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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7265115" data-attributes="member: 996">That was the example I thought of.  Gandalf didn't seem phased by Bilbo having a ring that turned him invisible, so such lesser rings much have existed, as well, without all the corruption of the One Ring, and telling the difference wasn't easy.  The D&D Rings of Elemental Command each appear to be a lesser ring of some kind until their true powers are somehow unlocked or revealed.  Personally, I'm having trouble thinking of a lot of other sources of magical rings.  The one variation on the djinni legend, the lamp your rub /with the matching ring/, and the titular ring of the Nibelung (of which the One Ring can surely be considered derivative, in story arc, if not in powers).  What am I blanking on?The original thief couldn't use a magic wand via trickery, and Thieves' Cant is an older idea than Zelazny... IIRC, Lieber's Grey Mouser shared the D&D Thief's preferences for armor & weapons, including favoring the sling over the bow, and dabbled in both linguistics and magic.But, the Thief, like the warrior, is a hoary archetype, indeed. Possibly, if there were still the media sensations over Satanism and suicide associated with it. While I was technically alive for it, I certainly wasn't reading sci-fi/fantasy at the time, but what I've noticed is that there was a whole lot of Conan pastiche written in the 60s (Elric, for instance, was an intentional subversion of the formula), and the Tolkien pastiche started later...</blockquote>

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