They were definitely all(?) high level characters before the brainworm

will

Will could summon greater demons in his backstory, meaning he was lv11 at minimum.

karlach

Karlach cannot have survived as soldier in hell for decades and not leveled up at all, that’s also impossible. Devils and demons are strong

shart

Shart is supposed to be a sharran elite, and all the mobs in the temple are like level 5 at minimum. She was definitely way higher, at least lv 9.

So will being a high level wizard in his backstory is pretty believable. Almost none of these characters work as level 1 characters. Maybe astarion or laezel? Idk

And then when you find out his backstory it sounds like exactly the kind of thing I would veto if he were a PC in my game. You’re level 1, dude!

I always assumed the level 1 bit was a result of the , but you’re right, the redditor wizard is probably the biggest stretch of that.

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Keeping his hand as a souvenir is funny during an evil Dark Urge playthrough.

Various spoilers.

Yeah, it’s pretty silly. His backstory was probably near or at Epic level

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if he genuinely thought he could fuck around with Karsus’ Folly - that’s one of the few things that would have your peer superwizards (who mostly dislike each other) joining forces to put a stop to.

I think pretty much all the character’s backgrounds were a poor choice on their part. You don’t need a shred of backstory upfront if the writing is up to snuff, and having theirs be so high-level kinda makes everything happening pretty low stakes - the intro cinematic with the spelljammer vs dragonriders is basically a level 20 action sequence, and then you’re slogging through mud and goblins hearing about how cool everyone else used to be, having just seen how cool the stuff you don’t get to do is.

Plus Elminster could genuinely solve all of it in about three hours, so he shouldn’t have even been there to say:

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“So I hear you’re an unstable antimagical nuclear weapon now Gale?”.

Then teleport away without doing anything about it.

But eh, the story and stakes are all over the place.

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It isn’t even actually mind flayers! It’s just mid-level clerics of the three gods who job harder than Skeletor, with a plan so intensely stupid - fucking around with Illithid - that it can only function via the power of a saturday morning cartoon villain’s mcguffin.

It’s… like the Battle Angel Alita movie. It likes the source material too much, so it crams in too many elements from much later and weakens itself in the process. Or perhaps the poison of escalation.

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It isn’t just hints of the mind flayer space empire, it’s a netherese superweapon, no wait, it’s also the Dead Three! The city you’ll reach in thirty hours will be destroyed - and the entire world hangs in the balance! Only your level 12 characters can save the universe!

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There was also a large straight cis-male gamer audience that does not understand that rejecting someone’s romantic advances (and/or did not understand that he was making romantic advances) is not a mean/rude thing to do, leading to situations like this hilarious comic.

I think specifically feeding him magic items was quickly filling up his “NPC likes you” meter now that I think of it