You guys remember Elminster?

Unfortunately.

>>54470629
No, I've never read anything by Ed Greenwood. What's good about it?

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You could say that. Maryest of Sues across the entirety of Forgotten Realms.

>>54470629

Yes. Like literally everything published about D&D, he is shit.

>>54470774
Whew lad, your ceaseless rage never fails to shame you and the rest of you trolls.

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>>54470629
Yes, and I stopped reading after "The Herald."

>>54470744
I like the corny way he talks and how, even now, Wizards of the Coast keep it up.

How could I forget Elminster? I use him to make sure my characters don't get out of hand.

>>54470629
Yes, I remember him.

Doesn't he spend most of that novel as a slave to some elf?

>>54470774
>memeposting
Okay.

Enjoy your opinions.

I don't much care for Elminster, but some of Elaine Cunningham's work is among my favorite fantasy fiction.

>>54471179
First he gets captured by elves on entering Cormanthor and imprisoned.

They try and mind-rape him to see whether he's the vanguard of an invading human army, because he had to sneak into their horribly racist city on account of being peppered with arrows otherwise and wore a kiira that only elves could wear via a magic spell. So when the disguise goes down, oops.

Mystra says no, I'm not letting you mind-rape him.

So the ruler of Cormanthor, in a remarkable display of "hey, maybe us acting like assholes to EVERY OTHER SPECIES is a bad idea in the long run" tasks him to become a knight of the Elven Court to prove to the elves that not all humans are evil tree-burners.

Elminster succeeds by befriending the Srinshee and is thus made a knight. This is treated with shock, horror, and disgust by every single elf noble except for one or two elven women who have decided they're bored with flirting and seducing elf men, because he's an EVIL TREE-BURNING HUMAN.

So at the acceptance party for his being made a knight, there are various attempts to poison him, one elven noble matriarch an heros to try and kill the ruler of Cormanthor (she fails), and Elminster has to flee the party, but takes said flirty and thirsty elf woman with him. And then before they even get started with the sex, more assassins attack because other elves are disgusted that said elf woman would perform what amounts to bestiality.

So Elminster runs away again, and spends the middle section of the book being hunted down until, while in ethereal form, he's captured by an elf wizard and enslaved. He spends the rest of the book being a slave to said wizard until at the very end he succeeds in killing the wizard before he can corrupt the nascent mythal into a "kill all humans who step into it" spell.

And remember: this Cormanthor, Myth Drannor, the city of song? This is the nation that the Harpers fervently believe was the best of the world and continually fight to restore.

Fuck Myth Drannor.

>>54470629
I have read scores of ready-made amateur scenarios and remember some that explixity said he's NOT HOME YOU FUCK OF DO IT. And also heard about twice a dozen of stories about players who tried to find him anyway and were persistent in it.

Having some powerfull NPCs is fine, but still I think that D&D spell-spewing mages just simply have to high power level. Like, Gandalf the Grey is seen only doing minor tricks and is unable to defeat heavy outnumering gobos before rising from death and he's kind of angelic being, isn't he?

>>54471625
Gandalf was depowered when he got sent to middle earth, so he wouldn't fuck things up too much. Same with all the wizards. Saruman went and got himself corrupted and stopped playing by the rules, which is why he started doing all sorts of shit. It wasn't until gandalf got killed and god said "nah, go back and fix this shit" that he started using more powerful stuff to try and set things back on an even keel.

>>54470774
I bet you play GURPS

>>54471625
Elminster is dealing with real problems, that could end all life in realmspace.

Now fuck off and go deal with your necromancer raiding villages

>>54470629
making of a mage is probably my favorite book

>>54471422
and guess what? the city fell just a few centuries later due to said multiculturalism

hey, just like real life

>>54472855
>Elminster is dealing with real problems
I don't understand this argument. Sure, it works for why he's not around all the time, but there are plenty of other reasons why he might not be helping. Such as, you know, maybe he's busy teaching an apprentice (he canonically has them every so often). Or doing spell research, because he's Mystra's chosen and his job is to help create and spread magic. Or wandering around his tower doing spring cleaning because he spent a few weeks in Waterdeep with Laeral. Or working in his vegetable garden to let his mind rest for a bit while mulling over a particularly annoying problem. Or reading a book that isn't related to magic because maybe he's recently gotten fond of high-society murder thriller mysteries. Or chatting with a friend he hasn't seen in 10-20 years. Or doing any of the other shit that a person might do as they generally live their life.

The notion that he, or ANY other high-level NPC one might care to name, is a video game character who mows down combat encounters like Doomguy does demons is absurd. He's mortal and has times when he doesn't care enough to help like anybody else.

When the not!Mongol horde invaded the Heartlands, Azoun sent a missive to him requesting his aid. His response was something to the tune of "fuck off, I'm busy".

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>>54470629
Back before our local tg convention turned to shit Ed Greenwood was one of the occasional special guests. I never payed any attention to it but as I know he dressed up in a wizard outfit and did a seminar role-playing as Elminster.

>>54473501
According to a vlog by the guy my local con is now his favorite. I don't remember seeing him when i went.

Elminster's only positive contribution to the setting was the concept of becoming a 'chosen' of a god, which is a good meta-motivation for devout characters.

Otherwise he's a literary abortion and he fucking ruined Dungeons and Dragons Online by dragging the story out of the woefully boring and generic Eberron into exciting and totally interesting Cormyr with some of his mary sue magic horsecock

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>>54470629
Aye

>>54470811
Are any of these guys from Salvatore's cleric books? I didn't read any of those either but it sounds nice

>>54473971
>Salvatore
I tried reading the crystal shard many years ago, I remember it being not good. Is he just a hack or should I give him another shot?

>>54474052

It's extremely good literature for kids, but sub-average for adults.

>>54474052
He is a great combat writer. His characters are somewhat archetypical and he's not good at character development. I've read like 15 of his books

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>>54475546
I second this opinion
His combat is fantastic but all his characters boil down to brooding good guy drow, dwarf, lazy halfling, Conan-lite, some Scottish chick who does nothing of import for most of the books
They are good reads for the most part but you have to go into them looking for some entertaining generic fantasy and not a literary masterpiece

>>54470629

Greenwood is way better at creating settings and worlds, than characters in a fictional narrative. See his early Dragon Magazine articles on Hell for an example.

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>>54473155
Could've sworn the knife-eared faggots opened up the way to the Far Realm.

>>54478102
They did. It's a specifically 4E thing, mind, Toril had been isolated from the Far Realm before that point, but a couple of Eladrin got stupid and made a deal with Cthulhu because it couldn't POSSIBLY go wrong, and as a result they almost opened a giant-ass hole to the Far Realm through a couple of corrupted stars.

Elf hate is cancerous, but the knife-ears have such a long history of genocide, race wars, enslavement, and meddling in shit that should not be meddled with that sometimes I can't help but cheer when they get their comeuppance.

>>54478197
The picture I posted is from 3.5 anon.
Also, Father Lymmic.

>>54478102
>knife-eared

Do spoonears still try to use this as an insult?

>>54478203
I just looked at the Elder Evils book to check, and said book is setting-neutral.

The "Elder Evils in Faerun" thing is just providing plot hooks for people who actively want to put said Evils into FR (it includes options for putting them into Eberron or Greyhawk as well) for a campaign. It flat out says so at the start:

>Two subsections suggest ways to adapt the elder evil to the FORGOTTEN REALMS® and EBERRON™ campaign settings.

There are only two Elder Evils fully acknowledged as very definitely existing in FR. One is Pandorym because it appeared in a novel, to my knowledge, and that was summoned/bound by the Imaskari. The other is Zargon whose entire backstory is probably Asmodeus shading the truth anyway, because he's noted in the 5E SCAG as a possible warlock patron.

Llymic, by contrast to those two, does not seem to exist in FR that I can see unless an individual GM decides to put him there, and they aren't obligated to go with the the options provided.

Raistlin>Mordenkainen>shit>Elminster
Prove me wrong, faggots

>>54478205
So... do we call half-elves sporkears?

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>>54478341
>Raistlin
Suicided before achieving his ultimate goal of killing Takhisis, because his godhood did nothing more than turn him into a black star that could do nothing but destroy itself over and over again. Proceeded to come back from the dead only to suicide AGAIN and dissipate himself into the River of Souls.

Ultimately a failure.

>Mordenkainen
Failed at maintaining balance, was betrayed. Fucked up by the Dark Powers and tossed into Ravenloft. Even after he was released, he's instead still insane and now stuck in FR, where he has to be tended by Storm Silverhand to try and assuage the madness.

Although being tended lovingly by Storm Silverhand might not be such a bad thing, pic related.

>he doesn't run a forgotten realms game
lol!
With the 1e/2e sourcebooks and adventures, you have enough material to play a session every day for the next 10 years and still have untouched material.

>>54470629
A shitty self-insert sue, how can anyone possibly defend him?

>>54478292
What about Age of worms?

>>54479170
Set in Greyhawk if you mean the Adventure Path in Dungeon, and Kyuss is a Greyhawk deity anyway. Some of his spawn did manage to find their way to Faerun, but he's firmly based elsewhere. Besides him, there are some evil spellcasters in FR who turned themselves into Worms That Walk, but they aren't the original undead demigod.

>>54470629

got the first book on my shelf, never read it though. Should I?

>>54470744

>thou've

I swear to god that almost killed me. THEY DID NOT SAY THAT.