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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 3767775" data-attributes="member: 1003">Hmmm ... slight tangent, but I think that the 'quick leveling' of 3e (which apparently will be worse in 4e), with no to little 'down time' between adventures (other than whatever time it takes the wizard to transmogrify dungeon swag into +4 Cloaks of Resistance) contributes to the player's expectations that major NPC's should often be available.  After all, adventures usually take a week or two, right? Shouldn't he be back by now?J.R.R. Tolkien doesn't make a big deal of it, but some of the 'adventures' that the main characters took prior to Frodo's journey took years.  According to the Wikipedia timeline, Aragorn and Gandalf spend 17 years looking for Gollumn / trying to track down the history of Bilbo's ring (perhaps not 'full time', but still ...).  In David Edding's books Belgarath the Eternal Man (and the other Apostles of Aldur) was known to become involved in tasks that occupied his attention for centuries at a time.  Unless the world was literally about to end, it wasn't worth his time.  Magical research came first.Maybe the best way to handle Elminster is just to have him really distant.  Like, the PC's show up in Shadowdale and the locals mentioned that no one has seen hide or hair of Elminster in going on fifteen years now.  There's one unlucky geezer who's lived in the village his whole life (64 years) and never met the man, always being out of town when "the Sage" makes one of his rare appearances.  Maybe there's a doorbell on the tower that says "Ring if Apocalypse Imminent", and local stories tell of the noble Ambassador sent from Amn who lost a hand about twenty years ago having pulled on the rope for a lesser reason.  Elminster is "Good" (he'll show up if the Apocalypse actually is imminent, and try to stop it), but because of his point of view (immortality, consort with Gods, etc.) most things that 'normal' people consider really important (like the sacking of Cormyr) are just the ebb and flow of history to him.  It's a bit like watching the tide come in and out.  I know the above argument is going to get the reaction that "that's not really 'good' then", but my only explanation would be "good and evil, like many things, depend on your point of view."Naturally this works best using Ruin Explorer's "no stats; he's a demi-god" scenario.</blockquote>

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