Ummm...thats BALROG, not BALOR. And there are no live elves in the Third Age that could take a Balrog.

To address some of Krylo's previous points:

There are only a couple of places you can stab a dwarf or man so they will instantly die, and those are covered up real well by dwarf armor.

Yes, you could stab my crotch with a rapier. But elves don't use rapiers. Generally they use longswords, which you can't point downward with a flick of the wrist. They are, as elves use them, better suited for slashing nd helmets are good protection from slashes. The face is a very small target to hit, even with a thrust.

Your argument about Sting and Glamdring does little but speak for the strength of those weapons. Yes, elf weapons are good, but if Gandalf had gotten his hands on Angrist, a dwarf weapon, he would have done easily as much damage.

Longbows are good. You need not preach to me on their virtues, as I have been well acquainted with them. But elves don't use longbows. They use shortbows. Take a look at the movies. A longbow is the height of its owner usually, and leggy's is maybe half his height. And even if elves did use longbows, the point still stands. Boromir took three arrows before going down. An axe in the chest or face would have shut him up a lot faster.

EDIT: dammit leave faries for another thread, I wanna talk about dwarves and elves!

An arrow to the face would have shut Boromir up just as fast as an axe.

Of course there aren't any elves in the third age that could take a Balrog alone. However... get a nice elvish army because the elves did the smart thing and ran away to seek help, and you could take a Balrog. Especially if they got mage/human help.

And, I could stab your crotch with a longsword the same way. It'd take a little more strength, but most of the characters in LotR didn't seem to have any problem stabbing with longswords. I could also do it with a knife, which many elves also carried.

As for sting and glamdring... alright then, at the LEAST the elf weapons are equal to dwarf weapons. Either way, elven weapons are not weak. Which leads me to the bows... they may have been short bows, but look at how well they WORK. They're as powerful as a longbow...

Edit: Psst... in Celtic mythology 'faeries' and 'fey' were sometimes used to describe all fey races, which included elves... although celtic elves were more like the keebler elves than tolkein elves.

Also, FZ, ironically enough, you got that back asswards. They walk around rooms and for short distances, but they fly when they travel. The celts would often describe the 'host' (unseelie) as shadows flying over the moon on dark nights... which is probably where we get the halloween thing of bats and dark clouds and witches outlined against the moon... although I'm not sure on that.

Closest thing to faeries I can think of, that you would know, would be the LoD winglies, from before the dragoon wars. When they ruled the world. Remember Lloyd fighting Dart? That's about right for a faerie...

For the Balrog, the same could be said about Dwarves, so you've proved little.

For the crotch stabbing...be that as it may, I doubt you could stab a approx. 6cm x 6cm sqaure on a melon while it was moving around and swinging an axe at your knees.

I think we can say that a very good Dwarven axe is at least as effective as an enchanted elven sword. And I'll concede that they were as powerful as longbows.

DAMMIT! Enough about fairies!

It all really comes down to this.
Strength vs. Agility.
It depends on how you figure that.
It's not like an Elfer is going to go "OH! Your argument for Dwarves is so intelligent that I'll change my opinion because I'm a logical, reasonable being!"
Or vice versa.
If we run off of GURPS, the two are equal. If we run off Hero, agility is worth much more.

You say it all comes down to strength vs. agility, I say WRONG. Thats like boiling down the fight between the US and Russia to MIGs vs. F-16s, or Abrahms vs. T-65s. There's so much more involved.

Like...?
Weapons? Each weapon is for the dwarves is pretty much brute strength, each weapon for the elves is pretty much speed and good aim.
Armor? Dwarves have a lot therefore slowing them down and bulking them up, elves have little so they are faster but easier to kill.
Spells? Dwarves spells, I believe, are pretty much straight forward attack or healing spells. Elf spells tend to be more versatile but less useful.
Technique? Dwarves are strong but slow, Elves are nimble but weak.
Strategy? Elves come running around your right flank, Dwarves go running into you full throttle like insane possessed killer cars.
Speed vs. Power should have been my wording though.
I stick to my previous argument on the Elfers and the Dwarfers.

Weapons, culture, ideology, physical stature, mental prowess, resistances, history, yes weapons, and your argument is flawed, and so on and so forth.

Tolkein was not being "lazy". He was drawing from Norse and British mythology to create these races. He did not "make them up", nor did he really ever intend for them to be compared. If you asked him what he thought, he would have said elves, but he wrote so many arguments into his books that I have to argue for dwarves.

Don't insult Tolkien. Without him there would be no fantasy, and likely no FF, and therefore no 8-bit. Plus you're making me angry.

I think they're about equal after further examination. The dwarves and elves did have a bit of a feud for quite sometime... and they're both still alive.

Elven aiming/accuracy could reasonably hit that 6cmx6cm mark. And really, that mark was bigger because most dwarven armor didn't have face plates... but it wouldn't be easy to hit it.

I still hate dwarves, though.

Culture, ideology and history are useless in combat. Mental prowess is unimportant except when used for strategy. Resistances are useful only when combating disease and poison, neither of which are likely to happen in war.
One big outright battle, it boils down to Speed vs. Power.

Agreed that they are about equal. I'm glad we managed to come to that conclusion.

And I still hate elves.