[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

(Generally, though, I must admit I don't find comparing the magical hit-points of characters that fascinating - but don't let that keep you, or anyone else, from doing it to your heart's content!)

I second this thought, and yet I agree rather with the rest of your post, which treated seriously with the question offered, and I would take it a step deeper--far beyond the realm of magical hit-points to a consideration of Arda's metaphysics.

Couched in Gorthaur's comparative question is the nature of Ainur made incarnate, and the tangled relationship this has with the incarnational reality, for Melian, of producing offspring. It's pretty clear, when one looks at Morgoth and Sauron, that being permanently-incarnated has its pros and cons. In Morgoth's case, this gave him an immense advantage, because it allowed him to disseminate himself throughout matter, the stuff of Arda, making all Arda "Morgoth's Ring"--but at the cost of diminishing the amount of power he was able to wield in himself--Tolkien goes so far to say, if my memory is right, from Morgoth's Ring that Sauron in the Second Age was, in his person, effectively greater than Morgoth had been at the end of the first.

Permanently incarnation is also a trade-off for Sauron. He lost his body and the ability to assume a pleasing form in the Akallabêth, and it took him, it seems at least a thousand years to rebuild his body after that one was slain.

As for Melian... there's no certain indication, I think, that she became permanently incarnate at all. After all, when Thingol died, she was able quite easily to change form and return to the West. However... that being the case, I have to wonder if, in fact, she was bound to her incarnate form as the Istari later were, and that this gave her a Ring-like effect in being able to create the Girdle of Melian. As for bearing Lúthien, while I agree that a body was necessary to achieve this, I don't see that this necessarily bound her to the body after birth, nor that any of her "power" would thereby be lost to her. But it's a sticky question... Fëanor, the only Elf to father seven sons, seems to have specifically managed this because of the greatness of his spirit--but I don't read into this necessarily that Fëanor's spirit was thereby lessened in strength. As I said... it's sticky.

However, if one compares Melian further with the Istari, one has to wonder if her drifting away and returning to the west wasn't a corporeal suicide analogous to Saruman's death--save that Melian was not blown back from the West. This would strengthen immensely, I think, the case that Melian was permanently incarnate, and one can certainly understand suicide when Thingol's spirit is now in Mandos, where reincarnation can only lead to Valinor, and Lúthien will die and pass beyond the world entirely. If Melian were permanently incarnate, it stands to reason that, like the Elves, she'd have been unable to return to Valinor by normal physical means, for this is still some time pre-Eärendil.

The Istari, however... I think are a somewhat different case. Pitchwife said:

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

As for the Istari, I feel they're another matter altogether, as incarnation wasn't the only restriction placed upon them - meaning that even in humanoid form, I guess they still could have danced circles around any elf except for the simple fact that they had been explicitly forbidden to do so.

I'm not altogether sure I like you saying "simple fact that they were forbidden," because this makes it sound like Saruman only didn't use a whole lot more Maiarin force because Manwë said "no." While I certainly don't want to totally downplay the idea that Saruman still thought himself loyal to the mission, after a fashion, I also don't think it's simply a matter of being forbidden, I think it's a matter of being incapable, which is something different, terminologically, though Pitchwife may have meant the same--and this is, I think, what's at the heart of Gorthaur's question: does this incapability limit the Istari's power, and to what extent?