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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Khisanth the Ancient" data-source="post: 7696932" data-attributes="member: 11368">There seem to be two categories of 'magical' things in Middle-Earth:1) Elvish and exceptional Dwarvish and Numenorean/Dunadan craft - seen as magical by Hobbits and (at least most) Men, but not by their makers. IIRC Galadriel says that she doesn't understand what humans/hobbits mean when they call elf-crafted items 'magical'.2) Truly potent items imbued with the spirit of a great crafter, which become the fulcrum of great events - the Silmarils, Gurthang, the Rings of Power.In the first class, I do not think there is necessarily a clear distinction of kind (rather than degree) 'in-world' between Elvish weapons that are "merely" astonishingly well-made and those with 'special properties' like Sting/Orcrist/Glamdring's orc-detection.So if we are going to translate into D&D terms we have to make a largely arbitrary decision, and I think it is at least defensible to say that weapons made by Elvish artisans and the greater Dwarvish and Numenorean ones are the equivalent of +1 magical weapons, even if they have no 'overt' powers.TL;DR - The distinction between magical and non-magical doesn't work in Middle-Earth the way it does in D&D.Sauron was defeated and (temporarily) killed by the Last Alliance with the Ring on his finger and thus at a much higher power-level than he has at the time of LOTR.Sauron, pre-Ring, was defeated by a magical dog in the First Age.Middle-Earth has fallen a long way by the time of LOTR. Sauron is like a WWII battleship surviving in a post-apocalyptic age where the best anybody else has is cannon-armed wooden sailing ships: powerful but counterable in its original time, but now an overwhelmingly superior force.</blockquote>

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