Why not back to before that Time of Troubles nonsense?
Darn straight! It should be photocopies of napkin notes from Ed's original game! (must spread XP and all that)
Why not back to before that Time of Troubles nonsense?
\I really disliked what 4E did with the Realms so I would hope that they fix that.
I have never understood the compliant about the high powered NPCs. First of all it is your game and you can choose how to use them or take them out completely.
The gaming police are not going to come and fine you for tweaking the Realms. And if you have players who can't deal with any changes to their beloved Realms well that is a player problem not a setting problem.
I'll look up that greybox module later to see if "Elminster showing up to heal the party" is even part of it... or if its something your DM used as a safety net.
The 2nd edition boxed set had Elminster pop in and accidentally heal the party. After a grueling series of encounters, the group finds Elminster (just described as an old man) trying to teach a dog to heel. Whenever he says "heel," his wand flickers and one of the PCs gets healed. The challenge is then to trick Elminster into saying "heel" enough times to heal the whole group.
Personally, I thought that was a good encounter. First of all, it came at a time when low-level characters likely needed some healing. Secondly, it showed Elminster as very powerful but also a bit senile, since he apparently had no idea that he was waving around a magic wand while trying to train a puppy in the middle of a perilous dungeon.
I have little patience with 1st level characters who think they're the Kings of the World. You want to deal with the kinds of problems that Elminster is dealing with? Work for it. You want to be as important as Han Solo? Earn it.
"Oh no! My viking PC is totally trivialized by the existence of Thor!"
Every aspect of any RPG is "up to your DM". If your DM happens to be an asshat, your game is in trouble. Using Elminster to make the PCs feel small = Asshat DM, regardless of what is and isn't written into the setting.
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Conversely, there's nothing to "fix" with the 4E Realms, it's great. Just set your game in whichever era you want. Most of my Realms games (regardless of edition) are 4E setting but I have a 4E game set in the Gray Box era.
Elminster is built with a whole bunch of specialised templates and rules exceptions such that it is impossible for a character to start at 1st level RAW and advance to match him.
My big objection is not so much the existence of those high-level NPCs. It's that the text I quoted makes it clear that whatever they do, the PCs are largely irrelevant.
I would not mind if they did what they did with Dragonlance and let you choose what time you want to play in.
I just hope that the setting does not only have the stuff from 4e which imo ruined the Realms.