Was it out of character?

[the phantom]

Tolkien would disagree with you.

I'm not a clone of Tolkien, so that's bound to happen occasionally. I'm fine with that.

But Tolkien might not disagree with me as much as you think. In Telchar's thread, How do you kill Wyatt Earp?, Telchar shows that the way Sauron was defeated was definitely not proper.

He likens it to challenging an enemy to a gunfight and when he shows up and you're about to start the duel your friend, who's been hiding in a building, shoots your opponent in the back with a rifle.

Tolkien certainly didn't see a problem with defeating Sauron by those means.