Dumbledore vs Sauron

[Mider2009]

Dumbledore vs Sauron third age of magic

Round 2 Dumbledore and Voldormort team up vs Sauron second age of magic when he has his body and the one ring

Round 3 Dumbledore, Voldormort, Harry with the strongest wands vs Sauron in his strongest form

[Sharpandpointies]

Not really sure what these Wizards have that's going to really put the hurt on Sauron. Physical attacks against a guy who withstands lightning that's shattering important Númenorean temples? Mental attacks against someone who psychically controls his armies.

Bit of a stomp in all three cases. Even Sauron without the Ring in the Third Age of the world was still more powerful than Gandalf the White.

[big_adventure]

Round 1 is Dumbledore against a featless spirit? Does Sauron in that form have anything he can do to Dumbledore?

Round 2... quickdraw if things like Avada Kedavra or Transfiguration work. If they don't, the wizards are likely screwed.

Round 3... same as 2.

[Sharpandpointies]

Round 1 is Dumbledore against a featless spirit? Does Sauron in that form have anything he can do to Dumbledore?

Sauron, in the books, isn't just a spirit in the Third Age of the World. He's there, physically.

Also he does stuff like 'Psychically control his entire non-human army over a distance of hundreds of miles' so he has at least that going for him. Should be enough.

Round 2... quickdraw if things like Avada Kedavra or Transfiguration work. If they don't, the wizards are likely screwed.

Round 3... same as 2.

I think we'd need to see feats for Kedavra working against a spiritual, immortal being of enormous supernatural power with a potent artifact that ties it to this world. Similarly transmutation. I mean, at least with Transmutation you can argue that Sauron doesn't have any feats against it, but the problem is that Sauron is also a shapeshifter.

[Mider2009]

Round 1 is Dumbledore against a featless spirit? Does Sauron in that form have anything he can do to Dumbledore?

Round 2... quickdraw if things like Avada Kedavra or Transfiguration work. If they don't, the wizards are likely screwed.

Round 3... same as 2.

He’s not without feats, he has some control over mount doom, weather control, I think he’s causing the sun to be blotted out with storms, he has mental powers, he empowers the Nazgul and witch king, and as mentioned he does control his armies mentally as well.

[Mider2009]

I don’t think that curse can just destroy anything, didn’t it get deflected in the Harry Potter movies ?

[Mider2009]

Not really sure what these Wizards have that's going to really put the hurt on Sauron. Physical attacks against a guy who withstands lightning that's shattering important Númenorean temples? Mental attacks against someone who psychically controls his armies.

Bit of a stomp in all three cases. Even Sauron without the Ring in the Third Age of the world was still more powerful than Gandalf the White.

He also was fine when a continent sank no?

[Sharpandpointies]

He also was fine when a continent sank no?

Actually, Númenor’s destruction cost Sauron his body.

Edit: Which apparently has spawned endless discussion about ‘If he didn’t have a body, how did he carry the Ring home?’ I think there might be an answer in the Letters, but I haven’t read them in a while; pity Siriel isn’t around.

[Mider2009]

Actually, Númenor’s destruction cost Sauron his body.

Edit: Which apparently has spawned endless discussion about ‘If he didn’t have a body, how did he carry the Ring home?’ I think there might be an answer in the Letters, but I haven’t read them in a while; pity Siriel isn’t around.

I thought it only made it so he couldn’t shape shift

[Mider2009]

Actually, Númenor’s destruction cost Sauron his body.

Edit: Which apparently has spawned endless discussion about ‘If he didn’t have a body, how did he carry the Ring home?’ I think there might be an answer in the Letters, but I haven’t read them in a while; pity Siriel isn’t around.

Reading further, I think both happened actually...he couldn’t shape shift into a pleasing form and had no body?

[Sharpandpointies]

Reading further, I think both happened actually...he couldn’t shape shift into a pleasing form and had no body?

Something like that. "Never again could take on fair form. Took on the form of a dreadful tyrant and remained in that form forevermore."

*looks it up in Akallabêth*

Okay, here's one of the statements about that.

"...and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair ot the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arouse out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible..."

What I get from this is that Sauron not only left his Ring at home when he went to Númenor (solving that debate), but his sexy form (Annatar, Lord of Gifts/Mairon, the Excellent Dude) was destroyed and he couldn't take on that shape. However, he could still make new shapes for himself, and chose one that was pretty nasty. Re-embodied himself.

And Sauron, back in the First Age, was perfectly capable of shape-shifting (like all of the Ainur) - does it more than once when trying (and failing) to deal with Lúthien and Huan. Did he lose that power? Will need to look it up a little more, been a while since I researched Sauron.

Either way, he's a powerful spirit whose body is nothing more than something to house that spirit, and if he loses it (as long as the Ring is around) he doesn't actually lose any of his overall power. I'm still pretty iffy on Transmutation working on that, especially when done by someone of lesser power to Sauron himself.

[big_adventure]

Sauron, in the books, isn't just a spirit in the Third Age of the World. He's there, physically.

Also he does stuff like 'Psychically control his entire non-human army over a distance of hundreds of miles' so he has at least that going for him. Should be enough.

That wouldn't really work on Dumbledore, who explicitly has extremely high mental defenses. Sauron, in the Third Age, as I recall, has no feats for throwing fire or lightning or really anything mental that will affect a human with Dumbledore's level of oculomancy (the skill of protecting your mind).

Now, I'm not claiming anywhere that Dumbledore can do anything to Sauron there. The same point applied to the other two fights would apply here: would Dumbledore's instawin options work? I'm far from sure. Probably more likely against Third Age, ring-less Sauron than the earlier, stronger, complete versions, but I don't even know how to specify how likely that would be. I just don't think that depowered Sauron can do much to Dumbledore in the arena. The dude still has teleportation, invisibility and a host of other stuff at his disposal.

I think we'd need to see feats for Kedavra working against a spiritual, immortal being of enormous supernatural power with a potent artifact that ties it to this world. Similarly transmutation. I mean, at least with Transmutation you can argue that Sauron doesn't have any feats against it, but the problem is that Sauron is also a shapeshifter.

I would tend to agree that AK would fail on a being as strong and immortal and... inhuman... as Sauron. Transmutation is a harder question. If Dumbledore transmutes Sauron into a glass of water, it's arguable that Sauron wouldn't retain enough mind to be able to transform himself back. Afaik, he isn't Zeus from Greek myth who golden showers himself into strange womens' bedrooms before transforming back. However, given the power level generally shown for Sauron and his equals in the old ages, I'd probably lean towards him resisting or fighting through it. And for the second two fights, he should also definitely be capable of destroying the wizards.

[big_adventure]

Something like that. "Never again could take on fair form. Took on the form of a dreadful tyrant and remained in that form forevermore."

*looks it up in Akallabêth*

Okay, here's one of the statements about that.

"...and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair ot the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arouse out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible..."

What I get from this is that Sauron not only left his Ring at home when he went to Númenor (solving that debate), but his sexy form (Annatar, Lord of Gifts) was destroyed and he couldn't take on that shape. However, he could still make new shapes for himself, and chose one that was pretty nasty. Re-embodied himself.

And Sauron, back in the First Age, was perfectly capable of shape-shifting (like all of the Ainur) - does it more than once when trying (and failing) to deal with Lúthien and Huan. Did he lose that power? Will need to look it up a little more, been a while since I researched Sauron.

Either way, he's a powerful spirit whose body is nothing more than something to house that spirit, and if he loses it (as long as the Ring is around) he doesn't actually lose any of his overall power. I'm still pretty iffy on Transmutation working on that, especially when done by someone of lesser power to Sauron himself.

Well, that certainly supports the idea that he'd be able to deal with a transfiguration attack.

[Sharpandpointies]

It's kind of a thing with Ainur that their bodies are nothing more than houses they build for their actual selves. Now, things are a little different with beings like the Balrog, Sauron, and other spirits who have cut themselves off from the Secret Fire and Ilúvatar, but that's one of the reasons Sauron made the Ring - so that if anything happened to him, he had this anchor that prevented him from losing any of his power and being dispersed if his physical form got messed up.

Basically, it prevents what happened to the Balrog from happening to HIM.

It also acted as an enhancement tool for his own powers of domination and 'sorcery', allowed him to remote-control the other Rings, etc.

Sauron in the books is explicitly stated to be more powerful than Gandalf the White. Tolkien himself basically confirmed that in the Letters. Gandalf the White was stronger than Gandalf the Grey. We've been over Gandalf the Grey's feats before.
So it gives a running start as to where Sauron stacks up, powerwise.

Note - the above refers to the Third Age, Sauron without his Ring. Note that Sauron without his Ring is stated by Tolkien to be no less powerful than he was before he made it; his power still exists, and as long as he has recovered from losing his power he's at full strength (as he is by the time Lord of the Rings rolls around).

With his Ring his power is actually ENHANCED beyond what it naturally would be.

I don't see why Sauron, as of the Third Age, couldn't do all of the stuff he did before (other than, perhaps, shapeshifting, jury still out on that). His power level remains the same, it's the same character, etc. There are reasons, in-story (and good ones) why he doesn't just storm around stomping all over people, so it's not precisely PIS that he doesn't.

[big_adventure]

Well, I will take your take on the lore of Tolkien.

I never interpreted the Third Age Sauron like that - I recall it being, er, Tolkien-explicitly stated that he tied up a lot of his power in the Ring, such that when he didn't possess it, he didn't have that power, but that therefore he had more power when the Ring was his.

He couldn't romp his way through ME without the ring. His armies could, of course, but he couldn't. And a full-on Ainur would have been able to do just that: romp, no matter what the opposing forces present consisted of. He was drastically lessened without the Ring - this is why he simply didn't just go stomp Gandalf's face into the dirt, why he didn't just go rip Aragorn's head from his body, why he depends on Nazgul and Orks and Saruman and mercenaries and everything else. Thus, he wanted the Ring back, over everything else, because with it, he'd have all the power he needed to own these frail forces aligned against him.

As stated, I will take your word for this not being the case. I have only read the core books and the Sim, and none of the other supporting materials, and I've certainly not spent any time on interpretations. And interpretations are required in Tolkien's work, as he leaves a lot of details pretty fluid. So-and-so "has great power" but we never actually see a lot of it on-page.