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Message: <blockquote data-quote="epithet" data-source="post: 7516055" data-attributes="member: 6796566">Another change to CoS that I feel is necessary is making some sense of the Mad Mage of Mt Baratok. The Archwizard in question would not be likely to engage Strahd, and if he did he would have beaten him, in part because he would have arrived at the head of an army from the Citadel. What Barovia offers is a place no one but the Vistani can leave, and the Amber Temple has secrets the Archmage might want to access. The solution for me was that the Archmage entered Barovia and either left something he wanted to trap here or collected something (from the Temple) that he wanted to remove. To escape, he gained an unwitting vistani ally with geas and modify memory, then used imprisonment on himself to take a vacation in a hedged prison tower for a couple of days to catch up on his research. The vistani delivered him back to Oerth, which was the trigger for release. If you want to get super technical about how demiplanes are said to work and so forth, you could use the minimus containment version instead and have the vistani carry the jewel out beyond the mists.Meanwhile, the simulacrum he created of himself engaged Strahd. The point was never to defeat Strahd, just to make sure that anyone looking for him would find him, so that the jade anchor for the hedged prison could be safely removed from Barovia. The Mad Mage, then, is a simulacrum of a level 20 archmage with a few epic boons, but no spell slots. He can cast the mansion and perhaps a couple of other spells once per day, he can cast shield and mage armor without using a spell slot, and he can cast cantrips. He knows what he is, and what his purpose is, but he has problems remembering things since the diversionary encounter with Strahd. Simulacra are not designed to last that long.The whole mind blank thing was a load of crap, in my opinion, and there's no way that particular archmage could just go missing for a year without someone (of demigod power levels, at least) going to look for him. The Mage of the Vale, for example. Replacing him with a worn-out simulacrum solves all those issues and tones him down enough to be an ally of the party without being an "I Win" button.</blockquote>

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