Canonfire!

Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:18 am Prince Reydrich of Ahlissa 3e Stats

An article on the Archmage prestige class was recently posted on Wizards website. It contains an example archmage character called Reydrich. Since it was written by Creighton Broadhurst (and there were other clues) you know it must be Prince Reydrich. From memory the magic items generally fit those described in Ivid the Undying for Reydrich.

I thought it was good. It has Reydrich as Wiz15/Archmage5.

Link is http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070130

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070130

FYI.

Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:17 pm

Yea, I thought it was cool that Creighton deigned to use Reydrich as his sample NPC. Not bad, although a little vanilla. Unless you use purely core rules in your campaign, Reydrich could get run over like a truck by a squad of well-built 10th-level PCs. I think a handful of Complete Arcane or Complete Mage feats and items would spruce him up a bit.

Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:37 pm

Yeah I could see why you might call him vanilla. Being used as an example, Creighton probably had to keep it simple. Nice to see Reydrich though, he has been a long time villain in my campaign.

There seems to be mixed opinions on Greyhawk as to 'high' magic and 'lower' magic games. Lower ones would presumably restrict an abundance of magic items - so he might well get trounced by 10th level characters weighed down with magic items...

Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:56 pm

Greyhawk is definitely medium fantasy, as in, there are a few realistic elements in it, but it is a largely fantastical place. However, I have no problem with a DM taking his own vision of Greyhawk or playing in such a campaign. I just doubt such campaigns agree with canon. Even the Carl Sargent era stuff wasn't greatly magical, it just introduced the idea that the outer planes played a greater role in the affairs of the Flanaess than previously stipulated. However, if you consider the Gord the Rogue novels as canon, then Gygax apparently shared the same opinion, so I don't think Sargent got it all that wrong. But either way, I do not think magical items are what would let PCs roll Reydrich over. I think it is allowing overpowered feats like Shock Trooper and Leap Attack or sudden metamagic that would contribute mostly to his downfall. I mean, if a PC is capable of casting the equivalent of an 8th level spell (maximized cone of cold), he is casting an 8th level spell in my opinion, and that is a bit much.

Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:52 pm

Well, the solution to bad game balance is not to make the NPCs equivalently unbalanced....

Sun Feb 18, 2007 3:12 am

Sun Feb 18, 2007 6:50 am

Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:53 am

Creighton also did Cymria of Celadon as the example Eldritch Knight.

The Exotic Weaponmasters, Three have some Greyhawk flavour but aren't known NPCs afaik, the Troglodyte Dark Hunter and half elf mystic theurgewould fit into GH as well.

Mon Feb 19, 2007 11:23 pm

What Ho All,

Yes, indeed the featured archmage is meant to be the (in)famous Reydrich the archmage of Ahlissa. I have been meaning to stat him up for ages and when the opportunity came along to write the prestige class article everything seemed to fall in to place.

The goal of the articles is to explain a certain prestige class and to provide an example member of that class. As such, I couldn't really use that many new feats and spells from the various Complete books becasue I didn't have enough wordage to explain lots of them and I can't assume that the readers all have access to the non-core books.

You could easily make Reydrich tougher, I deliberately didn't power-game when building him. I'm getting a bit tired of powergaming as it all seems a bit pointless. The DM builds an incredibly hard NPC. The PCs either get slaughtered or build equally powerful PCs. Then, the DM ramps up the hardness to provide a challenge and the circle begins again. That to me is not what D&D is about.

Yes, I did do several other Greyhawk NPCs in the articles - I always try to slip one in if I can. The Eldritch knight article features a certain chum of Tenser, Cymria of Celedon. The mystic theurge article details Deggum the outcast (from the 3rd-level of the original Temple of Elemental Evil).

Creighton