NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4860585" data-attributes="member: 80487">I am not sure that the nature of Gandalf (or the Ring, or other things) had yet been pinned down to their later definitions when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. Certainly, I see much in a very different light when reading the book through the lens of TLOTR and the posthumously published works than I did when first it enchanted me -- and I know that Gygax liked TH better.The D&D magic-user owes, I think, much of its inspiration to the war-game context in which it originated (as part of the Fantasy Supplement to Chainmail). Portions of the spell lists reflect the figure's role as basically an artillery piece.That was of course just part of it, but perhaps a bigger part now in 4E. The scholarly aspect really came to the fore in AD&D, as the character started with but a few spells and had to seek more in scrolls and codices recovered from the depths of dungeons. Questing for enchanted wands, rings and other artifacts of power was also key. The first pages of Howard's The Hour of the Dragon tell of such undertakings.The druid class has often seemed to me most evocative of Gandalf, Merlin and other enchanters in old tales -- but of course it is no perfect fit.The mightiest mortals of Middle-Earth (at least in the Third Age) might well best be modeled in old D&D (even 3E) terms as 5th or 6th level.Well, there's a problem of misunderstanding (or conscious deviation from) the original idea. It would be a deadly one, too, considering that a 1st-level human thief was (per Supplement I) 9 times as likely to blow it as to succeed at trap removal -- and even a dwarf thief had odds of 3 to 1 against! Moreover, the thief's dice-roll applied only to "small trap devices (such as poisoned needles)". However were adventurers to deal with pits full of poisoned stakes, scything blades, spring-launched spears, vials of poison gas, collapsing ceilings or crushing walls, death rays ... ? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The chief inspiration for the thief's class functions seems to me likely to have been Zelazny's Jack of Shadows. Cugel and Mouser also shaped the composite archetype, of course -- but the powers of hiding in shadows, moving silently and climbing nearly sheer surfaces (even, in AD&D, horizontal surfaces, i.e., ceilings!) are qualitatively more than mundane.The literally roguish qualities of Vance's and Leiber's characters (Cugel in particular being a silver-tongued rakehell) have never really come to the fore.Now, the rogue (along with the ranger) has been largely transformed into a combat specialist of the sort lately categorized as a "striker". That is quite an about-face from the thief's former strategy of generally avoiding open combat (lacking puissance, armor and hit points).I would characterize the Mouser first as a fighter (and then as a lover) -- very accomplished (and aided by his slight stature and customary garb) at stealth, and possessed of a rudimentary education in sorcery. Yes, I think the 4E rogue fits rather nicely.</blockquote>

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