[Zsych]

The Magister's immunity to those wizards' fireball spells, was probably a chosen style Spell immunity.

The magister did say that all young wizards seem to like using fireballs.

Also, from what i recall, generally the change in the office of magister is because the previous one gets defeated by the new one.

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Anyway, Larloch, a lich and arch-wizard of Netheril. One of the people who directly studied the Nether scrolls and still has some.

Meta-magic mastery exceeding most gods, and absolute spell reflection(to spells of any level... definitely better than the Magister's ability).

Not to mention that he has replicated the chosen's 1 spell per level immunity by himself.

Plus, he's joined in a mental link to 60+ liches, many of them also from Netheril. (Just there age and achievement of archwizard status long before Elminster and the rest were born, gives them an advantage).

This all coupled with his massive plane walking experience, and primary focus on increasing his magical knowledge(unlike Shade who's more interested in politics), and he has a one-up on the Simbul's planewalking experience too(which is likely the reason that she's better than Elminster).

Halaster is technically also of a higher level than Elminster, and he's also a serious planewalker, but in their visit to Hell. Halaster did not do well, while the Simbul was quite confident.

Halaster or Elminster may actually outstrip the Simbul in overall magical knowledge(of the non-combat kind), but there's no way to be sure.

There's always the possibility that the Simbul's confidence in Hell derives from a source similar to Sysquemalyn(apprentice of Lady Polaris of Netheril), whose magical knowledge may not have been very extensive, but time spent with Demons and Devils, led to her acquiring magical knowledge that allowed her to best them all and then later give a decent beating to Lady Polaris, who was an Archmage of Netheril.

On the whole though, i'd say that Larloch is probably the strongest. In battle and otherwise. Besides his various sources(Nether scrolls, trips across the planes, developments of his servant wizards, millenia of experience), he is practically the only mage out of the lot who has focussed primarily on magic instead of politics and other mundane issues.

Too bad none of the novels focusses on him.

Hmm... i might even consider him superior to Karsus... mostly due to experience.