Newbie question

Newbie question.

Are powerful NPCs always bad?

Yes

Only A Sith Deals In Absolutes

Only if you use them for bad purposes.

Not necessarily, but it depends mostly on how they're used.
If they exist as a fixture of the setting like a ruler of a nation or some ancient hero the party goes to for information/cool magic stuff, that's fine. The problem happens when an NPC starts overshadowing the party in their own campaign.

The answer to "Is [X] always [Y]?" is pretty much universally no.

Not if they're antagonists. It's when they're the player's allies that it becomes a problem.

>Yo, Elminster, the world's about to be destroyed by an evil cult, sending everyone to a nether plane to suffer in flaming agony forever, don't you think you should get off your ass instead of having us fifth level nobodies do it?

>Uhhh.. Elminster doesn't answer the wizard phone because... he's like, busy and stuff?

No. Spotlight-stealing NPCs are always bad.

But I always make cooler and better characters than my retarded players

>First session: go on mission with mentor NPC. They send you on important side-mission while they handle diplomacy/laboriously disarm the magic defenses on the tomb/heal the townsfolk while you search for the herb that will cure the disease.

>Tenth session: players find themselves fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with their old mentor, finally equal to them in power (though perhaps not wisdom.)

>Twentieth session: mentor is beloved source of advice, support, and lore, though they rarely take to the field. The situation has escalated beyond their abilities, and the players would be crushed if anything happened to them!

This is the true path.

Note that the mentor should not feature in every session or plotline.

Not necessarily. While absolute power corrupts absolutely, there are exceptions to the rule. The trick is finding out who is the exception.

This, However keep in mind that peak human is roughly level 5. People higher than that are superhuman and rare.

A level 6 chap is 1 in a million
A level 20 chap is 1 in a billion
A level 40 chap is 1 in a trillion
A level 100 chap is incalculably rare.

Where did you get that retarded idea from. Let me guess - you're a 3.PF player.

NPC's who invalidate the point of the PC's are bad. Regardless of the scope, make the players the focus. It's about them. There can be more powerful forces at play, allied or opposed, but when the players are on screen it's generally bad form to just upstage them. It can work in certain context, but it's a tool that needs to be used very rarely, and deftly applied to have the desired impact.

Yes, and calm down son.

No need to be a fuckass about it.

NPC level distributions vary widely from one setting to the next. Forgotten Realms has a bunch of epic level goofs running around, for example. But even Eberron, which was specifically designed to have lower power levels, has higher common levels than you described.

The fuck kinda levels are those? Why are most humans capped out at level 5 out of 100? None of this makes sense!

The strongest mortal right know is about level ~120

Keep in mind that people are mainly level 1.

And that anyone who got though 117 levels of fighter cannot be a Mary Sue.

Not to be a dick, but that's the kind of character I would have made fun of a friend for making when I was 14.

It's a immortals handbook dude.

Not the best guy though. He's in the adventure idea section of pic related.

I'm not saying you made it. I'm saying it's a vampire with long white hair and six artifact swords who's the most powerful fighter in the universe.

A drawfag needs to draw gargillian

preferably as a girl

>Challenge Rating: Great Wyrm 680
And here I thought you were like omnipotent at 330+.

Nope.

Timelords and god are the omnipotent people. Timelords are omnipotent in their domain, which might be anything from a few feet to the outer planes. They aren't stated.

God is the dungeon master and he has absolute power over the world.

Not at all. The only real requirement is making sure that you can always give the players something significant to do in the story, either by limiting the power of the NPCs such that they require specialized help (by the players) or by tying up the NPCs holding off threats on their level while the players subvert weaker but still critical threats (potentially saving the more 'powerful' NPC from being overwhelmed).

OP NPCs only really serve two purposes well.

One is BBEG.

The other is as a strawman Big Badass Good Guy to prove the BBEG is BB'er than the BBGG.

Using OP NPCs as anything runs the risk of obviated the PCs with a DMPC.

They're like political messages in games I would guess. No they aren't and in fact can be done very very well, however nine times out of ten they are done in a shit way, so the common perception of them is poor.

No, they are not. They are only really "always bad!" if you run a shitty sort of game where everything devolves into THE BIG FIGHT AGAINST THE BIG BAD, and your heroes are only the heroes of the day because they're the killiest people in the world.

It's, after all, ridiculous to assume that maybe your characters are just local heroes and the campaign is mostly local in scope, and that there are bigger fish elsewhere in the world. Or even that they're the heroes because they're the ones who noticed the problem first and stepped in to do something about it, not because they can stab the most people with a pointy bit of metal or make the biggest magical explosion.