Or gaining experience through other means. Adventuring is not the only way to get it. It's just the most efficient way to get high level.
Gods grant templates, spell like abilities, clerical spells when you gain levels, and so on. They do not hand out levels. As for your artificer, that would be a DM house rule/home brew. It's not how D&D works by the rules.
I feel like this devolves into semantics.
Granting Experience points equal to 3 levels is mechanically the same as gaining three levels of experience. In terms of what the person can now do the result is the same.
Now, your next question is can I point to that ever happening. Well, I don’t own any old modules or anything like that, so I must rely on my DMG to provide any evidence I have. The Deck of Many things for example has 2 cards (the Jester and the Sun) that grant EXP. That is the only example I can find in modern DnD, but since all items had to be created by something, and 5e makes it decently clear you need to be capable of doing a thing before you can make an item that does that thing, then this is something that should be possible for sufficiently powerful entities to do. And since granting EXP=Granting Levels, that kind of covers my bases I think.
Can you point to an official example of that happening? I'm not aware of any at all. I've never seen a write up that said that the NPC was level X, because his god gave him those levels.
Does the Eberron lady who gains 17 levels when she’s in her home temple count? That seems to be relatively blatant in “my god gave me these levels”
Because other than her I have no idea. I don’t own any modules that list NPCs and gives me a detailed backstory of how they got to be so powerful. Personally, I think referring to my above argument should be enough.
If it is possible to grant EXP, then Entities such as Gods should be able to do so, and EXP = Levels.
The argument is that their existence diminishes the PCs. Most of the NPCs of the Realms don't go around doing lots of things, despite the claims here.
It takes more than interaction, though. The NPCs have to quite literally be ready to step in and take over from the PCs 24/7 to accomplish what people here are complaining about.
Funny thing about people, it doesn’t take a lot to make them feel inferior.
If I was watching a movie about Daredevil, and during the entire movie Superman was just floating in the background, wouldn’t that kind of ruin it? He’s there, he’s watching. Daredevil may be fighting all these goons, but Superman could come in and just win the fight. He doesn’t, he just floats there, so the fight must not be important. There must not be real stakes, because Superman is THE hero, and if there were real stakes involved here he would act.
He doesn’t even need to be floating behind Daredevil’s shoulder and offering quippy advice. Even if he is just floating over the city, we know he is aware of Daredevil’s actions, that he could intervene, and that he does not, so the real fight, the real threat, must be something else.
Daredevil is still doing cool things, but the entire tone of the story is shifted because of the very presence of Superman in the skies. It can still be a cool story, but the closer it gets to “I’ll destroy the city if you don’t stop me” the weirder and weirder it gets that Superman does not get involved. He’s there, he knows about the threat, what is stopping him, why isn’t he acting, is this simply not important enough, is the enemy bluffing.
You don’t need him stopping everything for this to develop into a problem. You just need him in enough scenes and it ruins the illusion that you are making a difference. That you are doing something no one else is in the position to handle.
Reading your other response about Raistlin and Elminster, I begin to wonder if you understand what people are meaning about overshadowing.
Being a competitor can never overshadow the group, unless they never win. If Raistlin is after something and the party needs to get it first, they cannot be overshadowed, unless it is the umpteenth time that it has happened and Raisltin always wins (see DMPCs for something similar)
Yes, in the case of Elminster part of the problem is “You could solve this problem, why are you not solving this problem if it is a dire problem” but for that perception to exist does not require Elminster to solve every problem.
I keep going to comics because it is a medium that has a lot of “high level” characters. Let us say our setting is Gotham.
The existence of the Joker does not overshadow my vigilante detective. The Joker is a villain, someone to oppose and fight. The existence of Catwoman does not overshadow my vigilante detective. She is a sometimes ally, sometimes villain, sometimes competitor who plays by her own rules and makes for interesting encounters. The existence of Batman does overshadow my vigilante detective, because he is everything my guy is trying to be but he is the best at it. The shadow of Batman defines the types of things my character does, they will be compared constantly, if I do the same things he does then the question rises as to why, if I do different things the same question arises, no matter what this character does, he will be defined by Batman who is still an active hero in Gotham.
You can still have fun and interesting stories, you can really explore issues involved, but you have to deal with that in every instance. Batman goes out and fights crime and the Joker and interacts with Catwoman. That is perhaps a large part of why every superhero in Gotham is part of the “Bat Family” none of them can escape the fact that Batman is in this city and operating in Gotham means interacting in some way with Batman who is the hero of the city.
You can argue people are being silly all you like, but this is a problem for some people. Elminster being a massive hero, a super powerful wizard who actively goes and involves himself in the world makes him a potential problem if you want to tell stories about saving the world. Because Elminster makes a habit of saving the world, not Bob the Fighter and the Silver Scales Team that no one has ever heard of before. For some people, there group has no problem with that dichotomy, for others it truly harms their suspension of disbelief.
If we're going to discuss context, then let's discuss context. Elminster is a sage. He talks a lot and gives out advice. Modenkainen on the other hand is a very active adventurer. Which one is more likely to overshadow the PCs? It's not Mr. Talksabunch. Citing more examples of Mr. Talky Talky talking to PCs in adventures doesn't mean he is more likely to overshadow the PCs. The guy who is a mover and shaker of the world, actively engaging bad guys is more likely to overshadow the PCs.
You also have to consider that the DM determines what the NPCs actually do. A DM may have Mr. Talky Sage O'shadowdale become more active in the world, or he may have Mordenkainen retire to a cottage in the mountains and never be heard from again. Those modules you mentioned are ones I've never run, which means Elminster never actually did them in my Realms. They are only suggestions that some DMs may engage in.
Ultimately, whether NPCs overshadow PCs or not has nothing to do with how they are officially portrayed in the material. Nothing at all. It's 100% how the DM portrays them in the campaign.
Okay, what the */#$ is with you people and canon materials.
It isn’t just you Maxperson, but you just up above demanded that I provide you with canon materials that prove Gods can grant levels to people. Now in this you are saying “Well, I never used that canon module, so it isn’t canon for me”
Canon is canon. Whether you never used it is irrelevant. I am 26 years old, my first actual DnD campaign with people I ever played in took place in 2011. From my perspective I have never used a single module, read more than a half dozen novels, and have actually never played in a game that was either not explicitly or implicitly heavily home-brewed.
Canon is still canon. If I decided to run a realms game right now, and three months from now some thing is published that say Elminster goes mad and destroys the city my game is based in then I am going to ignore it, I am free to ignore it. Canon is that Elminster goes mad and destroys that city. I can’t go online and say “I chose to ignore it so it never happened and I don’t understand why you people are complaining about it happening”. Just because you can ignore it or you never bought the product that caused the problem does not mean it is not a problem.
Only that which is specifically a setting or setting supplement. The novels are fun, but not canon. The modules are optional ideas for adventures, but are not canon. Video games are the same as modules. Now, if the novels or video game lore is placed into a setting later, it becomes canon at that point.
This is not how most of us think of canon. The novels are canon. The modules are canon (though who completed what to save the world changes per table) . Video games might be an exception, due to the nature of MMOs, but a lot of the material within them is probably still considered canon by a lot of people.
