Overshadowed by Elminster?

[the Jester]

I pretty much never play or run anything that isn't homebrewed, so technically, the answer is no.

HOWEVER, in one guy's homebrews, the same npcs (even in sessions that are thousands of years apart) always show up and are always much higher level than the pcs. Then they travel with the party. I think that's pretty close. So I'm voting Other.

 

[Sammael]

I used Elminster a grand total of twice in my 5-year-long FR campaign.

The first time, he was called by the party (by means of his Chosen sending-like ability, which they were aware of) to help with a collapsing High Elven mythal (comprised of both regular magic and shadow magic). He told the party to run, started drawing the remaining magic into himself, and then the whole complex fell down on top of him. For all intents and purposes, he was dead for the next three years (real time), until he reappeared - together with Khelben and Halaster - after the party's climactic encounter on the newly restored Netherese flying city of Eileanar (which was plummeting to the ground at the moment, since the party destroyed the artifacts that were powering it and helped Helm slay the insane Avatar of Lathander who wanted to use the city as his base for rooting out all evil on Faerun). The three Chosen told the party to teleport away and then used their powers to stabilize the city in the air (the City is still aloft and no-one knows what's going on there).

That's how I use the high-level NPCs - they may show up to clean up, but only after the PCs have done their thing and made the decisions that needed to be made. They are way too busy dealing with their own issues to help them all the time and besides, they are operating in a league of their own, doing stuff behind the scenes and subtly manipulating the world to prevent other manipulators from getting their way.

 

[Ktulu]

As a DM, I can ensure this never happened.

As a player, I know of at least 3-5 instances in my ten years gaming. Once, our party was saved by Drizzt, despite the fact that we were in the dalelands...

Once we were made complete morons (in fact, the fighter was feebleminded) by the powers of elminster and his irritations with our requesting his aid.

Another time, with a different DM, Fzoul Chembryl nearly killed our entire party at level 6 because we were in his way. He got bored and left after killing the barbarian and my ranger.

Those are ones I can think of. My current group has never done anything like that; which is a pleasant difference between them and my original group.

 

[Ravellion]

It was a homebrew setting, but well established NPCs came to save our bacon when suddenly, one of our opponents turned out to be about 15 levels higher than us, and had a special fighting style that we as PCs were not offered originally. We helped, but the charges of our wands and measly attacks were meaningless compared to the attacks of the pet NPCs in question.

Admittedly, the DM did understand, when confronted by the players, that this was less than stellar DMing.

 

[Lhorgrim]

One of the very few times I played a FR game my party was saved by this uber-awesome good aligned drow ranger.

It was a published module for 2E, but I do not recall the name. Maybe something about a tower?

Anyway, my low level party was attacked by wolves, and we were having a hard time with the fight. Fortuitously the good drow ranger joined the fray, and quickly dispatched the critters. As I recall, he was pretty handy with those two scimitars, and with the multiple attacks he got per round it didn't take him long to save our bacon.

 

[El Mahdi]

I've only ever used such npc's twice (both times it was Elminster). The first was in a high level adventure (The Labrynth of Madness) where I had Elminster request the help of the pc's just to get them started on the adventure (it was a one-off). The other was an adventure that was actually written with Elminster as part of it (it was an Ed Greenwood tournament adventure). He gives the pc's there mission at the beginning of the adventure (they need to go recover an extremely high powered artifact), and then shows up at the conclusion of the adventure (after they have beaten the BBEG and recovered the artifact) to claim the artifact from the pc's (can't have them wandering around with an artifact that powerful).

I have also used a DMpc, once, with a group of brand new players. He accompanied the pc's on their first adventure and then parted ways with them. I only used him to help walk them through how to play. After the first adventure they were on their own. However, he will make a nice contact they can use for help and information if they so choose. He won't show up unless they seek him out, and he will not do the work for them.

 

[smug]

I never saw the problem, so long as the DM didn't do the same thing again and again. There's a difference between being 'overshadowed' and being made irrelevant.

 

[GAAAHHH]

Yes. In a Star Wars campaign, I took the force sensitive feat, so the GM had Darth Vader show up and forced me to be his apprentice (I was a fringer pilot before) . After this I took up a dual weapon style of lightsaber/thermal detonator (go ahead, hit me).

Same GM, Forgotten Realms: We were kidnapped by Cyric and forced to fight in an arena. After lobbing a few fireballs into the audience, I was taken before Cyric. I was about to break my staff of Power, when Elminster showed up and rescued us all.

I don't game with him anymore.

 

[Wormwood]

Never.

While I've found myself *constantly* overshadowed by DMPCs, they were all invented whole cloth by crap DMs, and never canonical.

Honestly, I'd have preferred Elminster or Drizzt showing up to ruin the game instead of the pet NPCs I've seen in the past 20+ years.

 

[Prisoner6]

I've only experienced this once in a 2E game that I played a long time ago. The DM had a pet NPC who traveled around with the party who was at least 3 or 4 levels higher than we were, not to mention just a complete jerk. (In the name of "role playing" ... he was supposed to be a jerk). After a few adventures it turned out the NPC was the whole focus of the campaign.

As players we eventually had it out with the DM who temporarily dropped him from the game. The party went off their own way for a few months, but the NPC showed up again at the end "to complete his story."

The DM in question was something else. Somehow he had 5 or 7 of the *worst* attributes you could ever want in a DM, while at the same time there were 5 or 7 of the best. It was a whole lot of good stuff surrounded by massive piles of suck. The group eventually dissolved when we got sick of his nonsense, but couldn't find an acceptable replacement.