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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 306429" data-attributes="member: 2020">I find it ironic that terror is what saved Sam, Merry, and Pippin, in the Battle of Weathertop.  Merry and Pippin failed their Will saves (in D&D terms) and threw themselves to the ground.  Sam failed his Will save, and shrank to Frodo's side, effectively incapacitated.  Effectively, they played dead ... and because Frodo put on the Ring, and Aragorn leaped out to fight, they were allowed to get away with it.  Had any of the three actually attacked the Ringwraiths (as Sam did in the film), the Ringwraiths would easily have hacked them down.  Such wounds would have been fatal ... there is no question of that, when you consider that striking a Ringwraith with your own weapon ultimately kills you.  I do believe the Ringwraiths would have slain Sam, Merry, and Pippin where they lay (or stood), had they had the chance.  Aragorn saved all of them.  Had one of MY low level characters been in that situation, he would have RUN.  He would have run, and he would have kept running until he couldn't run any more ... and then he would have walked until his feet were falling off, until morning came.  For only then, with the sunrise, could he hope to stop his flight, and yet continue to live.  That is what I think FRODO and the others should have done ... they should have fled from Weathertop when they knew the enemy was nearing (in the evening hours prior to the attack), and kept moving through the night, until morning brought a measure of safety and respite.  I have thought this since I read the book 30 years ago, and nobody has yet convinced me that a more sound strategy existed for Frodo and his Company.</blockquote>

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