Who is the most famous wizard in D&D?

[infected slut princess]

The correct answer to this question is Raistlin. Certainly not Elminster.

SOme folks here might be too young to remember, but the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy was a pretty big deal at one point. They sold a lot of copies and most fantasy fiction nerds read them whether they were into D&D or not. Other than Lord of the Rings, this was arguably the fantasy series a fantasy noob was most likely to read at one time.

The Chronicles were much bigger than the Drizzt books, which were for the most part the only Forgotten Realms books that sold more than 10 copies. Drizzt were less popular than the Dragonlance Chronicles and Drizzt books never had Elminster in them.

For some groups of D&D players, Elminster will be better known but most D&D players don't even know anything about Forgotten Realms. The Dragonlance Chronicles were more widely read than Forgotten Realms and therefore Raistlin would be better known. Furthermore, the Chronicles were very popular pulpy fantasy books among non-D&D people.

Anyway, Raistlin is a pretty lame and the only cool books with him are the Dragonlance Legends (sequel to the Chronicles) because those had a cool time travelling storyline.

[Voss]

As for Raistlin... well, after deaddm insisting he's more famous than actual Roman emperors

Are you really going to try and convince us that you don't know what an analogy is? And even if you succeed, do you actually think that'll make your argument more credible?

He wasn't making an analogy. He claimed he has met two actual people who are Raistlin fanboys, 0 Hadrian fanboys and 1 Justinian fanboy.

He was seriously talking about terrible historians doing history wrong by being fanboys (or girls) of specific individuals.

[Silent Wayfarer]

In Asia specifically I wonder if Capcom's Magic User in Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara would be better known than the novel characters.

I actually encountered the D&D SoM magic users before I encountered D&D. In fact, the arcade game and Baldur's Gate led me to D&D 2e, which in turn led me to 3e and my involvement with the hobby.

His green-colored alternate counterpart has a wicked awesome pointy hat.

[deaddmwalking]

He wasn't making an analogy. He claimed he has met two actual people who are Raistlin fanboys, 0 Hadrian fanboys and 1 Justinian fanboy.

He was seriously talking about terrible historians doing history wrong by being fanboys (or girls) of specific individuals.

You sound delusional.

The analogy was comparing fictional figures to historical figures. There are some historical figures that everyone has heard of (like Hadrian), but most people don't know anything about his life or times. Knowing he is associated with 'a wall' is analagous to Bigby being associated with 'hand spells'. That may qualify as a certain type of fame, but it isn't the type most people have in mind when they say 'famous'.

[GâtFromKI]

an iconic wizard character from a bestselling series of d&d books and one of the best known d&d worlds is in fact hardly known at all amongst the group of people that might know any d&d wizards.

That's the whole point: he's hardly known at all among the group of people that might know any d&d wizards. That's several order of magnitude less than characters who are known among the group of people who shouldn't know any d&d character at all - like Imoen or that girl from the d&d movie; or Bigby, Melf and Mordenkainen, whose spells are very useful in the videogames.

As far as 'total numbers of people that have heard of either one', I don't think there is any strong evidence either way. If I were a representative sample, I would consider Raistlin more famous than Bigby - again, not because I know one and not the other, but because of the DEGREE of knowledge.

Great, I'm more famous than Hadrian; only a handful of people know about me, but they know many details. I'm also more famous than Newton, el Che Guevara and Alfred Hitchcock.

Wait; that doesn't make any sense.

[Starmaker]

You have to establish the metric of fame. My mostly unfounded feeling is that
- Raistlin is a character that the most people give a shit about.
- Elminster is a character that the most people have seen in media, particularly videogames (but don't give a shit about his story).
- Any of the Greyhawk spell inventors win on basic name recognition. Depending on what games people play and what selections of spells are available, people don't necessarily get spells are named for their inventors.

As anecdotal evidence:

I have wanted to get into Dragon Lance for years now due to the story of Raistlin Majere.
Which Dragon Lance books involve him?
Thanks.

I've noticed that some spells have names attached to them. I was wondering if any particular stories come with the spells, and who was the person each spells was named after?

Who is this dude who keeps showing up.
His name is Elminster if memory serves. He's obviously important since they wont give me a chance to rend him limb from limb like I did with Drizzt and his band or Seamon Havarian on that part with the boat.
Cuz he looks interesting and since he's leader of the Harpers I'm guessing that he'd put up a good fight.
Although, what is he against a Demi-God? MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! *Fart*

People on Tor.com reread the Dragonlance Chronicles and were drooling over Raistlin all the way.

as a kid living in Karachi in the dark days before the internet and finding the Chronicles in second hand book stalls, I had no idea that there was any more to these stories than what I was reading. The books were the entire canon, as it were, and if there was clunkiness then well, it was just clunkiness. As for the cliches that existed in RPGs at that time—I didn’t even know what RPGs were! I haven’t read these stories for over 20 years—maybe more—and this is the first time I will read them knowing that they tied in with other modules.

There's only one person in the world who might consider a reread of an Elminster book, but he'd soon realize he can squirt out a sequel for money instead.
---

If you tell me to name a random D&D wizard, I'd say Mordenkainen every time. I remember him hairy, though.
If told to keep to videogame characters, I'd say Irenicus.
I don't associate Raistlin with D&D despite being enough of a fan of the TSR books to still remember most of the poems (it's been, what, 20 years? fuck I'm old) because I consider Dragonlance basically unplayable as-is (reason).

I'm also not ashamed of still liking most of Raistlin's appearances. I graduated (or perhaps degraded) to fantasy from "classic" sci-fi and historical novels. Classic sci-fi was full of omnipotent dickheads. Historical novels were full of dead people impossible to wholeheartedly root for, because I already knew how their stories ended. Eowyn was a traitor. I fully expected the Christianist authors to turn Raistlin into an Important Moral Lesson, but they didn't, at least not initially, and even his capture and torture in Legends was eventually reretconned into a toothless "Meh I'm too awesome for this stupid world, blah blah balance, call me when you try to raise the franchise as a zombie". Dude seemed to have transcended reality and defeated the writers. Impressive.

---

I had originally chosen to play as Sturm Brightblade, but when he was supposed to die, I had to switch to Cameron.
...
I did read the Dragonlance trilogy (so I knew how to play my character 'right').

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Nunm3Sbzo

(Oh, and it's 200:68 in favor of Raistlin for me.)

[fbmf]

If we're using facts commonly known about the character as the measuring stick, isn't Strahd Von Zarovich a necromancer?

A good portion of gamers from the 80s 90s could recite The Tome of Strahd verbatim.

Game On,
fbmf

[Chamomile]

As for Raistlin... well, after deaddm insisting he's more famous than actual Roman emperors

Are you really going to try and convince us that you don't know what an analogy is? And even if you succeed, do you actually think that'll make your argument more credible?

He wasn't making an analogy. He claimed he has met two actual people who are Raistlin fanboys, 0 Hadrian fanboys and 1 Justinian fanboy.

He was seriously talking about terrible historians doing history wrong by being fanboys (or girls) of specific individuals.

I would grant you that his statement on the subject strongly imply a direct comparison, except for two things. Number one, those statements came after you made the post accusing him of making a direct comparison, and number two that accusation also came after the post in which DDM said it was an analogy:

Bigby would be like Hadrian in this example. Having heard of him doesn't necessarily imply fame.

That's the whole point: he's hardly known at all among the group of people that might know any d&d wizards.

Shlominus was being sarcastic, you dumbass. He even said as much explicitly like two posts later.

Great, I'm more famous than Hadrian; only a handful of people know about me, but they know many details. I'm also more famous than Newton, el Che Guevara and Alfred Hitchcock.

Each of these people individually has a minimum thousands of people who know fully 100% of the significant details of their life. Many of them have tens or hundreds of thousands. If you genuinely have that many people know your life in that level of detail, then yes, you are more famous than them. It doesn't matter how many people know insignificant details of your life, though. You're absolutely right that your friends and family knowing about the argument you got into with your wife over the weekend before you kissed and made-up has no impact on your fame whatsoever, but that's hardly an argument in favor of your position, seeing as how "invented a magic hand spell" barely even qualifies as a significant detail in Bigby's life.

[Kaelik]

seeing as how "invented a magic hand spell" barely even qualifies as a significant detail in Bigby's life.

Quick check, how many (true) things does the average person (or for that matter, you personally) know about Issac Newton that don't involve "inventing" calculus and the theory of gravity.

Every single person in the US knows Newton, and they know why they know Newton, and they know the effects Newton's existence has had on math and science.

But apparently, you are now arguing that if more people read Dragonlance than are specific Issac Newton scholars who know off the top of their head all about his specific life path, then Raistlin is more famous than Isaac Newton.

Spoiler alert, if your view of "who is more famous Isaac Newton or Raistlin?" is dependent on the number of history of science scholars at all, then your theory is wrong.

Sorry buddy, inventing calculus counts, and so does inventing hand spells. Old dead people are famous for inventing things all the goddam time.

Hell, living people are. Before the Facebook movie I bet like 1k people in the entire fucking world knew anything about Mark Zuckerberg besides that he invented facebook.

[Starmaker]

Spoiler alert, if your view of "who is more famous Isaac Newton or Raistlin?" is dependent on the number of history of science scholars at all, then your theory is wrong.

Sorry buddy, inventing calculus counts, and so does inventing hand spells. Old dead people are famous for inventing things all the goddam time.

Hell, living people are. Before the Facebook movie I bet like 1k people in the entire fucking world knew anything about Mark Zuckerberg besides that he invented facebook.

You're contrasting one real person with one character. Deaddm and Cham (and now me) are contrasting two completely fictional characters, and likening that contrast to another contrast between two real people, four figures total, even if the second real person was only implied. (Then you can swap signifier and denominator at your leisure.)

Bigby to Raistlin is like Newton to John Nash.

(Now, because science is not art, and earlier discoveries loom disproportionately large, here's a more appropriate comparison)

Bigby to Raistlin is like Kamehameha to Hamilton.

[Kaelik]

You're contrasting one real person with one character. Deaddm and Cham (and now me) are contrasting two completely fictional characters

The relevant comparison is "Does inventing something that everyone knows about, and everyone knows you invented make you famous" and since the answer is "duh, yes it does" that means Bigby wins. (Unless you argue that more people read Dragonlance than ever played D&D.)

Bigby to Raistlin is like Newton to John Nash.

(Now, because science is not art, and earlier discoveries loom disproportionately large, here's a more appropriate comparison)

Bigby to Raistlin is like Kamehameha to Hamilton.

Except you know, how both of those comparisons are fucking garbage and one of them (kamehameha) straight up contradicts the main point by using a less known person in the first example.

Again, the relevant comparison is not "whatever bullshit nonsense supports my example" it is "Does inventing things count as a goddam famous, of course it does, this argument is stupid and everyone saying Raistlin is living in delusions."

[sendaz]

When I first saw Kamehameha, I was momentarily wondering why we were comparing a DBZ move to a former President, but then I realized he meant the Hawaiian ruler.

[Starmaker]

Except you know, how both of those comparisons are fucking garbage and one of them (kamehameha) straight up contradicts the main point by using a less known person in the first example.

But vastly more people know Goku's signature attack. That's the main point -- whether something well-known named for you make you personally instafamous.

Again, the relevant comparison is not "whatever bullshit nonsense supports my example" it is "Does inventing things count as a goddam famous, of course it does, this argument is stupid and everyone saying Raistlin is living in delusions."

Bigby and the others aren't even characters in the Forgotten Realms, and I think a substantial number of players don't know who they are and perhaps consider them videogame designers' nicknames or a reference to Skyrim. If you think "Oh, I remember, there was a spell with that name" is enough to make a character the most famous D&D wizard (even though the person might not know they are specifically wizards and spell inventors; maybe Tasha is a developer's ex) -- sure, whatever, I'm not going to argue, my criteria are different and more strict but the answer is almost the same anyway.

[souran]

The thing that is most immensely stupid about the "spell name wizards are famous" argument is that the spell name wizards didn't actually invent their fucking spells.

Those spells were named after those wizards because Gygax or Arnsen wanted a hidden credit on who came up with various ideas. Hell, often even then they were written in conjuction or even for other freaking people. Every "Melf" spell was written by Gygax for his freaking kid. That means every "Melf" spell is really a "Mordenkainen" spell.

If you go to a convention and ask who the DM/Setting Author Penis extension wizard is for FR they KNOW. They know its Elemenister. If you ask who the DM/Setting Author Penis Extension Wizard is for Dragonlance they will say Raistlin. As fbmf has pointed out, you could even get people to give you an answer for Raveloft. However, nobody knows that for Greyhawk. Hell Gygax played several of the wizards on the circle of 8. Which one was the freaking leader?

If you asked people about the "spell name" wizards, most would probably think they are all from the Forgotten Realms.

Seriously the logic presented by Kaelik all one would have to do to make a "famous D&D wizard" is make a print run of PHBs with that characters name inserted. If we stick the name "Oakencocks whatever" on every evocation spell in the PHB he would be the most famous D&D wizard EVAH!

[Kaelik]

But vastly more people know Goku's signature attack.

Do you really believe that? I can't tell if you are serious here.

Your greater point that "What if people think Melf's Acid Arrow wasn't an acid arrow invented be Melf?" is at least a better argument than Cham "Isaac Newton Isn't Famous" omile, but it's still a really dumb argument.

But really, do you actually think more people know the name of Goku's attack than Alexander Hamilton?

If you asked people about the "spell name" wizards, most would probably think they are all from the Forgotten Realms.

I doubt that this is true, but even if it was, that's like saying Newton isn't famous because people might think he was french or german or american. It's not even remotely relevant to why he is famous in the modern day.

Seriously the logic presented by Kaelik all one would have to do to make a "famous D&D wizard" is make a print run of PHBs with that characters name inserted. If we stick the name "Oakencocks whatever" on every evocation spell in the PHB he would be the most famous D&D wizard EVAH!

Yes, if you posted a new PHB tomorrow, a 6E, and then every human being who ever played D&D played 6E the next day, and every single spell was named after some Wizard you just made up for 6E lore, that would be the most famous D&D Wizard, of course he would be, every single person who had ever played D&D would know who he was and why he was famous.

[Mechalich]

There's a problem here in arguing about different types of fame. Any figure whether in pop culture or otherwise, is going to have varying layers of fame - which might be visualized as concentric circles - that represent different levels of familiarity.

A simple example is a musical group: the outermost circle will be people who have heard the name of the group and maybe know what the lead singer looks like but have no actual familiarity with their music. The Beatles are a good example of this: there are billions of people on this planet who have heard of the Beatles and who can process that they existed as a band, but may have never heard their music (Japanese millennials for instance). Then there will be a smaller circle of people who've heard one or two of the band's biggest hits a few times and can recognize them as 'hey that's a Beatles song' but know nothing further about the group. And then there's a still smaller group of complete and total obsessives who know everything there is to know about a group and have their whole discography and know the whole history.

Total fame then, would involve summing up the people in each of these circles, but generally it is accepted that people in the innermost circles count more than people in outer circles - in no small part because a small, highly devoted group of superfans can maintain broader awareness of a group for much longer than a diffuse group of vaguely nostalgic masses. The MCU, for example, was built off the leveraging of comic superfan effort across decades, even as the mass media appeal of comics cratered.

So a wizard like Bigby would have a very large number of name recognition fans, in the form of people who've come across the named spells in a D&D book or game at some point, but would have almost no fans beyond that point, because the number of Greyhawk obsessives is puny. By contrast Raistlin has a somewhat smaller number of name recognition fans, but a much larger group of people who are reasonable familiar with him in the form of having read at least one dragonlance novel he was in, and a still sizeable group of true obsessives who read every novel he was in and a bunch of other dragonlance novels besides.

As a result the Bigby vs. Raistlin fame contest comes down to how you choose to proportionally value the respective fans of the two by their 'hardcoreness.'

[MGuy]

For what it's worth, most of the people I've ever played DnD with don't really associate Bigsby spells with anyone named Bigsby. Most have never taken a second to think about it at all. Since the names got filed off in the change to Pathfinder I don't really think anyone would recall them either. 'I' am probably the only one out of the people I even still game with that even recognize/remember that Mordenkain is totally a guy that was an actual guy and not just a name attached to a spell. On the other hand a number of them do know that Elminster and (at least 2 know Raistlin) was totally an awesome wizard.

[Mask_De_H]

Going completely anecdotal here, I used to read the Dragonlance novels as a little Jimmy and I just now was reminded of Raistlin. Bigby and Mordenkainen I knew as spell names, Elminster I knew as a warning sign of big dick DMPCS.

So if we're talking fame as in known name, probably the Greyhawk spell fuckers or the Big El, for being in a lot of game material with equal or greater current penetration than the Dragonlance novels. If we're talking name as in popularity, then Big El (for infamy) or Raistlin (for edgy teens in the Regan/Bush/Willy years)

[GâtFromKI]

Each of these people individually has a minimum thousands of people who know fully 100% of the significant details of their life.

Lol no.

You know why I've chosen only dead people ? There's only one person who knows 100% of the significant detail of the life of any individual. In the case of Newton, el Che Guevara and Hitchcock, that person is dead. In my case, that person is alive.

At the moment your metric is "the number of significant details a single person remembers" instead of "the number of persons remembering a single detail", then every living person is more famous than any dead people.

And that's before counting family, friends... Seriously, you think there's any historian knowing more about Newton than you know about your children ? If that's the case, you're the worst parent ever.

Quick check, how many (true) things does the average person (or for that matter, you personally) know about Issac Newton that don't involve "inventing" calculus and the theory of gravity.

Actually, nobody knows if he invented differential calculus, if Leibnitz did, or if both did. There are only conjectures.

But as Chamomile says, Newton "has a minimum thousands of people who know fully 100% of the significant details of [his] life". Lol. I guess "inventing differential calculus or not" isn't a *significant* detail.

If you go to a convention and ask who the DM/Setting Author Penis extension wizard is for FR they KNOW. They know its Elemenister. If you ask who the DM/Setting Author Penis Extension Wizard is for Dragonlance they will say Raistlin. As fbmf has pointed out, you could even get people to give you an answer for Raveloft. However, nobody knows that for Greyhawk. Hell Gygax played several of the wizards on the circle of 8. Which one was the freaking leader?

Mordenkainen has a max level spell disjuncting the game. Of course everybody knows who is the penis-enlarger DMPC.

And Bigby has a max level spell because someone has to handjob Mordenkainen's giant penis.

[Chamomile]

words

Clearly you have not read the post to which you claim to be responding, seeing as how that post contains a rebuttal for the counterpoint you're trying to make. For your convenience, I have copy/pasted the relevant parts of the post in their entirety.

Each of these people individually has a minimum thousands of people who know fully 100% of the significant details of their life. Many of them have tens or hundreds of thousands. If you genuinely have that many people know your life in that level of detail, then yes, you are more famous than them. It doesn't matter how many people know insignificant details of your life, though. You're absolutely right that your friends and family knowing about the argument you got into with your wife over the weekend before you kissed and made-up has no impact on your fame whatsoever, but that's hardly an argument in favor of your position, seeing as how "invented a magic hand spell" barely even qualifies as a significant detail in Bigby's life.

Actually read the complete post this time around, and try again.

[GâtFromKI]

Yeah yeah, I know. Knowing if Newton actually created differential calculus isn't a significant detail of his life. And "invented theory of gravitation" barely even qualifies as a significant detail in his life.

And also, you're stupid.


Let me reformulate: nobody knows if Jesus actually existed. That's quite a significant detail of his life. As a corollary, even if he did exist, nobody knows what is true about his life and what is a myth.

Nobody knows anything about Jesus, and still he's more famous than Raistlin.

Any metric of renown including "the number of significant detail some people might know" is shit flavored shit. The number of details people know is an orthogonal notion, it has absolutely nothing to do with renown.

[souran]

Let me reformulate: nobody knows if Jesus actually existed. That's quite a significant detail of his life. As a corollary, even if he did exist, nobody knows what is true about his life and what is a myth.

Nobody knows anything about Jesus, and still he's more famous than Raistlin.

Any metric of renown including "the number of significant detail some people might know" is shit flavored shit. The number of details people know is an orthogonal notion, it has absolutely nothing to do with renown.

This is complete horseshit. Knowing things about a person is EXACTLY what fucking fame and renown is. Your statement about Jesus is completely fucking ass backwards. People believe they know LOTS OF SHIT about Jesus. That is indeed, the ONLY reason he is famous. Weather those things are true or about a fictional character is the ancillary part. They know is motivation, his plan, his life story, the day of his birth and the day of his death. Fuck, pre-Pauline Christians who still followed Judaic tenants had a reasoning by which they new the day he was conceived. That is fucking fame.

Name recognition of an empty suit is not fame. By that definition the name Jesus is the fucking famous part and it doesn't matter which Jesus were talking about. Which is so prima fascia stupid that all the people arguing that should go home and slap themselves in front of a mirror until their god damn cognitive abilities return.

Attaching a character name to a good spell does not make that wizard famous. The spell is the famous part, not the wizard.

[Chamomile]

Yeah yeah, I know. Knowing if Newton actually created differential calculus isn't a significant detail of his life.

So what you've demonstrated is that if you come up with a sufficiently stupid definition of "significant detail," measuring fame by knowledge of significant details no longer works. Why would you think that this is any kind of rebuttal against the concept of measuring fame by knowledge of significant details in general? I mean, we're talking about fictitious characters who have precisely zero actually verifiable details at all. Fully 100% of the significant details of Raistlin's life are details that are generally agreed upon but unverifiable, because he isn't real. You aren't actually making a case for your side of the argument by pretending to be too stupid to understand this without having it spelled out for you.

[Voss]

There's a problem here in arguing about different types of fame. <snip>

No, you're suddenly goalpost shifting from fame to how obsessively devoted someone is to their 'waifu.'

fame: the condition of being known or talked about by many people, especially on account of notable achievements.

Not obsessive fanboyism and being extraordinarily creepy and sad. You can know David Bowie is famous for being a singer and musician without being able to recite his entire catalog from memory and/or have stalkerish photographs of all his lovers.

[Prak]

Actually, you know what, I'm going to say that Bigby is the most famous D&D wizard by far. Strahd is probably the second best known D&D character who happens to be a wizard.

Why do I think Bigby is the most famous? When was the last time you saw a joke about Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion? Or Leomund's Secret Chest? Or Tasha's Hideous Laughter? Or Raistlin anything? There are two kinds of jokes I have seen about Elminster, that he's a lech, like Ed Greenwood, who cosplays him at cons, and that he's gigantic Mary Sue. But I think virtually every pop culture work ever that is deeply invested in D&D, or, hell, even just shallowly invested in D&D, has made a Bigby's __ Hand joke.