With all that said, one has to consider that in quite a lot of quests, the NPCs are not of epic power. Actually, the NPCs might not be powerful at all. It's just that if one attends a quest aimed at epic characters... well... one kind of has to expect the baddies to be of epic proportions also. Take a random quest aimed more towards low/mid level (say "Pseudonym - Stand Alone Quest") and one suddenly notices the NPCs are generally rather weak to nature...
Even though they might not be epic, LynnJuniper's "grievance" stands, specifically if you have been on any of the aforementioned quests involving Pseudonym's Menestas protagonist.While it may be annoying that your own spellcaster will never be able to shrink things down so small for a "Fantastic Voyage" type journey through one end of a cat and out the other, it was fun trip for the players, if not the characters.
Epic Characters...They do epic things...and for that, people know who they are...Following?So Why is it , that 'epic NPCs' (not the named ones even, Milara, Selian, etc) Can do all of these fancy things that PCs couldn't even dream of or try...but no one's ever heard of them? I understand quest progression...but it kind of miffs me when some random nobody from some quest that will either die in the end or isn't plot eccencial can do things that no PC will ever be able to directly accomplish....but their name isn't even on the maps?
Then every PC in the world has to come crying to all the Elminsters of the world because they need help saving the world and he's too busy reading a book and just divulges cryptic sentences now and again, so all these NPCs that are WAY more powerful than the PCs have to have their butts saved all the time, or thousands of years of campaign slaving can be easily ruined by a previously little known villain's cough, because he's just that powerful. It's just how it works at times. "
Or conversely, how does the PC necromancer take over the world with his single undead summons, whereas his NPC counterpart has an army of undead? *shrugs*That is one of the oldest paradoxes since the earliest days of the "D&D Boxed Edition", best not contemplated by us mere players.Or, you can put it down to too much DM creativity.