Raistlin Majere

We have reached the absolute peak of magical power on this ranking and the absolute peak of tragedy.

Let's talk about Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance series.

Created by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the CBR article specifically crowns Raistlin as the mightiest wizard in the entire Dungeons & Dragons multiverse.

Which is a massive, massive claim.

And so they put in a whole bunch of ads and a whole bunch of different publications, including Dragon Magazine.

They even had Mark Weiss write up a short story called The Test of the Twins that is talking about Raistlin and Karim and Majeer going to the...

Tower of High Sorcery in Weyrith and going through his Test of High Sorcery, which is this whole magical fraternity that sort of controls magic in this era.

And that was released in Dragon Magazine number 83 in March 1984 before Dragons of Despair came out.

And I think it all came from that narrative storytelling focus, the incredible characters that were created.

And that really is the lasting legacy.

I mean, when people go to play MMOs, they name them the heroes of the lands, whether it's Raistlin or Tanis or Karamin or Riverwind or Goldman or whatever.

You're always referencing back to that original group because it was so impactful in the time.

And you played the characters from the novels as characters.

So you played Raistlin and Clariman and Sturm and all that lot.

And Flint.

You played all those characters rather than playing your own characters.

Like, the pre-made characters.

I mean, you could choose between Raistlin and Sturm and, you know, Caramon, or Ta- Tasslehoff.

But tha- those are the o- you can only pick the characters from the books to play.

Um, and the, uh, the module series, um, like, it follows on the rails the story of the first book.

And so you trick a creature you can see within range into believing that it is watching itself and its surroundings crumble away as if time is passing in moments.

Like it's just like, This is like Raistlin's curse, you know, like his hourglass eyes, right? Except this is going to hurt a lot more because they have to succeed on an intelligent saving throw or they take 10d12 psychic damage and have the paralyzed condition for the duration.

And while paralyzed, you know, the target can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns.

And on a failed save, they gain one level of exhaustion, right? So if they fail the saving throw enough times, they die, right? Like that's just, you know, and this is compound.

He can be very charming when it suits his purpose.

Raistlin will not under any circumstances return to the Red Robes, much less the White.

Raistlin is truly evil.

He chose to be evil, and it is only because of his final sacrifice that he's rewarded by the salvation of peace in death.

I was always like, "Man, I thought there was some spark of good in Raistlin." And I wanted to get your take, Rich.

I've got Margaret Weis's take, but I want to-

Um-

That's never good.

Soon my transformation to Raistlin will be complete.

[laughs] Yeah, exactly.

Nice.

I, I'm gonna, I, I'm gonna just start kind of wearing red, w- red robes with like a big hood up and just-

Yeah, there you go.

I think Raistlin had like a con 10, like in the, in the module, so that's saying something about Argus.

So [laughs] anyways, uh, so-