D&D 5E Levels of literary heroes (and inflation thereof)

[S'mon]

Most of them don't always succeed when it matters - they come out on top at the end after repeated failures. Generally because that final, one-in-a-million shot pays off.

Yep. If give them godlike stats then they won't actually behave like or feel like they do in the fiction. Conan won't surrender to Belit's pirates because he knows he can kill all of them - he won't run away from the Black Ones on their Isle because he can just kill them. Stat him at 8th level Fighter with unusually high Attributes
then play him as a smart guy who wants to stay alive, and he'll feel much more Conany than if you make him 25th level.

 

[delericho]

Before assigning levels to literary heroes, it is probably more important to assign levels to the literary setting.

Essentially, this.

Actually, I'd advocate that if the designers are trying to emulate stories of a given sort (be it for a Star Wars or Harry Potter game, or Appendix N in the case of D&D), they should start by looking at the heroes of those stories at various points in their careers, assign rough levels to them, and use that to calibrate the game.

So maybe they decide Frodo and Sam are 1st level at the start of LotR, the Black Company are Heroic-tier, Aragorn Paragon, and (late-story) Conan is Epic. Or maybe they move everyone down a step and set the heroes of "Clash of the Titans" as Epic-tier. Or whatever.

That way, they can check that the game they've built actually matches the one they were trying to build, and it also means they can give the DM (and adventure writers) more meaningful guidance as to the sorts of adventures they're shooting for.

 

[delericho]

Stat him at 8th level Fighter with unusually high Attributes...

I'm generally resistant to the notion of giving him attributes that are too high. I'd rather he be assigned a slightly higher level to compensate.

Basically, I'm inclined to think that Conan should be buildable as a rules-legal character using whatever build method is recommended for PCs.

(If you give him unusually high stats but moderate level, that makes him unattainable - no PC can ever match him. Conversely, if he's higher level but has achievable stats, that means a PC can match him; they just haven't done so yet.)

Having said that, Conan is a case where I think his stats change significantly over time. Somewhere in there he transitions from mostly-thief to mostly-warrior to mostly-king, and transitions from having an extremely high Str and moderate mental stats to having a lower (but still quite high) Str and much higher mental stats. Part of that is just a matter of aging, but I don't think that covers it all - as Conan goes on he definitely seems to work on improving his Cha as he shifts from loner to leader of men.

 

[Quartz]

Going back to the OP and Gandalf, remember that the Balrog was not the D&D Balor, but a fire spirit. That could be a Fire Elemental (CR 5) or perhaps a fire version of a Water Wierd (CR 3)

 

[delericho]

Going back to the OP and Gandalf, remember that the Balrog was not the D&D Balor...

Given that the D&D Balor was originally a Balrog, and only got renamed when the Tolkien estate threatened to sue, I'd be inclined to say that that was indeed the beast in question.

 

[S'mon]

I'm generally resistant to the notion of giving him attributes that are too high. I'd rather he be assigned a slightly higher level to compensate.

Basically, I'm inclined to think that Conan should be buildable as a rules-legal character using whatever build method is recommended for PCs.

(If you give him unusually high stats but moderate level, that makes him unattainable - no PC can ever match him. Conversely, if he's higher level but has achievable stats, that means a PC can match him; they just haven't done so yet.)

I think it's fine to take either approach - to build him with a Point Buy legal for PCs, or to have him as an unusual NPC with stats somewhat higher than a PC could get through Point Buy.
It's partly a question of how you stat NPCs in general - if PCs are generally much better
than NPCs, then PC-type stats for Conan is fine. If PC stats are not particularly
remarkable then I'd make Conan's higher than that. I definitely would avoid the 'string of 18s' or 'string f 20s', though.

 

[Uchawi]

From a literary perspective, I find 5E does not go far enough to grant martial classes flexibility to emulate different heroes represented in books without going heavy into multi-classing and casters have too many choices available except for high fantasy (magic is common) stories. So you end up having to choose high level martial classes/multi-classing with inflated abilities or low level casting classes to match what is found in books.

 

[Quartz]

Given that the D&D Balor was originally a Balrog, and only got renamed when the Tolkien estate threatened to sue, I'd be inclined to say that that was indeed the beast in question.

Originally Tolkein conceived of 'Balrog' as a class of monster, with there being hundreds of them, and being regularly slain by heroes. Only later did they become more potent.

 

[Mephista]

Originally Tolkein conceived of 'Balrog' as a class of monster, with there being hundreds of them, and being regularly slain by heroes. Only later did they become more potent.

The Balrog was basically a fallen angel. Each was a miniture Sauron, in effect. So, its not really that the balrogs were "regularly slain by heroes," its that elves were so powerful that they fought on par with angelic beings. After the fading of the elves, the chaining of Sauron's master, and the destruction of Tolkein-Atlantis (forgot the name of it), the general power level of the world plumbeted.

Hells, Sauron was stronger when the Atlantis-expy people showed up, and he was forced to surrender. In LotR, Sauron's power and military forces were diminished, and he was considered to be near unstopable at that point.

 

[delericho]

Originally Tolkein conceived of 'Balrog' as a class of monster, with there being hundreds of them, and being regularly slain by heroes. Only later did they become more potent.

Well, yes. But since LotR long predates D&D, I'm not entirely sure how that's relevant.

The D&D Balor was, in the earliest incarnation of the game, called a Balrog. It was renamed due to the threat of legal action from the Tolkien Estate. So, in D&D terms, we can be pretty sure that the Balrog Gandalf faced in Moria was indeed a Balor - because that creature was the exact inspiration Gygax (or Arneson) used for the D&D creature.