Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-33719810-20180317041546/@comment-33185350-20180317202100

Sauron more or less lost his physical form in the wreck of Númenor as far as I remember. When it was sunk into the ocean he was on the island, and his spirit fled but from then on he could never take a form that appeared fair to men.

If Sauron had never made the ring I think he would be less powerful than with his ring. Otherwise he never would have made it. While most of it is his own power, he spent a long time learning the craft of ring forging and did so to create a weapon that would control the other rings so he could dominate all the Free Peoples of Middle-earth.