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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7696657" data-attributes="member: 4937">Absolutely it can.If you assume that magic items are pretty rare...That most NPCs are 1st level characters...Then sure, a genius level creature with a fear gaze attack that most characters are going to need like a 17+ to resist, and the ability to create an aura of fire that does like 3d6 damage to everything near you, and a high AC, and a 70% magic resistance that basically means it can always shrug off spells from any caster 4th level or lower, and strong resistances and immunities can pretty easily run riot through a city.  Oh yeah, and the ability to employ a die no save Symbol of Death that takes out 120 hp worth of foes.  Yeah, it can definitely destroy a city.If you assume Durin VI was about a 9th level character with his ancestor's magic axe, then maybe he can give the Balrog a tough fight.  But the implication is that Durin gets ambushed and killed early on in the contest, and without their champion (and with Durin I's axe, the 'Axe of the Dwarvish Lords', now missing) his people are eventually routed.  Now if you assume that magic items are common, and that your average dwarf is a 6th level fighter, then no, of course not.  But those assumptions are D&Disms that reflect how D&D is commonly played in practice, with high level characters that require high level challenges, and they don't reference or attempt primarily to reference any particular story but deal with the powers of PCs as they actually can appear in the game.  However, you can find stories that do reference 1e AD&D's explicitly.  For example, Elizabeth Moon's "Deed of Paksenarrion" very explicitly follows the career of a 0th level fighter in a mercenary company straight out of the 1e DMG, up through the levels, through the adventures in T1: Village of Hommlet, until she becomes a high level Paladin.  However this story wasn't based on AD&D as it was actually played, but on AD&D and its world as how it was described by Gygax.Conversely, Raymond Feist's Riftwar Saga or Hickman and Weis's Chronicles of the Dragonlance are based on AD&D as it actually was played in practice, and as such the characters in it are very much clearly high level.  Raistlin and Pug are much more powerful in absolute terms in their stories than Gandalf is shown to be in his story.  But I think The Lord of the Rings is much closer in its idea of what mighty means or in its power scale to Deed of Paksinarion, than it is to Chronicles of the Dragonlance.  In a world were most everyone is 1HD, a 9th level Paladin is an epic hero and you'll hardly find anyone more powerful.  In the Forgotten Realms, it's the relatively common captain of the town watch of a pretty small rural village, and anyone who is anyone is like 18th level or higher.</blockquote>

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