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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 3827845" data-attributes="member: 1165">I disagree with you on this (of course). I'm not going to sit down and count how many levels the Simbul needs to have in order to roast sixty-five beholders (her game stats don't reflect that anyway), but what she did "in some novel" is part of the FR world, as far as I'm concerned.If Thay came up with a clever plan to attack Aglarond last year, but the Simbul annihilated it single-handedly, it's not just going to appear in a novel, it's going to appear in songs and tales sung around Aglarond and eventually all over Faerun.Of course, it could be that FR is now based on the novels, rather than the other way around, and that is harming the setting.They don't seem to have big fish to fry. They're so much more competent (and powerful!) than the villains that the setting needs to add new villains to compete with them. However, if these new villains are capable of matching the Chosen, then they will overwhelm the PCs. Also, I think Mystra simply has too much "power" in the setting, numbered in many things, Chosen but one facet of that. If the novels could depower them somehow, that might fix the problem, but short of ambushing all nine Chosen and doing something to them, the only way to depower them is to strike down Mystra, who should be removed from her pedestal anyway. I always thought a deity of magic was a dumb idea.He certainly seems like Superman in the setting, although of course he's dealing with all these big threats that in another setting PCs would be dealing with.Does anyone remember the novel where Storm killed the Bane-Malaugrym? She could surround an entire castle with her silver fire, which was strong enough to keep the Bane-Malaugrym stuck in the castle. She's world shakingly powerful, and people like the Simbul are far more powerful than her.But then, the much less powerful Liriel Baenre can treat Lolth as her own plaything. "No, I don't feel like hosting Lolth today. Get out!" And it worked.Elminster had a much better idea when he gave up being the prince. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Isn't that stepping on someone's toes? She does it so easily (in part due to the Red Wizards being incompetents) that she can take time off to fight the second, third and fourth threats of the day.I think this is also hurting the setting; all these incredibly strong villains that can't be stopped except by even more incredibly strong uber-NPCs. Most other settings put a strict limit on the number of excessively powerful villains (including the oldest method in the book, Sealed Evil in a Can (tm)).Unfortunately, they're not his Realms anymore. Maybe people assume any criticisms of the Realms are a bash on Ed, which is why his name keeps appearing in statements defending the Realms; I've never met him, and the only things I didn't like about his writing are Mary Sue-ism (not in all of his books; the Kingless Land book 1 was notably lacking in that) and the excessive feminine nudity. Maybe he should publish a "competing" setting with smaller plots instead of world-shattering plots, world-shattering villains and world-shattering Chosen.As for whether such campaigns exist, they do. People keep mentioning them, and other people reply that "they don't get the Realms" or "I'm a superior DM" or even "you're just making that up", which isn't helpful for the debate. It's like some DMs are told "if you like the setting but don't like the Chosen, drop the Realms; we don't want your loser kind around here".</blockquote>

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