Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Rice
If you've read the Simarillion, you'll find that the race of men are capable of matching any of the feats of the Elves or Numenoreans. See the deeds of Hurin, Turin and others in that book. So the way I see it is that the best of men can easily match these others in prowess of strength and battle ( if perhaps not in craft of metalworking, etc). So the only advantage I see of the Elves and Numenoreans is that of time.
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Ah, but hang on! Hurin, Turin, etc., are Edain - so they're Men and elf-friends from before Numenor (a gift to the Edain from the Elves). They're not the "lesser Men" that the Numenorians find when they return after the fall of Numenor.
There's a consistent theme in Tolkien of peoples (Men, Elves, even Orcs) becoming "lesser" as time passes; the Edain are the Men of the heroic past, and so they'd be supermen compared with Third Age Breelanders or Dunlendings or whatever.
And the Dunedain at the end of the Second Age (and thus into the Third Age) are clearly "supermen" in some senses. Tolkien tells us that they're extremely tall and strong; and at the Gladden Fields, even "great Orcs" are only able to kill them with a five-to-one loss ratio.
It's precisely that sort of thing that would incline me to tweak the rules a bit for full Middle Earth flavour.