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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7696761" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm sure they did, but this doesn't mean that other than something like Durin's Axe, weapons sufficient to harm the Balrog were in any way common.Again, I think you are fundamentally misreading the setting based on later D&D assumptions about prevailing power levels and the commonality of magic.  A dwarf with as much as a +1 battleax would have been rare.   Most of the dwarven weapons were actually no more than masterwork quality items.  Indeed, it could be argued that a faithful Middle Earth setting has no magic at all, merely technology.  The elves themselves have no word for 'magic', and didn't clearly understand the term.  They would have understood the important medieval term goetia, but found magic bafflingly imprecise.  A key scene in Lord of the Rings is when Sam is inspecting the rope that the elves have provided, and he asks, "Is it magic?"  The elf on hand laughs and says, "I'm sure I don't know what you mean.  Certainly it is well-made...Had we known the craft delighted you, we could have taught you much."  In other words, the item that appears magic to Sam, is not magical at all, but simply good technology which Sam - having no aptitude for what a reader would call 'magic' - could have been taught to produce.  The vast majority of the weapons, armor, and so forth of the elves and dwarves are of this nature.  They are not magical in the D&D sense, but simply extraordinarily well made.  That is not to say that dwarves and elves couldn't produce things that are 'magical' in the D&D sense, by weaving spells into their construction, but this labor required an individual of extraordinary personal authority and deep lore.  It certainly not the case that Moria would have been filled with such items.  Magical items in middle-earth are rare - so rare that they are generally famous.  Middle Earth is not filled with unnamed +1 magic weapons.  They are rare and tend to have histories.  No one is going around middle earth wearing the Christmas tree.  The Fellowship, despite being a collection of the mightiest mortal figures of Middle Earth, isn't exactly overflowing with magical weapons.  They have Sting, the ancient dagger of Gondolin, and Gandalf's Glamdring.  They have the newly reforged Anduril.  And arguably that's it.  Boromir's newly forged elvish blade might have been magical, or it just might have been a masterwork elvish blade.  There is good evidence that it is not magical because it is unable to damage the troll that tries to enter the chamber of Marzarbul, though Sting's bite is deep.  Legolas eventually acquires a bow from Galadriel that is probably a magic bow, but again it could have just been masterwork.  Gimli, despite being a cousin of the King and the son of King's chief chancellor, certainly does not appear to carry a magic weapon, nor did Thorin appear to have a magic weapon before acquiring Orcrist, nor is any weapon in Smaug's horde apparently its superior.  This is I think very much sufficient to prove that magic weapons, much less potent ones, are not common in Dwarf kingdoms.</blockquote>

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