Belzamus said:
(btw, does it sound like I'm annoyed at all? I hope not. I just love debating this stuff.)
No worries, man. I love debating this stuff too.
I suppose we could infer something like a featherfall, I was just assuming, absent any mention of Gandalf using a spell to avoid the impact, he just straight-up tanked it.
This is basically the case for most of these points, as the language leaves room for a fairly wide interpretation. Especially salient in this regard is magic in Middle Earth, as it tends to be referenced rather than described.
For me, given that the two are a wizard and a supernatural creature, it seemed more likely to me that they have some sort of magical method of cushioning their fall, such as via
feather fall or something similar. I suppose they could have just taken the impact damage, since even a fall of several miles will top out at 20d6.
Anyway, it's described as
[...]
What I take from this is that this was a prolonged battle, not just a couple spells hurled back and forth, otherwise it wouldn't look like a "storm" to the on-lookers. From that, I conclude that not only are both combatants capable of casting the likes of fireball and chain lightning repeatedly, but that they are capable of surviving multiple such spells.
So, are we to conclude that both have high resistance or immunity to such attacks? If so, why are they not pursuing more effective means of attack?
Is the part about it being eight days long described somewhere else, because I'm not really seeing anything in the quoted passage to make me think this was a particularly long fight. Storms can be fairly brief, after all.
Likewise, the amount of lightning and fire tossed about could reasonably have been as brief as two or three castings per combatant. Throw in some good saves and low damage rolls, maybe a protective spell or two, and it's fairly reasonable to assume a modest damage output (particularly since the damage was still enough to be deadly for both of them).
Likewise, if you haven't prepared the right spells (and have set spell-like abilities) then you pretty much have to go with the strategy you've got (though that's supposition, as there's little to say either way about the efficacy of a given attack in that fight).
Also, is a simple fireball spell capable of flashing ice to steam like that? /isn't so good with physics and DnD.
I think this one varied across editions, but I'd just chalk it up to flavor text from the GM.
I'll leave whatever "breaking the mountain" means, since that's pretty ambiguous.
Fair enough.
I also find it kind of... disheartening that a feat of endurance like fighting for 8 days straight while climbing however many miles nearly straight vertically counts for almost nothing simply because DnD has no system for emulating why those things should be special.
Yeah, that one can be rather disappointing, particularly if you want to include combat fatigue as a tactic (which, when it comes to actual fighting, is a major component of any battle). To date, the only times I've seen rules for this are when I've asked two different (minor) third-party companies about coming up with systems for this, and while both did, they left something to be desired...though I suspect that's simply due to the nature of how D&D combat works.
And about magical Balrogs, quoth Gandalf after the situation in the chamber of Mazarbul,
[...]
So, from this we can glean that the Balrog is at least as skilled in magic as Gandalf. At the very least, he has a Dispel Magic SLA and a caster level sufficient to overcome Gandalf's Hold Portal.
Yeah, but that's a very rough approximation that Gandalf and that Balrog were evenly matched. Which does make sense overall, since fighting a foe with a CR equal to your level, by yourself, will result in an equal match under the game rules. Hence why both died. There's nothing here about their objective measurement of power, though.
But, that's all discounting something else I feel is rather significant. Both Gandalf and the Balrog are Maiar, lesser Ainur. We see in the Silmarillion that the Valar, the greater Ainur, are continent-busters. So, extrapolating down, a powerful Maiar might be in mountain-buster territory -- and we do see Huan causing widespread destruction simply from his roar.
This is tricky, because it's based on the idea that since X are similar to Y, they must have similar abilities. However, based on my limited understanding of real-world lore about angels, different ones had different specialties, and so different powers - is there perhaps room for understanding that only some valar could crack continents?
Even if not, then that's still iffy in regards to maiar. Balors and dretches are both demons, for example, but the latter is far and away weaker than the former.
Where I'm going with this is, the Balrog is a Maiar aspected to fire and destruction. I.e., one of the stronger Maiar in terms of combat abilities, so... should he not be higher than 8th level? That seems really low to me, no matter which way you approach it from.
I thought it was fire and shadow, but leaving that aside, the placement of a "stronger" creature is still relative. If you accept Justin Alexander's premise that, in the real world, the most legendary people of history (in terms of mastering a given area) are no higher than 5th level, then an 8th-level creature starts to look like something of a demi-god.
For more scaling, Fingolfin was able to contend with Morgoth for... a week straight, was it? Who, even in his weakened form was causing tremendous geographic devastation with his strikes. And yet, his brother Feanor is explicitly stated to be the strongest of them all. And yet, Feanor is killed by a swarm of Balrogs.
If Balrogs are 8th level, and let's say a "swarm" means... 8, which seems to me about as many as could effectively coordinate against a single target... that would be... rusty here... a CR 14 encounter? So, Feanor is apparently level 13 ish, meaning Fingolfin would have to be... 11ish, at most? Meaning Morgoth could be no more than maybe level 15? Does this honestly sound right?
The objective point here is the level of destruction Morgoth was causing (was he still that destructive even after being weakened? Likewise, when exactly did he fight Fingolfin?). That's hard to do in D&D, since it keeps most things to a tactical level. One could suppose that some 7th- or 8th-level spell-like abilities, perhaps with metamagic, could passably recreate that. Even if not, there are some
third-party supplements that make it possible.
Add in that such things don't necessarily reflect on things like hit points, saving throws, etc. and you can make a reasonable case for a CR 15 Morgoth.
Likewise, economy of actions is pretty important in D&D, and being surrounded by eight creatures can quickly overcome a single opponent. It's certainly not impossible (particularly with some bad rolls for Feanor and some good ones for the balrogs) that eight CR 8 creatures can down a 14th-level character.
If it does, then I want to hear, what does an epic level character in fluff look like?
Bear in mind, that's going to depend on the relative disparity between the epic character and the viewing characters. To a group of 1st-level mortals, watching the CR 15 Morgoth being defeated is like watching a god being taken down.