Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Warrior Poet" data-source="post: 2648952" data-attributes="member: 1057">I'd like to make a case for Gandalf not being an ubermensch.Which sounds crazy, I know, considering he is a maia, a transcendent and eminently powerful being, the only member of the fellowship capable of facing a balrog (also a maia), and possessed of breathtaking knowledge and wisdom.Even looking over what I just wrote, it feels like I'm digging myself deeper into a hole.  Nevertheless!  Onward!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Gandalf is tremendously powerful, and yet, despite this, he is limited.  Maybe this is the Phoenix condition you reference (I don't know those comics, so I can't comment), and maybe he has to be conveniently "removed" so that everyone else can shine, but I don't really feel that's the case.  For one thing, he isn't really removed until the balrog pulls him down into the depths of Khâzad-dum, and even when he is in the fellowship, everyone else continues to contribute (often significantly; it is one of the hobbits who "solves" the riddle of the door into Moria, for example).  Even when he returns as Gandalf the White, he continues to struggle against the enemy.  He does not merely stand at the walls of Minas Tirith and blast away every orc as far as the eye can see.  Yet we know he is tremendously powerful.Part of it is Tolkien's world, and the scales of power do not lend themselves to easy measure on a quantified chart.  I get a chuckle everytime someone tries to "stat" the Lord of the Rings characters.  "Gandalf's only 5th level!"  Sure.  A 5th level demi-god. Alternately, if he's a demi-god, what's he doing with these low(er) level flunkies?  It doesn't work, to my mind, so it's not worth trying, and that's the nature of Tolkien's vision.Also, despite all that power, Gandalf still can't take the ring.  Sauron's a maia, and he made the darn thing, why can't Gandalf just sprint that bad boy on up the mountain side, flip it into the fire, then head for the beach and a well-deserved umbrella drink.  Despite his power, he is still potential prey for the lure of the ring (Saruman's wisdom exceeded that of Gandalf, and he fell easily prey to the lure of the ring).  There's such a disparate quality to the power exhibited by, well, just about everything in Tolkien's world.  Gandalf's powerful in some areas (tremendously so), less in others, despite his nature as a transcendental being.I'm probably not making much of a good case for it, but I don't think he's an ubermensch in the same way that Superman, Captain Marvel, and some other examples are.Anyway, there's others here who could argue the case better than I could, and there's still others who'll shoot terrific holes in what I've posted here, so there it is.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Warrior Poet</blockquote>

Verification