD language? Probably with an MC as some of you have pointed out. Lore bard was often thrown around and it does seam to fit well into some of his abilities and lore wise would make some sense. What "level" should he be? Well..... the answer to both this questions of course already pointed out lies in different places in different editions. As i am not versed enough in all editions of DnD (and i don't have the source material for more then half of those), i'll limit myself to only pointing out the ways and magnitudes of which he (and other Middle Earth characters) were able to manipulate the environment. 

I'll skip with most "low level" innate abilities like magical senses and jump straight to the major feats. Note, some of this feats are not powers themselves but actual accomplishments. 

-As most have concluded, he does manifest affinity to manipulate fire. Some for of fire balls or other related actions or "spells" thus seam fitting. In at least one case (on Wethertop) when he was surrounded by Nazgul he seams to have "cast" something that appears to be (i am sure i got the name wrong) a 2E Fire Blast or Flame Blast, that is a powerful fireball that originates from the caster. Find the level of that spell, the level needed to cast it at least once, and you have the minimum level right there.

-During the Moria encounter both he and the Balrog engaged in a contest of wills and used both power words and wards to seal doors and walls. More difficult to quantify.

-Besides the fire and lighting abilities, he also seams to posses some kind of "Sacred Light" thingy and i don't mean the light he used to lead the way. Also difficult to quantify. 

-The protection and shielding was already mentioned.

-During his fight with the Balrog on top of the mountain we don't get much detail as to what and how much was actually done. But we do know this:
"I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountainside where he smote it in his ruin"...... 
Which brings me to the next point..... the Balrog was no pushover. Neither were the Powers and their servants. A dead Balrog broke a mountainside in his fall. That tells you something. And when he first senses it, Gandalf states "I have finally met my mach". I would presume he meant that this enemy was his equal. And lo! He died fighting it. 

So, on the nature of the Powers and their servants. Tolkien himself states in the Silmarillion that though they were not gods, the Valar or the Powers were in fact what humans from later ages would consider gods to be. Could they create matter out of "nothing". The way i read the books, i could never clearly discern if they created the world or only shaped it, but i am pretty sure they could rase continents and islands, raise and hollow oceans, break and raise mountains, create celestial objects...... all these things do not sound like work of Solars and Planetars. At the very best Solars and Planetars from DnD could be their servants. Similar to what hte Maiar are. And to some extent the Maiar could produce similar effects, only on a smaller scale. But not just the Maiar..... powerful Eldar as well. When the one Ring fell, and Sauron with it, after the hosts of Lothlorien and Mirkwood defeated the armies of Dol Guldur, Galadriel herself came out and she rooted the fell Castle of its foundations. So yeah, i can see why some would consider her the Greatest of the Eldar on Middle Earth. And maybe even the most powerful of the White Counsel.

So where does this lead us? First of all, i think that in his true form, Gandalf as a Maia and a spirit, would be equivalent to a Balrog, or at least the Moria Balrog (after all that is what the Balrogs are, fallen Maiar). However, Gandalf stated that as the time passed his abilities are diminishing. Probably a result of him being encased in a human body. He did forget many things in example, that he once knew. Also, when he came back to the Fellowship, he stated that neither of them (Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli) had weapons that could harm him. Now, i am not sure, did he meant harm his physical form or his spirit? After all, the only noted case when a Wizard died was he himself after "spending" himself in the fight with the Balrog (or possibly dying from the wounds). Yes Saruman was killed by an arrow in the back, but at this time (like Sauron and Morgoth before him) he has already "fallen" beyond redemption and was confined in the shape he has chosen for himself. 

Ah, look at the time. Closing hours. I must cut short. A very topic indeed! I would like to see it continue and will try to jump in again later this evening.


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## Umbran (Mar 17, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> If you assume that magic items are pretty rare...
> That most NPCs are 1st level characters...




You do know that NPCs can, you know, move around, right?  That the 1st level ones won't just sit there to be killed, and the higher level ones won't wait for the monster to come to them?



> If you assume Durin VI was about a 9th level character with his ancestor's magic axe, then maybe he can give the Balrog a tough fight.




Yes, so the leader *himself* will give it a run for its money.  But, clearly he's not alone.  Any leader of a nation (the dwarves considered it so) would have a personal guard who were quite capable.  And the dwarves are a militant race, so certainly they have security forces that are well above 1st level.  There's going to be a whole bunch of combat capable characters in that city.  If we accept Durin the top at 9th, then there's going to be enough 5th level characters to fill a mead hall.  As soon as the Balrog comes a-callin', they're going to come out, and in aggregate they will take it down handily.

This scenario works just fine is the Balrog is significantly more powerful than the dwarves, but not if he's only marginally more powerful.  So having a very high CR compared to the dwarves makes more sense.



> But the implication is that Durin gets ambushed and killed early on in the contest, and without their champion (and with Durin I's axe, the 'Axe of the Dwarvish Lords', now missing) his people are eventually routed.




It is not clear that the axe disappeared with Durin.  All we know is that Balin's people found it - it could have been lost with Nain, Durin's son.



> Now if you assume that magic items are common, and that your average dwarf is a 6th level fighter, then no, of course not.




You don't need "the average" to be 6th.  You need, maybe, a dozen such in the entire city, who would be called on when such a monster reared his ugly head.

In essence, this argument assumes the conclusion - Gandalf is only a 5th level wizard because we assume the demographics to be not just "most" NPCs are first level, but that characters of notable level in the population are nigh non-existent.  I suggest that this is backwards.  We should look at what happens in the books, and track back to what that means in D&Disms.  

Smaug is as big and old as dragons get.  Balrogs are not far short of such a dragon (by description of combats in which they are featured).  Work down from there.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 17, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> The elves made many such weapons.  The dwarves also made weapons of unsurpassed quality and sold them to the *armies* of the elves.  There's no reason to think the dwarves fell prey to a disease that reduced them to imbeciles and they suddenly stopped making weapons like that in quantity.



Elves and dwarves made many weapons, true, but AFAIK, the assertion that they made many weapons of such extremely high quality as you describe- analogous to D&D magic weapons- is, I think, unsupported by the text of the novels.

It is not a question of imbecility, but rather of the scarcity of material, skill and time.  

Look at real-world swordsmithing: in any given culture in which the making of swords is a major concern, there will be many sword makers.  But among those, only a certain small fraction will have the requisite level of skill and available time to fashion a truly well-made weapon.  It is like the difference between the skills needed to make a handcrafted Rolls Royce Drophead Phantom and a Toyota Corolla.  And not every maker is going to be that skilled.

Mithril is not going to be as available as simple steel.  I have personally held in my hands actual gemstone material that was so rare that the stone in the palm of my hand represented 30% of the world's supply.  And in the days of Napoleon, aluminum was rarer than gold- the knowledge & technology of how to recognize, find & refine it was limited to just a handful of people.  We don't know precisely what "mithril" is, because it is fantasy unobtanium.  But like the gemstones and aluminum, Middle Earth material scarcity and the limits of societal mining & smelting tech will put some kind of cap on mithril's availability as a resource.  JRRT's Dwarves & Elves weren't going to Gnome Depot to buy tons of the stuff every other weekend.

And even if you have the skill and material in sufficient time, it probably isn't as if crafting a fine weapon of mithril is a quick job.  If JRRT imagined the process is analogous to real-world production, working mithril probably takes more time- and possibly specialized equipment- to work as compared to lesser weapons-grade metals.  The very qualities that make it a desirable metal might also make it devilishly hard to work with.  That will increase the time it takes to make any given piece, possibly by orders of magnitude.  Again, the real world illuminates this point: a medieval swordsmith could produce many dozens of weapons of standard steels in the same time it took to craft a single blade of high carbon steel such as you'd find in a master crafted katana or Damascus sword.

If you want a titanium alloy steel, for instance, you have to be able to work with titanium, which requires _exactly_ that because of its extremely high melting point.  Ditto platinum as compared to other precious metals: any jeweler who uses it has specialized tools to work with it.  

This is even more true if the material is unusually hazardous to work with.  I've had custom guitars made, and when choosing which wood would form the body of the first one, I narrowed it down to a few choices, one of which was cocobolo.  However, I quickly abandoned it: cocobolo requires special tools and safety precautions to work because its oils can ruin certain tools and increase the toxicity of its dust.  As a result, not many woodworkers use it, despite its beauty.  Those that do invest in tools that they only use on cocobolo, and on having better than average workshop ventilation or even full-on respirators.

So I reiterate: just because Dwarves and Elves had Mithril weapons, it does not necessarily follow that they had _lots_ of them.


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## fjw70 (Mar 17, 2016)

Uchawi said:


> D&D is not a good fit for middle earth, unless you revamp all the classes and magic. You would need to take the champion fighter as the lead and dumb down everything else to match. Even a class like a warlock (as a simple caster) is too complex for middle earth. Even if you re-fluff it. I believe that is a hint to why every D&D movie is a disaster, i.e. too much magic and no way to tone it down and at the same time be true to the game.




I do expect a revamp of the classes and magic for this game. I don't think their goal is to be true to D&D fluff but just to be rules compatible.

It will be interesting to see how they handle it. Will they cap 3rd age PCs at 10th level (or something like that).  Will they have a different level system to extend those levels (assuming PCs don't go to 20th).


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> Now where to start. So many of you fine gentlefolk have already made most of the best points. I can only full heartedly agree with most of those. Yes Gandalf is neither human nor a mage in DnD terms. Although he is familiar and proficient in some spell casting (as already quoted on this forum), most of his power (and i dare say the greatest part) doesn't come from his spells, but rather from his nature and "jurisdiction"...As most have concluded, he does manifest affinity to manipulate fire.




There is a complication here.  Fire isn't part of Gandalf's natural jurisdiction as a vassal of Varda (or possibly Manwe).  He is essential an Angel of wisdom and hope, learning and words, light and truth, and has some jurisdiction over those things.  He also appears to have personal knowledge of magical lore and words of power, related to study of the things within his authority, and so to be able to cast 'spells' using those words and his natural authority.  Essentially, he knows stuff about the universe and being who he is, has a right to command it.  So he might have learned things about fire, but we know from the text that the primary source of his authority over fire is his possession of Narya - the Ring of Power concerned with the element of fire.  Narya vastly increases Gandalf's ability with fire, giving him much greater command over fire itself than he'd have without it.  In D&D terms, assuming Narya is something like a Ring of Elemental Command, we can't be certain whether anything Gandalf does with fire can't be explained as a power of Narya and not something in one of Gandalf's spell slots as a wizard.  We can be reasonably sure that nothing he does with fire is equivalent to Gandalf's racial abilities, since fire wouldn't be part of his 'portfolio'.  



> Some for of fire balls or other related actions or "spells" thus seam fitting. In at least one case (on Wethertop) when he was surrounded by Nazgul he seams to have "cast" something that appears to be (i am sure i got the name wrong) a 2E Fire Blast or Flame Blast, that is a powerful fireball that originates from the caster. Find the level of that spell, the level needed to cast it at least once, and you have the minimum level right there.




And thus the complication.  It's possible that any powerful manifestation of fire that Gandalf does is simply Gandalf invoking Narya's ability to cast Fire Blast or Flamestrike or whatever.



> -During the Moria encounter both he and the Balrog engaged in a contest of wills and used both power words and wards to seal doors and walls. More difficult to quantify.




Not really.  While there are parts of the text that are very hard to fit into D&D, I don't think this is one.  Gandalf attempting to shut the door in Moria is the origin of the spell 'Hold Portal'.  The Balrog simply cast 'dispel magic' or something of the sort, and beat Gandalf's caster level check.  The rest is in D&D terms merely color, and an example of good RP.



> Besides the fire and lighting abilities, he also seams to posses some kind of "Sacred Light" thingy and i don't mean the light he used to lead the way. Also difficult to quantify.




Again, not really.  Gandalf occasionally uses Searing Light.  That's probably a racial ability owing to his stature as a Ainur, rather than one of his Wizard abilities.  It's easily explained in most editions of D&D with a race or template, only slightly customized or even depending on how you do it, not at all.  I'm not clear on what the first appearance of the Searing Light spell is, but in my 1e suggested stat block, it would be an easy to fit into the powers of an Agathion just by putting it on his clerical spell list.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 17, 2016)

Another point: the original OD&D had Balrog stats, before the whole copyright issue got involved and they were removed [though references to them remained]. It was a 10 HD monster, AC 2. A dozen or so dwarf fighters of 4th level or so could take it down - though with losses.

EDIT: And the Hold Portal spell explicitly said that Balrogs could defeat it - so I agree that's what Gandalf used in Moria.


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

Umbran said:


> You do know that NPCs can, you know, move around, right?  That the 1st level ones won't just sit there to be killed, and the higher level ones won't wait for the monster to come to them?




Sure.  That's why it probably took years to depopulate the city.



> Yes, so the leader *himself* will give it a run for its money.  But, clearly he's not alone.  Any leader of a nation (the dwarves considered it so) would have a personal guard who were quite capable.  And the dwarves are a militant race, so certainly they have security forces that are well above 1st level.  There's going to be a whole bunch of combat capable characters in that city.  If we accept Durin the top at 9th, then there's going to be enough 5th level characters to fill a mead hall.  As soon as the Balrog comes a-callin', they're going to come out, and in aggregate they will take it down handily.




I'm fully prepared to except that there were many NPC's above 1st level in a city as great as Dwarrowdelf.  Let's say the whole holds 20,000 dwarves, equivalent to Medieval London or Paris.  I'm prepared to believe that there were hundreds of dwarves of 4th level or above, given both D&D demographics regarding dwarves and apparent Tolkien demographics.  What I'm not prepared to believe is that any significant fraction of them had magical weapons, and without them they'd been largely or wholly helpless against the Balrog of Moria.  Magic weapons just aren't that common in the Tolkien-verse.  

Why should we believe that they lacked magical weapons?  Because there is evidence elsewhere in the text.  First, Gimli himself would have fit the characteristics of one of these King's mead hall dwarves.  And not only that he would have been an important and high stature dwarf, and yet there is no evidence he ever possessed a magical weapon, nor did any or many of his kindred.  Gimli probably is at the beginning of Fellowship 5th or 6th level, yet lacking a magic weapon, he would have been helpless against the Balrog even discounting the magical abilities of the creature - which are considerable, both in D&D, and presumably in the Tolkien universe as well (as Gandalf's peer in stature).  

Similarly, in a universe like Forgotten Realms, when Boromir is presented by Elrond with a new sword as a present, we'd expect this transaction to involve a magic weapon.  After all Elrond is defacto High King of the Elves remaining in Middle Earth (though entitled to claim the honor, he declines to do so), and Boromir is the prince designate of one of Middle Earth's most powerful kingdoms.  But, the text gives us no reason to think this is actually the case, as the troll that tries to enter the chamber of Marzarbul seems completely immune to Boromir's weapon, and only Frodo's Sting - explicitly known from the text to be magical - is capable of biting that magical flesh despite Frodo's much weaker arms and lesser combat prowess.  In other words, Boromir hit the thing, but couldn't overcome it's damage resistance, likely because his blade wasn't magical.

Also, Tolkien dwarves, unlike D&D dwarves, can't actually see in the dark.  And an anti-Gandalf certainly would have had the power to fill tunnels with darkness, and extinguish fires and flames - powers largely reflected in the 1e type 6 with its ability to create darkness at will.  Early on it can act like a perfect ambush predator, killing off dangerous dwarves as it encounters them, and fleeing if (rarely) threatened.  Because it can detect magic at will, it knows when it can be threatened so its never going to jump into a fight were the odds aren't in its favor.  The D&D version can use Symbol of Death to kill off individuals or even dozens of dwarves at a time - magic items or not - with no risk to itself, and it has other useful spells as well that I can't recall at the moment.

Gradually, as the heroic leaders of the community are killed off, it can take the offensive.  Any dwarf without a magic weapon is toast, which was always most of them and by this time is almost all of them.  The majority of foes won't even last a round, even if they had an ax +1, and he can kill off a half dozen at a time with ease.  Of any 100 or so that try to band together to stand against him, a significant portion will end up fleeing or cowering in terror because of his aura of fear.  In short, yes, a type VI demon in 1e really can kill off a whole city of dwarves using D&D demographics if you only assume that magic items, and especially potent items, are very rare in the particular campaign world.



> It is not clear that the axe disappeared with Durin.  All we know is that Balin's people found it - it could have been lost with Nain, Durin's son.




Fair point.  All we know is that it wasn't successfully employed against the Balrog, who (certainly in D&D) had several abilities that would effectively thwart any would be wielder of it - flight (assuming wings), a vorpal blade, symbol of death, magical darkness, etc.



> You don't need "the average" to be 6th.  You need, maybe, a dozen such in the entire city, who would be called on when such a monster reared his ugly head.




DR 10/magic is a 3e innovation.  In 1e, if you don't have a magical weapon, you are just out of luck against anything even as lowly as a gargoyle.



> In essence, this argument assumes the conclusion - Gandalf is only a 5th level wizard...




No, Gandalf is only about a 5th level wizard because he never casts any spells above 3rd level, and additionally if he could have cast higher level spells then the story becomes problematic because higher level D&D spells can do things far beyond the observed abilities of anyone in the story.  The only character that seems to have these higher level spells is Sauron, which neatly suggests just why he is so feared.



> because we assume the demographics to be not just "most" NPCs are first level, but that characters of notable level in the population are nigh non-existent.  I suggest that this is backwards.  We should look at what happens in the books, and track back to what that means in D&Disms.




That's precisely what I am doing.  Again, I think the critical point involving combat with a Type 6 demon in D&D terms is that magic items are rare, and that once the few high level characters that have them are assassinated, the rest of the community goes into an unrecoverable death spiral against any creature that requires a magic item to damage it. 



> Smaug is as big and old as dragons get.  Balrogs are not far short of such a dragon (by description of combats in which they are featured).  Work down from there.




Sure.  But Smaug as say a 10HD ancient red dragon is harder in 1e AD&D to explain killing off a city of dwarves than a Balor is, simply because a 1e red dragon would run out of breath weapon long before the city ran out of dwarves, at which point those mead hall dwarves you mention start becoming very significant.  Of course, if we assume Smaug used a later innovation of being able to split up his breaths into mini-breaths, or like 2e or later could breath once every 1d4 rounds, this problem goes away.

Stepping back a bit, you can get into the Tolkien mindset I think by consider Beowulf, a text Tolkien loved and translated.  Those mead hall warriors of the Danes weren't simply 1HD weaklings.  The problem was that Grendel was immune to their weapons.  Slash and fight back however they might, they couldn't kill the thing.  The same issue threatens the dwarves of Dwarrowdelf when faced with the creature from the black pit, who will eventually cause the name of the city to be changed.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 17, 2016)

Faenor said:


> How I read the powers of the Maiar and Valar is that each had a finite power reservoir. Their essence or Angel energy. They could choose to invest that power according to their interests. Balrogs as 'spirits of fire' were like elementals. The dragons created a body that also had a breath weapon. That body was incredibly powerful, except that it was biological and therefore could be killed with a well placed arrow.




When the Maiar/Valar become 'fallen' they tend to become limited in their forms, which come to reflect their inner nature. Morgoth becomes trapped in his Dark Lord form after the Darkening of Valinor. Sauron loses the ability to take 'fair' deceptive forms after the Downfall of Numenor. The Balrogs become shadowy, and physical enough to be killed.

The Istari/Wizards are a bit different. They are Maiar, but their bodies seem to be created for them as part of their sending into Middle-Earth. Thus they could 'die' even without being fallen, and when Gandalf died, he had to be 'sent back' by higher authority - he couldn't just put on a new body.

I don't think there is any evidence the Dragons are Maiar, though, and the fact they seem to reproduce (there's a reference to 'Glaurung and his brood') argues against it. I think they are biological creatures corrupted and empowered by Morgoth.



> Yavana (was it yavana with the trees?) Invested her power in green growing things, but then sank it all into the trees which could then be destroyed.




I don't think that is quite the same thing. Feanor also could never create another work to match the Silmarils, and he wasn't a Maia/Vala, so I think that's a more general rule of creating super 'magical' things in Tolkien's universe rather than having to do with the angelic powers of Maiar/Valar specifically.

If the Trees had been to Yavanna what the Ring was to Sauron, containing nearly all of her power, she would have been reduced to a helpless shadow on their destruction - which she wasn't.


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> When the Maiar/Valar become 'fallen' they tend to become limited in their forms, which come to reflect their inner nature. Morgoth becomes trapped in his Dark Lord form after the Darkening of Valinor. Sauron loses the ability to take 'fair' deceptive forms after the Downfall of Numenor. The Balrogs become shadowy, and physical enough to be killed.




This is Morgoth's Ring stuff, as you well know.

The important thing thus far missing from the discussion is that by maiming themselves (in a sense) in taking on material forms, they weren't getting weaker.  They were trading one power for another they felt more useful.  They were giving up spiritual authority for greater material authority.  Fallen Maiar, in giving up detachment from the physical world, were doing so in order to gain greater command over the physical world.  They were seduced as it were by the dark side - quicker, easier, more seductive.  Their new physical forms gave them greater power in the physical world, at the cost - perhaps not originally realized - of becoming transient like everything else in the physical world.



> The Istari/Wizards are a bit different. They are Maiar, but their bodies seem to be created for them as part of their sending into Middle-Earth. Thus they could 'die' even without being fallen, and when Gandalf died, he had to be 'sent back' by higher authority - he couldn't just put on a new body.




Indeed, not only could he not provide himself with a new body, but Manwe had to make a personal appeal to Illuvatar to return Gandalf to service, as he was truly and utterly dead and beyond the Valar's ability to do anything about it.



> I don't think there is any evidence the Dragons are Maiar, though, and the fact they seem to reproduce (there's a reference to 'Glaurung and his brood') argues against it. I think they are biological creatures corrupted and empowered by Morgoth.




This is a point of debate since the text doesn't make it clear.  My personal feeling is that the dragon and troll species where originally created by some powerful Maiar, one akin in stature to Sauron, extending their spiritual form into that of a whole species.  In sense, the 'dragons' were the 'ring' of some Maiar (possibly named Glaurung) that had given up its individuality and identity to become something of a force of nature.  This is a lesser version of what Morgoth himself was striving to obtain by enfusing himself into the whole of Middle Earth, turning the very matter of the universe and all of the universe into his 'ring of power'.

There is a good possibility that the Eagles are descendants of Maiar that took this form and got stuck in it, though they appear to not have been fully corrupted in doing so, and are still vassals of Manwe.  

Or at least, when explaining the origin of Trolls in a ME RPG (notably absent in the Silmarillion) the explanation of a Sauron-peer maiar infusing himself into the stones to bring forth trolls is the explanation I hit upon and which feels most right to me.



> I don't think that is quite the same thing. Feanor also could never create another work to match the Silmarils, and he wasn't a Maia/Vala, so I think that's a more general rule of creating super 'magical' things in Tolkien's universe rather than having to do with the angelic powers of Maiar/Valar specifically.
> 
> If the Trees had been to Yavanna what the Ring was to Sauron, containing nearly all of her power, she would have been reduced to a helpless shadow on their destruction - which she wasn't.




Agreed.  If Yavanna (turned into the God of halflings in D&D) had been doing the same technique of infusing herself into the material world to create the trees that Sauron used to create the One Ring (and which Sauron tricked the mortal races into doing when creating the Rings of Power), this would have likely led to her corruption.  But yes, it seems a rule that you have to have 'inspiration points' to spend in order to create certain items, and that you can't do the same thing twice.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 17, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> This is Morgoth's Ring stuff




Yep.



> The important thing thus far missing from the discussion is that by maiming themselves (in a sense) in taking on material forms, they weren't getting weaker.  They were trading one power for another they felt more useful.  They were giving up spiritual authority for greater material authority.  Fallen Maiar, in giving up detachment from the physical world, were doing so in order to gain greater command over the physical world.  They were seduced as it were by the dark side - quicker, easier, more seductive.  Their new physical forms gave them greater power in the physical world, at the cost - perhaps not originally realized - of becoming transient like everything else in the physical world.




True. Morgoth lost power by dissipating it into Arda at large, but Sauron didn't (I believe it says in Morgoth's Ring that Sauron was actually stronger than Morgoth had been at the end of the First Age, since Sauron hadn't diminished himself), so the Balrogs likely didn't either. But they became vulnerable, as you say.

(As did Sauron by putting his power into the Ring.)



> Indeed, not only could he not provide himself with a new body, but Manwe had to make a personal appeal to Illuvatar to return Gandalf to service, as he was truly and utterly dead and beyond the Valar's ability to do anything about it.




That's what I had thought, but I didn't post that because I couldn't remember for sure whether it was direct divine intervention from Iluvatar or 'merely' Manwe.

I wonder what would have happened to Gandalf otherwise? He's still one of the Ainur and wouldn't "leave the world" permanently - that's the Gift/Doom of Men. Maybe he would have stuck around in Valinor as a disembodied spirit (maybe in the Halls of Mandos like the Elvish dead, or in Lorien's gardens of spirits)?




> This is a point of debate since the text doesn't make it clear.




Granted.



> My personal feeling is that the dragon and troll species where originally created by some powerful Maiar, one akin in stature to Sauron, extending their spiritual form into that of a whole species.




See, I don't think that would have worked. I think they would have been only puppets - even Aule and Melkor couldn't create independent life, and Glaurung and Smaug have personalities.  They don't seem to be 'bits of a hivemind'. 



> There is a good possibility that the Eagles are descendants of Maiar that took this form and got stuck in it,




I believe one of the HOME books (maybe Morgoth's Ring) has a note of Tolkien's where he considered that idea and rejected it - specifically because they're said to reproduce (one of the LOTR eagles is a descendant of Thorondor).


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## Celebrim (Mar 17, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> See, I don't think that would have worked. I think they would have been only puppets - even Aule and Melkor couldn't create independent life, and Glaurung and Smaug have personalities.  They don't seem to be 'bits of a hivemind'...I believe one of the HOME books (maybe Morgoth's Ring) has a note of Tolkien's where he considered that idea and rejected it - specifically because they're said to reproduce (one of the LOTR eagles is a descendant of Thorondor).




Well, late Tolkien revisionism has Tolkien rejecting that orcs are corrupted elves or men (or hybrids thereof) because he doesn't like the theological implications of that and has him floating a new idea that they are simply all puppets of Morgoth and later Sauron.  However, this idea is problematic because he's presented the orcs in the text as being independent beings with personalities and even voicing thoughts of rebellion.  So, I'm not sure how much we can allow non-settled issues in the Good Professor's own mind to trump his text.

In any event, there is precedent: Ungloiant certainly does manage to spawn an independent brood to plague the Earth.  Granted, there is the suggestion she is of Valar status (the missing intended spouse of Melkor), but I don't think it is beyond Sauron's capacity.  Whether she needed the aid of some other living creatures seems a trivial matter, given how unlike her spawn is from the natural creature it resembles in stature and intelligence.  So if Ungloiant can breed a horde of fiendish spiders into which a large part of her vitality and authority passes, then I don't see why its out of the question that a Sauron stature Maiar (or more than one) can turn itself or pervert something together with itself into a furnace of horn and iron that ends up having a will of its own and is capable of breeding with others of its kind.  This is certainly easier to buy as explanation than Illuvatar having created dragonkind to wait around for Morgoth to corrupt.   After all, there are plenty of uncorrupted spiders, but where then are the uncorrupted dragons - iguanas?

Also there are parallels, although we know scarcely more about them than we know of trolls or dragons.  Where do vampires or werewolves (and presumably from that line Worgs) come from if some Maiar doesn't establish the lineage?


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## Hriston (Mar 18, 2016)

It's quite clear that the Ainur can breed with the creatures of Middle-earth as is evidenced in the story of Melian the Maia.


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## MoonSong (Mar 18, 2016)

I just want to say is, Gandalf is NOT a wizard, he is clearly something else...

Personal innate power...
Never seen handling dusty tomes...
Doesn't have a spell for every problem...
Gets creative with the limited effects he can use...
Actually a magical creature bound to flesh...
Serves a greater deity...
Domain over matter limited to that deity portfolio...

Doesn't that sound like a SORCERER? a FAVORED SOUL sorcerer to be precise? (he obviously took a feat or used the training rules to get proficiency with that sword and took training in history and stuff)


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> I agree that there is nothing that says that Gandalf's staff is anything more than a focus for Gandalf's spells, and said so in my write up.  But it is important to note that the original essayist did not make that assumption.  Rather, the original essayist and many of his readers would have assumed that Gandalf has a Staff of Power.  The essayist mentions that on account of the staff and the ring, it would be possible that Gandalf is less than 5th level, since both would have in and of themselves explained Gandalf's ability to cast the spells he does.  Certainly it would appear to me that the idea of the retributive strike comes from the scene of Gandalf breaking his staff on the bridge of Khazad-dum, although I would have to check 'Playing at the World' to verify if this is true.  Nonetheless, this gives plenty of ability for a player from a oD&D or AD&D perspective to imagine a 5th level Wizard beating a Balrog, and that is sufficient along with all the other evidence to suggest Gandalf could have been a 5th level Wizard.
> 
> It's self-evident why it is more reasonable to assume Gandalf has a Staff of Power rather than a nuclear bomb.




My point is that there is as much evidence for the bomb as there is for a Staff of Power.  That amount is zero.  Assuming a Staff of Power is bupkis.



> Once again, you are misremembering the text and relying on a loose summation of a passage rather than the text itself.  They were commanded not to use their power to dominate the free peoples, nor to attempt to overcome Sauron's power by power.  Gandalf normally conceals his full power as a 6th level wizard so as to not overawe the free peoples, because in Tolkien's world a 6th level wizard is incredibly powerful awe inspiring worker of miracles capable of doing things far beyond what is possible for ordinary people, but Gandalf is perfectly free in a pinch or in private or when away from observation to use his full power in self-defense or to protect those same free peoples provided his purpose in doing so is not dominating the free people, nor with the ultimate aim of defeating Sauron by his own power.  When Gandalf does his fireball type thing against the phantom wolves, or uses lightning bolts against the goblins, or both against the Nazgul on Weathertop, there is no reason to suppose that he is not using his full power.  After all, Gandalf rarely chooses to do even that much.  And there is certainly no reason to suppose that Gandalf is breaking the command of the Valar to do so.




If they have to warn them not to attempt to overcome Sauron by power, then they are in the same ballpark as Sauron is for level.  Both have angelic powers and magic, so if Gandalf were only 6th level, there would be no need to warn him not to try.  He's not an imbecile.



> Gandalf differs from Saruman not in that Saruman had decided to reveal his full power as a 18th level wizard (or some other crap), because there is certainly no evidence Saruman had any such power, but in that Saruman had decided to rule over the free peoples and defeat Sauron in a direct contest of power.  Saruman himself was probably not more than a 7th level wizard, plus whatever other racial powers Gandalf had, themselves no more potent than what would be expected of a character of about 6th or 7th level.  Any big difference in the power level of Gandalf and Saruman appears to be related to what magic items they each had access to.  Gandalf of course had Narya, as a gift from clear eyed Cirdan, and this is probably the ultimate source of Saruman's jealousy and eventual fall.  Saruman finds the Palantir in Orthanc and so has powers of observation and action at a distance that Gandalf lacks.  But neither acts in the way a high level wizard in D&D acts, despite the fact that Saruman is disregarding the commands of the Valar.  That in itself ought to be sufficient to show that when Gandalf is concealing his power, it's concealing that he's a 6th level wizard and an ainur, and not that he's concealing that he's an 18th level wizard.



Again, not an imbecile.  If he's going up against Sauron, it's because he's at a power level where winning is at least possible.  If we assume Sauron is 18th level (and I think he's higher), then Saruman would be 16-17th level and Gandalf right behind at 14-15th level, at least until he takes the white and gains power, moving him up to Saruman's level.



> Now, there is an important point to be made here.  Fireball is actually more powerful than anything Gandalf can actually do.  The text makes perfectly clear that Gandalf cannot make fire in midair or set alight anything that cannot burn.




There is no such text.  What he did in the Hobbit does not in any way make it clear that he can only do that sort of thing.



> Most of what is in D&D is in one way or the other, all disclaimers aside, inspired by Tolkien's works.  Often it is based on the reader's lack of clarity regarding the text or wrong imagination of the scene, as for example with the fireball spell or any number of other things, be it elves (who don't need to sleep), elvish chainmail, goblins, ents, or mithril.  To say then that the mithril of Middle Earth is far more powerful than the mithril of D&D is on some level ridiculous.  The mithril of D&D is intended to be the mithril of middle earth.




It's nothing like the mithril of Middle Earth, just as D&D dwarves and elves are nothing like Middle Earth dwarves and elves.  They are poor approximations limited by play balance.



> And if you are to assume that Gandalf's powers are only that of a wizard, there is no reason to assume that he is anything more than a 5th or 6th level wizard.



There's no reason to assume that just because he didn't show anything more powerful, that he couldn't cast anything more poweful.



> Why not?  Exactly what a dragon breaks when it falls is pretty much entirely up to the DMs license, and indeed even the term 'broken mountains' involves a bit of literary license to decide what is meant by that.




Broken mountains means broken mountains.  Literary license in what that means is the same as the movies having elves at Helm's Deep.  It's the sort of "literary license" that invents fabrication whole cloth.  



> The basic problem you seem to have is that you know that in 3e there are 34HD dragons, and so 10HD doesn't seem very potent to you.  But a 10 HD ancient red dragon in 1e has 80 hit points, and saves as and probably should be treated as for the purpose of XP a 17HD monster.  And a monster with 80 hit points and effectively 17HD is enormous and epicly powerful in 1e D&D.  Keep in mind that the attack table only goes up to 16HD.  But ok, even if we assume Ancalagon was a unique dragon and not simply the largest possible size of firebreathing dragon which I don't agree that we should, then he is no more than the Tolkien universe's equivalent to Tiamat - and 1e Tiamat only had like 133 hit points.




Um, no.  The problem I'm having is that Ancalagon the Black was large enough to break mountains when he fell.  That can't be modeled by 1e dragons, or even by 1e Tiamat.    



> A solar can easily cast Animate Object, which is afterall only a 6th level clerical spell, and which would allow an object to appear to be alive - though actually mindless.  The SRD says of the spell: "You imbue inanimate objects with mobility and a semblance of life."  I believe that it is compatible with the idea of a semblance of life for a statue to move and breathe and appear alive.  The Silmarillion text explicitly says that everything the Dwarfs were doing prior to Illuvatar's intervention was simply Aule animating them according to his will, and they wouldn't have moved at all if he had not continually willed it.  So if anything, Aule had less power than Animate Object appears to confer, although obviously we can't be sure how Animate Object actually works.




You are not remembering correctly.  The dwarves could only act when his thought was upon them.  That's is not at all the same as they could only act as puppets.  When his thought and power were upon them, THEY could act.  They had the ability and life to do things.  When his thoughts were not upon them, they could not act.  He needed Eru for that.



> Fundamentally, you are repeating the error the original essayist is speaking out against.  The idea that the Valar have to be greater gods or that Ancalagon can't simply be the largest possible firebreathing dragon or that Gandalf can't be a 6th level wizard or that the Balrog of Moria cant' be an ordinary Balor involves mentally diminishing what those things actually are, and making them in your imagination small and trite things.  But not only is that contrary to the intention of the original author of those things which intended those things to not only represent the very things you claim they can't be and who likewise intended them to be awesome, but in doing so you are unnecessarily crapping on your own game world by making your PC's small things of little worth, your stories smaller things than the game intended them to be, your setting more trite than it was intended, and your gameplay slower and more complicated than was intended simply because you are insisting on multiplying all the numbers by some factor just to make them feel extraordinarily large to you.  But if you look at the text, that's ridiculous.  Balors and Solars are intended to be so rare and powerful as to be countable things in the entire multiverse.  It's not the original conception that is small - it's what DMs have done with them since then.




No.  I'm simply rejecting the plethora of unsupported assumptions that the author of the essay makes in order to make everything as weak as he wants it.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Elves and dwarves made many weapons, true, but AFAIK, the assertion that they made many weapons of such extremely high quality as you describe- analogous to D&D magic weapons- is, I think, unsupported by the text of the novels.
> 
> It is not a question of imbecility, but rather of the scarcity of material, skill and time.
> 
> ...




Real world sword smithing has little bearing on this.  Dwarves as a race are makers and highly skilled in crafting, the crafting of weapons in particular.  Even their normal weapons could not be rivaled except by the very few, very best of the Noldo.  Those same very best that created Sting, Orcrist and Glamdring.  All powerful magic weapons.  Given thousands of years worth of mining and weapon craft that would dwarf (pun intended ) the best sword smiths Earth has ever had, the dwarves of Khazad Dum would have had plenty of weapons to mash the Balrog with.  There's no way an 8+8 hit die monster did them in.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> The important thing thus far missing from the discussion is that by maiming themselves (in a sense) in taking on material forms, they weren't getting weaker.  They were trading one power for another they felt more useful.  They were giving up spiritual authority for greater material authority.  Fallen Maiar, in giving up detachment from the physical world, were doing so in order to gain greater command over the physical world.  They were seduced as it were by the dark side - quicker, easier, more seductive.  Their new physical forms gave them greater power in the physical world, at the cost - perhaps not originally realized - of becoming transient like everything else in the physical world.




Melian and Tom Bombadil disagree with you.  They are not bound and have far more power than any of the fallen Maia.  The fallen Maia due to their evil simply become bound to their form and unable to change it and die forever when the form dies.  Those who are not bound to it don't have that happen.  There isn't increased physicality and power when you are bound to a form.  It's a prison, not a boon.



> Indeed, not only could he not provide himself with a new body, but Manwe had to make a personal appeal to Illuvatar to return Gandalf to service, as he was truly and utterly dead and beyond the Valar's ability to do anything about it.




Unable to re-create a body is not the same as being dead.  He was confined to Valinor and had to be given the ability to return to Middle Earth.



> This is a point of debate since the text doesn't make it clear.  My personal feeling is that the dragon and troll species where originally created by some powerful Maiar, one akin in stature to Sauron, extending their spiritual form into that of a whole species.  In sense, the 'dragons' were the 'ring' of some Maiar (possibly named Glaurung) that had given up its individuality and identity to become something of a force of nature.  This is a lesser version of what Morgoth himself was striving to obtain by enfusing himself into the whole of Middle Earth, turning the very matter of the universe and all of the universe into his 'ring of power'.




I think that Maia could twist elves into orcs, but I doubt one or even several would have the power to create dragons.  I'm fairly certain that Morgoth himself would have been required to make something that powerful.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> See, I don't think that would have worked. I think they would have been only puppets - even Aule and Melkor couldn't create independent life, and Glaurung and Smaug have personalities.  They don't seem to be 'bits of a hivemind'.




He didn't create them.  He bred them.  He had the power to twist normal snakes over time, enlarging them, giving them wings, and eventually the ability to breathe fire.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 18, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Real world sword smithing has little bearing on this.




Because it is a fantasy novel?  That is nonsense.  You might as well assert that Middle Earth steel is like one of our marshmallows and their fire would not burn us because real world information we have on metal and fire has little bearing on how it works there.

No.  All fiction has its basis in reality and branches out from there.  How much so depends on the unreality of the fiction in question.  The less familiar the basic rules of the fiction's setting, the less accessible it will be.  But JRRT's world works much as ours does- steel is hard; fire is hot.



> Dwarves as a race are makers and highly skilled in crafting, the crafting of weapons in particular.  Even their normal weapons could not be rivaled except by the very few, very best of the Noldo.  Those same very best that created Sting, Orcrist and Glamdring.  All powerful magic weapons.




I'm not saying otherwise.  I'm asserting that there is no evidence in the novels that weapons of *that* power approach anything like the ubiquity you're claiming.

In fact, the very rarity of such weapons even within the Company of the Ring would argue _against_ there being anything approaching a large number of such weapons in the world.  Given the dire situation and the stature of the individuals in it, the Company would have probably had their pick of gear available.  They'd be the denizens of Middle Earth most likely to be kitted out like a D&D party.  Not just as a matter of pride for those behind them, but also to ensure the mission's success.

If there really were huge numbers of magical weapons stockpiled somewhere, nobody's contingency plans would go awry by being short the gear they might request.



> Given thousands of years worth of mining and weapon craft that would dwarf (pun intended ) the best sword smiths Earth has ever had, the dwarves of Khazad Dum would have had plenty of weapons to mash the Balrog with.




Plenty of weapons?  Sure.  Plenty of MAGIC weapons?  There's no evidence for that.

Dwarves live a long time.  But not all dwarves are smiths.  And not all Dwarven smiths are master smiths- even among themselves, there will be differing levels of competence.  The ones capable of forging magic weapons might be rare indeed.

And how long does it take to forge a magical item in Middle Earth anyway?  AFAIK, JRRT never says.

Hell- the process of creating magic weapons may be so long and involved that only the master craftsmen of the Dwarves and Elves live long enough to complete even a few.


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## Faenor (Mar 18, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> That theory is not backed up by the books.  You're taking the tendency for fallen Maia and other evil supernatural entities to be tied to their form and thereby become limited in power by that form and trying to apply it to the Valar and unfallen Maia who do not have that problem.




I didn't say anything about them being tied to their bodies. They invested their power in certain things, and if those things were destroyed, it used up their power. Yavana could only make those trees once. The maiar that made Dragon bodies invested all of themselves in that body.

Also, a distinction between fallen Maiar and not fallen Maiar is not supported by the books. Same with Valar (Melkor). Illuvatar didn't do anything to them.


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## Faenor (Mar 18, 2016)

Also, their were no other supernatural entities. There were only Valar and Maiar.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 18, 2016)

Celebrim said:


> There is a complication here.  Fire isn't part of Gandalf's natural jurisdiction as a vassal of Varda (or possibly Manwe).  He is essential an Angel of wisdom and hope, learning and words, light and truth, and has some jurisdiction over those things.  He also appears to have personal knowledge of magical lore and words of power, related to study of the things within his authority, and so to be able to cast 'spells' using those words and his natural authority.  Essentially, he knows stuff about the universe and being who he is, has a right to command it.




I think you may have misunderstood me. I didn't meant that Gandalf had jurisdiction over fire, or that his use of fire came from his authority over it. Those two sentences (his power came from his jurisdiction and he had affinity to fire) were separated by a dot/period. What i meant by his power to do some things came from his "task" or "assignment" or jurisdiction is i.e. when he "decommissioned" Saruman. Or as you mentioned his domain overs some element of reality. 

On the other hand:


Celebrim said:


> So he might have learned things about fire, but we know from the text that the primary source of his authority over fire is his possession of Narya - the Ring of Power concerned with the element of fire.  Narya vastly increases Gandalf's ability with fire, giving him much greater command over fire itself than he'd have without it.  In D&D terms, assuming Narya is something like a Ring of Elemental Command, we can't be certain whether anything Gandalf does with fire can't be explained as a power of Narya and not something in one of Gandalf's spell slots as a wizard.  We can be reasonably sure that nothing he does with fire is equivalent to Gandalf's racial abilities, since fire wouldn't be part of his 'portfolio'.



Cirdan himself said: "Take this ring, Master… for your labours will be heavy; but it will support you in the weariness that you have taken upon yourself. For this is the Ring of Fire, and with it you may rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill. But as for me, my heart is with the Sea, and I will dwell by the grey shores until the last ship sails. I will await you."
The way i always interpret it, Narya never gave Gandalf any (literal) fire abilities, just like Nenya never gave Galadriel water summoning or Wilya Elrond any air related activities. The way i see it, Narya gave Gandalf exactly what was advertised, it helped him shrug the weariness of time and the burdens of his task on what hand, and inspire those who would stand up to the Shadow.


Celebrim said:


> And thus the complication.  It's possible that any powerful manifestation of fire that Gandalf does is simply Gandalf invoking Narya's ability to cast Fire Blast or Flamestrike or whatever.



Thus, no. I think any affinity of Gandalf towards casting fire was either because he personally favored it for some reason, or IMO much more likely, because it was most appropriate at the time. Like fire and divine light being the obvious best choice against the Nazgul, but apparently not against the Balrog, and not against the Nazgul the second time on the banks of Bruinen, when water was more appropriate. So, what level of spell was flame blast?



Celebrim said:


> Not really.  While there are parts of the text that are very hard to fit into D&D, I don't think this is one.  Gandalf attempting to shut the door in Moria is the origin of the spell 'Hold Portal'.  The Balrog simply cast 'dispel magic' or something of the sort, and beat Gandalf's caster level check.  The rest is in D&D terms merely color, and an example of good RP.



Perhaps. If one could flavor dispel magic as the door self destructed because both of them were warding and or piercing it, then yes, i agree.



Celebrim said:


> Again, not really.  Gandalf occasionally uses Searing Light.  That's probably a racial ability owing to his stature as a Ainur, rather than one of his Wizard abilities.  It's easily explained in most editions of D&D with a race or template, only slightly customized or even depending on how you do it, not at all.  I'm not clear on what the first appearance of the Searing Light spell is, but in my 1e suggested stat block, it would be an easy to fit into the powers of an Agathion just by putting it on his clerical spell list.



This i agree with. It would be either racial ability or the cleric aspect of Gandalf and clearly more in line with his "jurisdiction" powers and not manipulation of matter. Like his cleansing powers in example.

On the issue of scarcity of magical weapons...... i agree with you and others here, they were probably not all that common, even in the first age and even less so in the third. Dwarfs were master smiths yes, and some of their work would certainly make even Noldo craft pale in comparison. But were they magical? As in possessing supernatural abilities above the basic property the item was made for? I tend to interpret this mastery (even the Noldorin mastery) as a form of technology too. So yes, Noldo and Naugrim blades would have +1 or +2 to hit, maybe even to damage, but most of those superb/masterwork items would not be magical per se. Not in the way that Tolkien usually attributes magic to items, i.e. they either have some form of spirit of their own, or have inherited some of their crafter's spirit and creative urge. And such weapons would indeed be rare. For like the Valar, the Maiar, Eldar and Naugrim could do some things only once or few times in their whole lives at best. And these items would be of extraordinary properties. The Noldorin princes in the first age would probably have such weapons. And being crafted in Valinor (some even under guidance of Melkor and some explicitly to fight him and his servants, they might have had more "spirit" or "magic" then your typical magical weapon  even in Tolkien terms. Then there were weapons that acquired "souls" or were "upgraded" during their times, like Narsil/Anduril and Anglachel, both of which may have rudimentary "spirits" or "spirit bonds" from the start. Heck, Anglachel was even self aware. But again such weapons were so rare, and so precious that they were considered gifts for or of kings! The very greatest of smiths, be he a dwarf or an elf would make no more then few such items in his entire lives. And many of those weapons were lost with their owners in the first age alone. So, yeah..... i don't see many people possessing such items, even in the rich kingdom of Moria.

But let us digress a bit. Let's assume that Gandalf did not slay the Balrog because he had a magical +2 elven balde that dealt divine damage. I mean, it helped yes, but what if it wasn't the blade that did the killing. What if a very hardy warrior wielded it.... say, Eorl the Young, could he slay the Balrog with it? Gandalf said, "this is a foe beyond any of you" , not "this is a foe beyond any of your weapons" of which at least Aragorn had one, i'd guess. What if Gandalf was able to slay the Balrog because like himself, it was a being of spirit. A spirit of fire no less, not trapped in a mortal shape like Saruman. A shape it had, but a much more premordial and in line whit its purpose. So, what i'm saying is, maybe it takes a spirit of similar or greater nature to slay such a spirit. True, there were Noldorim heroes in the first age that did the deed, but these were high elves, half of their spirits still in Valinor, and themselves being at least as much "fire" and "magic" and "spirit" as they were corporeal. After all, "mighty were the princes of the Noldor", especially when enraged and the fire of Valinor was still burning strong in them.

As for the shapes, again i agree. While the Maiar could take shapes just like the Valar, and wear them (and cast them off) as cloths, the Wizards were a special case. Their shapes were truly and for all intents and purposes mortal and human. They were not just some aspect of them, they could change and discard at will. Would killing their bodies kill the spirit confined to them? No, it would send them back to Valinor. But it would certainly "kill" their mandate in Middle Earth. Hence the special intervention needed to send Gandalf back. Or Glorfindel for that matter. And it is my belief that they were sent (and bound) in such bodies for a reason. They were to oppose Sauron, but never in a direct contest of might, but rather of will and counsel. This is why the choice of who is to be sent did not fall on the mightiest among them, but rather the most "skilled" or "wise" ones. Remember that Gandalf was actually afraid of being sent back, because he did not consider him self strong enough to oppose Sauron? Manwe's response was that, that is exactly why he sends him, because he will not fall into temptation to fight Sauron openly, or engage in an "arms race" with him, but rather stay true to his task and provide help to the free peoples through labors of guidance and inspiration. And he did.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 18, 2016)

A second post, in order to avoid overloading the previous one.
On spirits.
There were more spirits in Middle Earth then just the Balrogs and the Maiar. Or at least there were more manifestations of them. Even with the creation of Arda, probably some spirits were "permanently" bound to some shapes. I think the Eagles and the Ents are such spirits. Some of them did or might have "fallen" over time, accepting their bestial nature (The old willow) and thus given rise to the monsters of later times. Some have indeed been corrupted be the Shadow. Some may have been interbreeds of such fallen spirits and beasts and animals. Like the werewolves and the vampires. Or the spiders for that matter.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Because it is a fantasy novel?  That is nonsense.  You might as well assert that Middle Earth steel is like one of our marshmallows and their fire would not burn us because real world information we have on metal and fire has little bearing on how it works there.
> 
> No.  All fiction has its basis in reality and branches out from there.  How much so depends on the unreality of the fiction in question.  The less familiar the basic rules of the fiction's setting, the less accessible it will be.  But JRRT's world works much as ours does- steel is hard; fire is hot.




No, not because it's a novel.  It's because the novel establishes that dwarves are skilled beyond any other race, including humans.  Last I checked, Earth swordsmiths were human.  Do you have knowledge and proof that they weren't human?  I'd really like to see it if you do.



> I'm not saying otherwise.  I'm asserting that there is no evidence in the novels that weapons of *that* power approach anything like the ubiquity you're claiming.




The dwarves were capable of created magic items of such power that just wearing one a mask could make you immune to dragon fire.  Their weapons were only able to be rivaled by the greatest of Noldo smiths who made magic weapons of great power.  There is evidence that they can make weapons of power, yes.  You're just ignoring it.



> In fact, the very rarity of such weapons even within the Company of the Ring would argue _against_ there being anything approaching a large number of such weapons in the world.  Given the dire situation and the stature of the individuals in it, the Company would have probably had their pick of gear available.  They'd be the denizens of Middle Earth most likely to be kitted out like a D&D party.  Not just as a matter of pride for those behind them, but also to ensure the mission's success.




Rarity among humans, hobits and other non-elves and dwarves?  Sure.  We are never shown whether dwarves and elves fail to have magic weapons as a race, and we are told in the Silmarillion that they do have such weapons in abundance.



> Dwarves live a long time.  But not all dwarves are smiths.  And not all Dwarven smiths are master smiths- even among themselves, there will be differing levels of competence.  The ones capable of forging magic weapons might be rare indeed.



The Silmarillion implies otherwise.



> And how long does it take to forge a magical item in Middle Earth anyway?  AFAIK, JRRT never says.




And yet the Silmarillion is full of them.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Faenor said:


> I didn't say anything about them being tied to their bodies. They invested their power in certain things, and if those things were destroyed, it used up their power. Yavana could only make those trees once. The maiar that made Dragon bodies invested all of themselves in that body.
> 
> Also, a distinction between fallen Maiar and not fallen Maiar is not supported by the books. Same with Valar (Melkor). Illuvatar didn't do anything to them.




There is nothing that says that her being unable to make those trees once is due to her lack of power.  My sense from reading is that the time, so soon after creation, is what allowed her to make them and is why she couldn't make them again.  It took great power to take what light was left and create the sun and the moon with it.  More than would be required to make two trees I would think.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> A second post, in order to avoid overloading the previous one.
> On spirits.
> There were more spirits in Middle Earth then just the Balrogs and the Maiar. Or at least there were more manifestations of them. Even with the creation of Arda, probably some spirits were "permanently" bound to some shapes. I think the Eagles and the Ents are such spirits. Some of them did or might have "fallen" over time, accepting their bestial nature (The old willow) and thus given rise to the monsters of later times. Some have indeed been corrupted be the Shadow. Some may have been interbreeds of such fallen spirits and beasts and animals. Like the werewolves and the vampires. Or the spiders for that matter.




There's no reason to think that the eagles and ents were anything other than creations of from the beginning of time.  What spirits Tolkien showed us were like the Balrogs, Bombadil, and Goldberry.


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## Faenor (Mar 18, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> A second post, in order to avoid overloading the previous one.
> On spirits.
> There were more spirits in Middle Earth then just the Balrogs and the Maiar. Or at least there were more manifestations of them. Even with the creation of Arda, probably some spirits were "permanently" bound to some shapes. I think the Eagles and the Ents are such spirits. Some of them did or might have "fallen" over time, accepting their bestial nature (The old willow) and thus given rise to the monsters of later times. Some have indeed been corrupted be the Shadow. Some may have been interbreeds of such fallen spirits and beasts and animals. Like the werewolves and the vampires. Or the spiders for that matter.




Balrogs were (are?) Maiar. A group of Maiar that were referred to as 'spirits of fire'. Fire was in there nature, and that predisposed many of them to follow Melkor and become Balrogs.

The Ents and Eagles are not explained, but based on their entirely biological nature, it's pretty clear that they are not Maiar. Dragons are mostly biological, but their fire breath and great size required more than just upscaling lizards. And, being that only illuvatar created life, and the only 'spirits' he created were the Maiar (and Valar), there's no indication that the ents and Eagles were not creatures of illuvatar's created  world. Those creatures, which were non-magical, could be 'brought up' in the good sense or twisted in the evil. Like orcs, wargs, or Shelob on the evil side and Huor, shadowfax, and even the Noldor, on the good side, by exposure to the Valar or Maiar. But they needed to start with that biological life from illuvatar.

Admittedly, that was more clear with the eagles than with the ents. The only being that didn't fit this logic was Tom Bombadil, but JRRT made it very clear by his powers that he's above and outside all of these rules. The ents, though neutral and ancient, didn't have any kind of super or magic powers, so there's no reason to assume they don't follow JRRT's general rules like bombadil. The explanation for the Ents that fits best is that they were plants brought up by Yavanna when she walked the earth in the twilight time before the light of the trees.

There was also no case in JRRTs writing that the Maiar could or did reproduce biologically with creatures of Arda. Perhaps the only exception was spiders being referred to as children of ungoliant. However, it's not explicit that were not children in a more figurative sense, and, also it's not explicitly stated that ungoliant was a Maiar. The best explanation for ungoliant is that she was a left over from before JRRT worked out his rules that only illuvatar was capable of creating life.


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## Faenor (Mar 18, 2016)

Thinking now. Maybe there were half Maiar elves. Still, elves were magical creatures and didn't follow the same life and death rules as humans and other animals.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 18, 2016)

Faenor said:


> The Ents and Eagles are not explained, but based on their entirely biological nature, it's pretty clear that they are not Maiar.




Not Maiar, yes, but they are actually explained. Ch. 2 of the Silmarillion, "Of Aule and Yavanna".

Yavanna petitions Iluvatar through Manwe to create defenders of the trees, and he agrees. 

"When the Children [elves] awake, then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar, and they will go among the _kelvar_ [animals] and _olvar_ [plants], and some will dwell therein"

But these spirits don't seem to be of Ainur (Valar/Maiar) type since the Ents & Eagles are embodied beings that reproduce. They'd be more like human or elven souls.



> There was also no case in JRRTs writing that the Maiar could or did reproduce biologically with creatures of Arda.




There is one clear case - Luthien.



TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> Some may have been interbreeds of such fallen spirits and beasts and animals. Like the werewolves and the vampires.




I believe it's stated that Morgoth or Sauron sent evil spirits into wolves, creating the werewolves. (Which in Middle-Earth don't seem to be shapechangers, just huge evil intelligent wolves.)



Maxperson said:


> He didn't create them.  He bred them.  He had the power to twist normal snakes over time, enlarging them, giving them wings, and eventually the ability to breathe fire.




That's my take, yes. Though he might well have done the same 'send in evil spirits' thing - but I agree the original stock were probably large snakes like pythons. The earliest dragons were snakelike and wingless. The winged dragons only appear at the very end of the First Age.



Faenor said:


> Thinking now. Maybe there were half Maiar elves.





Only Luthien.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 18, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> No, not because it's a novel.  It's because the novel establishes that dwarves are skilled beyond any other race, including humans.




Unless they are actually using magic to aid the process, the Dwarves are still limited by the known physics of forgecraft.  They can't make the ores heat faster, hotter or separate into their various elements more rapidly.  The metal will quench at a set rate.  It will take a certain amount of time to repeatedly hammer and fold the blade in order to get the optimal distribution of carbon (especially Carbon nanotubes), tungsten, vanadium and other trace elements within the steel- plus whatever it is that makes the alloy called Mithril.

That isn't about skill, that's physics.  Physics doesn't care if you're man or dwarf.  Skill doesn't create physics-defying shortcuts.



> The dwarves were capable of created magic items of such power that just wearing one a mask could make you immune to dragon fire.  Their weapons were only able to be rivaled by the greatest of Noldo smiths who made magic weapons of great power.  There is evidence that they can make weapons of power, yes.  You're just ignoring it.



Reread what I wrote, Maxperson.  You are either missing my point or deliberately misrepresenting it.

To be 100% clear: _I. Am. Not. Asserting. Dwarves. Can't. Make. Powerful. Magic. Items._  Not at all.

What I am saying is that there is zero evidence in the novels that they made a buttload of them.



> Rarity among humans, hobits and other non-elves and dwarves?  Sure.  We are never shown whether dwarves and elves fail to have magic weapons as a race, and we are told in the Silmarillion that they do have such weapons in abundance.




You still don't get it.  The overall plot of LotR is Middle Earth's facing of an Extinction Level Event.

This is their big meteor coming to hit the planet, and everyone has to work together to make the big super nuclear missile (or missiles) to knock the thing off of its collision trajectory.  If the nukes fail, everyone dies, so there is no point in holding anything back.  So nobody does.  The contingencies in such stories are never "we'll fire our own withheld and secretly better missiles after yours fail because we are so awesome we don't need your help".  It's always having bunkers where they hope someone will survive the impact.

Just like the humans, hobbits & everyone else in Middle Earth, the elves and dwarves are screwed if the Company of the Ring fails.  If Sauron wins, there won't be a bunker deep enough.  There is no point in not supplying elven mail to any of the 9 it will fit.  There is no reason for them not to give/loan powerful magic weapons to those who will be facing Sauron...*if they have it to give.*

Yet not even Gimli and Legolas have anything resembling a significant magic weapon at the quest's inception.

This is a strong implication against the ubiquity of magic such as you are asserting.



> The Silmarillion implies otherwise.



Support this claim with quotes, please.



> And yet the Silmarillion is full of them.




Support this claim with quotes, please.


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## FitzTheRuke (Mar 18, 2016)

I'm late to the party, but I'd say, if he's a 5th level Magic User, his race is a totally broken homebrew.


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## Hriston (Mar 18, 2016)

Where does the idea that Gandalf is a vassal of Manwe and/or Varda come from? Is it just that he was their choice of emissary among the Istari? Based on the Simarillion, I've always thought of Gandalf as one of the people of the Vala Lorien, as it is said he dwelt in the gardens of Lorien before he was sent to Middle-earth. This seems to be in keeping with his function as a kindler of hope.


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## Marandahir (Mar 18, 2016)

Gandalf was a multiclass character. In 4e, the Invoker was developed to be a Divine Wizard to emulate Gandalf, but I always saw him in 4e terms as an Invoker/Runepriest (sword) Hybrid Class character. In 5e terms, he's probably a Wizard/Paladin or a Wizard/Cleric (of some domain that grants martial weapon proficiency, like Tempest or War). 

You also have to remember that he was well known for hoarding his spells per day because he felt it wasn't right to go all out with his power. We saw him unveil his power in specific circumstances.

Also, just because he uses low-level spells doesn't mean he doesn't cast them in high-level spell-slots. 5th Edition handles his sort of character in a much better way, to that effect.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 18, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Unless they are actually using magic to aid the process, the Dwarves are still limited by the known physics of forgecraft.  They can't make the ores heat faster, hotter or separate into their various elements more rapidly.  The metal will quench at a set rate.  It will take a certain amount of time to repeatedly hammer and fold the blade in order to get the optimal distribution of carbon (especially Carbon nanotubes), tungsten, vanadium and other trace elements within the steel- plus whatever it is that makes the alloy called Mithril.
> 
> That isn't about skill, that's physics.  Physics doesn't care if you're man or dwarf.  Skill doesn't create physics-defying shortcuts.




What I think you're missing is that "Art" or "Craft" in Middle-Earth is, or can be, inherently magical.  Even the mundane items made by skilled Dwarven and Elven craftsmen (and those of Westernesse of old) will have properties that can't be explained by physics and chemistry.




> Just like the humans, hobbits & everyone else in Middle Earth, the elves and dwarves are screwed if the Company of the Ring fails.  If Sauron wins, there won't be a bunker deep enough.  There is no point in not supplying elven mail to any of the 9 it will fit.  There is no reason for them not to give/loan powerful magic weapons to those who will be facing Sauron...*if they have it to give.*




I don't think you can apply that kind of logic to these stories.  Remember that the 13 Dwarves set off to kill a dragon with no weapons at all.  We are dealing with a world with different conceptions of objects and ownership and fate and magic.

There was an old cartoon of a movie theatre where a sci-fi space battle is on the screen, and this nutty professor sort is standing up and yelling "Stop the movie! Stop the movie! Explosions don't go BOOM in a vacuum!"

Don't be that guy.


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## Marandahir (Mar 18, 2016)

Hriston said:


> Where does the idea that Gandalf is a vassal of Manwe and/or Varda come from? Is it just that he was their choice of emissary among the Istari? Based on the Simarillion, I've always thought of Gandalf as one of the people of the Vala Lorien, as it is said he dwelt in the gardens of Lorien before he was sent to Middle-earth. This seems to be in keeping with his function as a kindler of hope.




See "The Unfinished Tales," chapter, "The Istari." 

These are stories that belong with the Silmarillion and the LotR Appendices but didn't make it into either. They're still "canon," if you can consider any of it canon given Tolkien's constant revisions (and his son's revisions that made it into the Silmarillion – if you ask Christopher Tolkien today, he'll tell you that several aspects of the Silmarillion were fudged in order to reconcile elements he didn't have a true answer to at that point in time). Now we have more answers because of more recent scholarship, though some questions, such as if Balrogs have wings, what Tom Bombadil is, what is the nature of Orc morality, what is the true love-story of Galadriel and Celeborn, and how did Glorfindel come back, these questions are still very much in doubt and likely will never be answered "truly" given that Tolkien was undecided on them by the time of his death.


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## Marandahir (Mar 18, 2016)

FitzTheRuke said:


> I'm late to the party, but I'd say, if he's a 5th level Magic User, his race is a totally broken homebrew.




Given that he's an Astral Deva taking mortal form… Devas were balanced in 4e, but in 5e playing one would be totally broken, yes.


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## Zardnaar (Mar 18, 2016)

His race could jsut be NPC, and most likely was  since he is a celestial in D&D terms.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Unless they are actually using magic to aid the process, the Dwarves are still limited by the known physics of forgecraft.  They can't make the ores heat faster, hotter or separate into their various elements more rapidly.  The metal will quench at a set rate.  It will take a certain amount of time to repeatedly hammer and fold the blade in order to get the optimal distribution of carbon (especially Carbon nanotubes), tungsten, vanadium and other trace elements within the steel- plus whatever it is that makes the alloy called Mithril.




Then you can tell me what "physics" allowed them to make a face mask that would keep the entire body of the wearer immune to even the hottest dragon fire.

That isn't about skill, that's physics.  Physics doesn't care if you're man or dwarf.  Skill doesn't create physics-defying shortcuts.



> Reread what I wrote, Maxperson.  You are either missing my point or deliberately misrepresenting it.
> 
> To be 100% clear: _I. Am. Not. Asserting. Dwarves. Can't. Make. Powerful. Magic. Items._  Not at all.
> 
> What I am saying is that there is zero evidence in the novels that they made a buttload of them.




Other than the Silmarillion stating that they equipped elven armies with weapons to fight Morgoths armies, which included balrogs and other fallen Maia.  Hard to equip entire armies to fight things like that if they aren't magical and in large numbers.



> You still don't get it.  The overall plot of LotR is Middle Earth's facing of an Extinction Level Event.
> 
> This is their big meteor coming to hit the planet, and everyone has to work together to make the big super nuclear missile (or missiles) to knock the thing off of its collision trajectory.  If the nukes fail, everyone dies, so there is no point in holding anything back.  So nobody does.  The contingencies in such stories are never "we'll fire our own withheld and secretly better missiles after yours fail because we are so awesome we don't need your help".  It's always having bunkers where they hope someone will survive the impact.
> 
> Just like the humans, hobbits & everyone else in Middle Earth, the elves and dwarves are screwed if the Company of the Ring fails.  If Sauron wins, there won't be a bunker deep enough.  There is no point in not supplying elven mail to any of the 9 it will fit.  There is no reason for them not to give/loan powerful magic weapons to those who will be facing Sauron...*if they have it to give.*




The ONLY reason it's an extinction event is because the number of elves and dwarves is so low.  Feanor and company would laugh at Sauron and company.  Heck, even the Numenoreans forced Sauron at the height of his power to give up and use subtlety and manipulation.  He could't beat them.



> Yet not even Gimli and Legolas have anything resembling a significant magic weapon at the quest's inception.




Says who?  Just because they weren't flashy like Sting, doesn't mean that they weren't magical.


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## MoonSong (Mar 18, 2016)

Marandahir said:


> Given that he's an Astral Deva taking mortal form… Devas were balanced in 4e, but in 5e playing one would be totally broken, yes.






Zardnaar said:


> His race could jsut be NPC, and most likely was  since he is a celestial in D&D terms.




Aasimar anybody?


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## Marandahir (Mar 18, 2016)

While Deva served the same purpose as Aasimar in 4e, and was intended as a reworked Aasimar (granted, mostly because the developers hated that name and it's connotations), it lacked the key quality of the Aasimar – they're Half-human or more than half-human. I guess they could be half some other race. But the point is that while Deva is a full angel taking on human flesh, an Aasimar has angelic ancestry. 

Lúthien is more like an Aasimar than Gandalf. She's half-Elf, half-Celestial. 

Gandalf is a full-fledged angel that took on a human shape. That's right there in the Astral Deva description in the Monster Manual for 5e. While you COULD try to emulate him with the Aasimar, you'd be extremely underplaying his latent racial abilities.


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## jsaving (Mar 18, 2016)

It's hard to say whether Lord of the Rings is best described as a low-magic setting (characters have wimpy spells/equipment because nearly all spells/equipment in the world are wimpy) or as a different-magic setting (where magic items tend to look normal and casters for whatever reason tend to shy away from casting the high level spells they possess).  I tend to think it's a combination of the two, which makes it even tougher to write a "conversion manual" for LotR.

But getting back to Gandalf -- we're talking about a guy who has three defining features compared to the other NPCs who are seen in the books/movies.  One, he can man the front lines and hold his own in melee as those around him go down, not because attacks bounce off of his magical defenses but because of his melee prowess.  Two, he has an unparalleled ability to inspire people around him and an unparalleled knowledge of lore.  Three, he is able to face epic-level monsters like the balrog and sometimes emerge triumphant, even telling the rest of his high-level party to fall back because the balrog is beyond their -- but implicitly not his -- power.

Taken together, it just seems untenable to stat Gandalf as a low-level character.  A better approach is probably to give him max XP and then figure out his class(es) based on which class features best epitomize what he does in the setting.  While there are always pitfalls in this kind of exercise, I'd look for class(es) that would give him some combination of the extra attack class feature, spellcasting, access to an inspiration/exhortation class feature, and some knowledge of lore.  This would lead me toward either a college of valor bard or an eldritch knight, which are two of the more common ways people have statted Gandalf in the past.  The eldritch knight approach nicely reconciles Gandalf being a high-level character yet never casting high-level spells, while the bard approach handles the knowledge/inspiration aspect of his character while also offering class features like countercharm and magical secrets that dovetail nicely with his eclectic spellbook and ability to break through enchantments.     

Opting for 20th level wizard is certainly another possibility, as Gandalf calls himself a wizard and carries the signature weapon of a wizard.  I don't see the class features of a 5th edition wizard as being a great fit for Gandalf, personally, but maybe it would be possible to carefully tailor his spellbook to include mainly buffs/divinations and then explain his apparent lack of magic by saying he was constantly casting those kinds of spells off-camera.  His martial prowess, inspiration ability and uncanny knowledge of lore would then be coming from spells even though we didn't explicitly "see" the appropriate spells being cast, an approach that could potentially make him a much higher-level wizard than he "appeared" to be.


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## Tony Vargas (Mar 18, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> My point is that there is as much evidence for the bomb as there is for a Staff of Power.  That amount is zero.  Assuming a Staff of Power is bupkis.



Well, there was a staff, so that's more evidence than for a bomb, FWTW.  

But, from a slightly different angle, isn't it fair to say that the few things Gandalf did with his staff up to and destroying the bridge, might have been inspiration for the Staff of the Magi (including its retributive strike), and the things he did with his new staff after could have been inspiration for the Staff of Power.  Both magic items do a lot more (typical for D&D, really), but are consistent with the powers displayed.  



> They are poor approximations limited by play balance.



heh



> I'm simply rejecting the plethora of unsupported assumptions that the author of the essay makes in order to make everything as weak as he wants it.



Remember, he was working without the Silmarilion, and going by what the character displayed.  Sure, a 5th level magic-user could have done what Gandalf did in LotR, as far as actual spell-casting ability displayed.  A higher level D&D magic user in a similar scenario could have done a lot more, and probably would have.  It just illustrated that D&D magic-users didn't emulate the 'high fantasy' genre very well, and already had gone beyond the pale.  

There was a tendency to translate almost any literary character as very high level, and possessing rule-breaking special abilities, class combinations, levels and the like, especially in Giants in the Earth.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, there was a staff, so that's more evidence than for a bomb, FWTW.




There was a fuse at the bottom of the staff 

Seriously, though, that's only evidence of a staff, not a Staff of Power.



> But, from a slightly different angle, isn't it fair to say that the few things Gandalf did with his staff up to and destroying the bridge, might have been inspiration for the Staff of the Magi (including its retributive strike), and the things he did with his new staff after could have been inspiration for the Staff of Power.  Both magic items do a lot more (typical for D&D, really), but are consistent with the powers displayed.




Inspiration isn't the same as the thing being what you are inspired to create.  A dog running across the street to his master could inspire me to write a love story.  That doesn't make the dog a leading man.



> Remember, he was working without the Silmarilion, and going by what the character displayed.  Sure, a 5th level magic-user could have done what Gandalf did in LotR, as far as actual spell-casting ability displayed.  A higher level D&D magic user in a similar scenario could have done a lot more, and probably would have.  It just illustrated that D&D magic-users didn't emulate the 'high fantasy' genre very well, and already had gone beyond the pale.




True. 



> There was a tendency to translate almost any literary character as very high level, and possessing rule-breaking special abilities, class combinations, levels and the like, especially in Giants in the Earth.




Well, most literary characters are depicted as very powerful, or else grow into being very powerful.  I'm not familiar with Giants in the Earth, though.


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## Tony Vargas (Mar 18, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Inspiration isn't the same as the thing being what you are inspired to create.



Exactly.  D&D was inspired by Lovecraft, Lieber, Moorcock, Howard, Tolkien &c.  But it didn't faithfully simulate specifics of their work.  Gandalf was the greatest wizard of his age, but he inspired a handful of 1st - 3rd level spells, and few magic items (which each do a lot more than was displayed when he used them).  Aragorn was a lost king who could summon a ghost army, but he inspired a class that was good at tracking, killing giants, and attracted random woodsy followers and cast low-level MU & Druid spells at high level.




> Well, most literary characters are depicted as very powerful, or else grow into being very powerful.



That's just the point, though.  Gandalf is very powerful, but D&D rates the magical powers he actually displays as fairly low-level spells.    







> I'm not familiar with Giants in the Earth, though.



Just the title of the regular feature in The Dragon that presented D&D stats for literary or legendary characters.


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## Maxperson (Mar 18, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> Exactly.  D&D was inspired by Lovecraft, Lieber, Moorcock, Howard, Tolkien &c.  But it didn't faithfully simulate specifics of their work.  Gandalf was the greatest wizard of his age, but he inspired a handful of 1st - 3rd level spells, and few magic items (which each do a lot more than was displayed when he used them).  Aragorn was a lost king who could summon a ghost army, but he inspired a class that was good at tracking, killing giants, and attracted random woodsy followers and cast low-level MU & Druid spells at high level.
> 
> 
> That's just the point, though.  Gandalf is very powerful, but D&D rates the magical powers he actually displays as fairly low-level spells.    Just the title of the regular feature in The Dragon that presented D&D stats for literary or legendary characters.




Huh!  With all the Dragon magazines I read from 1e to 3e, you'd think I'd have known that.


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## Hriston (Mar 18, 2016)

Marandahir said:


> See "The Unfinished Tales," chapter, "The Istari."




I've read the Unfinished Tales. It's one of my favorite collections of Tolkien's work. I don't recall specifically, however, the mention of Gandalf's vassalage to Manwe or Varda. Is it mentioned there?


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## Greybird (Mar 19, 2016)

In D&D terms?  Maybe, but that's because he didn't do what he did based on his 'class.'  The thing to keep in mind is that he used a custom race - Istari.  It gave him +10 to all stats and made him immortal.  He then used 2,000 years of downtime gaining proficiency in every skill and language.  He didn't need 9th level spells.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 19, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> There's no reason to think that the eagles and ents were anything other than creations of from the beginning of time.  What spirits Tolkien showed us were like the Balrogs, Bombadil, and Goldberry.





Faenor said:


> Balrogs were (are?) Maiar. A group of Maiar that were referred to as 'spirits of fire'. Fire was in there nature, and that predisposed many of them to follow Melkor and become Balrogs.
> 
> The Ents and Eagles are not explained, but based on their entirely biological nature, it's pretty clear that they are not Maiar. Dragons are mostly biological, but their fire breath and great size required more than just upscaling lizards. And, being that only illuvatar created life, and the only 'spirits' he created were the Maiar (and Valar), there's no indication that the ents and Eagles were not creatures of illuvatar's created  world. Those creatures, which were non-magical, could be 'brought up' in the good sense or twisted in the evil. Like orcs, wargs, or Shelob on the evil side and Huor, shadowfax, and even the Noldor, on the good side, by exposure to the Valar or Maiar. But they needed to start with that biological life from illuvatar.
> 
> ...




And yet:
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world. Thus they brought word to him of well nigh all that passed in Arda; yet some things were hidden even from the eyes of Manwe and the servants of Manwe, for where Melkor sat in his dark thought impenetrable shadows lay." And it was Manwe who sent the eagles to Middle Earth to watch over the Noldor. I am not saying this actually means these are the same eagles, but the fact that the greatest of them were sentient and could actually speak, may imply some of them were those servants of Manwe in corporeal form. And who knows, maybe as Melian and Thongol had a daughter, so did Thorondor and some of his kin had children with the more "biological" eagles of Middle Earth, and thus the race of the great Eagles was given birth.  Ulmo also had servants that took shapes of streams or rivers, sometimes storms. Not all were house less spirits. And then we have the Ents..... this is how they were created:
"When the Children awake, then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar, and they will go among the kelvar and the olvar, and some will dwell therein, and be held in reverence, and their just anger shall be feared"
Again we have spirits inhabiting the shapes of the trees, to act as their guardians. Maybe never directly stated, but i think it is strongly implied that many of the "magical" creatures were in fact spirits of some sort, either bound to or having been given a physical shape.

EDIT:
I should have read the last 2 pages before answering,  *Khisanth the Ancient*       beat me to it 



Khisanth the Ancient said:


> I believe it's stated that Morgoth or Sauron sent evil spirits into wolves, creating the werewolves. (Which in Middle-Earth don't seem to be shapechangers, just huge evil intelligent wolves.)




Precisely.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 19, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Other than the Silmarillion stating that they equipped elven armies with weapons to fight Morgoths armies, which included balrogs and other fallen Maia.  Hard to equip entire armies to fight things like that if they aren't magical and in large numbers.




Specifically, they equipped Thingol's armory with weapons (and i don't recall if it was armor as well), but it is never stated they are magical. Thingol's army never really accounts for any Balrog kills (which doesn't mean there weren't any), however do notice that when Beleg has the freedom to chose a weapon, any weapon, from the entire Thingol treasure he picks a sword forged by a dark elf named Eol. And that sword was probably at the time one of the deadliest weapons in Middle Earth (and had a will of its own). If some of the wrightings are to be correct, it is that sword that will strike the final mortal blow to the returning Morrgoth. Even that sword (obviously "magical" even by Tolkien standards) did not kill any balrogs though..... it claimed a dragon, but that is a different story. The only cases of Balrogs being felled in battle that i can remember were actually in fighting with the Noldorin princes, probably most of them during the siege of Gondolin. I would have thus attributed the kills to the divine nature of the Aman originated high elves themselves and not their weapons, but then if i recall correctly, Tuor actually killed some himself. Still.... even in these instances (of arguably lesser Balrogs as presented in Silmarillion then in LOTR) it is always the nobles or their most faithful allies/guards that do the deed. And those allies would be equipped with weapons made in the undying lands and/or specifically for fighting the servants of Morgoth. In any case, there would not be many of them. Even so, most of those were still lost during the Fall of the Noldorin princes and following War of Wrath. 

There is however another way of looking at the weapons aside from the magical (spirit imbued) weapons of the elves and the masterwork superb weapons of the dwarfs. Maybe like all tech, weapons were made with certain use in mind. Maybe Noldor weapons were made to fight the servants of Morgoth and were best suited for that. On the other hands dwarven weapons were maybe made to be supremely sharp and of high durability, thus being able to cut better through otherwise difficult to cut/pierce objects, like dragon scales.

EDIT:
Sorry for taking so much time and space (this is one of my favorite topics after all), but i nearly forgot why we came here:
Here is a list of spells in 5E that could qualify for part of Gandalf's repertoire:
4th level:
Control Water, Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere (arguably, could be globe of invulnerability) , 
5th level:
Wall of Force (alternatives bellow), Scrying (arguable), 
6th level:
Chain Lightning (In Goblin town, could be regular lightingbolt), Globe of Invulnerability (alternative to ORS), Guards and Wards (alternative to wall of force), Sunbeam , True Seeing (only on himself)
7th level:
Symbol (more exotic version of warding)
8th level:
Sunburst 

Unfortunately, no spell i could find is equivalent to a fireball centered on the caster. Some of these could be innate abilities of the race, but either way, his effective MU level would be at least 7 or 9, and could go all the way up to 15.



Hriston said:


> I've read the Unfinished Tales. It's one of my favorite collections of Tolkien's work. I don't recall specifically, however, the mention of Gandalf's vassalage to Manwe or Varda. Is it mentioned there?




Good question. I have read it only once and i can't recall it all that well. And i am too tired from scrolling the Silmarillion to look for the answer right now. I hope someone can make it more clear.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 19, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Then you can tell me what "physics" allowed them to make a face mask that would keep the entire body of the wearer immune to even the hottest dragon fire.
> 
> That isn't about skill, that's physics.  Physics doesn't care if you're man or dwarf.  Skill doesn't create physics-defying shortcuts.




Yes, "magic" is fairly considered to be part of the physics of a fantasy realm.  However, even though this may be so, it is usually called "magic", not "skill", even within the literature.

Speak plainly, now: by dwarves being "skilled", do you actually mean they are using "magic"? 




> Other than the Silmarillion stating that they equipped elven armies with weapons to fight Morgoths armies, which included balrogs and other fallen Maia.  Hard to equip entire armies to fight things like that if they aren't magical and in large numbers.




Covered by TheLoneRanger1979's post.



> The ONLY reason it's an extinction event is because the number of elves and dwarves is so low.  Feanor and company would laugh at Sauron and company.  Heck, even the Numenoreans forced Sauron at the height of his power to give up and use subtlety and manipulation.  He could't beat them.




I don't think that's accurate.



> Says who?  Just because they weren't flashy like Sting, doesn't mean that they weren't magical.




Ok, let me put it this way: I have yet to see anyone but you suggest that their weapons are magical.  You are making an extraordinary claim.  As such, the burden is upon you to support it.


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## Maxperson (Mar 19, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Yes, "magic" is fairly considered to be part of the physics of a fantasy realm.  However, even though this may be so, it is usually called "magic", not "skill", even within the literature.
> 
> Speak plainly, now: by dwarves being "skilled", do you actually mean they are using "magic"?




Magic is often referred to as craft, and dwarves had the ability to craft.  They can clearly create magic items, having done so in the book.  They were taught their craft by their maker.



> Covered by TheLoneRanger1979's post.




Those items could have been magical.  Heck, if even 1% of their weapons were magical, that's still more than enough to equip dozens of very strong dwarves with magic weapons in Khazad Dum.  While mithril was hard to mine, there was enough of it to make suits of armor and many weapons.  The dwarves of Khazad Dum would have had access to those weapons and armor.



> I don't think that's accurate.




Feanor and company resisted Morgoth with many times more orcs, many more dragons, balrogs, and more, and you think Sauron could have resisted them.  He couldn't even resist Numenor at the height of his power and there's no way Numenor could have resisted the 1st age Noldo.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 19, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Yes, "magic" is fairly considered to be part of the physics of a fantasy realm.  However, even though this may be so, it is usually called "magic", not "skill", even within the literature.
> 
> Speak plainly, now: by dwarves being "skilled", do you actually mean they are using "magic"?




There seem to be two categories of 'magical' things in Middle-Earth:

1) Elvish and exceptional Dwarvish and Numenorean/Dunadan craft - seen as magical by Hobbits and (at least most) Men, but not by their makers. IIRC Galadriel says that she doesn't understand what humans/hobbits mean when they call elf-crafted items 'magical'.

2) Truly potent items imbued with the spirit of a great crafter, which become the fulcrum of great events - the Silmarils, Gurthang, the Rings of Power.

In the first class, I do not think there is necessarily a clear distinction of kind (rather than degree) 
'in-world' between Elvish weapons that are "merely" astonishingly well-made and those with 'special properties' like Sting/Orcrist/Glamdring's orc-detection.

So if we are going to translate into D&D terms we have to make a largely arbitrary decision, and I think it is at least defensible to say that weapons made by Elvish artisans and the greater Dwarvish and Numenorean ones are the equivalent of +1 magical weapons, even if they have no 'overt' powers.

TL;DR - The distinction between magical and non-magical doesn't work in Middle-Earth the way it does in D&D.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> I don't think that's accurate.




Sauron was defeated and (temporarily) killed by the Last Alliance _with the Ring on his finger_ and thus at a much higher power-level than he has at the time of LOTR.

Sauron, pre-Ring, was defeated by a magical dog in the First Age.

Middle-Earth has fallen a long way by the time of LOTR. Sauron is like a WWII battleship surviving in a post-apocalyptic age where the best anybody else has is cannon-armed wooden sailing ships: powerful but counterable in its original time, but now an overwhelmingly superior force.


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## Maxperson (Mar 19, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> So if we are going to translate into D&D terms we have to make a largely arbitrary decision, and I think it is at least defensible to say that weapons made by Elvish artisans and the greater Dwarvish and Numenorean ones are the equivalent of +1 magical weapons, even if they have no 'overt' powers.




The dwarves were unparalleled in their ability.  If elvish and Numenorean craft is +1 magic at the basic level, dwarven craft should be +2 magic at the basic level.  Quality dwarven work (to dwarves) would be +3.  +4 and over would be given over to the named weaponry of the races.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 19, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> There seem to be two categories of 'magical' things in Middle-Earth:
> 
> 1) Elvish and exceptional Dwarvish and Numenorean/Dunadan craft - seen as magical by Hobbits and (at least most) Men, but not by their makers. IIRC Galadriel says that she doesn't understand what humans/hobbits mean when they call elf-crafted items 'magical'.
> 
> ...




Which goes back to the first thing I said in this thread: D&D magic is significantly different from Middle Earth magic.  And in all ways, ubiquity of items among them.





> Sauron was defeated and (temporarily) killed by the Last Alliance _with the Ring on his finger_ and thus at a much higher power-level than he has at the time of LOTR.
> 
> Sauron, pre-Ring, was defeated by a magical dog in the First Age.
> 
> Middle-Earth has fallen a long way by the time of LOTR. Sauron is like a WWII battleship surviving in a post-apocalyptic age where the best anybody else has is cannon-armed wooden sailing ships: powerful but counterable in its original time, but now an overwhelmingly superior force.




Point clearly & concisely made.  Conceded.  Sauron wasn't "all that & a bag of chips."

Still doesn't change my position about the rarity of magic items in Middle Earth.  Everyone is still facing an ELE- if anyone has magic that could aid those seeking to defeat him, there's no point in withholding it from the Fellowship.  That they're not kitted out with better gear is a strong implication that there isn't a lot of real magic- stuff dwarves, elves & supernatural beings would consider magic- being stockpiled anywhere.


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## Maxperson (Mar 19, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Still doesn't change my position about the rarity of magic items in Middle Earth.  Everyone is still facing an ELE- if anyone has magic that could aid those seeking to defeat him, there's no point in withholding it from the Fellowship.  That they're not kitted out with better gear is a strong implication that there isn't a lot of real magic- stuff dwarves, elves & supernatural beings would consider magic- being stockpiled anywhere.




The dwarves aren't always rational and hate, HATE to give things away or just share.  It's not in their nature.  The Hobbit shows that when the dwarves flat out refuse to give up the Laketown gold that Smaug took.  The Silmarillion shows that all over the place when dwarves are talked about.  They would, and do cut off their noses to spite their faces.  The elves wouldn't have as much in the way of magical arms as the dwarves would, having lost much of it in the wars with Morgoth and Sauron.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 19, 2016)

The Dwarves may hate sharing, but to the point of risking extinction?  Even when the Fellowship includes one of their own? Even he doesn't get kit.

Still not buying it.  The instinct for self-preservation is among the strongest in any living being.


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## Tony Vargas (Mar 19, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> So if we are going to translate into D&D terms we have to make a largely arbitrary decision,TL;DR - The distinction between magical and non-magical doesn't work in Middle-Earth the way it does in D&D.



So, if a Balrog is arbitrarily translated into a Type VI Demon hit only by magical weapons, and Dwarves are arbitrarily translated into short, high-con, guys who can't be magic-users and are very rarely (NPC) clerics, and even then not typically very high level, it's no great stretch to translate a Balgron slaughtering a city full of Dwarves into a Type VI Demon slaughtering a city full of dwarves, largely because they lacked the magical weapons to harm it.

Games like D&D are inspired by a range of fictional sources, and try to model what's in those sources.  But, their failure to model an instance of fiction doesn't render them invalid the way a scientific model that fails to fit the facts is rendered invalid.  It just makes them kinda bad at modeling that fiction.


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## Maxperson (Mar 19, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The Dwarves may hate sharing, but to the point of risking extinction?




The answer to that according to the books is yes.  13 dwarves and a hobbit fighting against two armies is pretty clearly, "I'm not going to share, even if it kills us all."


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 20, 2016)

Individuals may be suicidal, entire species rarely are.


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Individuals may be suicidal, entire species rarely are.




They were typical dwarves.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 20, 2016)

I think the question of the abundance of magic weapons is irrelevant to Moria vs the Balrog. A Balrog is physically embodied - and a Maia physically embodied is vulnerable to ordinary physical weapons. Saruman was killed by a normal knife/dagger wielded by Grima, a Man of no great 'spiritual strength'.

So I don't think there is any reason to expect that harming a Balrog requires either an exceptional weapon or exceptional 'spiritual strength'. IMO, the reason only high Elves and Gandalf are known to have done it, and the reason they died in the process*, is because you need the 'spiritual strength' to sustain your body long enough to do it. 

Saruman wasn't surrounded by an aura of flame.

*Actually, in early texts, Tuor killed some and survived, and I don't think this was ever rejected by Tolkien - but that was when Balrogs were creations of Morgoth rather than Maiar.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 20, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> They were typical dwarves.




An intelligent, extremely long-lived species capable of building cities and a strong family-centric culture that is ALSO universally suicidally averse to sharing resources strains credulity.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 20, 2016)

I think it's silly to use real-world analogues...about technology, sociology, historical progression, or anything else...to insist upon how fictional worlds must work.

That said, I also think it's fair to say that in Tolkien's _fictional_ world, Dwarves are particularly prone to a type of madness that places greed above survival. It is left unsaid by JRRT, but it is consistent narratively to conclude that possession of one of the Seven brought out this tendency.  

However, remember that some of Thorin's company were sympathetic to Bilbo:


> “And so Bilbo was swung down from the wall, and departed with nothing for all his trouble, except the armour which Thorin had given him already. More than one of the dwarves in their hearts felt shame and pity at his going.”



So not all Dwarves are like that all the time.


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> An intelligent, extremely long-lived species capable of building cities and a strong family-centric culture that is ALSO universally suicidally averse to sharing resources strains credulity.




Why?  It's not as if they've ever been in this position before, so this sort of flaw would not have ever come up and destroyed them.  You're also presuming that they don't stubbornly (like dwarves) believe that they can resist the armies of Sauron by holing up in the lonely mountain or another stronghold.  Just because it's suicide doesn't mean they know or believe that it is.


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> I think it's silly to use real-world analogues...about technology, sociology, historical progression, or anything else...to insist upon how fictional worlds must work.
> 
> That said, I also think it's fair to say that in Tolkien's _fictional_ world, Dwarves are particularly prone to a type of madness that places greed above survival. It is left unsaid by JRRT, but it is consistent narratively to conclude that possession of one of the Seven brought out this tendency.
> 
> ...




And yet they lowered him anyway and didn't try to persuade Thorin.  The flaw was in them, even if it was less strong than in Thorin.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 20, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> And yet they lowered him anyway and didn't try to persuade Thorin.  The flaw was in them, even if it was less strong than in Thorin.




I'll agree the flaw lurks in all (or most) of them.

Not sure I'll agree that following orders and helping to lower him to safety and freedom is evidence of that flaw, though...


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 20, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Why?  It's not as if they've ever been in this position before, so this sort of flaw would not have ever come up and destroyed them.  You're also presuming that they don't stubbornly (like dwarves) believe that they can resist the armies of Sauron by holing up in the lonely mountain or another stronghold.  Just because it's suicide doesn't mean they know or believe that it is.



They're more stubborn, true.

But for them, long lived like the elves, the events of the past encounters with Sauron are fresher than they are for the humans & hobbits.  Fewer generations have passed.  No one save the elves can look back with fewer generations worth of distortion and the fog of history to understand how and why he lost before...and what has changed in the interim.

And, as I pointed out, it isn't just the dwarves who would have to be so fatally dimwitted to so grossly underestimate the threat Sauron presents at the time of the events in LotR.  The elves, longer lived and only slightly less capable of creating magic items, would ALSO have to make the same error in judgement if they didn't offer whatever they had at their disposal to help insure the success of the Fellowship.

So, still not buying into your view of the number of magic weapons available in Middle Eatth.


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## pemerton (Mar 20, 2016)

I think this discussion about offering help to the Fellowship in the form of magic items belongs to the same genre as those who think that the command "Fly, you fools!", as Gandalf was pulled down by the Balrog, was an instruction to travel to the eagles' eyries and take a lift to Mount Doom. Namely, it misses the point.

Defeating Sauron isn't just (or even primarily) a procedural or practical problem. It is a spiritual problem. The problem has a certain origin, and to be overcome must be resolved in a certain way. Loading up on magic items is no more a part of that solution than hitching a lift with eagles.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 20, 2016)

pemerton said:


> Defeating Sauron isn't just (or even primarily) a procedural or practical problem. It is a spiritual problem. The problem has a certain origin, and to be overcome must be resolved in a certain way.




Agreed.



> Loading up on magic items is no more a part of that solution than hitching a lift with eagles.



Here, we part ways.  If you can't complete the journey to your goal, you can't complete the mission.

They have a goal which involves a lot of travel through regions fraught with hazard.  While being festooned in all the magic items you can carry might not help you defeat Sauron himself, depending on their exact nature, they very likely GREATLY improve your odds of completing that journey to whatever the final confrontation- or lack thereof- may entail.  It makes no difference if you're prepared to defeat Sauron if you're ill equipped to get past whatever orcs, goblins, wolves, frostbite, dehydration, starvation, etc. lie betwixt & between.


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## pemerton (Mar 20, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> If you can't complete the journey to your goal, you can't complete the mission.



So why not use eagles?

And what caused the problem with Sauron in the first place? In part, an excessive concern with the power that might be granted by magic items!


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 20, 2016)

pemerton said:


> So why not use eagles?
> 
> And what caused the problem with Sauron in the first place? In part, an excessive concern with the power that might be granted by magic items!




Yup.

If Dannyalcatraz's position were correct (that magic items are exceedingly rare, and that free folk would willingly hand out those magic items to defeat evil) then they wouldn't have left Glamdring in Thorin's tomb.  They'd be using it. 

But people in Middle Earth seem to view possession of physical objects a bit differently. Maybe part of Feanor's fatal flaw is that he was possessive of things in a way that was alien to others.


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## Marandahir (Mar 20, 2016)

Hriston said:


> I've read the Unfinished Tales. It's one of my favorite collections of Tolkien's work. I don't recall specifically, however, the mention of Gandalf's vassalage to Manwe or Varda. Is it mentioned there?




Yes it is. I just re-read it because you cast doubt on my recollection. But yes. The Unfinished Tales are broken and convoluted narratives, of course, since they're essentially the unfinished texts that Christopher found on various topics. But one of the texts he includes there speaks to the Istari being sent by specific Valar.

The Valar decide 3 messengers shall be sent, and Aulë suggests Curumo (Saruman), while Oromë sends Alatar (a Blue Wizard). Manwë then asks Olórin (Gandalf) to go with them, even though Olórin doubts his abilities and fears Sauron. It's Varda who realises that Olórin shall not be third but shall be the greatest of them all, and Curumo remembers this prophecy.

Then Yavanna, the wife of Aulë, begs Curumo to take Aiwendil (Radagast) with him, and Alatar takes Pallando (the other Blue Wizard) as a friend with him, at the request of either Oromë or of Mandos and Nienna (unclear which).


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> They're more stubborn, true.
> 
> But for them, long lived like the elves, the events of the past encounters with Sauron are fresher than they are for the humans & hobbits.  Fewer generations have passed.  No one save the elves can look back with fewer generations worth of distortion and the fog of history to understand how and why he lost before...and what has changed in the interim.




Morgoth.  Sauron fought the elves and men.



> And, as I pointed out, it isn't just the dwarves who would have to be so fatally dimwitted to so grossly underestimate the threat Sauron presents at the time of the events in LotR.  The elves, longer lived and only slightly less capable of creating magic items, would ALSO have to make the same error in judgement if they didn't offer whatever they had at their disposal to help insure the success of the Fellowship.




The elves are far fewer than they used to be and most of their best weapons and smiths are dead and lost.  They don't have the stores of the dwarves who are relatively untouched.  Morgoth was focused on the elves, not the dwarves.


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

pemerton said:


> So why not use eagles?
> 
> And what caused the problem with Sauron in the first place? In part, an excessive concern with the power that might be granted by magic items!




Because the eye could see a very, very long way and eagles would be seen long before they got to Mordor.  Sauron had many servants who could fly, so the odds of failure by flight were great.  Sneaking, however...


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Marandahir said:


> Yes it is. I just re-read it because you cast doubt on my recollection. But yes. The Unfinished Tales are broken and convoluted narratives, of course, since they're essentially the unfinished texts that Christopher found on various topics. But one of the texts he includes there speaks to the Istari being sent by specific Valar.
> 
> The Valar decide 3 messengers shall be sent, and Aulë suggests Curumo (Saruman), while Oromë sends Alatar (a Blue Wizard). Manwë then asks Olórin (Gandalf) to go with them, even though Olórin doubts his abilities and fears Sauron. It's Varda who realises that Olórin shall not be third but shall be the greatest of them all, and Curumo remembers this prophecy.
> 
> Then Yavanna, the wife of Aulë, begs Curumo to take Aiwendil (Radagast) with him, and Alatar takes Pallando (the other Blue Wizard) as a friend with him, at the request of either Oromë or of Mandos and Nienna (unclear which).




I went and looked as well and noted that passage.  I also noted, though, that it was never said that he was a vassal.  Manwe asked Olorin to go, but that doesn't mean that he was a vassal.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 20, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Because the eye could see a very, very long way and eagles would be seen long before they got to Mordor.  Sauron had many servants who could fly, so the odds of failure by flight were great.  Sneaking, however...




Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

The other contrived answer I've heard is that the Eagles are servants of Manwe, and thus cannot directly interfere in the affairs of Middle Earth.  Except they do, multiple times.  So then the rationalists attempt to explain how those other interventions were a support role and didn't directly impact the outcome...

Etc.

/eyeroll


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 20, 2016)

> If Dannyalcatraz's position were correct (that magic items are exceedingly rare, and that free folk would willingly hand out those magic items to defeat evil) then they wouldn't have left Glamdring in Thorin's tomb. They'd be using it.




That depends on how they view property- explaining why it would be put in the tomb in the first place- and grave robbing to get to it later.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 20, 2016)

pemerton said:


> So why not use eagles?




Damn if I know.  Perhaps Maxperson has the right of it upthread: increased risk of failure as compared to stealth.  Perhaps they were doing something else vital to the struggle.  Perhaps it is nothing more than a manifestation of JRRT's writing style.



> And what caused the problem with Sauron in the first place? In part, an excessive concern with the power that might be granted by magic items!




One could argue that the origins of the problem with Sauron lies within the personal motivations of Morgoth and Sauron.

So what got us the MAD doctrine?  Possession of nuclear weapons and fear of their proliferation.  Response?  Make more.  Yet they ended WW2 a lot faster and with less loss of life than conventional forces would have.  They had a time and place when they were the tool for the job.

In Middle Earth, what happens if Sauron wins makes using magic to defeat him a calculated risk worth taking.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 20, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Morgoth.  Sauron fought the elves and men.




...who was more powerful than Sauron.

Even so, it isn't like all the elves wouldn't remember and recognize the threat of Sauron, once it was revealed.  They still have that perspective.


> The elves are far fewer than they used to be and most of their best weapons and smiths are dead and lost.  They don't have the stores of the dwarves who are relatively untouched.  Morgoth was focused on the elves, not the dwarves.



All the more reason to offer what they can, to avoid extinction.


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> ...who was more powerful than Sauron.




Who didn't bother with dwarves.



> Even so, it isn't like all the elves wouldn't remember and recognize the threat of Sauron, once it was revealed.  They still have that perspective.
> 
> All the more reason to offer what they can, to avoid extinction.




First, the elves didn't have the numbers of weapons they once had, since they lost the to the orcs.  Second, elves were both taller and more slender than men, and used weapons of different design.  Elven swords weren't like mannish swords.  Giving out weapons and armor to men would have meant armor that didn't fit and weapons that they didn't know how to use effectively, creating large penalties than the +1 from the weapon.

Creating a situation where your allies can't fight effectively is a very poor way to avoid extinction.


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?




A lot less than flying directly into the path of The Eye.  Flying would have been one of the most stupid ideas they could have come up with.


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## Hriston (Mar 20, 2016)

Marandahir said:


> Yes it is. I just re-read it because you cast doubt on my recollection. But yes. The Unfinished Tales are broken and convoluted narratives, of course, since they're essentially the unfinished texts that Christopher found on various topics. But one of the texts he includes there speaks to the Istari being sent by specific Valar.
> 
> The Valar decide 3 messengers shall be sent, and Aulë suggests Curumo (Saruman), while Oromë sends Alatar (a Blue Wizard). Manwë then asks Olórin (Gandalf) to go with them, even though Olórin doubts his abilities and fears Sauron. It's Varda who realises that Olórin shall not be third but shall be the greatest of them all, and Curumo remembers this prophecy.
> 
> Then Yavanna, the wife of Aulë, begs Curumo to take Aiwendil (Radagast) with him, and Alatar takes Pallando (the other Blue Wizard) as a friend with him, at the request of either Oromë or of Mandos and Nienna (unclear which).




Sadly, I no longer possess a copy of Unfinished Tales. I did find a statement in Tolkien's letter #200 that Olorin had been "attached" to Manwe, however, and a footnote referring to Unfinished Tales, p 393. In contrast, the Valaquenta names Olorin as a dweller in Lorien, which seems to associate him with the Vala Irmo, as well as his tutelage under Nienna. It also names him as the wisest of the Maiar.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 20, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> A lot less than flying directly into the path of The Eye.  Flying would have been one of the most stupid ideas they could have come up with.




No, sorry, this is the worst answer I've ever seen for the "Why not use the Eagles" question.  

At this point, when the Fellowship set out, they were unaware of flying Nazgul.  Even the "because they are servants of Manwe and thus can't interfere" explanation is much, much better than this one.

EDIT: Wait, this is such a terrible answer that I can't just leave it at that.

"A lot less than flying directly in the path of The Eye".  I mean...what?!?!?!  They're going to send people to WALK to Mordor (insert over-used quote here), with no known ways of getting in except for Morannon and past Minas Morgul, both heavily watched, with mounted Nazgul able to sniff out the ring.

And you think a "lot less" could go wrong with that plan, than simply flying there?  Even if Sauron "saw" the Eagles...the swiftest known (or probably unknown) creatures in Middle Earth...what could he do about it?  Absolutely nothing.  At least, not with any of the powers we've seen from him or anybody else to date.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 20, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> No, sorry, this is the worst answer I've ever seen for the "Why not use the Eagles" question.
> 
> At this point, when the Fellowship set out, they were unaware of flying Nazgul.




Sauron can control weather (the Darkness/Dawnless Day), and I think the Wise knew this (Elrond had been involved in the last war against Sauron, and even if he hadn't demonstrated the ability before, Gandalf would have known what kinds of powers Maiar would be likely to have).

Also, the Nazgul themselves were not yet flying, but that doesn't mean the Wise wouldn't have known that Sauron had access to flying creatures.



> They're going to send people to WALK to Mordor (insert over-used quote here), with no known ways of getting in except for Morannon and past Minas Morgul, both heavily watched,




Hobbits can be quite stealthy, and Gandalf knew that from previous experience.

It wasn't a safe plan by any means (Gandalf calls it a "fool's hope"), but it was the least doomed, the only one that had any meaningful chance at all.

Also, Gandalf seems to have believed (correctly, it seems) that the hobbits were the key for more than purely tactical reasons. "Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker."



> Even if Sauron "saw" the Eagles...the swiftest known (or probably unknown) creatures in Middle Earth...what could he do about it?




Summon weather to kill them. Use flying monsters, with or without Nazgul riders.

But even if Sauron had no anti-air or flying capability, just being detected would have doomed the whole thing. All Sauron had to do was put a guard on the Cracks of Doom.


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## Maxperson (Mar 20, 2016)

Meanwhile at the Council of Elrond.

Gandalf: We need to get to the ring to Mount Doom.  The eye of Sauron is ever watchful and so stealth is required.

Anderson of Dale: We can fly there on eagles.

Elrond: The eagle idea would doom us all should we undertake it.  The instant they entered Mordor, the Eye would fall upon them and their riders and none would survive the power of Sauron.  He wouldn't even need his Nazgul at that point.

Anderson of Dale: It would succeed because eagles!!!!

Gandalf:  No.  Not even the eagles are mighty enough to resist the power of Sauron in his home.  They would not get close to Mount Doom before destruction came to all in the Fellowship

Anderson of Dale: Because eagles!!!!!!

Gandalf: You should leave now.

Elrond: Mr. Anderson....you will be escorted by two elves back to the borders of my home.  The wisest of the Maia and the wisest of the elves have to come up with a plan that has a chance, however slim, of working.  Bye now.

The rest of the Fellowship: What they said.


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## pemerton (Mar 20, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> So what got us the MAD doctrine?  Possession of nuclear weapons and fear of their proliferation.  Response?  Make more.  Yet they ended WW2 a lot faster and with less loss of life than conventional forces would have.  They had a time and place when they were the tool for the job.
> 
> In Middle Earth, what happens if Sauron wins makes using magic to defeat him a calculated risk worth taking.



I don't want to venture too far into territory at the margins of board rules.

But I'll go this far: of English philosophers with whose work I'm familiar, the one whose moral outlook is perhaps closest to Tolkien's in some key respects is Elizabeth Anscombe. In various of her papers - I am thinking especially of "Modern Moral Philosophy" and "War and Murder"- she launches a scathing attack on the sort of consequentialist reasoning that underpins MAD.

The idea that wrongdoing is permissible when it will save the world is not universally accepted, and I have doubts whether Tolkien would agree. And I don't think such an idea would fit within the moral framework of his fiction either.



Khisanth the Ancient said:


> Gandalf seems to have believed (correctly, it seems) that the hobbits were the key for more than purely tactical reasons. "Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker."



To the extent that this is true - and I think it clearly is, as the whole of JRRT's writing is infused with a notion of providence - it speaks equally against the idea that you would load up the Fellowship with magical items.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 21, 2016)

pemerton said:


> The idea that wrongdoing is permissible when it will save the world is not universally accepted, and I have doubts whether Tolkien would agree. And I don't think such an idea would fit within the moral framework of his fiction either.




I think this is pretty certain - Tolkien wrote about LOTR _not_ being an allegory of WWII and that if it were, it would have been decided by the Free Peoples using the Ring against Sauron, etc.

--

But I don't think that necessarily argues against the use of "magic" items (in the sense of the Elvish items) by the Fellowship. Galadriel makes it quite clear that the Elvish "magic" is something so utterly different from "the deceits of the Enemy" that it baffles her that humans/hobbits use the same words for both. 

Elvish magic is tied to art and craftsmanship while Sauron's is tied to domination and compulsion. The Istari have 'magical' or angelic powers by nature, but are forbidden to use them to compel others or in direct conflict with Sauron - Saruman breaks this rule and falls.

It would clearly be wrong and ultimately self-defeating to use the One Ring against Sauron or build Orc armies like Saruman tried, but the Elves using their specially-crafted weapons etc. doesn't seem problematic.

--

I also don't really see any lack of 'magical' items on the Fellowship's part. 

Gandalf has Narya, the Ring of Fire, and Glamdring (and his staff may also be magical). Aragorn has Anduril once it's reforged. The four hobbits have the barrow-blades, and Frodo gets Sting, another powerful First Age Elvish blade. 

They're also given lembas, Elvish cloaks, and Elvish ropes at Lothlorien, which have 'special' properties even if not flashy.

Gimli's axe and Legolas's bow don't have names or any observed special properties, but they are presumably Dwarvish and Elvish craft respectively, so who knows...


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 21, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> Sauron can control weather (the Darkness/Dawnless Day), and I think the Wise knew this (Elrond had been involved in the last war against Sauron, and even if he hadn't demonstrated the ability before, Gandalf would have known what kinds of powers Maiar would be likely to have).
> 
> Also, the Nazgul themselves were not yet flying, but that doesn't mean the Wise wouldn't have known that Sauron had access to flying creatures.




You're right, it doesn't preclude such knowledge.  But neither is there any evidence that they _do_ know any such thing.  If we want to start including as valid anything that wasn't explicitly prohibited by Tolkien, this debate is at risk of wandering off into bizarre territory.  (Lightsabers?  Tolkien didn't say that the elves couldn't make lightsabers, did he?)



> Also, Gandalf seems to have believed (correctly, it seems) that the hobbits were the key for more than purely tactical reasons. "Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker."



Yes, this is a very sensible point and I'll be getting back to it shortly.  But I'll point out that a Hobbit riding on an Eagle would still be Hobbits playing a role.



> Summon weather to kill them. Use flying monsters, with or without Nazgul riders.
> 
> But even if Sauron had no anti-air or flying capability, just being detected would have doomed the whole thing. All Sauron had to do was put a guard on the Cracks of Doom.




This is silly.  He's just going to snap his fingers and suddenly there's going to be a violent storm...where, exactly?  From LotR:


> and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash



In other words, it never occurred to Sauron that anybody would try to destroy the ring.  So if he noticed some giant Eagles flying into his domain he would think...what?  And remember, the only reason he became aware of the magnitude of his folly was that Frodo actually put the ring on.  

And did he summon a tornado to suck Frodo out of the doorway of Sammath Naur?  Did he command lightning to strike him dead?  No...he sent his Ringwraiths.  

Let's face it, the Eagles would have worked brilliantly.

So why didn't Elrond and Gandalf ask them to?  Because...big shocker coming here...they aren't real people making optimal decisions.  Tolkien didn't have his characters do any such thing because the story would have sucked.  The only rationale we need is the one you stated: Gandalf knew that Bilbo was 'meant' to find the Ring, and that somehow Hobbits would play an important role in this.  So we don't need to explain why the Eagles weren't used, or why magical weapons weren't handed out.  The answer is simply that doing so wouldn't have been as good of a story.

EDIT: And before I forget...the argument that Frodo was going to be able to sneak in because he was stealthy is nonsense: Hobbits going into Mordor alone was never part of the plan.  They sent some decidedly non-sneaky companions with him.  So, yeah, it turned out that way but you can't argue that the Eagles weren't utilized because they would be too obvious, so they sent Aragorn and Boromir and Gandalf to walk in instead.  Helloooooo????


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## Maxperson (Mar 21, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> You're right, it doesn't preclude such knowledge.  But neither is there any evidence that they _do_ know any such thing.  If we want to start including as valid anything that wasn't explicitly prohibited by Tolkien, this debate is at risk of wandering off into bizarre territory.  (Lightsabers?  Tolkien didn't say that the elves couldn't make lightsabers, did he?)




Since it doesn't say one way or the other, we are left to look at the books.  Sauron, Olorin, Galadriel, and so on all lived together in Valinor.  The spent ages living together.  Sauron rebelled against Valinor with Morgoth and fought against the elves for thousands of years and against Valinor when it came for Morgoth.  They knew the sorts of creatures Sauron had access to.

Is it more likely that they know what Sauron  has and can do, or more likely they don't?  You're assuming one way and we're assuming the other, but it's far more likely that we are correct.



> This is silly.  He's just going to snap his fingers and suddenly there's going to be a violent storm...where, exactly?  From LotR:




Suddenly?  There is no suddenly?  He has many hours to bring the storm up while the eagles fly towards him in full view.



> In other words, it never occurred to Sauron that anybody would try to destroy the ring.  So if he noticed some giant Eagles flying into his domain he would think...what?  And remember, the only reason he became aware of the magnitude of his folly was that Frodo actually put the ring on.
> 
> And did he summon a tornado to suck Frodo out of the doorway of Sammath Naur?  Did he command lightning to strike him dead?  No...he sent his Ringwraiths.




He's a smart cookie.  When eagles and the ring start flying for several hours towards Mount Doom, he's going to figure it out and have plenty of time to defend the place.  



> Let's face it, the Eagles would have worked brilliantly.




If by brilliant you mean die in a flash of fire and lightning, you are correct!



> So why didn't Elrond and Gandalf ask them to?  Because...big shocker coming here...they aren't real people making optimal decisions.  Tolkien didn't have his characters do any such thing because the story would have sucked.  The only rationale we need is the one you stated: Gandalf knew that Bilbo was 'meant' to find the Ring, and that somehow Hobbits would play an important role in this.  So we don't need to explain why the Eagles weren't used, or why magical weapons weren't handed out.  The answer is simply that doing so wouldn't have been as good of a story.




And because the eagles would automatically fail.  Also, because the Eagles are servants of Manwe and the Valar refused to go against Sauron directly or allow any of their servants but the Istari aid Middle Earth.  The excludes the eagles from even attempting the failure that would be their aid.



> EDIT: And before I forget...the argument that Frodo was going to be able to sneak in because he was stealthy is nonsense: Hobbits going into Mordor alone was never part of the plan.  They sent some decidedly non-sneaky companions with him.  So, yeah, it turned out that way but you can't argue that the Eagles weren't utilized because they would be too obvious, so they sent Aragorn and Boromir and Gandalf to walk in instead.  Helloooooo????



A ranger of the north is very sneaky, as is a wizard maia.  Boromir was undoubtedly taught the ability to sneak in his training.  4 hobbits are very sneaky.  An elf is very sneaky.  The only one who really would have difficulty is Gimli.  And it was said that it was a fool's hope.  The odds were long, but they were better than flying directly into Sauron's grasp.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 21, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Is it more likely that they know what Sauron  has and can do, or more likely they don't?  You're assuming one way and we're assuming the other, _but it's far more likely that we are correct_.




No, it is far more likely that *I* am correct!!!!  Wait...that's not really a useful argument, is it?  You need to learn the difference between blue sky conjecture and defensible argument.



> Suddenly?  There is no suddenly?  He has many hours to bring the storm up while the eagles fly towards him in full view.



How fast can the Eagles fly?  At 50 miles an hour it would take an hour or so, assuming they came in from due north of Mt. Doom.  How long before Sauron noticed?  How long before he guessed what they were up to?



> He's a smart cookie.  When eagles and the ring start flying for several hours towards Mount Doom, he's going to figure it out and have plenty of time to defend the place.



News flash: when nobody is wearing the Ring, he can't detect it.




> And because the eagles would automatically fail.  Also, because the Eagles are servants of Manwe and the Valar refused to go against Sauron directly or allow any of their servants but the Istari aid Middle Earth.  The excludes the eagles from even attempting the failure that would be their aid.



Ah, ok.  I'm glad to see you are abandoning the super-silly weather argument and falling back on this time-tested one.  Much harder to argue against it, of course.  Other than that if that was really the reason (instead of simple narrative fiat by the author) then presumably somebody would have suggested it at the Council of Elrond, at which point Elrond or Gandalf would have explained the cosmology.  But that didn't happen.  Anyway, I don't really want to debate this much improved argument.




> A ranger of the north is very sneaky, as is a wizard maia.  Boromir was undoubtedly taught the ability to sneak in his training.  4 hobbits are very sneaky.  An elf is very sneaky.  The only one who really would have difficulty is Gimli.  And it was said that it was a fool's hope.  The odds were long, but they were better than flying directly into Sauron's grasp.




Oh, drat, we're back to the "eagles would be detected and electrocuted" line of...um...I hate to say "reasoning".

The very presence of a Dunadan and a Maia is going to be a beacon, regardless of how physically stealthy they are.  Especially if either of them actually uses any of their abilities to, you know, fend off orcs or something.

Boromir was "undoubtedly" taught how to be sneaky?  As a scion of Gondor??!?!!?  Are you maybe confusing the line of Stewards with a clan of ninja from another milieu?

And yet you think that Eagles...silent hunters...can't be stealthy.  You know, fly low, hug the terrain?  For only an hour, rather than days on end?  

Question for you: do you really believe what you are arguing, or is this maybe a case of "Well, I said it on the Internet so now I have dig in and refuse to budge."  'Cause this is one of the screwiest things I've read lately.


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## Maxperson (Mar 21, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> No, it is far more likely that *I* am correct!!!!  Wait...that's not really a useful argument, is it?  You need to learn the difference between blue sky conjecture and defensible argument.




I provided evidence that we are more likely right.  This response refutes none of that.



> How fast can the Eagles fly?  At 50 miles an hour it would take an hour or so, assuming they came in from due north of Mt. Doom.  How long before Sauron noticed?  How long before he guessed what they were up to?




30 mph, and the might not be able to get over those mountains.  At their size, they can't fly as high as smaller eagles and those can only go about 10,000 feet.  The rockies are 14k feet.



> News flash: when nobody is wearing the Ring, he can't detect it.




News flash!  He's still not a moron.  You don't go to Mount Doom to sight see.  There's only one reason to go there and he's going to realize it.



> Ah, ok.  I'm glad to see you are abandoning the super-silly weather argument and falling back on this time-tested one.  Much harder to argue against it, of course.  Other than that if that was really the reason (instead of simple narrative fiat by the author) then presumably somebody would have suggested it at the Council of Elrond, at which point Elrond or Gandalf would have explained the cosmology.  But that didn't happen.  Anyway, I don't really want to debate this much improved argument.




Why not?  It defeats your claim that eagles would work.  If you don't want to debate it, does that mean you are conceding the debate to me?



> The very presence of a Dunadan and a Maia is going to be a beacon, regardless of how physically stealthy they are.  Especially if either of them actually uses any of their abilities to, you know, fend off orcs or something.




Correct for the Maia, who is wise enough to leave prior.  Not about the Dunedan, though.  He's not going to be a beacon like that.



> Boromir was "undoubtedly" taught how to be sneaky?  As a scion of Gondor??!?!!?  Are you maybe confusing the line of Stewards with a clan of ninja from another milieu?




His brother is head of the rangers.  Being able to be stealthy is very probably standard training for Gondor.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 21, 2016)

To quote Bootsy Collins: "Y'all are crazy, man."

Stick with the argument about the Eagles not being allowed to intervene.  People will laugh less.

EDIT: I was curious, so I did look it up: normal eagles can fly horizontally up to 80 mph, diving up to 150 mph.  You are free to interpret Tolkien in your own way, of course (I mean, you've been pretty creative with it so far so don't stop now) but in my version of Tolkien giant Eagles are more capable than normal eagles, not less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_speed


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## mflayermonk (Mar 21, 2016)

In the attached cartoon-there is no gaming table or dice. Might be interesting insight into the early history of RPGs.


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## Maxperson (Mar 21, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> To quote Bootsy Collins: "Y'all are crazy, man."
> 
> Stick with the argument about the Eagles not being allowed to intervene.  People will laugh less.
> 
> ...




That's a burst speed which can't be maintained for any significant length of time and doesn't include passengers.  Average flying speed, again with no passengers, is around 30 mph.


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## steeldragons (Mar 21, 2016)

ugh.

So that Gandalf guy, huh? Ain't he a character! So much accomplished for a 5th level wizard. 6th tops. And in only 2000 "lives of men" or so.

Love the beard. Funky hat. Magic ring. 

He's got the life, that one, I tells ya.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 21, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> If you don't want to debate it, does that mean you are conceding the debate to me?




You know, I really have to respond to this as well.  Your answer here is pretty much why I've lost interest in discussing this with you (and why the Internet in general is a cesspit of blather).  

You've been making an argument that they didn't simply ask the Eagles to carry Frodo to Mount Doom because Sauron would have become instantly aware of the Eagle and cast a high level Lightning Bolt spell from 40 miles away.  I've been saying that doesn't make any sense.  You offer plausible conjecture, and then state as fact that this is obviously more true than other plausible conjecture.  How is that useful?

Then you introduce a new-old argument (new for you, older than the hills) that the reason is because the Eagles are prohibited from interfering in the conflicts in Middle Earth.  Ok; I think that argument is unnecessary but it's not silly.  And I'll accept it as a better argument.  Then again I'm not suggesting that the Eagles _should_ have gone, or that the fact they didn't go breaks the plot, or whatever.  I'm just saying that "Eagles flying far more risky than Hobbits walking" is crazy.  So I'll cede the point about servants of Manwe and not start a second surreal debate with you.  

And how do you respond?  You immediately want to know if you've won.

So not only do you not seem to understand what you're debating about, but you can't even accept a ceded point.  Which suggests to me you might also be incapable of acknowledging a valid point, because in your world that might be tantamount to admitting defeat.

An attitude which is apparently a contagious disease on the Internet, and a source of endless frustration for those of us who...even if sometimes we get snarky and enjoy debating with the gloves off...are also willing to say, "Oh, hey, that was a good point.  I'll have to rethink this."  An attitude of open inquiry basically never gets reciprocated.  Without naming names (because doing so would finally rouse the moderators from their unwatchful slumber) some of the most prolific posters here (and in RPG sites in general; saying something about this population) are especially guilty of this attitude. And some have mastered the art of "plausibly deniable denigration", flying inches below the radar of the TOS.

I, on the other hand, call spades spades and frequently get tsk-tsk'd by the mods for it.

What I wouldn't give for a forum like ElitistJerks, where "moderation" is anything but.  If anybody out there wants to start such a forum let me know and I'll be a loyal...and courteous...participant.

Yeah, I can be a jerk in my posts, too. I'm human. But I try (I may not be perfect) to only respond aggressively to anti-social attitude, not to incorrect facts or divergent opinion.   Yes, I "white knight".  Funny that it's a pejorative around here.


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## Tony Vargas (Mar 21, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Elrond: Mr. Anderson....



Now I'm picturing Elrond wearing sunglasses and an earpiece.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 21, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> You're right, it doesn't preclude such knowledge.  But neither is there any evidence that they _do_ know any such thing.




It's not explicitly stated, but I'd expect Elrond and Gandalf to know Sauron's powers and resources quite well. Elrond was involved in fighting Sauron in the Second Age, and Gandalf  



> This is silly.  He's just going to snap his fingers and suddenly there's going to be a violent storm...where, exactly?  From LotR:
> 
> In other words, it never occurred to Sauron that anybody would try to destroy the ring.  So if he noticed some giant Eagles flying into his domain he would think...what?




Even if he didn't realize it was an attempt to destroy the Ring, Sauron would still act against Great Eagle intrusion, since he knows perfectly well that the Giant Eagles are associated with Manwe and thus his enemies. He might see it a spy mission, but why would that keep him from swatting them out of the air?

Sauron didn't think anyone would ever try to destroy the ring because its power of obsession is too great, and so he didn't guard the Cracks of Doom specifically. But Mordor itself is still guarded! Sauron does consider the possibility of enemy forces attacking.

(And the Eagles fear Sauron, I'd expect. _The Hobbit_ says they avoid going near men with bows; I really doubt they would willingly go to Mordor.)



> And did he summon a tornado to suck Frodo out of the doorway of Sammath Naur?  Did he command lightning to strike him dead?  No...he sent his Ringwraiths.
> 
> Let's face it, the Eagles would have worked brilliantly.




Mmm, I don't think so. Tolkien magic isn't D&D magic. I agree that Sauron can't do it "at a finger snap", and he may not be able to target it very precisely. But we know he can affect weather since he does it in the book.

And stopping the Eagles wouldn't require careful targeting. They are large flying creatures thus visible a long way off, and a generalized hurricane over the whole area would stop them quite well.






> EDIT: And before I forget...the argument that Frodo was going to be able to sneak in because he was stealthy is nonsense: Hobbits going into Mordor alone was never part of the plan.  They sent some decidedly non-sneaky companions with him.  So, yeah, it turned out that way but you can't argue that the Eagles weren't utilized because they would be too obvious, so they sent Aragorn and Boromir and Gandalf to walk in instead.  Helloooooo????




Certainly they weren't expected to split up as early on as they did (because Boromir), but I thought that Aragorn and co. weren't expected to be there for the final leg, just for most of the dangers en route. 

Didn't they need Aragorn (and presumably Boromir would have been there if he hadn't died) to lead the military diversion for Sauron?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Gandalf would not have ventured into Mordor (too close to direct confrontation with Sauron) and without him, eight people on foot would still have been far stealthier than giant flying creatures you can see from _dozens of miles away_ even with normal human vision.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 21, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> How fast can the Eagles fly?




 Googling it, average speed for a Golden Eagle is like 30 mph.  They are very fast in short bursts, but that's not endurance flying. 

Also, these guys are mostly soarers, so that means exploiting air currents, so not necessarily straight-line.



> How long before Sauron noticed?




Not long. Given that one was able to carry Gandalf (man-sized) up into mountains, they must be huge, perhaps the size of large pterosaurs. 

Large objects in open sky are incredibly visible, and Sauron's magic red eye thing is presumably far better than human vision, or what would be the point?

I wouldn't be willing to risk flying high anywhere where the curvature of the planet didn't block sight lines to Mordor.

EDIT: 







> How long before he guessed what they were up to?




Doesn't matter. He has no reason not to kill Great Eagles (enemies) on general principles.



> And yet you think that Eagles...silent hunters...can't be stealthy.  You know, fly low, hug the terrain?




They're capable of it, but that sounds way less efficient than soaring. How long per day are they going to be able to do it? It would take forever if you could only do it five or ten miles at a time... probably not any faster than horses.

EDIT: I'd accept that it might have been a reasonable trade-off of risks to use the eagles to bypass the Misty Mountains (and thus Caradhras/Moria). But not much closer to Mordor than that.


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## Hriston (Mar 21, 2016)

Much of the discussion of riding great eagles to Mordor presupposes the eagles would allow themselves to be used this way. I see nothing in the stories to suggest this is true. The two times in the tales I can think of where they are willing to carry the protagonists to safety, they only do so for a relatively short journey. Gandalf, for example, after a great eagle, Gwaihir I think, helped him escape from Orthanc, still had to travel to Edoras to obtain a mount. The eagles weren't willing to take him all the way to the Shire, even though he had dire information related to the treason of Saruman. Basically, the great eagles did not consider themselves to be beasts of burden and may in fact have been incapable of bearing passengers for a journey as long as travelling from Rivendell to Mt. Doom.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 21, 2016)

Night.

Flying.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 21, 2016)

Hriston said:


> Much of the discussion of riding great eagles to Mordor presupposes the eagles would allow themselves to be used this way. I see nothing in the stories to suggest this is true. The two times in the tales I can think of where they are willing to carry the protagonists to safety, they only do so for a relatively short journey. Gandalf, for example, after a great eagle, Gwaihir I think, helped him escape from Orthanc, still had to travel to Edoras to obtain a mount. The eagles weren't willing to take him all the way to the Shire, even though he had dire information related to the treason of Saruman. Basically, the great eagles did not consider themselves to be beasts of burden and may in fact have been incapable of bearing passengers for a journey as long as travelling from Rivendell to Mt. Doom.




Yeah, I can agree with this, too.  

I'm not suggesting they _should_ have used the Eagles, albeit mostly because it would have been a very short book.  I just think it's ludicrous to think that Eagles would have had worse odds than Hobbits on foot. If that's the reason they didn't use the Eagles then it would have been brought up at the council then discussed and decided against.  But it wasn't even brought up.


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## Hriston (Mar 21, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yeah, I can agree with this, too.
> 
> I'm not suggesting they _should_ have used the Eagles, albeit mostly because it would have been a very short book.  I just think it's ludicrous to think that Eagles would have had worse odds than Hobbits on foot. If that's the reason they didn't use the Eagles then it would have been brought up at the council then discussed and decided against.  But it wasn't even brought up.




I also have to point out that Tolkien, himself, for 'story reasons', absolutely loathed the idea of having the eagles carry the protagonists more than what he had them do in the story as is evidenced in his critique of an early draft of the Saul Zaentz Company's screenplay of the LR. In it, the screenwriter had the Fellowship riding great eagles from Rivendell to Lothlorien, which was represented as a castle in the clouds. Needless to say, the Professor was appalled at the cheapening of a narrative device that he felt should only have been used for dramatic effect.


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## Maxperson (Mar 22, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> Now I'm picturing Elrond wearing sunglasses and an earpiece.




And now my job is done.


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## Maxperson (Mar 22, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Night.
> 
> Flying.




Eagles.  

Day.  

Fliers.

Good way to get them dead making them fly at night when the evil power that be can see and they can't see very well any longer.  The Eye would have no difficult spotting them at night.  Nor would the flying defenders that rip them from the sky.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 22, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Night.
> 
> Flying.




Lack of thermals, so the eagles would get exhausted faster (which is already going to be a huge problem for long-range transport).

And that assumes night would even impair Sauron's vision, which I'm not at all certain of given that Morgoth's servants are tied to darkness.



Elfcrusher said:


> I just think it's ludicrous to think that Eagles would have had worse odds than Hobbits on foot.




I disagree. Giant Eagles are clearly _less stealthy_ than Hobbits on foot, and the only way this plan can work is by stealth. 

Also, one critical problem with the Eagle plan - if a guy like Boromir becomes obsessed with the Ring, Frodo can run and hide. If an Eagle gets obsessed with the Ring while 1,000 feet off the ground, there's nothing Frodo can do.



> If that's the reason they didn't use the Eagles then it would have been brought up at the council then discussed and decided against.  But it wasn't even brought up.




That does strike me as odd. OTOH, who would have brought it up?

Gandalf, Elrond etc. wouldn't expect it to work or wouldn't expect the Eagles to agree.

I'm not sure how much, say, the men of Gondor or the Dwarves know about the Eagles - it's said in the Hobbit that they avoid humans, so most people wouldn't know that they are intelligent.

Bilbo knows, and Frodo presumably does since he's heard the story, but they reasonably might not have thought of it.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 22, 2016)

It's entertaining (and a bit perplexing) how people limit their conceptions of the possible in a fictional world.  Talking giant eagles that are manifestations of divine spirits?  No problem.  Flying ability?  Oh, that's limited to what American bald eagles can do.

I do have to ask, because TWO people who feel this strongly on the topic seems improbable (and reminds me of the joke about always traveling with a bomb in one's suitcase): are you (Khisanth) and Maxperson friends IRL?


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## Maxperson (Mar 22, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> It's entertaining (and a bit perplexing) how people limit their conceptions of the possible in a fictional world.  Talking giant eagles that are manifestations of divine spirits?  No problem.  Flying ability?  Oh, that's limited to what American bald eagles can do.
> 
> I do have to ask, because TWO people who feel this strongly on the topic seems improbable (and reminds me of the joke about always traveling with a bomb in one's suitcase): are you (Khisanth) and Maxperson friends IRL?




I suppose it's theoretically possible.  Nobody I know has told me they are on this site, though.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 22, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> It's entertaining (and a bit perplexing) how people limit their conceptions of the possible in a fictional world.  Talking giant eagles that are manifestations of divine spirits?  No problem.  Flying ability?  Oh, that's limited to what American bald eagles can do.




I believe the Hobbit talks about the eagles getting tired out on the (much shorter) flight in that book, and they are afraid of shepherds with bows. They seem to be non-magical beyond speech/intelligence and size.

But if they were more like the First Age Eagles, who were "manifestations of divine spirits", then they wouldn't be allowed to intervene too directly, and even if they were they would be _more_ susceptible to the Ring's temptation. (The hobbits' resistance is partly due to their lack of power.)



> I do have to ask, because TWO people who feel this strongly on the topic seems improbable (and reminds me of the joke about always traveling with a bomb in one's suitcase): are you (Khisanth) and Maxperson friends IRL?




Not as far as I know - and it's a common and hotly contested topic in LOTR discussions. Not that improbable.

EDIT: Someday I really ought to go through the HOME volumes on LOTR and look for evidence whether Tolkien considered the eagle option, but certainly not today... I have too much RL stuff to do to look through 2000 pages for an internet argument.



Hriston said:


> I also have to point out that Tolkien, himself, for 'story reasons', absolutely loathed the idea of having the eagles carry the protagonists more than what he had them do in the story as is evidenced in his critique of an early draft of the Saul Zaentz Company's screenplay of the LR.




Well, "I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility _or usefulness_." (my emphasis), which seems to me to mean that it wouldn't have worked _besides_ making a bad story.


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## pemerton (Mar 22, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Let's face it, the Eagles would have worked brilliantly.
> 
> So why didn't Elrond and Gandalf ask them to?  Because...big shocker coming here...they aren't real people making optimal decisions.  Tolkien didn't have his characters do any such thing because the story would have sucked.
> 
> ...



I think there is also an infiction explanation: destroying the ring is a type of redemption for the free peoples. _They_ had to do it; not Gandalf, and not the eagles.

Discussing the quest to destory the ring as if it's an optimisation problem along the lines of the D-Day landings seems to me to miss quite a bit of the point of the book, at least as conceived of by its author.



Elfcrusher said:


> And before I forget...the argument that Frodo was going to be able to sneak in because he was stealthy is nonsense: Hobbits going into Mordor alone was never part of the plan.  They sent some decidedly non-sneaky companions with him.



They didn't have a plan to get in when they left Rivendell, did they? It was a case of making it up along the way. Likewise with the military diversion, mentioned by [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]. That was not an original part of the plan - apart from anything else it depended upon Aragorn coming openly to Gondor, which was on the cards but by no means a foregone conclusion.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 22, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Second, elves were both taller and more slender than men, and used weapons of different design.  Elven swords weren't like mannish swords.  Giving out weapons and armor to men would have meant armor that didn't fit and weapons that they didn't know how to use effectively, creating large penalties than the +1 from the weapon.




It was a long weekend and i missed out a lot. Training on Friday and Sunday, 8 mile run on Saturday, followed by a Saturday night DnD session (anyone remember those, it's why we are here  ); and only now on a lunch break do i get to write a bit. This is not meant as personal response to Maxperson, but i had to start from somewhere.

First of all, related to the quote above. Elves and Men, were much more interchangeable then Dwarves and Men. Taller and slender they were, and younger looking but still from a first glance you could not distinguish between them (especially the men of the West). Turgon even left a full set of equipment for Tuor (hauberk, shield and sword.... possibly a helmet, i don't remember) and it was never implied it was any different then what the rest of his household had. Turin was equipped as a knight from Thingol's guard as well. Gandalf is clearly human, and he wields Glamdring. I don't think there is any reason to believe elves use incompatible equipment to humans.

Now, on the nature of Thingol's dwarven armory. There is just no way of saying if it was magical or not. All we know is that dwarves made stuff of higher quality then most elves (definitely better then Thingol's Sindar). But were they magical? Nothing indicates so. Even Narsil had no apparent magical properties before being reforged. But's lest step aside from that, just one moment. By the time of the Counsel of Elrond, by Gloin's and Gimli's words we are informed that dwarves too lost lots of their craft, despite making some progress in establishing new foothold in the Lonely Mountain. And justly so, as some of their finest smiths were from Nordod and Belegost, both lost at the end of the 1st age. IRC only in mail making have the dwarves of the 3rd age regained some former mastery and possibly even surpassed their forefathers. Aside from that..... again, no indication of any magical properties of the equipment of either Gimli or Leglas. It is even stated that "dwarves make light of burdens" when Gimli takes his armor with him, which at least to me sounds like dwarven armor (mail) isn't any lighter then usual.

On Dwaves being stubborn and stingy. Indeed they were.... but not when fighting a common cause. The folk from the Blue Mountains equipped Thingol (though probably for a price) and Thorin did Bilbo a shirt of mithril for crying out loud!

As to the balrogs and their physical form being vulnerable to common damage..... this might as well be so..... but not because Saruman was killed by a knife or an arrow. Saruman was in mortal form, fallen and mortal when struck down. However, at least in the early writings, balrogs were slain but falling od a cliff, drowning and fighting powerful Eldar and one human, Tuor. We could argue that Tuor and the Eldar were well equipped, but that does not account for the other cases. And yeah, that was way back, when balrogs were supposed to be more numerous, but less powerful. But again, is a far stretch to believe that normal damage could kill one? Consider magic in Tolkien's world. Aside from divine magic, most of it is actually elemental and/or manipulation of matter. So, if a wizard could slay a balrog with say, a lightning, or making a large rock falling over it, why a large enough damage from a "conventional" weapon do it? In this case, it is only the skill and "durability" of the fighter that matters, not the weapon.

And finally, on the trip to Mordor....... Have we forgotten, what was said in the counsel? Sending Glorfindel with them was suggested. Sending a company of Rivendell knights in full mail was considered. In the end, a conclusion was reached. Sauron is too clever to be fulled or tricked. He we would expect every "wise" move they could make against him. So what was the least he would expect? Something that in his arrogance he might overlook? A small set of feet, secretly and beyond all hope sneaking in and destroying the only weapon that could overthrow him. They knew they won't win by might, wisdom or magic. They hoped they won't lose by foolishness. A "fool's hope" they called it. And it relied on friendship and loyalty. And that is what the book is trying to convey.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 22, 2016)

pemerton said:


> I think there is also an infiction explanation: destroying the ring is a type of redemption for the free peoples. _They_ had to do it; not Gandalf, and not the eagles.
> 
> Discussing the quest to destory the ring as if it's an optimisation problem along the lines of the D-Day landings seems to me to miss quite a bit of the point of the book, at least as conceived of by its author.
> 
> They didn't have a plan to get in when they left Rivendell, did they? It was a case of making it up along the way. Likewise with the military diversion, mentioned by [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]. That was not an original part of the plan - apart from anything else it depended upon Aragorn coming openly to Gondor, which was on the cards but by no means a foregone conclusion.




Oh, don't get me wrong...I'm certainly not arguing they should have asked the Eagles!  I fully agree it's not an optimization problem.  In fact, I got into this debate _defending_ Maxperson regarding magic items.  Dannyalcatraz was saying "if magic items were available they would have handed them out for  this important mission."  My take is that both that question, and the question of using the eagles, misses the point entirely about epic fiction.

I'm only arguing that the reason for not using the Eagles is not that sending Hobbits on foot was more likely to succeed. (Apparently, according to some, giant talking Eagles have to follow observed real world aeronautics, but Sauron only needs 30 minutes to create a a hurricane out of a calm day.) Not only is that silly conjecture, but it's just unnecessary: the reasons are the ones you allude to. Whether or not Gandalf & company "knew" that the free peoples had to do it for themselves, the storyteller knew. 

I mean, if the only reason to not use the Eagles was that they'd get spotted as soon as they entered Mordor, why not at least ask them to fly Frodo and Sam to Ithilien and both save time and avoid a dangerous journey?  Story, not ability.


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## Hriston (Mar 22, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh, don't get me wrong...I'm certainly not arguing they should have asked the Eagles!  I fully agree it's not an optimization problem.  In fact, I got into this debate _defending_ Maxperson regarding magic items.  Dannyalcatraz was saying "if magic items were available they would have handed them out for  this important mission."  My take is that both that question, and the question of using the eagles, misses the point entirely about epic fiction.
> 
> I'm only arguing that the reason for not using the Eagles is not that sending Hobbits on foot was more likely to succeed. (Apparently, according to some, giant talking Eagles have to follow observed real world aeronautics, but Sauron only needs 30 minutes to create a a hurricane out of a calm day.) Not only is that silly conjecture, but it's just unnecessary: the reasons are the ones you allude to. Whether or not Gandalf & company "knew" that the free peoples had to do it for themselves, the storyteller knew.
> 
> I mean, if the only reason to not use the Eagles was that they'd get spotted as soon as they entered Mordor, why not at least ask them to fly Frodo and Sam to Ithilien and both save time and avoid a dangerous journey?  Story, not ability.




Another reason for not using the eagles is that they possibly couldn't be asked. They lived in remote eyries high in the mountains, that were inaccessible to other races. The only reason they saved Thorin & Co. was because they saw the fires in the woods below and came down to investigate. Helping Gandalf escape from Orthanc was also somewhat of a coincidence, as Gandalf had asked Radagast to send messages to all birds of the air to assemble at Isengard because he anticipated the need to send messages from there quickly after his meeting with Saruman. In short, the eagles were not at the beck and call of the Wise.


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## Tony Vargas (Mar 22, 2016)

pemerton said:


> Discussing the quest to destory the ring as if it's an optimisation problem along the lines of the D-Day landings seems to me to miss quite a bit of the point of the book, at least as conceived of by its author.



Agreed.  But, one of the attractions of RPGs is the opportunity to reduce epics and heroism to precisely such pragmatic intellectual exercises.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 22, 2016)

Hriston said:


> Another reason for not using the eagles is that they possibly couldn't be asked. They lived in remote eyries high in the mountains, that were inaccessible to other races. The only reason they saved Thorin & Co. was because they saw the fires in the woods below and came down to investigate. Helping Gandalf escape from Orthanc was also somewhat of a coincidence, as Gandalf had asked Radagast to send messages to all birds of the air to assemble at Isengard because he anticipated the need to send messages from there quickly after his meeting with Saruman. In short, the eagles were not at the beck and call of the Wise.




Yup, makes sense.

So we have:
 - They're largely independent, not necessarily "allied" with the wise, and hard to reach on a moment's notice.
 - They may not be allowed to directly interfere in the war against Sauron.
 - Gandalf recognizes that this is something the free people have to solve for themselves, not have others solve for them.

All solid (and interrelated) reasons why they don't ask the Eagles.

Hobbits walking into Mordor inherently a less risky plan than having Eagles fly there?  Not so much.


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## pemerton (Mar 22, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> Agreed.  But, one of the attractions of RPGs is the opportunity to reduce epics and heroism to precisely such pragmatic intellectual exercises.



And then we get the mantra that RPGs can't do stories . . .


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 22, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Hobbits walking into Mordor inherently a less risky plan than having Eagles fly there?  Not so much.



Again, by canon, the plan was not chose because it was deemed the wisest, only because it seamed so far fetched to work, that the Enemy would be slow to respond and even slower to figure out what was going on. It was blind luck (or divine providence) that it worked out so well, the Enemy figured it out only moments before the Ring was cast into the fire.


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## Tony Vargas (Mar 22, 2016)

pemerton said:


> And then we get the mantra that RPGs can't do stories . . .



...like there's only one way to play.


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> I'm only arguing that the reason for not using the Eagles is not that sending Hobbits on foot was more likely to succeed. (Apparently, according to some, giant talking Eagles have to follow observed real world aeronautics, but Sauron only needs 30 minutes to create a a hurricane out of a calm day.) Not only is that silly conjecture, but it's just unnecessary: the reasons are the ones you allude to. Whether or not Gandalf & company "knew" that the free peoples had to do it for themselves, the storyteller knew.




You keep ignoring what was said at the Council of Elrond.  Sauron would expect every reasonable way to come at him, and given that he knew about the eagles, he not only would be keeping watch, but would have his own flying beasties in the air ready for them.  By flying all they do is serve his beasties eagle and hobbit chow, giving him the ring in the process.  The eagles couldn't get close to any border of Mordor without being engaged and killed, and they would only die easier and faster at night.



> I mean, if the only reason to not use the Eagles was that they'd get spotted as soon as they entered Mordor, why not at least ask them to fly Frodo and Sam to Ithilien and both save time and avoid a dangerous journey?  Story, not ability.




That would have been much more reasonable, but still fails when put up against the Manwe prohibition and Eagle dislike of flying people arguments.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 23, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> Again, by canon, the plan was not chose because it was deemed the wisest, only because it seamed so far fetched to work, that the Enemy would be slow to respond and even slower to figure out what was going on. It was blind luck (or divine providence) that it worked out so well, the Enemy figured it out only moments before the Ring was cast into the fire.




Um, I disagree a bit here.  They didn't choose it because "it's so crazy it just might work".  It was chosen as the "least bad" option.  And, yes, it had the advantage that the Enemy never suspected it.  But I would argue the part he didn't suspect is that they would try to destroy it rather than use it, not the means by which they got there, so Eagles flying Frodo to Mt. Doom would have been just as unexpected.


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## pemerton (Mar 23, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> ...like there's only one way to play.



I agree there is more than one way to play the game.

But if you set out to play a Tolkienesque fantasy, and then go on to frame all your problems as primarily logistical/operational, and _then_ reach the conclusion that RPGs don't do stories . . . well, I'm not sure the experiment warrants drawing such a broad conclusion.


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## C-F-K (Mar 23, 2016)

Level 5 wizards? Sure, but give him credit for swinging a sword and staff too! So level 5/1 wizard fighter? Perhaps more fighter levels?

But still, compared with D&D spells he's a 5th level wizard.
In D&D we have 9 wizard levels from 1 to 9. In Tolkiens world we don't know, but it is said that Gandalf in one of the most powerful wizards. So perhaps Tolkien envisioned his world with only 5 levels (If the same mechanic of levels is used...). Simple said: In Tolkien's world, Gandalf is a wizard of the maximum level, and therefor a 9th level wizard compared to D&D.

But what do we really know? We know what spells he casts in the books, not the spells he would have known. Perhaps he saved his power word kill for when the feces really hit the turbine. Perhaps he lost his spellbook and had to start all over?

IMHO: A great and powerful wizard is one that can cast a high level spell, but chooses not to and still gets out alive.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 23, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> .... It was chosen as the "least bad" option.  And, yes, it had the advantage that the Enemy never suspected it.  But I would argue the part he didn't suspect is that they would try to destroy it rather than use it, not the means by which they got there.....




Well two proposed interpretations are:
1. 


Elfcrusher said:


> - They're largely independent, not necessarily "allied" with the wise, and hard to reach on a moment's notice.



and
2. 







Maxperson said:


> Sauron would expect every reasonable way to come at him, and given that he knew about the eagles, he not only would be keeping watch




And both have merit. Here is why:

"How far can you bear me? " I said to Gwaihir.

"Many leagues," said he, "but not to the ends of the earth. I was sent to bear tidings not burdens." Which contributes to he theory that the eagles were either pretty much autonomous into their actions and/or limited in their capability.

Also:

"Elrond summoned the hobbits to him. He looked gravely at Frodo. 'The time has come,' he said. 'If the Ring is to set out, it must go soon. But those who go with it must not count on their errand being aided by war or force. They must pass into the domain of the Enemy far from aid."

"'And I will choose you companions to go with you, as far as they will or fortune allows. The number must be few, since your hope is in speed and secrecy. Had I a host of Elves in armour of the Elder Days, it would avail little, save to arouse the power of Mordor."

"I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom. Even if you chose for us an elf-lord, such as Glorfindel, he could not storm the Dark Tower, nor open the road to the Fire by the power that is in him.'"

Which kinda supports the secrecy/redemption line of though. 

If Elrond himself thought the great Eldar armies of the first age would be useless on this quest, then probably the Eagles would not be of too much help either. Either because they were powerless against the Shadow or because the Enemy was aware of them.

EDIT: i think the movies might have altered our perceptions a bit with their influence 



C-F-K said:


> Level 5 wizards....
> 
> 
> IMHO: A great and powerful wizard is one that can cast a high level spell, but chooses not to and still gets out alive.




Also, in 5E he might as well be at least lvl 7-9, depending on the choice of spells even above 11-12 and that is just the spell casting class.


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## pemerton (Mar 23, 2016)

A somewhat random post, more-or-less apropos this thread:

On the tram coming home this evening, a group of three friends was debating who is the hero of LotR (the two candidates being Frodo and Sam). The discussion then turned to who is the best character (the one who had plumped for Sam nominated Galadriel; someone else thought Strider). As I was getting off, they were debating who was the truer or more noble of Boromir and Faramir - the Sam and Galadriel advocate was taking the side of Farimir, on grounds that he could have taken the Ring, but didn't. (The case against him seemed mostly to be that he was a "daddy's boy".)

So anyone, the posters in this thread are not the only people exercised by the proper interpretation of LotR.


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## C-F-K (Mar 23, 2016)

Greatest Hero? Gollem! 
He had to endure all the same as Frodo and Sam, but didn't complain as much.
And more so, he gave his life for his goal in the most noblest of ways.


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> "Many leagues," said he, "but not to the ends of the earth. I was sent to bear tidings not burdens." Which contributes to he theory that the eagles were either pretty much autonomous into their actions and/or limited in their capability.




This portion is about the only portion I really disagree with, though I'm not so sure he was right about the armies of elder days being useless.  Sauron isn't Morgoth, even with the ring.

Here, though, you say that the eagles being willing to carry Gandalf implies autonomy.  I disagree.  We know that they are the servants of Manwe, that does more than imply that they are not autonomous, it pretty much states it outright.  When given instructions, they follow them.  They were "sent", not "asked" to bear tiding, which also implies no autonomy.  However, that doesn't mean that they can't do things outside of instruction that also don't violate other instructions.  In this case it means that carrying Gandalf to that destination was okay, but it doesn't mean that carrying the group close to or into Mordor is okay.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 23, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> EDIT: i think the movies might have altered our perceptions a bit with their influence .




I hope you're speaking for yourself there.  The movies are abominations.

Otherwise I'm not arguing with your analysis.  The only idea I'm disagreeing with is that "Sauron would have easily spotted the Eagles and shot them out of the sky with his weather control magic before they reached Mt. Doom."  _Maybe_ he would have, but it's a much smaller maybe than "Maybe hobbits walking into Mordor will get captured by orcs."  The latter is more of an "almost definitely".


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2016)

C-F-K said:


> Greatest Hero? Gollem!
> He had to endure all the same as Frodo and Sam, but didn't complain as much.
> And more so, he gave his life for his goal in the most noblest of ways.




Dying by accident after you have just assaulted and caused grievous bodily injury to someone, and then stolen his ring is the most noble of ways to die?


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> I hope you're speaking for yourself there.  The movies are abominations.
> 
> Otherwise I'm not arguing with your analysis.  The only idea I'm disagreeing with is that "Sauron would have easily spotted the Eagles and shot them out of the sky with his weather control magic before they reached Mt. Doom."  _Maybe_ he would have, but it's a much smaller maybe than "Maybe hobbits walking into Mordor will get captured by orcs."  The latter is more of an "almost definitely".




He doesn't need the weather.  If The Eye's gaze so much as falls directly on the ring bearer, he's royally screwed.  The rest are just screwed.  Sauron had great power and weather control is just the tip of the iceberg.


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## C-F-K (Mar 23, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Dying by accident after you have just assaulted and caused grievous bodily injury to someone, and then stolen his ring is the most noble of ways to die?




Frodo could never had parted with the ring if he wanted to. He had to much struggles with the power of the ring.
If gollem didn't do what he did, the ring wouldn't have been destroyed and who knows what would have happened then.

So no, not noble in the romantic "hero-slays-dragon" way, but in the unintentionally saving middle-earth way.


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## Maxperson (Mar 23, 2016)

C-F-K said:


> Frodo could never had parted with the ring if he wanted to. He had to much struggles with the power of the ring.
> If gollem didn't do what he did, the ring wouldn't have been destroyed and who knows what would have happened then.




I agree.



> So no, not noble in the romantic "hero-slays-dragon" way, but in the unintentionally saving middle-earth way.




That's what noble means, though.  Dying a selfish, accidental death isn't noble in any sense of the word.  Being necessary for the well being of Middle Earth doesn't make it into a noble act.


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## steeldragons (Mar 23, 2016)

...nevermind...

Don't mind me. S'not worth it. I'll just be rolling my eyes as I unsubscribe.

Carry on.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 23, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> He doesn't need the weather.  If The Eye's gaze so much as falls directly on the ring bearer, he's royally screwed.  The rest are just screwed.  Sauron had great power and weather control is just the tip of the iceberg.




I hear he can also shoot laser beams out of his eyes.


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 23, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> I hope you're speaking for yourself there.  The movies are abominations.




At least partially myself, yes. In example until last night i was almost sure that the wizards (namely Gandalf) could summon the Eagles ... somehow...... Only after re reading the chapters (before quoting) did it all get back to me. I find it funny how i remember Silmarillion, Children of Hurin, The lost tales and other stuff better then the Lord of the Rings itself.



Elfcrusher said:


> The only idea I'm disagreeing with is that "Sauron would have easily spotted the Eagles and shot them out of the sky with his weather control magic before they reached Mt. Doom."




Oh, no argue from me there. I have no idea how or what would have been used to either spot them or stop them and i am not a great fan of attributing "magical" abilities to solving Middle Earth "problems". But Whatever reason, even Elrond thought more subtle approach was needed. 



Maxperson said:


> Here, though, you say that the eagles being willing to carry Gandalf implies autonomy.  I disagree.  We know that they are the servants of Manwe, that does more than imply that they are not autonomous, it pretty much states it outright.  When given instructions, they follow them.  They were "sent", not "asked" to bear tiding, which also implies no autonomy.  However, that doesn't mean that they can't do things outside of instruction that also don't violate other instructions.  In this case it means that carrying Gandalf to that destination was okay, but it doesn't mean that carrying the group close to or into Mordor is okay.



I think i understand what you are trying to say, but what i meant by autonomy, i meant most of all autonomy from whatever power or chain of command there was among the free peoples of Middle Earth. I.E. even Radagast was a "friend" with the birds, not their master. In the end they probably called their own shots (the will of the Powers in the West excluded). When they arrived in force at the Black Gate, it was either on their own volition or under direct intervention of Manwe (or even Iluvatar).


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## TwoSix (Mar 23, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> I hope you're speaking for yourself there.  The movies are abominations.



Sometimes I think I browse geek forums just to get the fiery insights you can only find on geek forums.


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## ChrisCarlson (Mar 23, 2016)

Any movie adaptation that fails to spend hours of on-screen time faithfully bringing the Bombadil story arch to painstaking life is a travesty and deserves all our scorn!

All hail Tolkien!


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## Relic Dice (Mar 23, 2016)

Funny, I remember reading this!
I also remember reading a page 4 articles later that explained why Gandalf was just a 2nd level Magic User, since the Balrog was just a minor illusion he cast to properly motivate the dwarves after his "death".

In short, it's proven good DM's (or storytellers) don't need a character to be powerful to be great in the story. Except his superb combat abilities. That certainly helped! 
 - Holly


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 23, 2016)

If arguing that Gandalf was a 5th level magic user has any utility, it's to illustrate that a 5th level magic-user is actually pretty interesting and powerful.

I'm reminded of Bernard Cornwell's portrayal of Merlin in his Arthurian trilogy (Winter King, Excalibur, and Enemy of God...all fantastic).  Except for some ambiguous stuff at the end, Merlin doesn't actually perform any magic.  He's just really good at convincing everybody that he can (and his protege, who becomes Morgan le Fay, shares the gift.)

Not exactly the same thing as "Merlin was a 5th level magic-user" but illustrative of how a little big of "magic" can go a long way.


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## Gadget (Mar 23, 2016)

pemerton said:


> A somewhat random post, more-or-less apropos this thread:
> 
> On the tram coming home this evening, a group of three friends was debating who is the hero of LotR (the two candidates being Frodo and Sam). The discussion then turned to who is the best character (the one who had plumped for Sam nominated Galadriel; someone else thought Strider). As I was getting off, they were debating who was the truer or more noble of Boromir and Faramir - the Sam and Galadriel advocate was taking the side of Farimir, on grounds that he could have taken the Ring, but didn't. (The case against him seemed mostly to be that he was a "daddy's boy".)
> 
> So anyone, the posters in this thread are not the only people exercised by the proper interpretation of LotR.




Who is the real hero of tLotR?  The question has been debated by fans and scholars of tLotR for quite a while (usually between Sam & Frodo), so that is very understandable debate.  But anyone who has actually read the books, as opposed to merely seeing the movies as these two commuters apparently have (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here), and needs to debate who was more true and noble between Boromir and Faramir has some reading comprehension problems.


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## pemerton (Mar 23, 2016)

Gadget said:


> anyone who has actually read the books, as opposed to merely seeing the movies as these two commuters apparently have (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here)



There were three, but (on the basis of my eavesdropping) I can only report on two: the Sam/Faramir/Galadriel advocate has read LotR, the Hobbit and the Silmarillion. One of her interlocutors had read LotR and the Silmarillion, but not the Hobbit. I don't know about the third.


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## Eric V (Mar 23, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yup, makes sense.
> 
> So we have:
> - They're largely independent, not necessarily "allied" with the wise, and hard to reach on a moment's notice.
> ...




Wasn't there also a danger of bringing the Ring so close to the Eagles, who are very proud powerful creatures themselves?


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## Maxperson (Mar 24, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> I hear he can also shoot laser beams out of his eyes.




Eye


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## Maxperson (Mar 24, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> I think i understand what you are trying to say, but what i meant by autonomy, i meant most of all autonomy from whatever power or chain of command there was among the free peoples of Middle Earth. I.E. even Radagast was a "friend" with the birds, not their master. In the end they probably called their own shots (the will of the Powers in the West excluded). When they arrived in force at the Black Gate, it was either on their own volition or under direct intervention of Manwe (or even Iluvatar).




Gotcha!  That makes more sense and I can agree with it.


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## Maxperson (Mar 24, 2016)

ChrisCarlson said:


> Any movie adaptation that fails to spend hours of on-screen time faithfully bringing the Bombadil story arch to painstaking life is a travesty and deserves all our scorn!
> 
> All hail Tolkien!




I was disappointed that he wasn't in it, but I understood that some things need to be cut and he really didn't move the story very much.  What was an abomination was all the crappy changes that the movies made.  Putting elves in Helms Deep and things like that.  Still, the Hobbit "adaption" made the Lord of the Rings movies seem as if they followed the books word for word.  ::shudder::


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## TheLoneRanger1979 (Mar 24, 2016)

Personally my opinion on the movies is mixed (depending on which movie we are talking about), with the extended editions IMO providing better "Tolkien Experience". However, if asked how to put Tom Bombadil into any adaptation i would be hard pressed to make a call. Except for the Barrow Downs, there is very little you can do with him on the screen. Unless you are making the TV Show or a mini series.....


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 24, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> This portion is about the only portion I really disagree with, though I'm not so sure he was right about the armies of elder days being useless.




"A host of Elves in armor of the Elder Days" isn't necessarily the same thing as ALL the forces of the First Age elves. It could mean a Third Age-size force with First Age class equipment. 

(And the First Age elves lost against Morgoth's armies anyway.)



> Sauron isn't Morgoth, even with the ring.




"Sauron was 'greater', effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First." - Morgoth's Ring ("Notes on motives in the Silmarillion")

Sauron was certainly defeatable in direct conflict by First- or Second-Age power levels, and defeated (_with the Ring_ at the end of the Second Age by Elendil, Gil-galad and Isildur; and by Huan in the First Age).

But in both cases they were able to confront Sauron directly. There's no teleportation in Arda - an army would have to carve through Sauron's armies first. 

"A host of Elves in armor of the Elder Days" would be superior one-to-one to Sauron's orc and human forces, but Sauron has overwhelming numbers, as well as things like trolls and Nazgul. 

The Nazgul might not be much use against people like Glorfindel, but I think only those who had actually been in Valinor had that "Unseen-world presence". The Wood Elves in the Hobbit couldn't see Bilbo with the Ring, so they didn't.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Mar 24, 2016)

Back to the original topic...



C-F-K said:


> Level 5 wizards? Sure, but give him credit for swinging a sword and staff too! So level 5/1 wizard fighter? Perhaps more fighter levels?




In 5E terms, I'd say he's multiclass, yeah. Probably wizard or sorcerer 6/ranger 2 or something (so he can 'speak to animals' or 'animal friendship' Shadowfax). 

That limits him to 3rd level spells but he's significantly more powerful than a pure 5th level wizard.

One of Saruman's big things is his compelling voice, so he might be a wizard or sorcerer/bard multiclass.


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## BookBarbarian (Mar 24, 2016)

TheLoneRanger1979 said:


> Personally my opinion on the movies is mixed (depending on which movie we are talking about), with the extended editions IMO providing better "Tolkien Experience". However, if asked how to put Tom Bombadil into any adaptation i would be hard pressed to make a call. Except for the Barrow Downs, there is very little you can do with him on the screen. Unless you are making the TV Show or a mini series.....




I love the barrow downs! What a great part of the book. It would have been awesome to see an the screen, in no small part because it's the first time we see Frodo doing something heroic. One of my big gripes with the movies is the changes to Frodo's character. He's much wimpier in the films.


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## Maxperson (Mar 25, 2016)

Khisanth the Ancient said:


> "A host of Elves in armor of the Elder Days" isn't necessarily the same thing as ALL the forces of the First Age elves. It could mean a Third Age-size force with First Age class equipment.




That's a good point.  It could be read that way, too.



> (And the First Age elves lost against Morgoth's armies anyway.)




For the most part, they destroyed Morgoth's armies, but attrition got the better of them and he ultimately won.



> "Sauron was 'greater', effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First." - Morgoth's Ring ("Notes on motives in the Silmarillion")




I think he was roughly equal in relative strength in the Second Age.  He was beat by the Numenoreans outright.  He walked out and surrendered because he knew he couldn't match their might, and the last alliance of elves and men defeated him and his armies, but with great cost.  The First Age elves had the same range of difficulties with Morgoth, at least until the end when attrition made it impossible for them to win and the Valar came to help.

In the Third Age he was greater in relative power than Morgoth was in the First Age.



> "A host of Elves in armor of the Elder Days" would be superior one-to-one to Sauron's orc and human forces, but Sauron has overwhelming numbers, as well as things like trolls and Nazgul.




A host of elves in the armor of the elder days could beat trolls, too.  The Nazgul would be easily handled by Glorfindel, Galadriel, Elrond and the other remaining first age elves.  Really, the issue was Sauron combined with those other creatures.



> The Nazgul might not be much use against people like Glorfindel, but I think only those who had actually been in Valinor had that "Unseen-world presence". The Wood Elves in the Hobbit couldn't see Bilbo with the Ring, so they didn't.




That's true, but all elves of the First Age, even those who have never been to Valinor are much greater and much more powerful than the elves of the Second Age, who were more powerful than those of the Third Age.  Thingol never went to Valinor and he was mighty as all get out.


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## Maxperson (Mar 25, 2016)

BookBarbarian said:


> I love the barrow downs! What a great part of the book. It would have been awesome to see an the screen, in no small part because it's the first time we see Frodo doing something heroic. One of my big gripes with the movies is the changes to Frodo's character. He's much wimpier in the films.




So was Aragorn.  In the books he was a strong leader of men and wanted to be the king.  In the movies he was wishy washy and fairly weak as a leader, wondering if he wanted the crown.


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## BookBarbarian (Mar 25, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> So was Aragorn.  In the books he was a strong leader of men and wanted to be the king.  In the movies he was wishy washy and fairly weak as a leader, wondering if he wanted the crown.




Very true. I guess it added "drama" to make these characters weaker? I never got it. I did like that after Gandalf Falls in Moria, Aragorn questions whether he should continue on to Minas Tirith as planned or continue with Frodo to Mount Doom. Thankfully a wise Frodo took that decision out of his hands, but that conflict in the character was interesting. I also liked how he was much more rude & sarcastic to the Hobbits and Boromir in the books. It showed another side to his personality.

On the topic of the thread. I've never seen Gandalf as PC. As an NPC I would simply use one of the statblocks for Angels in the MM and and spellcasting. Specifically the spells he seems to use in the Hobbit and LotR. I would probably use the Deva and swap out the Mace attacks for Longsword (Glamdring) attacks. 

If I wanted to build a character inspired by Gandalf I would go Lore Bard, getting longsword proficiency from race, perhaps refluff High Elf. This would pretty well represent his ability to inspire others to great deeds. Which was his main purpose in Middle Earth, to enable the Peoples/Races to free themselves from Sauron with as little divine help as possible.


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## BookBarbarian (Mar 25, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> snip... Thingol never went to Valinor and he was mighty as all get out.




He did actually along with Finwe and Ingwe, but he never returned after meeting Melian.


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## Michael McGuire (Mar 27, 2016)

cbwjm said:


> He mentions a plural of lightning bolts and fireballs. Surely this would mean that Gandalf was at least 6th level to allow him to cast two 3rd level spells.




THAT is a really good point. in battling the Wargs in Hobbit, he cast numerous fireballs and I might argue that it was the Meteor Swarm  spell (9th) instead.


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## Marandahir (Mar 28, 2016)

BookBarbarian said:


> Very true. I guess it added "drama" to make these characters weaker? I never got it. I did like that after Gandalf Falls in Moria, Aragorn questions whether he should continue on to Minas Tirith as planned or continue with Frodo to Mount Doom. Thankfully a wise Frodo took that decision out of his hands, but that conflict in the character was interesting. I also liked how he was much more rude & sarcastic to the Hobbits and Boromir in the books. It showed another side to his personality.
> 
> On the topic of the thread. I've never seen Gandalf as PC. As an NPC I would simply use one of the statblocks for Angels in the MM and and spellcasting. Specifically the spells he seems to use in the Hobbit and LotR. I would probably use the Deva and swap out the Mace attacks for Longsword (Glamdring) attacks.
> 
> If I wanted to build a character inspired by Gandalf I would go Lore Bard, getting longsword proficiency from race, perhaps refluff High Elf. This would pretty well represent his ability to inspire others to great deeds. Which was his main purpose in Middle Earth, to enable the Peoples/Races to free themselves from Sauron with as little divine help as possible.






Aragorn struggles with these questions in the books, too. But Tolkien couldn't figure out how to reconcile the strong and wise leader he wanted to guide the Fellowship of the Ring and the Grey Company with the troubled ranger who wanted nothing of his royal heritage. Thus, he put most of those personal struggles into the appendices, where we can read them in "Of Aragorn and Arwen." 

As we see with Arwen's scenes in the movies, most are directly lifted from that appendix story. The movies (smartly, in my opinion) moved his struggles into the forefront of the story to successfully weave him as a compelling secondary protagonist rather than just the war leader who may be compelling in terms of physical struggles but lacked a compelling interior struggle in the context of the narrative. 

I should also say that, post Gandalf's fall in Moria until Gandalf's return in Fangorn Forest, Aragorn has a very compelling storyline in the books where he doesn't know what to do, because he always was relying on Gandalf's wisdom and guidance. The struggles he faces in leadership there really are a gem that Tolkien could have expanded into a wider character arc. This is one area where, I believe, the movies actually outdid the characterization of the books by seamlessly integrating the aspects of Aragorn's struggles into one cohesive narrative. 

Now don't get me wrong, the books are far and away better works than the movies. No question. There were a lot of missteps and problems and key missing elements. Whole messages from the book were lost in the translation. That's because the movies are the interpretation of one team of filmmakers. There will be more interpretations in the future. But I do believe that Tolkien has areas where he couldn't quite figure out what to do to make the stories as perfect as they could be. And a movie is a chance to offer potential fixes without staining the original published book.


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## BookBarbarian (Mar 29, 2016)

Marandahir said:


> Aragorn struggles with these questions in the books, too. But Tolkien couldn't figure out how to reconcile the strong and wise leader he wanted to guide the Fellowship of the Ring and the Grey Company with the troubled ranger who wanted nothing of his royal heritage. Thus, he put most of those personal struggles into the appendices, where we can read them in "Of Aragorn and Arwen."
> 
> As we see with Arwen's scenes in the movies, most are directly lifted from that appendix story. The movies (smartly, in my opinion) moved his struggles into the forefront of the story to successfully weave him as a compelling secondary protagonist rather than just the war leader who may be compelling in terms of physical struggles but lacked a compelling interior struggle in the context of the narrative.
> 
> ...




Hmm, Let's see. At around 20 Aragorn is told his ancestry and meets Arwen and is smitten by her. Over the 20 years or so he becomes a victorious Captain in both Rohan and Gondor. While in Lorien he then meets Arwen again. The fall in love and pledge themselves to one another. Elrond finds out and the next time he sees Aragorn tells him that the only Man (mortal) he will allow his daughter to marry is the king of the west. 

I don't see anywhere that Aragorn wanted nothing to do with his parentage. If anything we is completely committing to becoming the King of the west if only to marry his love. 

However, he seems to also be aware that victory over Sauron will not come through strength of arms. He does not have Narsil reforged into Anduril until the One ring is found. Did he come by this knowledge from his own time fighting against the forces of the enemy? From his close counsel with Gandalf? Both? We don't know for sure.

I find the character very compelling for many reasons, in no small part due to his doubts about himself, but nowhere do I see a rejection of his ancestry.


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## Maxperson (Mar 29, 2016)

Michael McGuire said:


> THAT is a really good point. in battling the Wargs in Hobbit, he cast numerous fireballs and I might argue that it was the Meteor Swarm  spell (9th) instead.




It wasn't really either.  It more like a produce flame that had fire that wouldn't burn out and spread when touched.  Sort of a produce napalm.  Who knows what level it was, but I'd guess at least 4th.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 29, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> It wasn't really either.  It more like a produce flame that had fire that wouldn't burn out and spread when touched.  Sort of a produce napalm.  Who knows what level it was, but I'd guess at least 4th.




So now you're claiming that Gandalf used napalm.  This is in addition to your claim that Sauron can shoot lightning bolts out of his eye.


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## Maxperson (Mar 29, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> So now you're claiming that Gandalf used napalm.  This is in addition to your claim that Sauron can shoot lightning bolts out of his eye.




Clearly you never read the Hobbit.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 29, 2016)

Napalm wasn't invented until 1942, long after the Hobbit was written.


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## Hriston (Mar 29, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Napalm wasn't invented until 1942, long after the Hobbit was written.




So it really is science fiction.


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## Maxperson (Mar 29, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Napalm wasn't invented until 1942, long after the Hobbit was written.




Which has zero to do with what I said, or do you not understand the concept of "sort of like."?


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 29, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> Which has zero to do with what I said, or do you not understand the concept of "sort of like."?




I'm just testing out the Maxperson Forum Debating(tm) technique.

Anyway, let's talk more about your claims that Sauron shoots lightning bolts out of his Eye and Gandalf uses Napalm.


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## Maxperson (Mar 30, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Anyway, let's talk more about your claims that Sauron shoots lightning bolts out of his Eye and Gandalf uses Napalm.



I never said either of those things, but then you know that.  Do you have anything of relevance to say?


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 30, 2016)

Maxperson said:


> I never said either of those things, but then you know that.  Do you have anything of relevance to say?




Well I don't want to say you're _wrong_ just that I'm skeptical about the Napalm part in particular.


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## Maxperson (Mar 30, 2016)

Elfcrusher said:


> Well I don't want to say you're _wrong_ just that I'm skeptical about the Napalm part in particular.




At this point, since your last 3-4 posted responses to me have had no relevance to what I post and do nothing but make fun of me, I'm directing you to stop harassing me.


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## pemerton (Mar 30, 2016)

BookBarbarian said:


> At around 20 Aragorn is told his ancestry and meets Arwen and is smitten by her. Over the 20 years or so he becomes a victorious Captain in both Rohan and Gondor. While in Lorien he then meets Arwen again. The fall in love and pledge themselves to one another. Elrond finds out and the next time he sees Aragorn tells him that the only Man (mortal) he will allow his daughter to marry is the king of the west.
> 
> I don't see anywhere that Aragorn wanted nothing to do with his parentage. If anything we is completely committing to becoming the King of the west if only to marry his love.
> 
> ...



I'm not sure what your measure is for "rejecting his ancestry". I mean, clearly he never literally rejects his ancestry in either book or film - but he has doubts in both.

In the film, he doubts "the strength of men" and worries about whether he is up to the task of defeating Sauron and reclaiming his throne. It is Arwen who assures him that he is "not Isildur", and will be able to prevail.

In Appendix A, when he first tells Arwen who he is, "he felt that his high lineage, in which his heart had rejoiced, was now of little worth, and as nothing compared to her dignity and loveliness. . . . [and] Aragorn was abashed, for he saw the elven-light in her eyes and the wisdom of many days . . ." (The quotes are from pp 1095-96 of my Unwin one-volume edition.)

Later, in conversation with Elrond, the latter says that "she is of lineage greater than yours . . . She is too far above you." (p 1096) Elrond also tells Aragorn that "A great doom awaits you, either to rise above the height of al your fathers since the days of Elendil, or to fall into darkness with what is left of your kin." (p 1096). Aragorn does not dispute this, but rather "[takes] leave lovingly of Elrond" before setting out on nearly thirty years of errantry, and we are told that "His face was sad and stern because of the doom that was laid on him". (p 1097)

When he meets Arwen again, she tells him that "Dark is the Shadow, and yet my heart rejoices; for you, Estel, shall be among the great whose valour will destroy it"; but he replies with doubt, saying that "I cannot foresee it, and how it may come to pass is hidden from me. Yet with your hope I will hope." (p 1098)

Again, we see that Aragorn takes hope and assurance from Arwen, which assuages the doubts and doom that he feels within himself. He wants to be king, of course, and thereby realise his destiny and marry his beloved. But he has doubts that he will be able to do what is required.

In the film, we see Aragorn struggle more with the consequences for Arwen of their betrothal, but then we see more of their interactions full stop. But in Appendix A, when Aragorn is dying, he offers Arwen the opportunity of repentance - so even in that respect, the film is not wildly at odds with the book in trying to convey the consequences for Arwen of her choice, and the significance to Aragorn of that consequence.

In the book, it seems to me that the truly pivotal scene in which Aragorn's doubts (well-expressed in his lamenting that "An ill fate is one me this day, and all that I do goes amiss" (p 433)) are dispelled, and his confidence rises to match Arwen's hope, is his wresting of the Palantir from Sauron's control. This is where we see him transcend any need for advice from Gandalf, and assert his kinghood: "I am the lawful master of the Stone, and I had both the right and the strength to use it, or so I judged. The right cannot be doubted. The strength was enough - barely." (p 811) In the films I don't think the trajectory is wildly different, although the delivery of Anduril rather than the use of the Palantir serves as the pivotal event.


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## Khisanth the Ancient (Apr 3, 2016)

Michael McGuire said:


> THAT is a really good point. in battling the Wargs in Hobbit, he cast numerous fireballs and I might argue that it was the Meteor Swarm  spell (9th) instead.




It's more like the old Fire Seeds druid spell... so much so that I think the spell was based on that specific scene. But I don't think that spell made it into 5th edition (it's at least not in the Player's Handbook).

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fireSeeds.htm

Meteor Swarm is way too powerful... four 40-ft.-radius blasts would have killed most of the goblins and scared away those that survived. 

In 5th Edition, it's more like a series of Firebolt cantrips, really. It doesn't seem to be a large blast effect like Fireball.


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## tglassy (Sep 25, 2016)

Gandalf was also a great fighter, so he likely had a good number of Fighter Spells as well.  He was also a story teller, entertainer and lore master, so a few levels of Bard probably would be in there, as well.  So even if he was only a 5th level wizard, he was likely at least a 5th level fighter and perhaps a 5th level bard.  You could likely add in five levels of Paladin, just cause, and still be on the mark.  

So there you go.  A level 20 character, just not all of them 'wizard', which would make since if he lived 2,000 years.  Muticlassed characters are more fleshed out anyway.  Who would want to have the same job for 2,000 years?


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## MoonSong (Sep 25, 2016)

tglassy said:


> Gandalf was also a great fighter, so he likely had a good number of Fighter Spells as well.  He was also a story teller, entertainer and lore master, so a few levels of Bard probably would be in there, as well.  So even if he was only a 5th level wizard, he was likely at least a 5th level fighter and perhaps a 5th level bard.  You could likely add in five levels of Paladin, just cause, and still be on the mark.
> 
> So there you go.  A level 20 character, just not all of them 'wizard', which would make since if he lived 2,000 years.  Muticlassed characters are more fleshed out anyway.  Who would want to have the same job for 2,000 years?




Sorry, but no. Gandalf is a favored soul(sorcerer), he spent his feats on skills, lore and the sword.


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## Maxperson (Sep 25, 2016)

MoonSong said:


> Sorry, but no. Gandalf is a favored soul(sorcerer), he spent his feats on skills, lore and the sword.



Also no.  I've read the books and he is a Wizard.  Nowhere does it say Favored Soul anywhere in any of the books.  Further, in the books he states that he learned spells of all the races, something a D&D sorcerer could not do.


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## Hriston (Sep 25, 2016)

I think the class that best fits Gandalf is Bard because his main function is to inspire others to deeds of bravery. Also, as an Ainu, he is one of the beings who created the original vision of the world through music, which seems Bard-like to me.


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## Sacrosanct (Sep 26, 2016)

STOP TRYING TO PUT GANDALF IN A BOX!  JUST LEAVE GANDALF ALONE!---[Brittnay Spears guy]


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## Tony Vargas (Sep 26, 2016)

A 'wizard' in Tolkien was a walking/talking plot device and source of exposition, not a character, let alone a class.


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## Caliburn101 (Sep 27, 2016)

Gandalf the Grey = 5th level Wizard/5th level Fighter/5th level Cleric of Light - all in a world where third level spells are the most powerful available and healing is skill and feat-based... then he goes to 6th level in each when he becomes Gandalf the White.


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## Inglorin (Sep 27, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> A 'wizard' in Tolkien was a walking/talking plot device and source of exposition, not a character, let alone a class.




What??? But then this whole discussion... well, ... AHHHHHHHHHH...


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## BookBarbarian (Sep 27, 2016)

Tony Vargas said:


> A 'wizard' in Tolkien was a walking/talking plot device and source of exposition, not a character, let alone a class.




Gandalf was a Plot Armored, Loot-Ninjaing, Kill-stealing DMPC.


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## TBeholder (Dec 1, 2016)

MoonSong said:


> I just want to say is, Gandalf is NOT a wizard, he is clearly something else...
> Personal innate power...
> Never seen handling dusty tomes...
> Doesn't have a spell for every problem...
> ...



 Whether he cannot do something, or have a reason not to is never clear, he's too much of a sneak.
But looking to the root of the issue, Gandalf is a Maiar.
In terms significantly later, but closer to the article than to this day D&D this would probably fall under "Quasipower". Not all the way godlike, but things like being thrown into a chasm only moderately inconvenience him.


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