Should Gamers Be Allowed to Kill Sauron?

Q: Should Gamers Be Allowed to Kill Sauron?

ANSWER: Yes. If you are a role-playing gamer and you are adventuring in Middle-earth during the Second Age or the Third Age, then you SHOULD have a chance to kill Sauron. Game referees and designers may not agree with me, but I am sure they all recognize that the games can’t really “stay faithful to the books” forever.

Still, if you are running a game in Middle-earth and your players want to take a swipe at Sauron, here are a few suggestions for how you can give them a fair shot at taking the old boy down without leaving everyone feeling like they betrayed Tolkien’s spirit.

Run the Game When Sauron is Ringless

Nearly all Middle-earth games that people have described to me are placed in the Third Age anyway. So if Sauron doesn’t have the Ring, your players don’t ever have to get hold of it (unless you’re allowing them to play Bilbo or Frodo — in which case, why are you reading this article?). If they do not know about the Ring, if they cannot find the Ring, they cannot defeat Sauron forever. So allowing the players to take a shot at Middle-earth’s most powerful evil Maia might “change the timeline” a bit if they kill him, but everyone knows he’ll come back and the Third Age will just last a little longer (assume it will take him 1,000-1,500 years to rebuild his body).

Assume Sauron Doesn’t Have a Single Physical Body

Many people rolled their eyes when they saw that horrific fiery eye in the Peter Jackson movies because we all know that Gollum tells Frodo and Sam that Sauron has nine fingers. Nine fingers = physical body, right?

Well, maybe. Even though Sauron was separated from the Ring, the fact that the Ring existed mean that most of his power was still relatively intact. Sauron was able to take physical shape again; by inference, it’s arguable that he could probably still disincarnate himself at will, or take a different shape (such as the form a giant fiery eye).

In this way if your player characters get close to Sauron and you feel like the game shouldn’t end too soon, you can have him morph into something which they are unable to kill. Essentially, transform him into an unincarnated Maiaric spirit and he can get away.

Surround Sauron With A Thousand Orcs

Maybe you don’t have to print out a thousand Orc character sheets. You might be able to create 1,000 Orc character sheet files and update them on your laptop. But make those ambitious players fight every last one of those 1,000 Orcs in order to get to Sauron.

Allow for player creativity. You don’t want to have to wipe out 1,000 Orcs all at once because someone figure out a way to create a nuclear bomb in Middle-earth. Spread your risk but make the players earn the right to confront Sauron.

Create a Few Fake Saurons

His specialty in the First Age was “master of phantoms”, remember? Sauron can certainly toss a few phantoms out there to act like himself. So you could send the players on a mission to deal with a phantom masquerading as The Necromancer or as Sauron himself.

Sauron was also served by “sorcerors”, such as the Hill Men of Rhudaur. There is no reason why you can’t elevate one of those lesser servants to take his place. Half of you have already done that anyway.

In the Second Age, Separate Sauron from the Ring

If you’re running a game in the Second Age (and I applaud you for doing that), then don’t let your characters know about the Rings of Power. Or, if they do know, don’t let them “see” the One Ring. Just because Sauron is wearing it doesn’t mean he can’t be slain. In fact, Elendil dealt Sauron a mortal blow while Sauron was wearing the One Ring. Isildur only finished him off a little more quickly by cutting the Ring off Sauron’s hand.

If you have painted yourself into a corner and your player-characters know about the Rings of Power and they still want to take on Sauron, then you still have some options.

• They need to resist him. The Ring improves Sauron’s ability to dominate others’ wills.
• Sauron can take the Ring off if he feels he is in serious danger.
• Sauron doesn’t have to stay in his body although the Ring won’t vanish if he disincarnates himself.

If you’re running a game BEFORE Sauron makes the One Ring, I guess your task is simpler: don’t let the players get near him. He is certainly more vulnerable before the Elves realize who he truly is but then your players need to justify why they would want to kill him then anyway.

Let Sauron Mop The Castle With The Heroes

He’s extremely powerful and not easy to kill. Sure, Elendil took a whack at Sauron and got lucky, but Elendil also had an ancient Dwarven sword that was probably made with Morgoth in mind. Narsil was “made by Telchar in the deeps of time” — it comes from an age when Dwarves were Dwarves and Men were Orc-fodder. Unless you’re going to allow the player characters to sail to Numenor and steal Narsil from some unsuspecting Lord of Andunie, it’s not like they have a chance at grabbing it anyway.

The odds are stacked against your player-characters. Sauron can toss lightning bolt after lightning bolt at them. If you’re using power points ignore the Rolemaster system and just give him, like, oh, 5,000,000 power points (BEFORE the Ring). Remember: the Maiar helped to shape the world and the universe. They’re well beyond the old “10 power points per level” thing.

You can also make Sauron a multitasking anti-player-character defense system. That is, if he is attacked he should be able to defend himself “magically” against everyone within a reasonable distance — say about 1,000 miles. He gets domination attacks against everyone on his radar. He can throw up barriers like stone walls and earth walls and fire walls in a dozen locations at once — two dozen. Fireballs are like popcorn to him.

The thing is, you can’t treat Sauron like he’s some namby-pamby 100th level Fire Demon facing off with 15th level fighters and mages. He’s beyond their ken. Let them take a few swipes at the old boy. He could probably use a few chuckles.

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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?

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