Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 7696853" data-attributes="member: 23751">My point is that there is as much evidence for the bomb as there is for a Staff of Power.  That amount is zero.  Assuming a Staff of Power is bupkis.If they have to warn them not to attempt to overcome Sauron by power, then they are in the same ballpark as Sauron is for level.  Both have angelic powers and magic, so if Gandalf were only 6th level, there would be no need to warn him not to try.  He's not an imbecile.Again, not an imbecile.  If he's going up against Sauron, it's because he's at a power level where winning is at least possible.  If we assume Sauron is 18th level (and I think he's higher), then Saruman would be 16-17th level and Gandalf right behind at 14-15th level, at least until he takes the white and gains power, moving him up to Saruman's level.There is no such text.  What he did in the Hobbit does not in any way make it clear that he can only do that sort of thing.It's nothing like the mithril of Middle Earth, just as D&D dwarves and elves are nothing like Middle Earth dwarves and elves.  They are poor approximations limited by play balance.There's no reason to assume that just because he didn't show anything more powerful, that he couldn't cast anything more poweful.Broken mountains means broken mountains.  Literary license in what that means is the same as the movies having elves at Helm's Deep.  It's the sort of "literary license" that invents fabrication whole cloth.  Um, no.  The problem I'm having is that Ancalagon the Black was large enough to break mountains when he fell.  That can't be modeled by 1e dragons, or even by 1e Tiamat.    You are not remembering correctly.  The dwarves could only act when his thought was upon them.  That's is not at all the same as they could only act as puppets.  When his thought and power were upon them, THEY could act.  They had the ability and life to do things.  When his thoughts were not upon them, they could not act.  He needed Eru for that.No.  I'm simply rejecting the plethora of unsupported assumptions that the author of the essay makes in order to make everything as weak as he wants it.</blockquote>

Verification