Gandalf as a Paladin?

[Nightingale 7]

Come on people!The answer is staring you straight in the face!He is a cleric.Chosen of god,wielding mainly protective spells,with decent fighting ability.The sword can be attributed to the war domain,or even a MWP(Longsword) feat.And the most blatant example was the TURNING of the ringwraiths in Return of the King.

 

[blackshirt5]

Come on people!The answer is staring you straight in the face!He is a cleric.Chosen of god,wielding mainly protective spells,with decent fighting ability.The sword can be attributed to the war domain,or even a MWP(Longsword) feat.And the most blatant example was the TURNING of the ringwraiths in Return of the King.

Paladins get turning too, you know.

-Tired of Paladin Discrimination

 

[Dirigible]

Actually, isn't he a polymorphed angel(I can't recall Tolkien's terminology... were the Valar the angels? does Istar just mean 'angel in man-cloths' or was it those five specifically?)

 

[Kavyk]

Istar is the name for one of the five specific 'wizards', who would be Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, and two more whose names escape me. Maiar is the word for the angel-types. All of the Istar were Maiar. Sauron is a Maiar as well.

I can see Gandalf statted as a Paladin if that were your choice. If you go with, oh, a Solar base and add class levels, I would definitely add Paladin. But if you decided to start out with character levels pure and simple, I would place him as a Cleric.

 

[Aaron L]

The other 2 Istari went further East and weren't dealt with in the books. Don't think they were even named. The balrog was a maiar too.

Unless I'm really off (which I could be)

 

[Trickstergod]

-- N, not really seeing the point of cross-dressing Gandalf

You do have some small point.

However, D&D is strongly influenced by the Lord of the Rings, so it's not like this discussion is completely off-base. I for one had contemplated on running a D&D Lord of the Rings game about a year or two ago; I opted not to, instead just running a Lord of the Rings-inspired one shot as opposed to just Lord of the Rings, but it still stands that someone else might run such a game at some point, and in all likelihood, there's been quite a few D&D games which were run on Middle Earth over the years.

Statting out Gandalf is certainly more appropriate than doing so for Batman.

Besides, it's a fun, trivial little thing to do when you're shirking off, in my case at the moment, writing or what have you. No point necessary particularly beyond that.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I vote druid. Fire spells and healing.

 

[Nifft]

However, D&D is strongly influenced by the Lord of the Rings, so it's not like this discussion is completely off-base.

Well... D&D is based on a lot of things. A really lot. D&D took flavor from those things, but not mechanics. Asking D&D mechanics to fit any arbitrary flavor isn't going to work.

These "influences" aren't mechanically balanced games -- they're usually not games at all. The wargames which did provide mechanical influence seem to lack "flavor".

I've heard that the Buffy RPG does a good job of making "unbalanced" characters remain fun to play together. It's used as an exmaple of how one can do a fiction/RPG cross-over. However, to me it just emphasizes how you need to make a new system specifically to model these unbalanced characters.

Besides, it's a fun, trivial little thing to do when you're shirking off, in my case at the moment, writing or what have you. No point necessary particularly beyond that.

Then I guess the same can justify my snarkyness.

-- N

 

[Ranger REG]

I don't necessarily look at the Ranger as "I hate those things with a passion". I look at it as "I'm really really good at hunting those things".

Still, he would have to acquire two class levels of Ranger before he can use the combat style (two-weapon melee) feature.

 

[EtherHulkRending]

I would have to go with cleric with fire domain. He's human and would have the feats to be passable in combat.

He turned the ringwraiths, he cast fire seeds(if you look at the Hobbit), heat metal, daylight, align weapon(darn Balrogs and their DR ), dispel magic/prot evil/dispel evil/magic circle (can't be sure which) , Forbiddance(kept the balrog at bay)

You can also make a strong case for druid, or maybe what no one has mentioned so far

Mystic Theurge?

EHR