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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5516405" data-attributes="member: 14159">Well, Elminster has Fighter, Rogue and Cleric levels "lost" because when they wrote his 3e stats, they actually paid attention to his background and his biography in the novel "Elminster: Making of a Mage" where he was a fighter/rogue as a youth, and converted to the worship of Mystra and served as a mid-ranking cleric before he was chosen personally to study magic and be a Chosen.In 1e and 2e, getting several levels in Fighter, then dual-classing to for a few more levels Rogue, then dual-classing to Cleric, and finally getting ~30 levels in Wizard (Human Fighter 9/Thief 10/Cleric 11/Wizard 30 would be a juggernaut in AD&D games) was an insanely powerful combination, a "power build" of its era, but loses something in the 2e to 3e conversion because of the change in multiclassing roles 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), so short of DM fiat like an NPC, no PC would ever roll high enough for a character like that.The stats for Elminster in 3.x make him strong enough to do everything he was shown doing in the novels, at least in theory.  Sometimes it might take some lucky rolls, but it could happen.  Also, he's so powerful that unless the party is Epic level, he is clearly stronger than them in every way, so nitpicky details of stats are largely there for show.In my experience, if I use Elminster, or Drizzt or any other "name" Realms NPC, it's for flavor text or a cameo to advance the plot by giving the PC's a Macguffin or important hint, and probably not in a combat encounter.  I also like to think that it points out how twisted the fixation towards optimization is, and the designers never meant for min-maxed characters to run around mauling things.</blockquote>

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