Why take a body? Why make a Ring?

[Tarpaladin]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

So, while putting pretty much all your power into one Ring, so much that if it was destroyed (or someone else mastered it) you also were essentially destroyed (though not completely) seems rather foolish. It really wasn't. Sauron was able to enhance his own power, desired to control all the Ring's of Power (to a certain extent I'd say he was successful), and the very fact that this little Ring had to be destroyed in one specific place...which to do so was beyond anyone's free will, we see it wasn't all that stupid at all.

A similar sort of thing occurs in the Harry Potter series with Lord Voldemort. By splitting his soul into seven pieces he makes his mortal self impossible to kill, but if the Horcruxes containing the six split pieces are destroyed and then his physical body is killed, he gets not even a normal death but is reduced to something less than a ghost, a mere seventh of a shadow of a soul. Pretty much fits the description in Tolkein's letters about what happens to Sauron when the One Ring gets toasted.