D&D 5E Phlan, 1490s, ToD storyline, NPC levels

[Riley37]

Are there any existing rulings or authoritative material, or links I should follow, in determining what spellcasting NPCs are active/available in the city of Phlan, on the Moonsea, in Faerun?

Context: this is an instance of Phlan coexisting with the DDEX modules. When people want help and are recruiting adventurers, mission sponsors such as lord sages of libraries and the high priest of Kelemvor are turning to low-tier adventurers.

So... how many individuals in Phlan would be capable of delivering, say, Dispel Magic, capable of neutralizing 5th-level castings? and how many, if any, for 9th-level castings?

A few individuals, and thus mostly aware of each other? Or are there dozens of candidates, from which you might pick out the one with the best reviews and the lowest published rates?

If you wanted to hire someone to cast WISH for you, could you find even a single possible candidate? or would that involve traveling to a larger city such as Baldurs Gate?

Thanks,
Riley37

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Just going off the Adventurer's League guidelines, you aren't allowed to buy any spell of higher than 5th level. This is likely a balance issue for the Adventurer's League campaign. However, that's about the limit I'd put on a city the size of Phlan anyways.

The city doesn't look like it would have extremely high level clerics all over the place.

Then again, I assume that you can't hire someone to cast Wish for you in any city in the Realms. Anyone 18+ level is NOT for hire. If the fate of the world was at hand, you might be able to convince some good aligned people to help but finding them and actually getting an audience with them to ask them would be a feat in and of itself.

I might allow up to 7th level spells to be bought in an extremely large city such as Baldur's Gate or Waterdeep. But they would cost an arm and a leg. Possible literally if you went to the wrong church.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Doing my own google searches does not reveal any site that has brought together all of the NPCs and city info that was parceled out in the 14 D&D Expeditions modules for the AL. I own a couple of them because I ran them at GenCon, and thus there are a few NPC names and a little bit of location info I know about... but don't have all of them to put together a wiki or codex of Phlan as it currently stands as of Tyranny.

The Adventurer's League site does have a little bit of current Phlan history, and the descriptions of the 14 modules does seem to indicate a progression of story up to and including who is the new leader of Phlan... but any further specifics would have to be culled from all 14 and written up by someone who has them. And it doesn't look like anyone has done that yet (or at least not yet posted said codex or wiki online.)

 

[Riley37]

Fair enough. Yes, there's a play balance issue in AL. For a campaign just using the same storyline, though, wider questions can arise. For example, if there's a super-dangerous evil magic item, is there ANYONE in the city of Phlan capable of casting a sufficiently strong Dispel Magic, or a Disintegrate? If not, then is there no solution, other than taking the item elsewhere, or bringing in an expert from elsewhere?

If something horribly contrived happened, with constraints as needed, such that either someone in Phlan casts Wish, or everyone in Phlan dies, then does everyone in Phlan die, on the grounds that no one in Phlan is *able* to cast Wish? That is: There can be all kinds of questions of whether anyone *able* to cast wish would be *willing* and findable-by-PCs. But if you remove those questions, then do you get a 17th-level arcane caster somewhere in Phlan casting Wish, or do you get a former city, now inhabited only by corpses?

 

[MerricB]

The only church in Phlan is that of Kelemvor.

The Library of Mantor probably has a few lower-level wizards.

Apart from that, I'm not sure. I should go through the adventures and see who they mention.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

It's very unlikely it'd be Baldur's Gate you'd travel to - so far away! Mulmaster, perhaps...

Phlan really is quite small. I'd say 9th level casters would be about the limit, and only a couple of them. Lesser priests (level 3 or below) - quite a few of them, and likely the same for wizards.

Cheers!

 

[Riley37]

Church, as such, Valhingen Graveyard, Kelemvor.

The Lathanderists have a soup kitchen and refugee camp, of sorts, at the Lyceum, over the destroyed temple of Bane, don't they? For their purposes, is service (and giving hope) a form of worship, perhaps enough to maintain a caster or two for Lesser Restoration, that sort of thing?

There's a cell of diehards who still sacrifice to Bane... not openly, but that sort of thing can build up power, no?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If something horribly contrived happened, with constraints as needed, such that either someone in Phlan casts Wish, or everyone in Phlan dies, then does everyone in Phlan die, on the grounds that no one in Phlan is *able* to cast Wish? That is: There can be all kinds of questions of whether anyone *able* to cast wish would be *willing* and findable-by-PCs. But if you remove those questions, then do you get a 17th-level arcane caster somewhere in Phlan casting Wish, or do you get a former city, now inhabited only by corpses?

If this happened, I'd say that Phlan would be destroyed. In the recent D&D Expeditions adventures, something pretty bad happened to Phlan and no one there was able to stop it. It would just require a couple of 12+ level people. No one seemed to be that powerful in town.