Elminster and Epic Level Fighters

[Votan]

the only time I saw anyone dual class was when we jumped too many levels early as thives.

I jumped from level 1-8 in theif one night becuse we stole a boat that ended up having thousands of gold worth of goods on it. We did out the xp (2xp per gp) and I jumped 7 levels, so I quickly dual classed into wizard, and found my self in a 2nd level game with 8d6 hps as a 1st level wizard. I spec in Evoc and when I hit level 9 picked back up my shortsword and leather armor...

I think here is where the no more than one level per adventure rule would have been really handy (well, it was that you couldn't gain more XP until you did training but it is the same thing).

 

[triqui]

I've seen one player go lvl 7-8 as fighter, then druid, *twice*, in TRPG, and all my characters in Baldur Gate 2 where fighter 7 dual anything else.

The penalty really didn't matter much, you would level fast as hell anyways. Plus if you can survive thanks to your group one single mission, you would level up SEVERAL times. You are a lvl 1 wizard earning your share of XP from a lvl 8+ group. That's quite a lot. In 2e, Dual was way much more powerful than multiclass imho.

 

[aurance]

snip

Terms like "CR" and "EL" only have meaning for the player characters, and is not some sort of physical rule of the game world. NPCs level if/how/when the campaign/DM/plot decides.

Also, there is no such thing "poorly built" NPC, unless they are meant for the PCs to fight, or to fight alongside them; otherwise, statistics for people like Drizzt and Elminster are strictly an academic exercise. Even so, the build matters very little unless the DM is a particular stickler for mechanics.

 

[Votan]

I've seen one player go lvl 7-8 as fighter, then druid, *twice*, in TRPG, and all my characters in Baldur Gate 2 where fighter 7 dual anything else.

The penalty really didn't matter much, you would level fast as hell anyways. Plus if you can survive thanks to your group one single mission, you would level up SEVERAL times. You are a lvl 1 wizard earning your share of XP from a lvl 8+ group. That's quite a lot. In 2e, Dual was way much more powerful than multiclass imho.

Why was Druid so beloved? The low XP chart in AD&D?

 

[Maldin]

While I heartily encourage anyone to have fun discussing any topic they find intriguing (and this one easily qualifies as intriguing), I would think that this topic is also ultimately futile, as literary characters rarely follow the rules of their time for all sorts of reasons that make for good literature and poor metagame quantification. It is even more impossible to try and shoehorn a literary character into a set of rules that didn't exist when they were created (which you're doing if you try to come up with 3E and 4E versions of characters created during 1E times, when they didn't even fit within those 1E rules). The ultimate example of that is the whole "Gandalf was a 5th level wizard (yet could take down a Balor)" argument, a literary character that was created with NO rules in mind.

Elminster and Drizzt have plot immunity.

Next question?

Kinda sums it up quite succinctly.

Denis, aka "Maldin" (who is Epic under any rules!)
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics, and more!

 

[Jeffrie]

and the ridiculously good ability scores it would take (STR 15, DEX 17, WIS 17, INT 17, with an INT 18 needed for 9th level spells), no PC would ever roll high enough for a character like that.

I once rolled 15, 16, 17, 17, 18, 18.

I'll never forget it. But i can't use it, cause it's such a fluke it's just silly.