gizmo33 said:
Mooks *are* battle hardened warriors. Otherwise they're called commoners. It's another situation where DnD has caused an escalation in people's expectations. Because someone's PC can easily dispatch a 1st level warrior, now we've got to up the ante. People seem to forget that DnD is designed to model heroic characters. If you don't feel like your character is heroic, that's an issue of interpretation IMO. It's not a license to start redefining "heroic" as being 10th level+.
And the idea of being "worth 50 battle-hardened warriors" doesn't mean you go out in the field and fight 50 warriors and win. It means that you're worth that in terms of achieving strategic objectives. Tolkien was not aware of DnDisms when he was writing his story. Aragorn has the ability to move swiftly, act independantly, be a leader, know his magic item lore, heal, observe, and basically do all sorts of extremely useful things that IMO should be factored into Tolkien's statement.
I'm quite mindful of Tolkien not being aware of D&Disms. However, in response to your post I looked up the line. I was mistaken, the line is Gandalf's and it's in referense to the threat they present to Sauron.
Imrahil of Dol Amroth is commenting on the "jest" of riding forth to face Sauron with only seven thousand knights. He is corrected by Gandalf:
"There are
names among us that are worth more than a
thousand mail-clad knights apiece."
We can debate this until the cows come home. Many people think Aragorn can be properly represented by a low level fighter. I beg to differ.
gizmo33 said:
There's no justification for making the ringwraiths into death knights. He didn't actually hit them with the flaming sticks so I don't know what was going on. I never saw the ringwraiths use abyssal blast, and I think they were incorporeal. Tolkien wasn't writing a game anyway, he could just have author fiat decide that Gandalf wasn't going to use a particular spell without having to explain the relevant resource issues to the reader. Or decide the ringwraiths were going to run away. As I recall Aragorn wasn't utilizing the flaming stick with some sort of superhuman ability, I think it was just a typical folklore case of a creature being afraid of fire.
DnD was suppose to model heroic adventuring, even at lower levels. Seems to me if a 5th level character isn't impressive anymore that's because the person is jaded, not because the character's capabilities are well within the range of the most cheesed-out of fantasy heroes. I suppose that's why we need 10th level commoners now.
The characterization and stories make Aragorn seem much more impressive than Bob the Ranger in someone's campaign, but there's no reason that such a thing has a bearing on actual power.
Except that his capabilities in his own world bear that out. No, Tolkien's world isn't a D&D world, but if you were to render Middle-Earth as a D&D world (wonkiness of wizards aside), we need to consider the facts.
Aragorn is 87 years old. He has been fighting and learning the ways of battle since he was 20. He hunts orcs with ease. He slays them at will. The difference is that orcs are actually treated as a danger to him - although I'll point out that he's never seriously injured in the story - something which could be chalked up to him having a LOT of "hit points" (in D&D terms).
He is also one of the few who can ride openly against the Nine and stand against them in open battle. The others are Glorfindel, Gandalf, the sons of Elrond and MAYBE some other Elves and Rangers. That's a pretty short list - and some of the people on it are scarily powerful.
The Nine are wraiths who cannot be easily defeated in battle. If anything, they're more powerful than Death Knights. Their Captain, protected as he is by the power of Sauron, can't be slain by a living man. Gandalf could face all nine of them and survive, but not triumph, only flee. The point is that they are dangerous foes even for the most powerful beings in Middle-Earth.
Aragorn, using fire, drives them off. They don't leave 'cuz their task is accomplished. They leave because he drives them away from Frodo "wielding a flaming brand in either hand." So Aragorn may not be able to beat the Nazgul, but he can fight them - in reasonable numbers with the right weapons. There's a suggestion that they're vulnerable to fire.
What "level" is reasonable for a several thousand year old elf? What "level" is a devil or demon like the Balrog? What "level" is an angel, since that's basically what Gandalf is? D&D defines that. As such, Middle-Earth must be considered in light of that information.
You have two choices - bump Aragorn up to a reasonable level, or diminish the maximum level of the most dangerous beings. And I would counter your comment about "power inflation" thusly. Just because someone's not flashy doesn't mean he's weak. A thousand foes slain in single combat is a thousand foes slain in single combat. And Aragorn's probably passed that number a dozen times over.
I'm not arguing that Aragorn is a 20th-level character by any stretch. But 10th-13th? Yeah, based on how he's presented in his own world, I'd bet on that.
As for magic, Middle Earth basically lacks completely what I call D&D's "flashy powers" - like teleportation, reversal of death, mind-reading, and (for the most part) flight. You can use that to fix the level of spells at 2nd or whereever, or you can just realize that Tolkien, as an author, recognized the narrative difficulty posed by those powers and decided to leave them out of his narrative.
It amuses me that this level issue comes up so frequently with
The Lord of the Rings, but not with older myths. I certainly don't hear anybody arguing that King Arthur is a 5th-level fighter....
