Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 3767961" data-attributes="member: 5948">If it were up to me, there's a passably simple method I'd use for dealing with uber-NPC syndrome.Basically, the Chosen are the ones who are the main problem.  Drizzt is only one guy with no magic, and whatever you think about the novels, he's only got a 5ft reach and (since he has no wizards in the party, the careless fool!) is generally limited to getting where he needs to go by foot.  He isn't going to be a major political power any time soon.  Cormyr, as pointed out above, is a keg of political gunpowder and any 'named' characters there have got their hands full trying to hold onto their heads.  Khelben is gone, Halaster is gone, Shandril is gone, Manshoon (or his various clones) is still spending his time fighting amongst himself, the Simbul (when used properly) is basically the only thing holding the Aglarond line against all of Thay at once, and so hardly has time to be blipping all over the Realms on a regular basis.The anonymous, disposable main characters of recent RSE novels are still there on the whole, but realistically nobody's going to notice if they fade away never to be mentioned again.  Quick, without looking it up, can anyone tell me the name of the unspeakably naff hero from the Return of the Archwizards series?  The Threat From The Sea series?  Thought not.So, the way I'd do it is have the Weave/Shadow Weave conflict come to a head.  Shar takes on Mystra, and like matter and antimatter this results in them both going foom.  Mystra is gone, dead, annihilated, and the same with Shar - except for the measure of power they entrusted to their respective Chosen.  So, Elminster, Alustriel, and the rest are now the anchors of the Weave.  If they die, the consequences for magic across the Realms will be catastrophic.  So in campaign setting terms, they become liabilities to be protected rather than assets.  They CAN'T go out adventuring - even a demon lord wandering around, or Thay conquering Mulhorand, or the Crypt of Sleeping Lizards awakening is less of a threat to the stability of the Realms than risking Qilue or someone getting ganked and having the Weave further destabilised.  They basically have to stay reclusive and heavily warded, and work through emissaries - Elminster once more becomes a stay-at-home sage and Alustriel will have to return her focus to Silver Marches politics (all as nature intended!)  Now, I'm aware there's more than a little bit of irony in my using an RSE to accomplish this after having bemoaned them so much earlier in this thread (and it's something that might be best handled off-screen and then left as a mystery for PCs to discover the details of), but this would accomplish a number of things.- Iconic Realms NPCs stay alive and accessible for setting fans, but no longer do PC-type stuff- Timeline need not be advanced too far, and major political units remain recognisable and in place, if rather more precariously so, so ongoing campaigns are not messed with too much- many good-aligned regions (the Dales, Silver Marches, etc) suddenly lose their 'big guns', with destabilisation/fragmentation inevitably resulting "But WHY won't Lady Alustriel come out of her palace and save our village from the dragon?!", leaving a darker (dare I say points-of-lightier!) setting with more for PCs to do- 3e's overwhelming and slightly tedious focus on Shar and the Shades as bad guys can be toned down, since they're in the same boat as the good guys re: the Shadow WeaveSure, there's problems (what to do with clerics of Shar or Mystra, for one!) but if I could come up with this after thinking for two minutes, surely WotC could, if they wanted to, find a way to reboot the Realms without such a massive overturning of all things familiar as seems to be the current plan.</blockquote>

Verification