Doom Guy replaces the Fellowship of the Ring

The Fellowship characters will still be around doing the various periphery things that don't directly relate to getting the ring to Mount Doom, but Doom Guy starts in the Shire with the ring, an indestructible map, and the basic knowledge of what it is and what needs to happen. He also has a chainsaw with unlimited fuel and a flashlight. For the purposes of this thread, he will just see the various evil creatures out of Mordor to be the same as demons. Various characters who helped Frodo know that he's coming, so he will still be able to get things like boats if absolutely necessary. Two scenarios:

1. The Ring is functioning entirely as normal. Can the mechanics of its manipulation impede Doom Guy? I pose this one because he has a history of being laser focused on objectives and being nigh on immune to subtlety (obviously he still has to get where he's going regardless). In this scenario, the map also gets fuzzy around Moria and will force him to take about as much time to navigate it as the Fellowship did.

2. The Ring functions as normal except that it has no direct effect on the Doom Guy regardless of whether it would or would not. Map is perfect.

Either way, I can't get the mental image of him screaming "WHO'S A MAN-AND-A-HALF?! [I]I'M[/I] A MAN-AND-A-HALF!!" out of my head. :D

Without any actual resistance feats against the kind of thing the Ring does, I'm not sure how he's going to manage scenario one.

[QUOTE=Sharpandpointies;4828026]Without any actual resistance feats against the kind of thing the Ring does, I'm not sure how he's going to manage scenario one.[/QUOTE]

Hell has a whole legend about his will power; the entire sum of the denizens of hell just acknowledge that he's an unstoppable force; "unbreakable, incorruptible, unyielding," according to their legends about him. It's not a very specific feat, but it's made very clear that no other human will could actually go through what he's gone through. And I know the next thing that's always said when the subject of will power comes up is that the ring is insidious, but brute force is the only real way Doom Guy gets manipulated these days. Samuel Hayden tried [I]so hard[/I] to be his "helpful radio guy who turns out to be evil" and got to watch Doom Guy destroy every one of his special Argent filters one after the other for his trouble. So with some level of superhuman willpower and a general immunity to subtlety, and with the fact that he's entirely on board with using force to accomplish all his goals anyway, I'm not sure what the ring can really do to him that it's demonstrated. When I say he's laser-focused on objectives, I mean he did nothing but kill demons for whole eons, and then after spending another arbitrarily huge amount of time suffering in a cursed sarcophagus, just got right back to it. Just to be clear here, so that doesn't make him sound way overpowered, part of the reason he was [I]physically[/I] able to do his endless war is because he can survive drinking demon blood and get stronger from it.

I'll say he's been lured by the presence of demons at the height of his battle fervor once, but the only reason that led to anything but more dead demons was because a bunch of hell priests collapsed a huge tomb/temple on top of him and trapped him in a cursed sarcophagus. So maybe if the ring could engineer collapsing Moria on him or something, but that seems out of its reach.

So I don't think it's very likely that the ring can meaningfully change him. His whole thing is being too angry for anything but killing demons and breaking all their artifacts to stick in his head.

Reference for (most of) this post:

[video=youtube;T5UF6ashzkw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UF6ashzkw[/video]

Strength of will doesn't really matter though.

Doom Guy is no stranger to using weird demonic artefacts which means he will resist putting the Ring on for all of a second.

Once it's on, he'll just rationalise to himself that he could use it's power to kill more demons. He's putting it to good use so why get rid of it?

The whole point of the Ring is that it works with ambition really well. Doom Guy wants to kill demons, it will help him do that/make him perceive it helping him. The Ring just wants to survive. The whole reason Hobbits are good with it is because they have no real desires for it to work with.

[QUOTE]Strength of will doesn't really matter though.
[/QUOTE]

It does if he's motivated not to put it on by the information he's given according to the scenario

[QUOTE] Once it's on, he'll just rationalise to himself that he could use it's power to kill more demons. He's putting it to good use so why get rid of it? [/QUOTE]

How does the ring make him come to this rationalization in a way that [I]completely[/I] sidesteps willpower? Like the ring has to challenge him on some level, as he is fanatically devoted to again, killing demons and breaking all their things, so while it's even possible he'd put it on, I think best case scenario is that he just goes into Mount Doom with it on his finger. It's not like he wouldn't.

The Ring is not a perfect manipulator, it's just [I]a[/I] manipulator

[QUOTE=BitVyper;4829583]It does if he's motivated not to put it on by the information he's given according to the scenario.

How does the ring make him come to this rationalization in a way that [I]completely[/I] sidesteps willpower? Like the ring has to challenge him on some level, as he is fanatically devoted to again, killing demons and breaking all their things, so while it's even possible he'd put it on, I think best case scenario is that he just goes into Mount Doom with it on his finger. It's not like he wouldn't.

The Ring is not a perfect manipulator, it's just [I]a[/I] manipulator[/QUOTE]

Well, this seems to be coming down to conjecture.

Like, as Sharp said in a different thread, Gandalf is a millenia old being who has never deviated from his purpose despite intensely difficult circumstances. He didn't even want to touch the Ring because he knew he would break and would be taken by it.

The Ring is seductive and powerful and works very subtly. Doom Guy won't be having a dialogue with it or anything, it works on the level of just getting people to work themselves into a position where taking it, holding it or putting it on seems like the best idea.

Doom Guy has no fear of demonic artefacts. That is a canonical thing. He will be warned like "Hey, don't put this on. It will eat your brain or whatever," but I'm having trouble with seeing him believing that. He will find himself thinking "Pssh, I'm the Doom Slayer. I have spent eons in hell, I have faced things this world has never known and been unbroken. They say I shouldn't even touch this thing but they don't know what I am capable of. This will make my guns shoot better (or whatever)," and then he puts it on.

Canonically, the best defence against the Ring is a lack of ambition and a lack of ego. Arguably the Ring's lowest point is when it is trying to get at Sam through gardening. It's driven to that because that's all it had to work with for Sam.

Doom Guy has desires, simple though they are. He has a healthy disregard for people telling him stuff and he has a consistent history of putting demonic things on or into his person. I'm really not seeing the case for him holding out against the Ring when he seems exactly like the kind of person who would get taken in by it.

Gandalf being afraid of it seems to be the best feat it has, as far as I can tell. Like is there some huge feat I've been missing all this time? Because arguments about the One Ring's vaunted ability seem almost tautological at times. As far as I'm aware, its feats in canon amount to: Directly and more-or-less immediately enthralled Isildur, who is largely unfeated (then wound up at the bottom of a river), enthralled Boromir who had [I]enormous[/I] motivation to take it from the outset and was never shy about wanting to use it to the point that his actions look almost natural, enthralled Faramir, who had the same motivation as Boromir plus daddy issues, and yet resisted it at least briefly, and spent months screwing up Frodo which ultimately led to Frodo failing to cast it into Mount Doom. That's good and all; I mean I'd certainly expect it to be able to manipulate a lot of people, but it's not like so great that we should be completely ignoring the motivations and feats of every character who might ever encounter it and assume that the One Ring is instantly able to jump in the driver's seat of their brain. Doom Guy has held to his motivation for literal eons and has solid feats of that kind of sneaky "aha you hate demons, I'll help you kill more demons" stuff working on him. That's the entire reason Hayden had to go for brute force methods of control.

Edit: I should say that when I refer to the ring's feats, I mean the ring on its own manipulating people. The ring with Sauron wearing it is a demonstrably different animal.

[QUOTE=BitVyper;4829609]Gandalf being afraid of it seems to be the best feat it has, as far as I can tell. Like is there some huge feat I've been missing all this time? Because arguments about the One Ring's vaunted ability seem almost tautological at times. As far as I'm aware, its feats in canon amount to: Directly and more-or-less immediately enthralled Isildur, who is largely unfeated (then wound up at the bottom of a river), enthralled Boromir who had [I]enormous[/I] motivation to take it from the outset and was never shy about wanting to use it to the point that his actions look almost natural, enthralled Faramir, who had the same motivation as Boromir plus daddy issues, and yet resisted it at least briefly, and spent months screwing up Frodo which ultimately led to Frodo failing to cast it into Mount Doom. That's good and all; I mean I'd certainly expect it to be able to manipulate a lot of people, but it's not like so great that we should be completely ignoring the motivations and feats of every character who might ever encounter it and assume that the One Ring is instantly able to jump in the driver's seat of their brain. Doom Guy has held to his motivation for literal eons and has solid feats of that kind of sneaky "aha you hate demons, I'll help you kill more demons" stuff working on him. That's the entire reason Hayden had to go for brute force methods of control.

Edit: I should say that when I refer to the ring's feats, I mean the ring on its own manipulating people. The ring with Sauron wearing it is a demonstrably different animal.[/QUOTE]

I'm not disputing any of that really.

I'll freely cop to not being a LotR buff, I never finished the books and the films like a thousand years ago so my knowledge is based on what gets thrown around here.

My take on this thread though, is very much rooted in the character's motivations and established behaviours.

Facts:

- Doom Guy wants to kill as many demons as possible at any time. His endless well of fury drives him to endure preposterously unpleasant things in pursuit of this.
- Doom Guy has zero problem getting all up in demonic energies, artefacts, tools, weapons and literal bodily fluids. He does this a lot. It's not out of character for him.
- Doom Guy has a healthy dose of scepticism towards people telling him things. Didn't listen to Hayden, didn't listen to much of anyone. Just kept on killing.

Ergo, Doom Guy is pretty much primed for the thought "I should use this ring," because he has a track record of not being effected negatively by this stuff and he is clearly hungry for more power to kill demons more efficiently with.

That's my whole thought process for this. In the LotR canon, it is people who don't have ego or desires that are able to best resist putting the Ring on. Doom Guy isn't that. He is like a raging id that wants to murderkill everything through every means necessary.

It might take a bit but I see the Ring beating him.

[QUOTE=Nik Hasta;4829572]Strength of will doesn't really matter though.

Doom Guy is no stranger to using weird demonic artefacts which means he will resist putting the Ring on for all of a second.

Once it's on, he'll just rationalise to himself that he could use it's power to kill more demons. He's putting it to good use so why get rid of it?

The whole point of the Ring is that it works with ambition really well. Doom Guy wants to kill demons, it will help him do that/make him perceive it helping him. The Ring just wants to survive. The whole reason Hobbits are good with it is because they have no real desires for it to work with.[/QUOTE]

Pretty much.

[QUOTE=BitVyper;4829609]Gandalf being afraid of it seems to be the best feat it has, as far as I can tell.[/quote]

Galadriel, who with her own Ring, basically holds off Sauron's constant mental prying, also knows she won't win against the Ring.

[quote] Like is there some huge feat I've been missing all this time? Because arguments about the One Ring's vaunted ability seem almost tautological at times. As far as I'm aware, its feats in canon amount to: Directly and more-or-less immediately enthralled Isildur, who is largely unfeated (then wound up at the bottom of a river), enthralled Boromir who had [I]enormous[/I] motivation to take it from the outset and was never shy about wanting to use it to the point that his actions look almost natural, enthralled Faramir, who had the same motivation as Boromir plus daddy issues, and yet resisted it at least briefly, and spent months screwing up Frodo which ultimately led to Frodo failing to cast it into Mount Doom. That's good and all; I mean I'd certainly expect it to be able to manipulate a lot of people, but it's not like so great that we should be completely ignoring the motivations and feats of every character who might ever encounter it and assume that the One Ring is instantly able to jump in the driver's seat of their brain. Doom Guy has held to his motivation for literal eons and has solid feats of that kind of sneaky "aha you hate demons, I'll help you kill more demons" stuff working on him. That's the entire reason Hayden had to go for brute force methods of control.

Edit: I should say that when I refer to the ring's feats, I mean the ring on its own manipulating people. The ring with Sauron wearing it is a demonstrably different animal.[/QUOTE]

Going to make a small correction. Ring did pretty much bugger-all to Faramir, because Faramir refused to even consider looking at it. Faramir's big thing was that he had already decided he wouldn't take it. He found out about it, nothing more, and said 'Nope, I already said I wouldn't do anything like that, and I'm sticking by it.'

Faramir didn't actually 'resist' anything, other than his OWN temptation. The Ring never had the opportunity to work on him, specifically because he was wiser than Boromir and didn't give it the chance.

[QUOTE=Nik Hasta;4829618]Facts:

- Doom Guy wants to kill as many demons as possible at any time. His endless well of fury drives him to endure preposterously unpleasant things in pursuit of this.
- Doom Guy has zero problem getting all up in demonic energies, artefacts, tools, weapons and literal bodily fluids. He does this a lot. It's not out of character for him.
- Doom Guy has a healthy dose of scepticism towards people telling him things. Didn't listen to Hayden, didn't listen to much of anyone. Just kept on killing.

Ergo, Doom Guy is pretty much primed for the thought "I should use this ring," because he has a track record of not being effected negatively by this stuff and he is clearly hungry for more power to kill demons more efficiently with.

That's my whole thought process for this. In the LotR canon, it is people who don't have ego or desires that are able to best resist putting the Ring on. Doom Guy isn't that. He is like a raging id that wants to murderkill everything through every means necessary.

It might take a bit but I see the Ring beating him.[/QUOTE]

Pretty much where I'm seeing this heading. I won't say that taking the Ring will stop Doomguy from running around slaughtering demons, or attacking Sauron's people in this situation as basically the equivalent of demons, or whatever. It clearly won't.

I just don't see this as particularly good proof that once he takes it, he's going to toss it into the fire. And if he doesn't do that, barring him actually having feats for being more powerful than Sauron, he's pretty much done.

Second scenario, can he be sneaky? Likely to get the Ring past the Nazgûl? And if he can't, is he capable of dealing with the Nazgûl (immaterial, weapons break on them, black breath,etc)?