Looks like you took the TL;DR route. Post #2 starts yapping about his theories about Gandalf not having any magical powers and neither did Merlin and you stopped there.
Can't deny that I didn't read the whole page - didn't even read the whole of post#2, though I considered the guy had a point insofar as Gandalf does indeed work mostly by more or less mundane means (diplomacy, gather knowledge, forge alliances etc. pp.) which, when I read the book for the first time, made me indeed wonder what good his casting abilities actually are (back then, I played a RPG with more modest but still influental magic and somehow would have expected more from THE archetypical wizard). Of course the reason is that a Wizard with unchecked powers has "Deus Ex Machina" written all over him and would kill any story he's in, and even with his limited powers (f.ex. no teleport, no flying, to walking through walls...), he's still absent most of the time in TH and lots of time in LOTR to preserve drama.
But, even with all his displays of power you quoted, some things still stand concerning Gandalf's power in particular and magic in Middle Earth in general:
- Gandalf is still a demigod and even considering he got hit by the nerfbat as he was sent to Middle Earth, he's still a thousand years old by the time of LOTR and one of the most powerful beings in the story (him, Saruman, probably Radagast, Galadriel, Elrond, Sauron, the Balrogs, Smaug, the Witch King - none of them being mundane beings)
- apart from defeating other Maiar, he still is fairly conservative with his power compared to magic-heavy settings. He uses fewer spells onscreen over 2 years than casters in D&D in a single adventure - hell, even with all his spells, he fails to open that door. Would you expect that to happen to a Wizard 15/Archmage 10/Maiar 10/Chosen of Manwe 10? (yes, I made that combo up)
- In fact, there isn't even much magic going around in the world anyway, and when it is, it's usually pretty ill-defined. Saruman does some stuff where you have a clear effect, and so does Luthién (breaking free of her father's imprisonment, morphing into a vampire, dancing Satan to sleep etc.). Others apparently are limited to their dominion when exerting their powers (Melian, Galadriel, Elrond etc.) or combine it with their craft (Feanor, Celebrimbor etc.). And even some of these prefer swords over spells when they get into a fight. And *none* of them are mere mortals.
- And, as Unbeliever says, some equally impressive feats are accomplished by fighter types using their swords, even though most of them are Eldar as well (okay, Tûrin was totally mortal and still badass).
Let me ask you: Would you play a Wizard in a setting were your power was limited to a certain location, bound to a specific artifact, or depending on you being either of divine blood and a couple of thousand years old to boot? It's not that "fighters can't have nice things" in Middle Earth, it's more that spellcasters are some kind of obscure prestige class with the prerequisite "Race: Maiar or Eldar" and half a dozen others tagged on it.
Seeker of Truth is a 12 book series adapted into a two season TV series. Not goina lie, loved the series even through it didn't exactly stick with the book.
* The Wheel of Time on the other hand is a 14 book like excellent series that recently ended and took like the last 15 years to write. [...] * Harry Potter vs Shotgun is an example that shocases how badly the books were wrote out. If Rowling wasn't actively trying to protray the entire Wizard world as a bunch of incompetent morons what's his name would have walked into a police station military base and instantly dominated every single one of the people inside. Because obviously, the killing curse f'ing fails on everyone who loves their children. >.<
Just quoting the stuff I can comment on:
- I've only heard that Terry Goodkind mainly uses his series to promote Objectivism and writes some pretty objectionable (no pun intended) stuff on top of that (okay, so do others). Still, not really interested.
- read TWOT until... book 5? Dunno (was a translation where the novels got split into ever-shortening books). I liked it in the beginning, but at some point it got repetitive watching epic level ta'veren and bazillions of Aes Sedai (each one new more coincidentally with some never before discovered power greater than before etc.) getting into fights with consecutively stronger shadowspawn or losing track of backup characters. And it wasn't even terribly well written imho. And the guy shouldn't have had protection from editors.
- Harry Potter I really liked, at least until book 4. Then my suspension of disbelief snapped because retarded decisions started piling up and the suspense from earlier books got taken out. Oh, and the Wizard Nazis were a pretty dumb plot device.
But to be honest, I stopped reading fantasy (apart from a few choice series) some time ago (I avoid series that are tied to an existing franchise (SW:EU or all other RPG novels) for quality reasons as well as infinitly long series) What I appreciate is pretty much everything from Tolkien, I like Dune, The Neverending Story, A Song of Fire and Ice, Howard's Conan, H.P. Lovecraft, and finally Harry Potter for the most part. Mythology is usually pretty cool, but I prefer a coherent story framework instead of the at times erratic retellings I am used from, say, Norse song epics.
Personally, I think that from all of the above, Conan handled spellcasting best (at least for RPG purposes). It isn't as inaccessible as in Tolkien's mythology, not as omnipresent as in HP, not as rare as in ASOIAF, but even with all the cool stuff it can do it doesn't reduce the mundanes to mere background characters and glorified henchmen.
