You know in older editions (mainly 2nd edition) it was a legitimately useful spell in fact in the baldur’s gate videogames (which are based on 2nd edition) its one of the most useful spells even at high levels.
You know what's funny about that? Gygax never has let anyone but himself and maybe his first group ever see Mordenkainen's character sheet, not the one he played with anyways. Most of what we and WotC know is pretty much based on speculation and nothing else. So the Mordenkainen we all know may not even be ol' Gary's original vision of the character.
@@peterrants9634 First rule of DMing I learned from observing a bad DM is one that apparently WotC doesn't know: The DM /never/ plays a PC character when that player is no longer a part of the game.
@@videogollumer I can definitely get behind the logic and in the hands of a more experienced DM or if the DM really knew the PC I could feel confident. I wouldn't recommend it for /every/ DM but my point still stands about WotC playing a PC when the player is not longer at the proverbial table and (so far as I can surmise) has no intention of returning any time soon.
@@videogollumer It's not about them using him! It's about them using him and not mentioning that its Gygax's creation at all. That's what I'm having trouble with here. The DM thing was a bad analogy on my part! LOL
I like to think that, when you're this powerful archmage who gets around - either physically traveling to other worlds or sending agents there - your name is going to get around. As are the spells you invented. In one plane, Mordenkainen tells a local Wizard, "hey, thanks for helping me keep the balance, here's a spell scroll". It's Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound. The wizard scribes it to their spellbook, and goes on their way. That wizard has apprentices who copy from their spellbook, who in turn get copied from later down the line. Other times, the wizard has to get a spell from another wizard, so they agree to hand each other their books, each copying a spell from the other. Still other times, the wizard gets their spellbook stolen by some wily thief with a nose for magic; the wizard had Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound memorized that day, so their put it in a fresh spellbook, while the thief goes off with the original. Maybe that wizard becomes really notable - if only because scholars have access to their spellbook and not any other wizard's - and so their spells become the basis for an entire society's magical curriculum. Whatever the case, over a long enough time period, Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound gets around. Even crosses over to other worlds. No one knows where the spell originally came from, any more than folks know who invented the Invisibility or Fireball spells. But it's still early enough that Mordenkainen's name is still attached to the spell, and all learned arcanists know it. People start wondering who this Mordenkainen is and, in lieu of actual facts, come up with their own explanations. A legend pops up, placing Mordenkainen in their world's history, even if the man himself never came there or visited only briefly. Some scholar posits a theory about *A* Mordenkainen native to their world, possibly conflating him with a real historical wizard whose name is unknown (or who stole the name Mordenkainen for the sake of prestige). A theory that is quoted in later writings, but without the key detail that it's a _theory,_ and later scholars treat the story as gospel truth. Until everyone "knows" the story of their world's Mordenkainen, from which the ubiquitous Faithful Hound is named. Then you have the actual Mordenkainen, an archmage that has existed for eons at this point, and has likely forgotten far more than any single person knows. He doesn't remember giving the spell scroll to this or that wizard, or even having come to this or that plane. He has been VERY busy, you see; even a genius like him can't be expected to remember everything. When he arrives at that world and hears tell of "the legendary Mordenkainen" and all the feats he was said to have done, Mordenkainen might say, "well, that certainly _sounds_ like something I would have done, so I'll take your word for it". Mordenkainen's legend grows so large, even HE is not immune to getting swept up in it.
@@Mordaris Melf was not a member of the Circle of 8 and yet spells are named after him as far back as 2nd edition. So you are simply wrong and I will leave it at that.
I always like to imagine that Mordenkainen is aware that he’s in a game. If evil wins then the party failed and will start a new campaign. If good wins then there’s nothing left for the players to do so they’ll start a new game. So he’s just always trying to keep the players interested in the game and that is the balance he speaks of
I have an outline written for the final arc of a homebrew where the Circle Of Eight roam the planes doing their thing, what those things are noone really knows, and they are lead by Mordenkainen (though they are all split up, not roaming as a group.) Strong evil forces who plan to throw the cosmos out of whack will trap him and corrupt the Circle to further these plans. My basic idea for the arc is for the heroes to go around helping/saving the members of the Circle and eventually Mordenkainen himself to thwart the plans of the Big Terrible Baddies
"Keeping the balance" is a great excuse to do any evil you like. "It's not like I really want to do this horrible thing, I HAVE to do it to keep the balance".
In my group's Curse of Strahd game, I'm playing a Human Wizard who believes she is the reincarnation of Mordenkainen, because the place she grew up in believes that he died when he disappeared and she happened to be born just before it was discovered that Mordenkainen was gone. Sadly, it's CoS, so a lot of that arrogance has been beaten out of her already, but I try to keep it up when meeting new people. Lol
I've always treated it as named spells were new enough that their creators are still known, and useful enough that as powerful wizards travel around the multivese they share them. In the old Dragon magazine there was an ongiong set of articles where Elminster, Mordenkanen, and Raistlin would get together on occasion to talk magic and share spells.
I've had this lingering idea that Mordenkainen has this network of Horizon Walker rangers zooming all over the planes, doing odd jobs for him. Was going to make a Horizon Walker who is this overworked employee of his, who is fed up with being sent into dangerous places by him.
I would definetly say yes, but there isn't any warlock subclass that would fit Mordenkainen as a patron. If a player came to me as a DM wanting to play a Warlock with him as a patron, I'd probably suggest he'd play an Arcana Domain Cleric?
Perhaps, but as said there's no official subclass that'd fit with that (although if homebrew is allowed in the campaign I know there are a couple homebrew pacts that'd fit)
Outside of the flavor, wasn't this an original character from Gygax's own home games, along with Tenser and Bigsby? For whom the floating disc and Hand respectively came from? (Sorry if I butchered the spelling)
@Spencer Minton Correct. Mordenkainen was actually one of Gygax's own PC that he made so he could be a player, Bigby was a evil wizard Mordenkainen charmed into being his service. When Mordenkainen was finally able to convince Bigby to leave his evil ways behind he became another of Gygax's characters. Tenser was one of Gary's son Ernie's characters, and the rest of the circle were either other PC's or NPC companions.
So the spell name is integral to its casting? That's interesting, one would initially think that the spell would be discovered and then named based on its effects. But instead to cast a spell you must know its name.
I love things dealing with the cosmos and gods. I was a bit disappointed in some of the lore changes in Mordenkenian's Tome of Foes though (since this is about Mord) at least in regards to some elf and drow lore (which I have gone into detail about elsewhere lol). But cosmic stuff always interests me. Gods, souls, the afterlife, the workings of the cosmos...love that stuff.
Wasn't it the Council of Eight that basically did all the balance act stuff with Mordenkainen at the lead? The old Dragon Magazine had that piece that featured Elminster, Mordenkainen and some other wizard of note...usually rotating I think. That gives a good take on their personalities.
Re: "What would be so bad if the angels 👼🏾 from Mt. Celestia just went down to the Lower Planes and cleaned house?" In other words, what would be so bad if good defeated evil to that extent? Take a look at the city of Istar on the world of Krynn. It was a city run by a cleric of good. He was so obsessed with making good win over evil, that he executed or enslaved evil creatures and people. He also had the hubris to claim that he was better than Paladine (a variant of Bahamut, deity of good dragons 🐉), the deity of goodness. This angered the deities so much (since he wasn't "just some guy" making this claim, he was a powerful and influential leader), that they sent a massive meteor upon the city, destroying it and much of the surrounding countryside. This became known as The Cataclysm. A disgraced Solamnic Knight of the Rose 🌹, Lord Soth, was given a divine quest that could've saved himself from damnation: to stop the Hierophant cleric if Istar. Because Lord Soth decided to turn his back on everything, he was damned and because a death knight.
@@InquisitorThomas well, brain dead basically. Insane, mad, crazy. He couldn't even beat Strahd, and Strahd broke him. Supposedly Elminster is trying to help him, but he will probably fail(unless plot armor saves him again). So much for his magic being "strong enough to rewrite the code of the weave across the entire multiverse".
@@InquisitorThomas "Mordenkainen later traveled to Barovia in an attempt to free the local population from its vampire darklord Strahd. However, he underestimated Strahd's power and, after barely surviving a confrontation with him, he lost his spellbook and his staff, eventually losing his memory and being driven to the brink of madness. He became known by the locals as the Mad Mage of Mount Baratok. In 1491 DR, Mordenkainen, still suffering from bouts of madness, was in Waterdeep, where Storm Silverhand and Elminster were helping him to recover from them."
“Idk mord, it really doesn’t feel like you’re doing a whole lot, are you sure you’re that important” “It’s because you didn’t notice my actions, that I know I’m doing a great job, what you want me to wait for the world to go to shit before I do something about it.”
Question: what dimension does the rope trip go to and where does M. Magnificent Mansion reside? The transitive planes or a demiplane? I've honestly never had an explanation
Mordenkainen sound like the kind of quest giver that I normally associate with Hags: do some seemingly good task but the quest giver need one specific and seemingly inconspicuous thing that the PCs usually don’t ask too much questions about.
People in the comments are acting like Gygax is an unknown never credited before man, that they personally discovered. Everyone more or less knows that most of the absurdly powerful characters in dnd history that keep popping up, usually have something to do with Gygax.
My headcanon is that Mordenkainen's "allies" are just alternate timelines of himself He knows of the many variations of the material planes Which is why he's a 10th level wizard yet has a 7th level spell named after him
Actually Mordenkainen is a magically embedded avatar of D&D founder Gary Gygax who from his meta-theatrical position within ongoing D&D content, seeks to foil Hasbro, Inc.
I’ve always thought of characters like Mordenkainen, Melf, Bigby, etc we’re far more esoteric. Powerful wizards from a time long forgotten, spread across the world that very little is known about.
So was that suggesting there is only one Mordenkainen and he is in the same world as Mystra (i.e. the Forgotten Realms) but not Eberron? I have always imagined that there were "versions" of the famous Greyhawk characters (Mordenkainen, Bigby, Robilar, Vecna, Rary, Tenser, Serten, Tharizdun, etc.) in every world's history whether or not still living during the campaign.
I think they are saying that there is only one Mordenkainen, but he isn't from the Forgotten Realms, he's from Oerth, the world of the Greyhawk Setting. He is, however, aware of the Realms as a place, as he would occasionally meet up with Elminster and I think Blackstaff in articles back in the old magazines. However, Eberron is a much newer setting, and I don't know if Wizards has ever gotten around to having him show up there. The idea isn't that there are a bunch of alternate versions of these big names running around, but that they are capable of planar travel and have so masterfully refined the arts of magic that their ideas quickly spread throughout the universe. On the other hand, your idea isn't a bad one, and homebrewing the story that way means your PCs can interact with the Legends without having to go outside of your campaign setting to meet them.
If I remember correctly, they lost the rights to Greyhawk or have to pay royalties to use it, so we will likely never get anything else based in Greyhawk! :(
He is validating evil by saying which is worse, in reality they are equally bad. What we actually view Orcus vs Asmodeus is immediate threat versus long term threat. They are both equally evil entities, one is just more likely to be threat on sight. The other will scheme against you, humanity and all of creation itself, and those gears are turning and you know it's coming... To view this as a lesser evil is a weakness of character and perception.
@@videogollumer Or perhaps he's figured out through his studies that the world is just a game, and he knows that if the world becomes too boring it will all end.
@@markdasaro9045 yes but the spellslots and spell list has been nerfed. Also Sorcerers in 3rd edition has benefited from a good amount of specialisations and as a good alternative to Wizards.
@Ryan Smith powerful yes at 20th level. For the early game its somehow given less advantages than the Warlock. In 3.5 you also had specialised casting types beyond what type of magic you use. Sorcerers were " we aren't book smart casters we are street smart" basically where wizards are regimented by the book magic users, a sorcerer is the one to think outside the box with spells.
As a Finn, when I first saw the name somewhere it looked weird and familiar at the same time. Apparently someone had tried to come up with something that sounds like a Kalevala hero but not very convincingly. Later I learned that the first letters of the name came from the Biblical character Mordecai.
Simply amazing that the guy that invented Mordenkainen's Disjunction, is the same guy who came up with Mordenkainen's Sword..... But just for fun, I am guessing the later was the brain child of some creative at WotC who has clearly never played the game before, and thought hey how can I nerf a decent spell into uselessness!?!?! lol
lol I laughed my ass off when I was running Curse of Strahd and Mordenkainen was beaten by Strahd and he had went crazy and couldn't get out of the demi plane lol.
8 and a half minutes of talking about Mordenkainen and co and not one mention that Mordenkainen was Gary Gygax' PC, and that Bigby and the rest were the PCs of his friends and co-founders. It takes 10 seconds and it's a valuable piece of DnD historical context.
Thanks for your contribution to the conversation, it's not like there's a dozen other comments pointing this out with various levels of vitriol. This video isn't about the character's history, this video is about Mordenkainen's personality and motivations and why a DM might want to include him in their games.
Nope. This stuff is just Mike's weird head canon. Mordy's name either isn't on those spells in my worlds, and all manner of spellcrafters have spells named after them. Genereally we use the simpler versions of spells, though.
You can really tell nobody in this video has real experience with 1e, where some of this stuff was better known. They basically make-up/alter stuff at this point.
Good job not crediting Gary Gygax with the fact it was his PLAYER CHARACTER that TSR stole from him. THIS VIDEO is the most arrogant thing you've heard in DnD.
What are you talking about? Noone stole nothing and there is nothing arogant about this video apart Mordenkainen's personality. Everyone worth their salt in this community knows that Mordenkainen is Gygax OG character, MToF mentons it and TSR uses him in Garys memory. That is a form of respect if you ask me.
"Who is Mordenkainen?" Someone you should have kept with the canon of Greyhawk!!!! WOTC, please stop pilfering icons from Greyhawk and canonizing them into your messed up FR timeline. It completely muddies the waters of your D&D universe.
Mordenkainen is a known planar traveller. He's known, associated with, and visited Elminster since before Wizard's owned D&D. He's been obsessed with the balance of the entirety of reality, including worlds beyond Oerth, since the TSR days. The Mordenkainen you're talking about is a character who is noticeably different from what he was before Gygax left TSR. He was considerably less Stupid Neutral when Gygax was in full control. The only official products of 5e that involve Mordenkainen are the Tome of Foes, which is written from a Extraplanar point of view, and Curse of Strahd. And pulling people from other worlds into Ravenloft didn't start with WotC, it started with TSR when they sucked Soth into the Demiplane of Dread. And frankly, considering Planescape and Spelljammer were both TSR ideas, the waters have been dirt brown since before Wizards shuffled onto the scene. The only world Mordenkainen couldn't have theoretically traveled to under TSR was Athas. Sorry if this seems a little much, but you're heaping a whole lot of blame onto WotC's plate for things that have been in place since way before they owned the brand.
@@eldrind213 Thank you for such a thoughtful response. I did not mean to come across as a WOTC hater - I greatly appreciate 5E, with the exception of their bastardization of Greyhawk material and placing it into FR. IMO, the FR timeline has been ruined since the Spellplague, and they have never recovered. The fact that Mordenkainen "associated" with Elminister is based off of several Dragon Magazine articles, which were very well written, but hardly garner any enthusiasm of making cross products with Elminster participating in Greyhawk events. Not to mention Acererak's placement in the jungle of Chult..... Ultimately, canon exists as a unique thing at everyone's game table and is easily fixable. What makes me sad is that new players will not understand the brilliance of what Gygax created with the World of Greyhawk and the interesting denizens of that place because WOTC continue to place these icons in Toril.
@@stevenphillips5323 To add to what David B said, Mordenkainen has canonically visited THIS plane on multiple occasions. Back when 'The Dragon' was still being actively published, there was a series of articles featuring Mordenkainen, Elminster, and an elven wizard(whose name escapes me) from the Dragonlance setting, gathering around a table at the author's house to discuss spells. It was a great series of articles.
@@Mordaris I referenced that in my previous reply - the articles were called The Wizard's Three and they were written by Ed Greenwood. My point is that those articles were a creative way to introduce new spells (none of which were official because at that time anything appearing in Dragon Magazine was not official). My point of contention is that Elminster, Dalamar and Mordenkainen are such icons of their worlds that they should remain there and not be crossed with other world products. WOTC currently does this way too much and it is offensive to some long-time fans of these products.
"Humility is not a luxery I can afford." -Mordenkainen, 2019
*Luxury
Stealing that
"He has a lot of spells that are all very useful"
_Mordenkainen's Sword_
DarthBinary Had to ‘balance’ out all the other spells with that one
You know in older editions (mainly 2nd edition) it was a legitimately useful spell in fact in the baldur’s gate videogames (which are based on 2nd edition) its one of the most useful spells even at high levels.
Remember how he was Gygax's character?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Ikr
You know what's funny about that? Gygax never has let anyone but himself and maybe his first group ever see Mordenkainen's character sheet, not the one he played with anyways. Most of what we and WotC know is pretty much based on speculation and nothing else. So the Mordenkainen we all know may not even be ol' Gary's original vision of the character.
@@peterrants9634 First rule of DMing I learned from observing a bad DM is one that apparently WotC doesn't know:
The DM /never/ plays a PC character when that player is no longer a part of the game.
@@videogollumer I can definitely get behind the logic and in the hands of a more experienced DM or if the DM really knew the PC I could feel confident. I wouldn't recommend it for /every/ DM but my point still stands about WotC playing a PC when the player is not longer at the proverbial table and (so far as I can surmise) has no intention of returning any time soon.
@@videogollumer It's not about them using him! It's about them using him and not mentioning that its Gygax's creation at all. That's what I'm having trouble with here. The DM thing was a bad analogy on my part! LOL
I like to think that, when you're this powerful archmage who gets around - either physically traveling to other worlds or sending agents there - your name is going to get around. As are the spells you invented.
In one plane, Mordenkainen tells a local Wizard, "hey, thanks for helping me keep the balance, here's a spell scroll". It's Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound. The wizard scribes it to their spellbook, and goes on their way. That wizard has apprentices who copy from their spellbook, who in turn get copied from later down the line. Other times, the wizard has to get a spell from another wizard, so they agree to hand each other their books, each copying a spell from the other. Still other times, the wizard gets their spellbook stolen by some wily thief with a nose for magic; the wizard had Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound memorized that day, so their put it in a fresh spellbook, while the thief goes off with the original. Maybe that wizard becomes really notable - if only because scholars have access to their spellbook and not any other wizard's - and so their spells become the basis for an entire society's magical curriculum.
Whatever the case, over a long enough time period, Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound gets around. Even crosses over to other worlds. No one knows where the spell originally came from, any more than folks know who invented the Invisibility or Fireball spells. But it's still early enough that Mordenkainen's name is still attached to the spell, and all learned arcanists know it. People start wondering who this Mordenkainen is and, in lieu of actual facts, come up with their own explanations. A legend pops up, placing Mordenkainen in their world's history, even if the man himself never came there or visited only briefly. Some scholar posits a theory about *A* Mordenkainen native to their world, possibly conflating him with a real historical wizard whose name is unknown (or who stole the name Mordenkainen for the sake of prestige). A theory that is quoted in later writings, but without the key detail that it's a _theory,_ and later scholars treat the story as gospel truth. Until everyone "knows" the story of their world's Mordenkainen, from which the ubiquitous Faithful Hound is named.
Then you have the actual Mordenkainen, an archmage that has existed for eons at this point, and has likely forgotten far more than any single person knows. He doesn't remember giving the spell scroll to this or that wizard, or even having come to this or that plane. He has been VERY busy, you see; even a genius like him can't be expected to remember everything. When he arrives at that world and hears tell of "the legendary Mordenkainen" and all the feats he was said to have done, Mordenkainen might say, "well, that certainly _sounds_ like something I would have done, so I'll take your word for it". Mordenkainen's legend grows so large, even HE is not immune to getting swept up in it.
Mordenkainen would never, ever, ever admit to forgetting he gave that spell scroll to that wizard, though.
@@vp21ct Never _admit_ to it, no. You are correct.
All of this. ☝️
Bigby literally put his hand in Mystras cement, lol. Nice one.
Mystras cement still not as strong as the glue stick lol
Hey AJ. I guess I really shouldn't be surprised to see you here, but what a nice surprise indeed.
Wow you watch these too?
@@burningbronze7555 I dabble.
I read Blinsky....
TL;DW: He's kind of an enormous wang rod but he's absolutely right about everything.
Or IS he? [Dun dun dun]
Or is he?
So he is a Rick named Mordy? lol
correction, he telss you he's absolutely right about everything
Really love to hear more of the circle of 8 in 5th edition but there are more than 8 wizards named in spells now 16 in fact.
Another one if you count Jim Darkmagic in the acquisition’s incorporates book
Not all wizard-named spells are named for the circle of 8 for several editions
Non-circle-of-8 spell names date back to at least 2nd edition.
@@user-me5zk3uy8w Not really. The "named" spells back in 2nd edition are all circle of 8 spells.
@@Mordaris Melf was not a member of the Circle of 8 and yet spells are named after him as far back as 2nd edition. So you are simply wrong and I will leave it at that.
"You don't get spells named after you in the Player's Handbook just by being a 10th-level wizard." Medium Rary, anyone?
I really hate that idea, but this joke is great
the Rary character never leveled past 3rd. but yeah.
Jim darkmagic?
Its pretty easy to have your spells in the Players Handbook when you are the character of the author of the players handbook.
I always like to imagine that Mordenkainen is aware that he’s in a game. If evil wins then the party failed and will start a new campaign. If good wins then there’s nothing left for the players to do so they’ll start a new game. So he’s just always trying to keep the players interested in the game and that is the balance he speaks of
I have an outline written for the final arc of a homebrew where the Circle Of Eight roam the planes doing their thing, what those things are noone really knows, and they are lead by Mordenkainen (though they are all split up, not roaming as a group.) Strong evil forces who plan to throw the cosmos out of whack will trap him and corrupt the Circle to further these plans. My basic idea for the arc is for the heroes to go around helping/saving the members of the Circle and eventually Mordenkainen himself to thwart the plans of the Big Terrible Baddies
THANK YOU for pronouncing the characters name correctly!! It's a pet peev of mine...
Love the Greyhawk setting and have used it for years.
"Keeping the balance" is a great excuse to do any evil you like. "It's not like I really want to do this horrible thing, I HAVE to do it to keep the balance".
In my group's Curse of Strahd game, I'm playing a Human Wizard who believes she is the reincarnation of Mordenkainen, because the place she grew up in believes that he died when he disappeared and she happened to be born just before it was discovered that Mordenkainen was gone. Sadly, it's CoS, so a lot of that arrogance has been beaten out of her already, but I try to keep it up when meeting new people. Lol
You know the Mad Mage in CoS is Mordenkainen, right?
@@abacate4492 Thanks for thinking I'm an idiot. I am well aware, but my character isn't.
@@abacate4492 Even if they didn't know why would you spoil such a major plot point?
@@Hey-Its-Dingo well meeting him surely will make a really awkward self? reunion.
@@THEO00900 That's the idea. Lol
I've always treated it as named spells were new enough that their creators are still known, and useful enough that as powerful wizards travel around the multivese they share them. In the old Dragon magazine there was an ongiong set of articles where Elminster, Mordenkanen, and Raistlin would get together on occasion to talk magic and share spells.
I've had this lingering idea that Mordenkainen has this network of Horizon Walker rangers zooming all over the planes, doing odd jobs for him.
Was going to make a Horizon Walker who is this overworked employee of his, who is fed up with being sent into dangerous places by him.
I love these types of videos and hope you do more!
There is one thing that Mordenkainen could learn from Jim Darkmagic: The royalty component.
I absolutely love the idea of running Mord like Big Tech, mord "I'm just the platform, I'm not responsible for how people use the platform."
If a wizard is strong enough to alter the weave itself, does that make him a suitable Warlock patron candidate?
I would definetly say yes, but there isn't any warlock subclass that would fit Mordenkainen as a patron. If a player came to me as a DM wanting to play a Warlock with him as a patron, I'd probably suggest he'd play an Arcana Domain Cleric?
Perhaps, but as said there's no official subclass that'd fit with that (although if homebrew is allowed in the campaign I know there are a couple homebrew pacts that'd fit)
This is absolutely great how he uses Mordenkainen. The gems! Hahaha
Adam Savage-looking Mike Mearls is HAWT!
Love when players just trust quest givers as well. Makes it easy for characters if they have ulterior motives
Outside of the flavor, wasn't this an original character from Gygax's own home games, along with Tenser and Bigsby? For whom the floating disc and Hand respectively came from?
(Sorry if I butchered the spelling)
@Spencer Minton Correct. Mordenkainen was actually one of Gygax's own PC that he made so he could be a player, Bigby was a evil wizard Mordenkainen charmed into being his service. When Mordenkainen was finally able to convince Bigby to leave his evil ways behind he became another of Gygax's characters. Tenser was one of Gary's son Ernie's characters, and the rest of the circle were either other PC's or NPC companions.
i was actually reading about this dude earlier, neat
It’d be interesting to reintroduce Elminster. It’d be great to have him involved in 5e more.
I miss the Happy Fun Hours with Mike Mearls.
Didn't expect to see The Abelhawk in a D&D video, hows the mapmaking going?
"Everybody wanna eat nobody wanna fix a plate" - Mordenkainen after losing his job, 2020
So the spell name is integral to its casting? That's interesting, one would initially think that the spell would be discovered and then named based on its effects. But instead to cast a spell you must know its name.
I love things dealing with the cosmos and gods. I was a bit disappointed in some of the lore changes in Mordenkenian's Tome of Foes though (since this is about Mord) at least in regards to some elf and drow lore (which I have gone into detail about elsewhere lol). But cosmic stuff always interests me. Gods, souls, the afterlife, the workings of the cosmos...love that stuff.
Mordenkainen is to Todd as Superman is to Clark Kent. Add glasses for disguise.
Dndbeyond, great video! Enjoy your Friday! 💯🙏🙌
Anybody know if that adventure Mearls mentioned with Arkhan was recorded?
MIKE! YOU'RE BACK!
Wasn't it the Council of Eight that basically did all the balance act stuff with Mordenkainen at the lead? The old Dragon Magazine had that piece that featured Elminster, Mordenkainen and some other wizard of note...usually rotating I think. That gives a good take on their personalities.
Re: "What would be so bad if the angels 👼🏾 from Mt. Celestia just went down to the Lower Planes and cleaned house?" In other words, what would be so bad if good defeated evil to that extent? Take a look at the city of Istar on the world of Krynn. It was a city run by a cleric of good. He was so obsessed with making good win over evil, that he executed or enslaved evil creatures and people. He also had the hubris to claim that he was better than Paladine (a variant of Bahamut, deity of good dragons 🐉), the deity of goodness. This angered the deities so much (since he wasn't "just some guy" making this claim, he was a powerful and influential leader), that they sent a massive meteor upon the city, destroying it and much of the surrounding countryside. This became known as The Cataclysm. A disgraced Solamnic Knight of the Rose 🌹, Lord Soth, was given a divine quest that could've saved himself from damnation: to stop the Hierophant cleric if Istar. Because Lord Soth decided to turn his back on everything, he was damned and because a death knight.
Mordenkainen is ROLLING IN HIS GRAAAVE!!!
Well at least he is finally dead. Good riddance stupid neutral characters. Join the chaotic stupid and lawful stupid in the graveyard of past editions
Wait Mordenkainen is dead?
@@InquisitorThomas well, brain dead basically. Insane, mad, crazy. He couldn't even beat Strahd, and Strahd broke him. Supposedly Elminster is trying to help him, but he will probably fail(unless plot armor saves him again). So much for his magic being "strong enough to rewrite the code of the weave across the entire multiverse".
@@InquisitorThomas "Mordenkainen later traveled to Barovia in an attempt to free the local population from its vampire darklord Strahd. However, he underestimated Strahd's power and, after barely surviving a confrontation with him, he lost his spellbook and his staff, eventually losing his memory and being driven to the brink of madness. He became known by the locals as the Mad Mage of Mount Baratok.
In 1491 DR, Mordenkainen, still suffering from bouts of madness, was in Waterdeep, where Storm Silverhand and Elminster were helping him to recover from them."
Dragon Hero But the party is capable of restoring his mind, and in nobody stays dead in D&D, ask Mistra.
“Idk mord, it really doesn’t feel like you’re doing a whole lot, are you sure you’re that important”
“It’s because you didn’t notice my actions, that I know I’m doing a great job, what you want me to wait for the world to go to shit before I do something about it.”
Question: what dimension does the rope trip go to and where does M. Magnificent Mansion reside? The transitive planes or a demiplane? I've honestly never had an explanation
My man Mike was on fire in this video
cosmic police... he's a green lantern!! ;)
Nah. More like Doctor Fate.
Or the Anti Spiral
Mordenkainen sound like the kind of quest giver that I normally associate with Hags: do some seemingly good task but the quest giver need one specific and seemingly inconspicuous thing that the PCs usually don’t ask too much questions about.
People in the comments are acting like Gygax is an unknown never credited before man, that they personally discovered. Everyone more or less knows that most of the absurdly powerful characters in dnd history that keep popping up, usually have something to do with Gygax.
more greyhawk please ❤🤞
Be anyone from learned on history in Toril: You keep the cosmic Balance? So you're Ao?
My headcanon is that Mordenkainen's "allies" are just alternate timelines of himself
He knows of the many variations of the material planes
Which is why he's a 10th level wizard yet has a 7th level spell named after him
Nobody knows his name, so I decided to name him "Gary" in one of my campaign, "Gary, just like my father" he said
Using Gygax's character to make players think outside of the box... Brilliant.
Actually Mordenkainen is a magically embedded avatar of D&D founder Gary Gygax who from his meta-theatrical position within ongoing D&D content, seeks to foil Hasbro, Inc.
Mordenkainen is essentially the Rick Sanchez of D&D.
I would like one episode about Melf!
Todd legitimately *IS* Mordenkainen on an Undercover Boss mission. Look at that goatee!
I’ve always thought of characters like Mordenkainen, Melf, Bigby, etc we’re far more esoteric. Powerful wizards from a time long forgotten, spread across the world that very little is known about.
I always just assumed the spells were named that by the people who made them. Like a trade mark.
Greyhawk Power !
So what you're telling me is Mordenkainen is Thanos.
Mordenkainen is my favorite of the Archmages.
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be...
Good is what is best for everyone. Evil is what is best for me. Mordenkainen is what is best for everyone and me.
The mad mage.
What's with the weird choice of video subjects? Lolol
Clues upon clues.
Excellent choice actually.
A recent video for Strahd and now on Morde? It's not like these to have clashed in a specific setting.
Mordenkainen is also a good friend of Elminster and Ed Greenwood.
He back
So was that suggesting there is only one Mordenkainen and he is in the same world as Mystra (i.e. the Forgotten Realms) but not Eberron? I have always imagined that there were "versions" of the famous Greyhawk characters (Mordenkainen, Bigby, Robilar, Vecna, Rary, Tenser, Serten, Tharizdun, etc.) in every world's history whether or not still living during the campaign.
I think they are saying that there is only one Mordenkainen, but he isn't from the Forgotten Realms, he's from Oerth, the world of the Greyhawk Setting. He is, however, aware of the Realms as a place, as he would occasionally meet up with Elminster and I think Blackstaff in articles back in the old magazines. However, Eberron is a much newer setting, and I don't know if Wizards has ever gotten around to having him show up there. The idea isn't that there are a bunch of alternate versions of these big names running around, but that they are capable of planar travel and have so masterfully refined the arts of magic that their ideas quickly spread throughout the universe. On the other hand, your idea isn't a bad one, and homebrewing the story that way means your PCs can interact with the Legends without having to go outside of your campaign setting to meet them.
When is Wizards returning to Greyhawk with a Campaign Setting book? 'tis time...and I can see you continue to be obsessed with it...just like us!
If I remember correctly, they lost the rights to Greyhawk or have to pay royalties to use it, so we will likely never get anything else based in Greyhawk! :(
Where is his state block?
Stat*
Sooo He’s like Rick from Rick n morty. Well ricks like him
He is the archivist from The Gods of Egypt basically. #ripchadwick
But, more than anything... where's DISJUNCTION?
Murdy-Gurdy!
But who watches Mordenkainen?
Lord Ao
@@1003JustinLaw Wrong world.
Baby Jesus of course
MORDENKAINAN.
Batman
He is validating evil by saying which is worse, in reality they are equally bad. What we actually view Orcus vs Asmodeus is immediate threat versus long term threat. They are both equally evil entities, one is just more likely to be threat on sight. The other will scheme against you, humanity and all of creation itself, and those gears are turning and you know it's coming... To view this as a lesser evil is a weakness of character and perception.
In my setting, Mordenkainen is only right because if there was no conflict, we couldn't play D&D! The world must have evil to slay.
@@videogollumer Or perhaps he's figured out through his studies that the world is just a game, and he knows that if the world becomes too boring it will all end.
Mordenkainen is Doctor Who of D&D
so he's Doctor Strange
We need a more Balanced Sorcerer class. As the class has been nerfed since 3.5.
In 3.5 metamagic is a full round action period
@@markdasaro9045 yes but the spellslots and spell list has been nerfed. Also Sorcerers in 3rd edition has benefited from a good amount of specialisations and as a good alternative to Wizards.
@Ryan Smith powerful yes at 20th level. For the early game its somehow given less advantages than the Warlock. In 3.5 you also had specialised casting types beyond what type of magic you use. Sorcerers were " we aren't book smart casters we are street smart" basically where wizards are regimented by the book magic users, a sorcerer is the one to think outside the box with spells.
My shadow sorcerer begs to differ. They just require a smart person to run them correctly, too many options at every stage
Why would you comment that on ddb? They have nothing to do with the development of the game.
Is Mordenkainen finnish?
As a Finn, when I first saw the name somewhere it looked weird and familiar at the same time. Apparently someone had tried to come up with something that sounds like a Kalevala hero but not very convincingly. Later I learned that the first letters of the name came from the Biblical character Mordecai.
So basically he's a conman trying to sell you The tiger repellant rock
They never actually say who he is...
Basically just tony stark but a liiiiil bit more selfish
He's rolling in his grave
WTF is his full name!! All I wanted to know!!!
So then at the beginning HE DID make mistakes, perhaps even catastrophic mistakes? Balance What???
Remember Gygax and what you are doing to his Character. Atleast some credit should of been given. This had really bugged me!
I thought Harper's get the Balance. And "balances" folks like Mordenkainen.
Is the Harper's in 5th?
Harper's are in 5th, but my understanding is that they maintain the balance in the material plane primarily.
SPOILER FOR CURSE OF STRAHD
How is Mordenkainen gonna enforce cosmic balance when he's getting bodied by Strahd?
The ring of 5
Simply amazing that the guy that invented Mordenkainen's Disjunction, is the same guy who came up with Mordenkainen's Sword..... But just for fun, I am guessing the later was the brain child of some creative at WotC who has clearly never played the game before, and thought hey how can I nerf a decent spell into uselessness!?!?! lol
will the real slim shady please stand up?
Lol St. Cuthbert...
Is mordenkainen a lich?
Logan H no
No, but Imagine that Mordenkainen is the kinda guy who just spams the Clone Spell as has a ton of back ups, just in case.
Mordenkainen is basically Nick Fury
Yes,.... Yeah,..... Fuckin A' right
Or the obvious answer, Dr Strange
lol I laughed my ass off when I was running Curse of Strahd and Mordenkainen was beaten by Strahd and he had went crazy and couldn't get out of the demi plane lol.
8 and a half minutes of talking about Mordenkainen and co and not one mention that Mordenkainen was Gary Gygax' PC, and that Bigby and the rest were the PCs of his friends and co-founders. It takes 10 seconds and it's a valuable piece of DnD historical context.
Thanks for your contribution to the conversation, it's not like there's a dozen other comments pointing this out with various levels of vitriol. This video isn't about the character's history, this video is about Mordenkainen's personality and motivations and why a DM might want to include him in their games.
Nope. This stuff is just Mike's weird head canon. Mordy's name either isn't on those spells in my worlds, and all manner of spellcrafters have spells named after them. Genereally we use the simpler versions of spells, though.
You can really tell nobody in this video has real experience with 1e, where some of this stuff was better known. They basically make-up/alter stuff at this point.
Mordenkainen is afraid of the world toppling over
So he's the D&D equivalent of a flat-Earther
Good job not crediting Gary Gygax with the fact it was his PLAYER CHARACTER that TSR stole from him. THIS VIDEO is the most arrogant thing you've heard in DnD.
What are you talking about? Noone stole nothing and there is nothing arogant about this video apart Mordenkainen's personality. Everyone worth their salt in this community knows that Mordenkainen is Gygax OG character, MToF mentons it and TSR uses him in Garys memory. That is a form of respect if you ask me.
For sure calm down.
"Who is Mordenkainen?" Someone you should have kept with the canon of Greyhawk!!!! WOTC, please stop pilfering icons from Greyhawk and canonizing them into your messed up FR timeline. It completely muddies the waters of your D&D universe.
Mordenkainen is a known planar traveller. He's known, associated with, and visited Elminster since before Wizard's owned D&D. He's been obsessed with the balance of the entirety of reality, including worlds beyond Oerth, since the TSR days. The Mordenkainen you're talking about is a character who is noticeably different from what he was before Gygax left TSR. He was considerably less Stupid Neutral when Gygax was in full control. The only official products of 5e that involve Mordenkainen are the Tome of Foes, which is written from a Extraplanar point of view, and Curse of Strahd. And pulling people from other worlds into Ravenloft didn't start with WotC, it started with TSR when they sucked Soth into the Demiplane of Dread. And frankly, considering Planescape and Spelljammer were both TSR ideas, the waters have been dirt brown since before Wizards shuffled onto the scene. The only world Mordenkainen couldn't have theoretically traveled to under TSR was Athas. Sorry if this seems a little much, but you're heaping a whole lot of blame onto WotC's plate for things that have been in place since way before they owned the brand.
@@eldrind213 Thank you for such a thoughtful response. I did not mean to come across as a WOTC hater - I greatly appreciate 5E, with the exception of their bastardization of Greyhawk material and placing it into FR. IMO, the FR timeline has been ruined since the Spellplague, and they have never recovered. The fact that Mordenkainen "associated" with Elminister is based off of several Dragon Magazine articles, which were very well written, but hardly garner any enthusiasm of making cross products with Elminster participating in Greyhawk events. Not to mention Acererak's placement in the jungle of Chult..... Ultimately, canon exists as a unique thing at everyone's game table and is easily fixable. What makes me sad is that new players will not understand the brilliance of what Gygax created with the World of Greyhawk and the interesting denizens of that place because WOTC continue to place these icons in Toril.
@@stevenphillips5323 To add to what David B said, Mordenkainen has canonically visited THIS plane on multiple occasions. Back when 'The Dragon' was still being actively published, there was a series of articles featuring Mordenkainen, Elminster, and an elven wizard(whose name escapes me) from the Dragonlance setting, gathering around a table at the author's house to discuss spells. It was a great series of articles.
@@Mordaris I referenced that in my previous reply - the articles were called The Wizard's Three and they were written by Ed Greenwood. My point is that those articles were a creative way to introduce new spells (none of which were official because at that time anything appearing in Dragon Magazine was not official). My point of contention is that Elminster, Dalamar and Mordenkainen are such icons of their worlds that they should remain there and not be crossed with other world products. WOTC currently does this way too much and it is offensive to some long-time fans of these products.
@@stevenphillips5323 I don't know how I missed that. In my effort to back you up, I ended up looking the fool. Sorry about that.
Again, a failure to separate Law, Good, Chaos, and Evil. A Lawful Evil would not just randomly harm the innocent, what you described was Chaotic Evil.