You know the meme about some Big Bad Evil like Tiamat popping into say, Faerun and Elminster...

You know the meme about some Big Bad Evil like Tiamat popping into say, Faerun and Elminster, favored by godess of Magic herself, pops in and fucks up BBE?

Well from the look of it,since dnd 5e stats came out, Elminster is no longer capable of that. 5e has screwed casters and screwed them hard. Or did it? I'd like to know your opinion? And especially on the question of lvl 20 wizard with all epic feats vs Tiamat(stats from Tyranny of the Dragons). I think such a wizard might not even be able to beat strongest of dragons in 5e.

Wizards, and casters in general, needed the nerf. No character should be able to face dragons alone without the intervention of a god or something.

And having said that, I STILL think Casters are a little too versatile out of combat, and this is coming from someone who usually plays them.

They went from being gods slumming it with plebs that don't even bother hiding the fact that they weren't playing the same game at all to being 'merely' really, really powerful. So I guess that's an improvement.

No. In 5e a wizard is roughly comparable in power to a fighter, although they are more versatile.

((Elminster was an epic level multiclass though))

>That file
Top tier taste user.
5e + OSR style = best D&D

>although they are more versatile.
This has been the problem all along.

Yeah, but in previous editions they were too versatile AND they were gods in combat who could be flying, invisible, buffed in every stat, and have 3 different kinds of forcefields around them while they rained death from the sky and their army of summoned minions killed the paralyzed blinded stragglers.

5e did away with alot of that with the revamped concetration system, limiting most of those to one thing at a time. And by being more generous with saves for status spells.

Now wizards just too versatile instead of too powerful. (Because unfortunately there are still alot of spells that outright replace entire skills, such as Alter Self and Disguise. IMO the wizard class should just be focused around crowd-control as their "niche" and lose alot of stuff thats not Evocation or Abjuration.)

>Elminster is no longer capable of that
Elminster is NOT an example of what a D&D pc caster can do, in any way.
He is some monstrous epic level multiclass thing that had like 2 entire prestige classes made up for him, on top of a handful of expressly deity level abilities.

>No character should be able to face dragons alone without the intervention of a god or something
yeah, nope.
MARTIALS should totally be able to solo dragons.
I agree that casters's should not, as casters are unheroic and faggy and should be forever degraded to support/utility role where real heroes do the glorious shit.

All you're doing is replacing one retarded power fantasy with another. Go play Skyrim if you want that shit and keep out of cooperative roleplaying games.

You're that guy who also makes the "all elves are fags" topics every day, aren't you? Stick to shitting up your own topics.

>MARTIALS should totally be able to solo dragons.
Oh yeah, because that turned out sooo well for Beowulf.

>Motive present in myth and legend since dawn of mankind
>retarded power fantasy
sure mate

And he still got shit on by any halfway decent PC Wizard when you look at how he was intended to be played and his shit spelllists

Where are these stats for Elmister? Show it to me.

He won.

So did Sigurd.

And Heracles.

There are more martials killing dragons than any number of wizards doing anything that impressive in the myths.

In fact, the ONLY mythology where casters are actually anything useful are Russian and Celtic.

No, elves are cool.
Almost all cool elves are martials, tho.

What part of COOPERATIVE GAME are you too retarded to understand?

I repeat, no one player should be able to solo the strongest enemies in a game based on teamwork. Goddamn, even for bait this is retarded.

That picture is wrong though. The "hero" should be hiding in a ditch as the dragon crept by and sneak-attacked the dragon.

That's how he killed that dragon. Not in some retarded charge.

>He won.
No, he died. Like a bitch.

That's what the story tells you. Doesn't matter what a big hero you are. One day you'll die, and everything you work for will be dust in the wind.

Lrn2medieval storytelling.

>Heracles
Oh, if you're turning martials into demigods, might as well bring back 3e so wizards can be demigods too.

You FUCKING retard.

>game based on teamwork
>game
>teamWORK
I guess I know where your problems lie, gamist pleb

...

Wizards are all based on demigods in the first place, you idiot. Merlin was half demon, Circe was the daughter of Hecate herself, etc.

Once again, the only place where this isn't the case is Russia and the Celtic myths.

>Once again, the only place where this isn't the case is Russia and the Celtic myths.
But that's wrong.

But in DnD those are just Sorcerers... and in 5e Sorcerers are pretty much strictly-inferior wizards with a worse spell list.

>half demon
>demigod

Since when do demons sit in heaven next to God?

>No, he died
He killed his enemy. Saved his people. Even if sacrifice of his own life was the price, he WON. That's how heroism works.
Especially if you shrug away the latter christian additions and place it in the original, germanic pagan contest, where dying in battle was a greatest honour granting you best possible afterlife. So living up to an old age, while defeating all your enemies, and still being able to rock enough to kill your last and greatest enemy, and dying in the process, achieving immortal fame, securing your place in valhalla, and saving your kin after long and succesful life is basically best ending possible

>Oh, if you're turning martials into demigods
>mistaking "demigod" as parentage with "demigod" as power level
I guess you're the retarded one. Heracles was "demigod" in sense he was human with divine blood, not exactly in a sense of abilities. I mean, he had supernatural strentgh, but it is not possible to judge to what degree. He could be anything from a mostly normal martial with strentgh boosted "somewhat" above normal limits to animu power level-sense demigod, but that's story recipent's interpretation and not objective fact.

It is very easy to judge how strong Herakles was. He managed to carry the Earth on his back. Which makes him full-on divine infinite strength.

You know demons are fallen angels right?

No, he carried the sky on his back. Slight difference.

Elminster isn't JUST a wizard, he's a wizard that has the resources of an entire plane at his disposal and could raise literal armies to do his bidding if needed. He's the initial hurdle to starting a FR campaign because the first question that needs to be answered is "Why doesn't Elminster solve it?"

Because he was assassinated in secret and now his personal demiplane contains nothing but a rotting corpse in an antimagic field.

All those great things he's supposed to have done are actually done by real dieties pretending to be him.

And since Merlin never actually fell, that makes him half-angelic.

This. Also St. George and the persian Rostam.

But actually, the problem is that dragons should be more weak, not martials stronger. Except when the dragon is literally Satan of course.

>the problem is that dragons should be more weak
Or the DM should just put in younger dragons. Seriously, why do monsters need to be weaker?

Are angels gods now?

Exactly, Merlin is simply part supernatural. Not semi-divine.

That's just the fault of GM's.

The dragon that St. George fought was basically an oversized crocodile that he ran through with a lance.

Dragons in actual mythology, outside dumb D&D conventions can range from big snakes all the way up to cosmic monsters that are planet sized.

I will explain myself better.

The average nameless dragon should be weaker. Young or old. Instead of being forced to nerf it, it would make more sense for the game to make the DM buff his dragon. After all, if players are exceptional, so can be the enemy. Or not, depending on what's better for you. But saying "yeah, you killed a dragon, but he was a shitty young one" is pretty anticlimatic and never the better option.

They're created by divinity, so they're divine creations. So, technically, are demons. they are literally divine creations.

You're both wrong; he carried the heavens on his back, which was a distinct concept from the sky in Greek mythos.

See, that's basically what I wanted to say. The big crocodile/snake should be your average dragon. And then, just like you have humans capable of soloing entire cities, you have dragons capable of soloing entire kingdoms. But that's because THIS dragon is that strong, not the majority.

Humans were created by divinity and are above angels and demons. This is canon.

If you have even the two spellcasting boons, I imagine time stop chaining would fuck most ancient dragons up pretty easily OP.

>"Why doesn't Elminster solve it?"

"Because he's dealing with his own shit".

Christ I hate this complaint. Veeky Forums has no sense of how big Faerûn, or any planet for that matter, actually is and how much stuff is going on in it, all the time.

Elminster lives in the Dalelands, a region the size of France. Poland fits comfortably inside of Thay. Faerûn as a whole comprises an area larger than that of North America.

Job 1:6 thru 1:12.

Then Elminster just opens the Book given to him by a Council of Several DMs, and memorizes the Spell That Nobody Else Can Learn That Lets Elminster Be a Faggot Harper And Still Teleport Around The World Punking Anyone The Current DM Wants To Have Punked While The Party Is Supposed To Be In Awe Of Such A Great Character.

Half the memorization is just the spell name

Reminder that Elminster fucked Drizzt's sister but when she was polymorphed into a man and thinks it "wasn't gay".

Goddamn right.

>[Helpless gesticulating trying to make an incorrect point]

ITT: Things that never happened, the post.

Elminster is pretty powerful, but he's nowhere near the most powerful being in Faerûn, and he's certainly nowhere near powerful enough to be everywhere, at all times, solving all problems. Hell, the 3rd Edition FRCS even had Elminster explain, in his own words, why he doesn't go around solving all of Faerûn's problems. Among other things he highlighted that in a fight between him and, say, Manshoon or Szass Tam, he has no idea who'd come out on top, but he's pretty sure that either of them have just as much a chance against him as he does against them.

Hang on, I'll get it for you, on the off chance you can read and comprehend something that goes against your baseless assertion.

FRCS 3rd Edition, pg. 84

>kills a dragon the size of a dog

Truly, the epitome of martial power.

how could it possibly be gay to have sex with someone's sister

>Well from the look of it,since dnd 5e stats came out, Elminster is no longer capable of that
Elminster's an NPC so he doesn't need to abide by the class system in any capacity.
His stats are "fuck you, he's Elminster", and because of the cosmology of 5e locking into a strong multiverse scenario it just doubles-down on his most bullshit abilities.

Look at 5e's Blessings and Epic Boons in the DMG. If he had need for an actual statblock, he would have half a dozen of each. Plus a handful of feats.
He canonically shows up in the real world for our modern snack foods and to shoot the breeze with Ed Greenwood because he has surpassed causality and can steal his creator's beer if he wants.

he's just level 20 wizard with 2 epic feats

Most of the time, except for when he isn't.
Existing primarily as a character from a novel means that his abilities within the game are a bit all over the place.

Also who cares, it never came up in drizzt's books?

While they can replicate many other class abilities in theory, it generally doesn't make sense for them to waste a spell slot when someone else can do it just as well. What you're describing is mainly a problem in high level play.

I agree that's a problem, and I don't really have a solution other than "give the other PC's uniquely cool shit" like a magic sword that levels mountains, or plan on retiring PC's before the game turns into a weird wizard show.

Unless you want to set the game in a specific era where Elminster had a particular set of statistics at a particular set of time, Elminster's latest statblock is probably what you get when encountering him, assuming your campaign is set during the present. Characters are not static, and I have the sneaking suspicion that Elminster has been used by the devs as a PC at least a couple of times. Of course, there's nothing stopping the DM from taking the reigns and mini-camaigning as him to learn a specific set of abilities, but then you just fall on GM's discression and could as easily have him befall some misfortune like Vecna deciding to drain him back to level 1.

For an idea of what I'm talking about, there's an old-ass statblock for Conan detailing his stats and alignment through his life.

Neither of those anons, but he also picked up and moved a river to clean out the whatever stables for one of his labors. Heracles had narrative strength. As Mutants and Masterminds puts it "his stat is X, the value of X being whatever it needs to be for him to succeed at the current task." It is basically up to the GM whether a task is "difficult" for that character, but it's always more interesting to see them strain than to do it effortlessly.

Wizards are still stupidly good at high levels. You get to clone people, wish, and true polymorph.

I like that he has latent psionics. Even back then, martials just weren't up to simulating their inspirations without adding some bullshit on top.