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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Halivar" data-source="post: 4680941" data-attributes="member: 9327">Not invariably. But enough are powerful that, if we want to do anything important, they're involved somehow. The way my DM puts it: if you are average for the setting, then logic dictates that the real movers and shakers in the universe (i.e. the NPC's the world [and therefore the game] revolves around) will kick your tail when you meet them.The real problem here (for my play style) is not the bad guys being stronger than me. If they aren't, then there's no challenge. It's the good guys that are stronger than me that I can't stand.Let's look at a game world with a wide variety of levels realistically (well... we can't really look at it "realistically"... but at least "internally consistently"). Sure... there aren't many LG level 20 wizards out there, but when something big happens happens, say, level 12, what keeps the level 20 wizard from taking five minutes out of their day to 'port in and take care of it for the PC's? You have two ways about it: come up with a reason the level 20 wizard can't take care of it for the players (which means contriving events to fit the narrative [which I approve of as a DM tool]), or simply do what I do in my campaigns now: there are no allies above the party's level. There is no one to bail them out. Once they hit level 2, they became the go-to guys. It's the party saving the day, or it's no one. I have no problem with this (pretty blatant) tip of the hat to pure gamism and narrativism, since the very idea of "levelling" is already chucking verisimilitude out the window in favor of cinema.BTW, GW, that's exactly what I was referring to when I earlier suggested that you might be happier with a universal system than D&D. A system with as much meta-physics as D&D (pick your edition) involved can't, in my opinion, reliably model an internally consistent world without significant narrative magic wand-waving.EDIT: I should mention that the above scenario is not hypothetical. This is kind of deus ex machina stuff happens all the time in [insert guilty DM's name here]'s games. The DM's logic is unassailable: "What was he gonna do? Sit it out?" A better choice, we try to tell him, is not to write the powerful NPC into the game world to begin with.</blockquote>

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