Gandalf was a 4th level MU

[blacksabre]

..At least thats what I think the Dragon article was named..
Not to date my age, but I believe it was around Dragon#30

The article basically ran down the list of spells Gandalf had performed in the books..

SO with the Movie series, what was the minimum level Gandalf had to be in order to cast the spells he did.
Caveat..For the excersize sake, lets assume the spells he cast were not from his staff, otherwise gandlaf could be very low level indeed..

I'm thinking level 10
The highest level spell I can remember would probably be Telekinesis, level 5 spell,, when he was battling Saruman.

[Khantalas]

Of course, Gandalf is a demigod, in a world where a god is much, much more powerful than a D&D god. His magic using capabilities don't matter that much.

[elliott20]

I thought he probably took a couple levels of fighter as well.

[Yuki Akuma]

I thought he probably took a couple levels of fighter as well.

He has Outsider hit die with a natural ability to cast spells as a twentieth level druid. He also has a few Divine Ranks.

[Draz74]

I say Aasimar Paladin/Sorcerer/Eldritch Knight. Final ECL about 12 or 13. (Effective Sorcerer level 6 or so.)

Just because he was a demigod in his backstory doesn't mean he has to have outsider RHD, or be a Solar with class levels, or be epic-powerful. That's his backstory. That kind of power got taken away when they turned him into an old man.

[Ceres]

Of course, Gandalf is a demigod, in a world where a god is much, much more powerful than a D&D god. His magic using capabilities don't matter that much.

I disagree. The Istari in LOTR aren't as powerful as D&D gods by a longshot. I would think wiz6/ftr3 or something like that. Most D&D-settings are very high-power and high-magic compared to LOTR.

[SpiderBrigade]

He has Outsider hit die with a natural ability to cast spells as a twentieth level druid. He also has a few Divine Ranks.

...and then doesn't use any of the amazing powers a Druid-20-casting outsider with divine ranks would be tossing around to in your standard mid-to-high-magic D&D setting.

LOTR is really not very high magic at all. The magic weapons are essentially masterwork blades that glow. Even the world-impacting artifact Rings of Power don't do all that much. The One Ring itself is basically a Phylactery that can turn you invisible, with some curse effects on it.

What Gandalf mostly does, in the books and the new movies, is inspire people. This is very much in keeping with his role as a divine messenger. He does also fight his opposite number, the Balrog, but that's more of a spiritual battle of wills than slinging spells. Gandalf's "weather battle" with Saruman is similar in nature. The few instances of actual spell-like effects are all pyrotechnic, and it is heavily suggested that this is due to Gandalf's possession of the Elven Ring of Fire.

Does this mean Gandalf is weak? Not at all, he's still one of the major powers in the setting. But in terms of spellcasting, a level 1 wizard could concievably cast more spells in a day than Gandalf does in the whole story. LOTR isn't about powerful wizards in the D&D sense of the term.

[Zeta Kai]

SpiderBrigade, I agree with everything that you said EXCEPT about the One Ring. It is a major artifact, plain & simple; it is probably the best known example of one in fiction. It's right up there with the Arc of the Covenant & the Holy Grail as a quintessential artifact.

I would dare you to use the One Ring in your game as just "a Phylactery that can turn you invisible, with some curse effects on it." As written, it has the power to break the game. Remember, like Sauron himself, we never really saw it at it's full might. But the mere threat of its potential power was enough to motivate every single character in the books (with the exception of a certain Tom Bombadil).

[Shadow of the Sun]

And Tom Bombadil is essentially god in any case.

[Seffbasilisk]

And Tom Bombadil is essentially god in any case.

He's like Shalm, only cooler.

[Vyker]

SpiderBrigade, I agree with everything that you said EXCEPT about the One Ring. It is a major artifact, plain & simple; it is probably the best known example of one in fiction. It's right up there with the Arc of the Covenant & the Holy Grail as a quintessential artifact.

Being a major artifact doesn't necessarily mean that it must have all manner of stat and ability bonuses, or grant you Real Ultimate Power. I agree with Spider -- the Ring, for all its hype, doesn't do much. Its power is subtle, and most of its power is available only to Sauron anyhow. Even exceptional characters can only utilize it to a lesser degree than its real master.

As for world breaking, that army of undead which Aragorn so casually chucks aside was "more powerful" than the One Ring.

"Hi, my name is Sauron, and I'm awesome 'cause I've got nine wraiths as my personal bullyboys!"
"Howdy, I'm Aragorn, and I'd like you to meet my thousand ghost warriors from hell."
"But... I've got the Ring of Power!"
"That's cool, that's cool... nice bling, by the way. Hey, while I'm here, mind if my boys kill all your minions, shatter your tower, and steal your lunch money? Oh, and they're bound entirely to my service, so your mind powers won't work on them."
"Oh. Crap."

Also, the One Ring couldn't melt Nazis. The Ark of the Covenant wins.

[elliott20]

I never really understood why Harrison Ford and the girl actually managed to survive by simply closing their eyes... or rather, if that is all it took, why the other nazis who had done the same thing not survived.

[Matthew]

Bleh. This again? Gandalf, in D&D terms, is an Outsider. Any number of Base Class combinations could represent his other abilities, but he evidently has access to Lightning Bolt in The Hobbit, which suggests Level 5 Spell Caster at the least. Prior to his death he tries to keep his power hidden, for fear of revealing himself to Sauron or other enemies. His Ring appears to be instrumental in driving off the Nazgul, as the white light tends to issue from that hand, but his other 'pyrotechnic' powers appear to be his own (something to do with that whole 'servant of the secret fire' deal, maybe).

The One Ring never reveals the full extent of its power, as that is determined by the user as much as anything else. However, the effects of its destruction provide some hints as to how truly powerful it might be, as well as Sauron's fear that Aragorn may actually be using it.

[Dark]

The One Ring granted immortality to its wearer, that's major enough in my book :)

[Umarth]

From the books the powers we know are:

Invisibility
Alignment change
Domination of other rings of power and those who wear them.
Limited mind reading/domination of others (probably more of this but Frodo wasn't intrested in it).
Imortality to any who wore it even for a second. (Don't forget Sam doesn't die, since he wore the ring, in the end he sails into the West to be with Frodo and Bilbo)
Enhance the abilities of anyone who wears it.

I'd say the explicit abilities it has push it to artifact status.

[Jayabalard]

it seems a silly question... the LOTR is from the Hobbit's perspective, and they have no metagame knowledge... we really have no idea how often Gandalf casts spells or otherwise uses magic when he's "on-camera", let alone when he's "off-camera"

[silentknight]

The One Ring would seem to have certain aspects of a Legacy Item. The more powerful the user, the more powerful the item. And only those who know how to unlock its powers can use them.

[Zeta Kai]

From the books the powers we know are:

Invisibility
Alignment change
Domination of other rings of power and those who wear them.
Limited mind reading/domination of others (probably more of this but Frodo wasn't intrested in it).
Imortality to any who wore it even for a second. (Don't forget Sam doesn't die, since he wore the ring, in the end he sails into the West to be with Frodo and Bilbo)
Enhance the abilities of anyone who wears it.

I'd say the explicit abilities it has push it to artifact status.

First off, sailing into the West isn't the same as immortality. Frodo, Bilbo, Sam & Gimli are all assumed to have died after a life of bliss & peaceful contemplation in Valinor. They were still mortal, & the Ring had no permanent effect in that regard.

The One Ring does NOT grant any form of true immortality, like what the elves have. It only prolongs life, "stretches it thin" in exchange for everything that makes life worth living.

Bilbo wore the ring for 60 years, & 20 years after he took it off for the final time, he was senile & had a foot in the grave. I'd be surprised if he made the journey to Aman without succumbing to old age. He was after all 131 at the time he took the White Ship into the West.

Gollum wore the One Ring for somewhere around 500 years, & it twisted him into a monstrous, wretched shadow of a hobbit, unrecognizable as such. After 80 years of skulking & hunting for his Precious, he may not have had much longer before time caught up to him & the "Gift of Men" would claim his pathetic life.

The ring has unparalleled power to corrupt, & the more power a being intrinsically has, the more likely they are to be corrupted. Gandalf & Galadriel were well aware that they risked their very souls to be within its presense, & they were among the mightiest beings in Middle Earth during the Third Age.

"Phylactery" indeed.

[Dausuul]

..At least thats what I think the Dragon article was named..
Not to date my age, but I believe it was around Dragon#30

The article basically ran down the list of spells Gandalf had performed in the books..

SO with the Movie series, what was the minimum level Gandalf had to be in order to cast the spells he did.
Caveat..For the excersize sake, lets assume the spells he cast were not from his staff, otherwise gandlaf could be very low level indeed..

I'm thinking level 10
The highest level spell I can remember would probably be Telekinesis, level 5 spell,, when he was battling Saruman.

Oh? How about the end of Fellowship, where Frodo is caught between "the Voice [Gandalf]" and "the Eye [Sauron]?" Can a 10th-level wizard counterspell from miles away? What kind of metamagic feat is that?

Also consider that Gandalf can solo a balor. Bit of a tall order for 10th level.

D&D mechanics just don't apply to Lord of the Rings. Magic in LotR is actually much more powerful than D&D magic, but it's also much more subtle and less localized. Middle-Earth wizards can cast spells with AoEs measured in tens of miles; when it comes to one-on-one combat, though, they frequently just pull out swords and start whacking things just like anybody else.

[TheElfLord]

As for world breaking, that army of undead which Aragorn so casually chucks aside was "more powerful" than the One Ring.

"Hi, my name is Sauron, and I'm awesome 'cause I've got nine wraiths as my personal bullyboys!"
"Howdy, I'm Aragorn, and I'd like you to meet my thousand ghost warriors from hell."
"But... I've got the Ring of Power!"
"That's cool, that's cool... nice bling, by the way. Hey, while I'm here, mind if my boys kill all your minions, shatter your tower, and steal your lunch money? Oh, and they're bound entirely to my service, so your mind powers won't work on them."
"Oh. Crap."

Also, the One Ring couldn't melt Nazis. The Ark of the Covenant wins.

Its important to note that in the books, the army of the dead doesn't actually kill anyone. All they do is terrify their enemies to the point that they lose the will to fight. Peter Jackson simplified a section of the book by turning them into massive killing machines.

Along with that, it is noted several times in the books, that if Saron regains the ring, he wins. He will be unstoppable and nothing in Middle Earth can defeat him. Even if you account for the effectiveness of the army of the dead at defeating the corsars, to qutoe Denathor, "To this dying city only the first fingers of his hand have yet been streched" The victories at the Pelenor Fields and over the Black Fleet were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. So no, the army of the dead is not more powerful than the One Ring.

[Dausuul]

Its important to note that in the books, the army of the dead doesn't actually kill anyone. All they do is terrify their enemies to the point that they lose the will to fight. Peter Jackson simplified a section of the book by turning them into massive killing machines.

Along with that, it is noted several times in the books, that if Saron regains the ring, he wins. He will be unstoppable and nothing in Middle Earth can defeat him. Even if you account for the effectiveness of the army of the dead at defeating the corsars, to qutoe Denathor, "To this dying city only the first fingers of his hand have yet been streched" The victories at the Pelenor Fields and over the Black Fleet were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. So no, the army of the dead is not more powerful than the One Ring.

Indeed. My guess is that the scenario would have gone more like this:

"Hi, my name is Sauron, and I'm awesome 'cause I've got nine wraiths as my personal bullyboys!"
"Howdy, I'm Aragorn, and I'd like you to meet my thousand ghost warriors from hell."
"Nice to meet you, Aragorn and ghost warriors. Incidentally, I've got the Ruling Ring."
"That's cool, that's cool... nice bling, by the way. Hey, while I'm here, mind if my boys kill all your minions, shatter your tower, and steal your lunch money? Oh, and they're bound entirely to my service, so your mind powers won't work on them."
"If that's how you want to be, no skin off my burning eyeball. I should point out three factors that I think you failed to fully consider, though. Factor One: I know a lot more about undead than you do. Factor Two: The whole purpose of the Ring is to let me enslave others to my will. Factor Three: Sic him, boys."

[Ever Phasm]

The way I view the 1 ring is this.

It does not turn you invisible but takes you to a LOTR version of the plane of Shadow.

It allows you to read the minds of others who have rings of power.

Sympathy: anything evil.

Sympathy: humans, elves and dwarves

DR 1X 10^3600/flames of Mount Doom

Energy Immunity: everything except the flames of Mount Doom

Highly Inteligent and Lawful Evil

It can decide to bestow the following powers as well

Increase your effective HD and can grant you any corrupting desire you want. (For reference on this see The Return of the King when Sam has the ring).

weight=x
x= whatever it wants to be

size to fit any finger.

[Indon]

The Ring is clearly thought to grant significant power to spellcasters, considering how Gandalf speaks of being able to essentially solo Sauron (who probably is a demigod on the D&D standard, disciple as he was of Melkor) if he were to take it.

Of course, being Sauron's phylactery, it'd probably pull a Soulstone thing on him and then you'd end up with Sauron the UsedtobeGandalf (Gandalf notes similarly, that he would just become another Sauron with the ring).

[Fax Celestis]

Oh? How about the end of Fellowship, where Frodo is caught between "the Voice [Gandalf]" and "the Eye [Sauron]?" Can a 10th-level wizard counterspell from miles away? What kind of metamagic feat is that?

Actually, it's core. Enlarge Spell plus a countering spell with a range of Large (400' + 40'/level) cast by a 10th level caster will hit 1600' away. Not a mile, but a quarter mile.

[Ulzgoroth]

weight=x
x= whatever it wants to be

'"And in the moment before the Ring of power touched the lava, there was a rippling in the air...and so ended the world."

...as it sets it's weight high enough to form an event horizon enclosing the entire planet.

[Dausuul]

Actually, it's core. Enlarge Spell plus a countering spell with a range of Large (400' + 40'/level) cast by a 10th level caster will hit 1600' away. Not a mile, but a quarter mile.

Oh, well, in that case, a spell with 5' range has a range of miles. 0.001 miles, specifically.

Miles. Plural, not fractional. In fact, a couple hundred miles, since the enemy caster was in Barad-dur and Gandalf was someplace west of Anduin.

[Vyker]

"If that's how you want to be, no skin off my burning eyeball. I should point out three factors that I think you failed to fully consider, though. Factor One: I know a lot more about undead than you do. Factor Two: The whole purpose of the Ring is to let me enslave others to my will. Factor Three: Sic him, boys."

If we accept that in LotR, there are magical abilities tied to singular people (i.e., the One Ring is an "I Win" button for Sauron, a cursed ring of invisibility for most folks, and a cursed ring of undisclosed modestly effective subtle coolness for already exceptional individuals), then I highly doubt that an army of the dead whose souls are bound to a singular bloodline can be somehow subverted.

Its important to note that in the books, the army of the dead doesn't actually kill anyone. All they do is terrify their enemies to the point that they lose the will to fight. Peter Jackson simplified a section of the book by turning them into massive killing machines.

Along with that, it is noted several times in the books, that if Saron regains the ring, he wins. He will be unstoppable and nothing in Middle Earth can defeat him. Even if you account for the effectiveness of the army of the dead at defeating the corsars, to qutoe Denathor, "To this dying city only the first fingers of his hand have yet been streched" The victories at the Pelenor Fields and over the Black Fleet were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. So no, the army of the dead is not more powerful than the One Ring.

So, you can have one of two things. One of them is a ring which will never be as powerful in your hands as it is in your enemy's, yet still grants subtle manipulation. The other is an army of the dead which terrifies other armies such that they cease to be armies.

Given that I've already got claim to Gondor, and the Horselords follow my lead, I'll take the undead guys who make that army invincible. All the subtle manipulation in the world won't stop you when everyone around you is dead or fleeing.

That, and we already know that the One Ring is not actually enough to save Sauron from an army. I seem to remember him losing even while wearing the thing.


--

Partily back to the OP, I'm gonna agree that you can't really quantify LotR in D&D terms. I mean, so much of it is based on willpower and ideals and virtues and foggy stuff that D&D just breezes right on by (or hacks up in grotesque fashion, like alignments).

The One Ring is powerful to Sauron. It is implied (people outright say this, but never how, so I consider that a downgrade to implication) that the One Ring could be powerful to other people as well, but it's so very subtle in that power that trying to give it mechanics or claim that it automatically wins is sorta missing the point.

Or, to put it another way, why didn't Elrond just push Isildur into Mount Doom when he refused to chuck in the One Ring?

'cause the whole vibe of LotR is one of morality. It's foggy and vague and not something you can box up nicely by assigning it stats.

[Innis Cabal]

actually...he dosnt have class levels, his race allows him to use magic

[Jayabalard]

That, and we already know that the One Ring is not actually enough to save Sauron from an army. I seem to remember him losing even while wearing the thing.

Actually, the army was pretty insignificant... he fell to a bunch of heroes.

perhaps another hero could duplicate that.... but I doubt it.

[Dausuul]

If we accept that in LotR, there are magical abilities tied to singular people (i.e., the One Ring is an "I Win" button for Sauron, a cursed ring of invisibility for most folks, and a cursed ring of modestly effective subtle coolness for already exceptional individuals), then I highly doubt that an army of the dead whose souls are bound to a singular bloodline can be somehow subverted.

They are bound against their will to carry out a particular task: Fight for Isildur's heir. They're hardly incorruptible--in fact, the task was given them as punishment for having betrayed Isildur to Sauron. Not only that, but they still retain free will; they just don't get to rest until they fulfill their oath. They can turn on Aragorn any time they feel like it.

I can think of any number of ways Sauron could disperse them or turn them against Aragorn. Some don't even require the Ring.

#1. He convinces them that he can restore them to life if they serve him.
#2. He points out that they've fulfilled their oath (as they have, after the battle with the Corsairs) and are free to go. If Aragorn doesn't release them now, he's obviously never going to, so why should they serve him? If they're going to spend eternity in torment anyhow, Sauron can at least offer them the cold comfort of making everyone else suffer for it too.
#3. With the full power of the Ring, he just blasts them into the abyss. What makes you think a pack of ghosts can stand up to a Maiar?

So, you can have one of two things. One of them is a ring which will never be as powerful in your hands as it is in your enemy's, yet still grants subtle manipulation. The other is an army of the dead which terrifies other armies such that they cease to be armies.

Eh, terrorizing enemy armies isn't that hard. Until you demonstrate the ability of the dead to defeat Sauron and his Nazgul--not to mention why they would stay loyal to Aragorn if he reneged on his promise to free them--this is hardly a guarantee of victory.

The way the books describe things, the chief weapon of the dead was fear, and somehow I don't think the Nazgul would be spooked by undead. Since they, y'know, are undead.

That, and we already know that the One Ring is not actually enough to save Sauron from an army. I seem to remember him losing even while wearing the thing.

It wasn't enough to save him from Elendil, Isildur, and Gil-galad. He was tearing their army to shreds before they engaged him.

The Ring is not, in fact, a universal Win Button, even for Sauron. But neither are the Dead.