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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3867610" data-attributes="member: 30001">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.  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.</blockquote>

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