Gandalf is the player that insisted on playing a wizard but never bothered learning their spells past cantrips and keeps rolling a d12 instead of a d20, but no one notices.
I’d say Gandalf is probably more like the dm self insert NPC that does exactly enough to move the story where it needs to go. He doesn’t use most of his spells because he wants the players to be the ones affecting change. And he suffers from the balrog because the party rolled low on the situation they were supposed to get out of. And Gandalf comes back because the dm said so and it made for an epic twist.
The main supporting parts of that are that Gandalf is the avatar of a Maia, which is kind of like a meta character already. Sort of like having a god in disguise. Not something a dm would allow for a player. As well as gandalfs explicit goal to not be the the pivotal being affecting change, but to push other major actors into doing it.
And lastly, the piece of trivia that Gandalf wasn’t supposed to play a bigger role in the hobbit (which came before lotr was written as an epic sequel, and was mostly a story for his kids) than basically a bumbling old sarcastic wizard, brings the concept that the dm just called back a character from a previous campaign.
I mean, it’s pretty bright.
Guy used his channel divinity charge to repel nine legendary undead and people are bitching about the light show
Lord of the rings lore is incredible, which is an oddly obvious thing to say, but the aspect that I love most is Tolkien’s take on divinity. Specifically that enacting magic necessarily requires a divine being to permanently surrender a piece of themselves as fuel. Every piece of magic performed amounts to irreversible self mutilation. This further develops several characters, but none more beautifully than Saruman who was stripped to nearly nothing in the end. He chose middle earth as his home and lost it, his friends whom he cherished, and the overwhelming majority of his being. He created his own hell out of cowardice first and greed second.
Is that right? I’ve read a fair number of the supporting works and that doesn’t ring a bell, so where is that said.
I thought it was more that Gandalf’s job was not to wade in and use might and magic to sort things out for the residents of middle earth - instead his brief was to be a mentor and catalyst, using minimal magic except at need.
The diminution of Saruman wasn’t because he spent all day magicing things up.
That’s how the evil boys became wisps- by pouring their being into arda. Saruman became diminished by expediting the creation of orcs, Sauron hollowed himself out creating the ring, and Morgoth spent his soul making femboys into ugly bastards (and flame demons). And you’re correct, but my comment was already long enough to dissuade most from reading it so I cut detail. No one reads multi-paragraph comments on checks notes /c/greentext.
you got me in the first half I’m not gonna lie
Morgoth did legitimately create ugly bastards from femboys. He warped the song of creation, causing orcs to come about- orcs who would otherwise have been salivatingly androgynous elves. Eru illuvatar was quoted as saying “not bad.” Genuinely canon, albeit paraphrased.
