So... has it happened to you?
As for BBEGs, my favourite ones are always those who have been turning up all the way through... you just weren't aware of this fact.
So... has it happened to you?
No, and in all honesty I am not and never have been interested in such a development.
So... has it happened to you?
Sort of.
In my Third Edition D&D Realms Campaign I picked up right where the story line for the novel Elminster in Hell left off.
When my Epic Level players ran into Elminster the first couple times around, I portrayed him as a slightly insane, sometimes wise but sometimes harried looking man, who would sit quietly for a time and politely answer questions put to him, but would not proffer up conversation on his own. At random I’d have him start madly scratching at his body as phantoms of the horrors he went through in the Hells came roaring back into his psyche.
Although I didn't intend to, this put the idea into my players heads that there was no great, all-saving NPC good guy who would come to save the Realms yet again.
So no, I've not killed him off, but I sure took the wind out of his sails.
So Elminsters brain is trapped, and Cyric is free, inhabiting Elminsters body.
Dude.....that's 24 flavors of awesome. :evillaugh
In my game, we finished him off. I tend to ignore Mary-Sues anyway, but I wanted to do something specific to make sure my players didn't try to pawn their problems off on him.
Did your players give you any indication that they would have done such?
Dude.....that's 24 flavors of awesome. :evillaugh
Thank you, though it's not my entire original work. I took the concept from Lord Karsus and someone else (MarkTay?), from a discussion from last February or sometime. I just actually used it in my game while they were just talking about possibilities.
Did your players give you any indication that they would have done such?
No but I want to nip it in the bud. Elminster is one of the few powerful NPCs that my players know (along with a couple of others) and I don't want them running to these people for answers/help/etc.
No but I want to nip it in the bud. Elminster is one of the few powerful NPCs that my players know (along with a couple of others) and I don't want them running to these people for answers/help/etc.
You know your players better than I do, but let me suggest that it's possible they would never have done that anyway (especially if they gave no indication that they wanted to do that).
Please keep your posts polite, respectful, and on-topic, and refrain from making personal attacks.
You know your players better than I do, but let me suggest that it's possible they would never have done that anyway (especially if they gave no indication that they wanted to do that).
Thats definitely good advice but I think one might. In a d20 Modern game that I ran with most of the same people that will be in my FR game (3/5, and even those 3 people are more or less new friends, who I've only known for a few months now) for a couple of weeks, one of the players was a cop, and was always telling his boss about the criminals that the players were tracking, and requesting back up and stuff. In the FR I can see the same player doing the same thing but only with Elminster or someone else like him. I never liked Elminster so for me, it's pretty easy to get rid of him.
Thats definitely good advice but I think one might. In a d20 Modern game that I ran with most of the same people that will be in my FR game (3/5, and even those 3 people are more or less new friends, who I've only known for a few months now) for a couple of weeks, one of the players was a cop, and was always telling his boss about the criminals that the players were tracking, and requesting back up and stuff. In the FR I can see the same player doing the same thing but only with Elminster or someone else like him. I never liked Elminster so for me, it's pretty easy to get rid of him.
Well again, it all depends on the players. If my DM got rid of Elminster (as in killed him), I would have been upset because I like the character (and those who know me know I wouldn't have arbitrarily tried to find him, myself).
As for the cop character--aren't cops supposed to report stuff to their superiors? Again, I wasn't there, but from what you are saying it sounds to me like the cop was played realistically.
Ody, thank you.
As for the cop character--aren't cops supposed to report stuff to their superiors? Again, I wasn't there, but from what you are saying it sounds to me like the cop was played realistically.
In reality sure. But, it wasn't reality, it was our RPG game. The character was a detective, so he was supposed to have a lot of leeway and independence. Basically he was supposed to go "deep undercover" and act on his own with the other charcters and that's it. Thats how I would have played it and what I thought was going to happen, anyway. He didnt though and was very dependent on his superiors, for information and backup.
In reality sure. But, it wasn't reality, it was our RPG game. The character was a detective, so he was supposed to have a lot of leeway and independence. Basically he was supposed to go "deep undercover" and act on his own with the other charcters and that's it. Thats how I would have played it and what I thought was going to happen, anyway. He didnt though and was very dependent on his superiors, for information and backup.
OK, understood. It still does not follow, though, that he would have done the same thing in another game with Elminster (you didn't mention whether or not someone tried to set him straight about what he was doing, or if he was a newbie, etc.).
Personally, I have no interest in killing off Elminster or any others. It sounds... needlessly vindictive. (Sorry, you just hear it so often on these boards.) Actually, I have little interest in using them at all. No real reason, I just don't. Perhaps because they're not my characters to play with.
I see the high-level NPCs as being like nuclear weapons during the Cold War. You can't just use one, else everyone would use all theirs. Elminster gets up and destroys an orc horde, the Zhents attack Shadowdale, or something. So they sit and wait, their presence alone being enough of a deterrent, and counter eachother's plots. On the side, they farm low-level adventurers into greater things, and get them to fly under the radar to get things done. So Faerunian politics is caught in a state of MAD, and thus, the balance of peace is maintained.
One of my PCs recently tried to scare off a drow pirate ship by claiming that he had both Elminster and Khelben on board (aided by glibness). Thanks to some excellent advice from folks on these boards, I think my PCs will later find that raising Elminster's help, or at least claiming to have it, will be more trouble than it's worth. And Elminster might never show up. :D