Overshadowed by Elminster?

[Synchronicity]

I think the question is slightly too simple, to be honest. The groups I've played with have never been overshadowed by hyper-competent NPCs, but we've never *met* hypercompetent NPCs. Of course we've encountered people above our power level, people who are more capable that us in certain areas, but we've never met anyone who suffers from the perceived flaw of Elminster; namely, not only is he better than you at the thing you're currently doing, he's better than you at *everything*. I think there's a line between 'NPC who is higher level than you, in your line of work, and thus is better than you at the present time' and 'NPC who will always be higher level than you, and will always be better than you at everything in the history of the universe, ever.' If I met somebody from the former category, as a player, I wouldn't bear them any ill will. The latter category, on the other hand..

Basically, trying to clarify myself here; the groups I've played with haven't ever encountered Elminster, or any of the characters accused of being these overshadowing canon NPCs, so I think if I answered 'no' to this poll, it would be disingenuous.

I never bought the "concerns of the might" stuff. Many of the high-ranking NPCs don't seem to have much responsibility, and are free to go adventuring. Even guys like Khelben (a lord of the a city) is one of many lords. Other lords can go away and do stuff, so what's his excuse? Given that, in the novels, Khadgar can tell you when a single drow is trying to sneak into his city, it's hard to believe he can overlook things that are actually big and important.

Maybe the big reason Eberron hasn't suffered from this problem isn't the lack of high-level good NPCs, maybe it's because their NPCs are believable flawed. Or maybe it's a bit of both. I dunno.

I totally agree on your point about the 'concerns of the mighty'; I think one of the reasons Elminster and other Forgotten Realms NPCs get so much flak is because their reasons for not helping out are so vaguely and poorly defined. Their excuses sound exactly like the ecuses of some novice GM, trying to invent a reason why Beef Rockfist, mighty warrior, doesn't have time to stop an orc invasion.

Oh, and on the Eberron thing, I think it says good things about the thought the creator put into the 'godlike NPC' problem that the 2 highest level divine casters in the world (IIRC) are a 16 year old girl who's only that powerful inside a specific building, and an utterly immobile tree.

 

[an_idol_mind]

The couple of times I ran a Realms game, Elminster came off almost as a comedic figure. Unless a given adventure was really a world-threatening situation, he seemed largely out of touch with the events of the world. He used his magic frivolously, focusing more on flashy effects than deadly magic. He also got knocked out by a lucky punch from one of the characters (2nd edition rules, where the unarmed strike tables had a %chance of KO - I didn't have anything beyond the boxed set, so I didn't find out until later how many contingencies would have fired off in that situation).

Even in the ultimate god-killing conclusion of my setting, Elminster didn't really factor in that much. He had his own plan for solving the adventure, but the PCs were convinced that the crazy old wizard was doomed to failure. Ultimately, although Elminster had vast power at his disposal, he was perceived as too senile or out of touch to solve the game's problems. While he was more capable than he seemed, the perception of the players that he was a crazy old man was all I needed to make sure they never relied on him to solve their problems.

 

[SPECTRE666]

No!

 

[Dioltach]

Not overshadowed by uber-NPCs, but once I was running a Star Wars Rebellion Era campaign and the party encountered Darth Vader (he was inspecting a military operation into which they had infiltrated). The players knew right away that they weren't in his league. For the rest of the campaign, though, they were of higher level and greater importance to the Rebellion than Luke, Leia and Han.

We've just started a Wheel of Time campaign, and I haven't decided yet how things will pan out with the established characters of that world. Maybe they'll run into Rand and Nynaeve, but I doubt they'll put up with any nonsense.

 

[Crothian]

Not since high school.

Wasn't Elminster only like second level then?

 

[mach1.9pants]

Never happened IMC, we have never had a player that was so, umm, annoying (to put it politely) as to try and impose what history he/she read in a novel/rules-book on our games. I have never played any sort of FR RPGA type thingy, where I suppose canon is actually canon.
But in any game that is not a tournament canon is totally and completely irrelevant.

 

[Barcode]

Played in an Amber game once, where the DM kept getting us into impossible situations and would use Gerard or Julian, even Caine once, to get us out.
There was also a D&D campaign where we were the servants of Baron Munchausen, and while we were expecting to be overshadowed by the Baron, he generally was off somewhere being dashing, but then we ended up being frequently upstaged by the NPC Major Domo.

 

[drothgery]

Oh, and on the Eberron thing, I think it says good things about the thought the creator put into the 'godlike NPC' problem that the 2 highest level divine casters in the world (IIRC) are a 16 year old girl who's only that powerful inside a specific building, and an utterly immobile tree.

An 11 year old girl, and if they haven't changed things from 3.5, she's that powerful in all of Flamekeep, not just in the Citadel of the Silver Flame itself. But pretty much, yeah.

 

[S'mon]

No, and the only time I can recall having a canon NPC appear while GMing was one time running Star Wars d6, the PCs were on a Rebellion base ship and I mentioned Luke Skywalker was on board - that was it. It made the players happy.

 

[Khairn]

I've never experienced it and never seen any other GM use NPC's that way either. The vast majority of competent or even slightly experienced GM's know not to do this. If it does happen, its because of poor GM'ing rather than a fault any particular setting.