Wizard worries

[Draig]

Ok another question for the people of the playground. I recently allowed another member into my DND group. He told me he wanted to be a wizard (party is at level 12 he started at 11 to use XP for crafting). He asked me if any spells or items were banned or restricted in the campaign and I asked him to keep it Handbook and DMG only. I originally thought his character would be a welcome addition to the party, however, he took the opening given to create a wizard based purely to annoy the gods. First he has permanence on Arcane Eye and See invisibility, a ring of couterspell against counterspells and a ring of counterspell against dispel magic, the ability to quicken spells (allowing him 1-4 a turn), and instead of having team helping spells or high damage ones he spams Cloudkill, evards tentacles, glitterdust, acid fog, greater invisibility, rope trick, and wall of force. Each encounter starts with him firing off evards tantacles, acid fog, and wall of force to block off the enemies from the party and then will either hide in a rope trick or greater invisibility to hide. While I would normally applaude him for his ingenuity its turning the rest of the party aggravated because their job has gone from adventurer to spectators for this party. He also is managing to successfully throw a wrench in every encounter I make. So my question for help here is what creatures or builds could I throw at the party that could circumvent these tricks and/or possibly render them less effective. Not so much to punish the character but to help equal gameplay out so the rest of the party can feel like they are needed members of the group.

[Drglenn]

Yea wizards tend to do that.
One thing though: arcane eye and see invisibility are, by RAW not able to be made permenant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm)

Also what classes are the rest of the party?

oh, and you can only cast one quickened spell a turn (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#quickenSpell) (because it's a swift action due to errata, there was a 1/turn restriction on the original feat)

[Draig]

Forgive me but RAW? And I was unaware of that restriction to quickened spells. See the new player used to DM and because of that he sometimes exploits knowledge he knows against me in some ways. Also the rest of the party are a cleric/radiant servant and a recently deceased monk (that player wants to come back as a swashbuckler/duelist)

[Alleran]

Forgive me but RAW?
Rules As Written.

As opposed to RAI, which stands for Rules As Intended.

Also, it sounds like you have somebody who has read Logicninja's Batman guide and Treantmonk's God guide, and is fully committed to exploiting them against you. :smallannoyed:

EDIT: Might I recommend that the monk player come back as a Warblade/Swordsage character type? It'd get him up a few tiers, and at least bring him close(r) to the Tier 1 Wizard. I'd also try talking to the Wizard player and trying to get him to tone things down. Also avoid handing out too many spells.

[Geigan]

Yea wizards tend to do that.
One thing though: arcane eye and see invisibility are, by RAW not able to be made permenant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm)

Also what classes are the rest of the party?

oh, and you can only cast one quickened spell a turn (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#quickenSpell) (because it's a swift action due to errata, there was a 1/turn restriction on the original feat)

Actually see invisibility is. It's even on the link you provided. I have no clue what arcane eye is but it's not on the permanency list. Is it possible he confused arcane sight?

On his behavior, yeah, he's being obnoxious and needs to play the game with the team not himself. You could easily extend the day until he runs out of spells which would teach him to conserve his spells and work with the others to be effective. Of course the easiest way would be to actually talk to him. It's easier to get people to stop being jerks if you tell them to.

[Drglenn]

RAW = Rules As Written

Yea that monk was doomed to fail, 3.5 monks are generally sucky.
That cleric should be able to at least match the wizard.

Try putting enemies that can teleport and/or resist/are immune to some of the wizard's schticks, also put him in an anti-magic field and watch this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0627.html) happen

[LordBlades]

Tbh there isn't much you could do in game about it. Wizards tend to be plain better at almost anything than most other character classes, so pretty much anything that would be challenging for him is probably overwhelming for the rest of the party if they are having as much trouble keeping up with him, although the cleric should do that without much trouble.

Also, there are a few things that sound fishy about what he does, namely getting that many spells per round. Quicken allows for 1 extra spell/round for a total of 2, and the only other ways I know of to get more than that in core are Time Stop and Shapechange into Choker, both of which are 9th level spells.

PS, Arcane Sight (I assume that's what he has rather than Arcane Eye) and See Invisibility are valid options for Permanency on yourself only.

IMHO your best bet is to talk with the player(s) out of game and agree upon how powerful/optimized you want the characters to be and either ask the wizard to tone down/change his character or the others to optimize their chars more.

[nyjastul69]

RAW is Rules as Written. There is also RAI, Rules as Intended. And RAM, Rules as Make Sense.

Edit: Heh. Not surprisingly I was Ninja'd. And one of them was by another flumph. Doesn't that just beat all. :smallamused:

[LordBlades]

RAW is Rules as Written. There is also RAI, Rules as Intended. And RAM, Rules as Make Sense.

Sadly, in most ambiguous cases all of the above degenerate into RAIITAYCPMWN (Rules As I Interpret Them And You Can't Prove Me Wrong, Nyeah) :smallcool:

[nyjastul69]

Sadly, in most ambiguous cases all of the above degenerate into RAIITAYCPMWN (Rules As I Interpret Them And You Can't Prove Me Wrong, Nyeah) :smallcool:

Sadly, you are correct. :smallfrown:

[Draig]

Ok first off I want to thank drglenn. I haven't laughed that hard in a while and seeing a wizard get beat down definatly sets off my funny bone. I was thinking of using antimagic fields the only problem being I don't know how to incorporate them into the encounters, like what creatures would it make sense to have the ability to have an antimagic field.

Second it was my fault I mistyped arcane sight.

Third I've tried extending the encounters so that he'll run out of spells and he just rope tricks n hides for 8 hours and the party members are too nice to leave him behind as it would also split the party.

Fourth if u had to face a wizard who did those things what sort of encounters would u throw his way to try n nullify his tricks?

[Godskook]

1.There is no 'counterspell' spell, so as far as I know, you can't have a ring of counterspell(counterspell).

2.The rules on counterspelling, near as I can tell, don't 'target' the caster, and therefore, shouldn't activate his ring of counterspells

3.A ring of Counterspell wouldn't protect against targeted dispel magic spells which are aimed at places other than the wizard in question, such as his previously cast Evard's Tentacles.

4.He can only wear two rings. You have available far *MORE* forms of dispelling, if you're willing to look outside core.

5.Two rings = two charges. Blow them, and he has to spend his slots to renew them.

6.A 12th level wizard has 3 6th and 4 5th(school slots), not counting bonus spells, which shouldn't be more than 4 additional slots. That means as many as 11 slots, or 2.75 per encounter if you do 4 per day. Try pushing him through *8* before allowing him to rest by giving the team a hard deadline. Then, when they're done, give them another *hard* deadline with significant encounters per day. Continue to do this until he learns more moderation.

7.If he's blowing his 'wad' early in combats, have 'bait' fights, which are nothing more than things to be ground up by his spells, such as a suicide squad of lvl 1 orcs, sworn to the service of their CR 14 Chief and his 30 CR 10 guards.

8.Detect Magic will see a Rope Trick. See invisibility will foil invisibility. Both can be made permanent for a trivial amount of xp for an NPC of CR 12(less than 10% of the xp required to level).

----------------

RAW = Rules as Written

[Tvtyrant]

Beholder has an auto-antimagic field that can be used to block the party. Then have it throw objects at the party using telekinesis while its slaves attack you with clubs/whatever.

[LordBlades]

Beholder has an auto-antimagic field that can be used to block the party. Then have it throw objects at the party using telekinesis while its slaves attack you with clubs/whatever.

Except a decent wizard has so many counters for an AMF and a beholder that it's not even funny (starting from simply getting out of the cone and casting to more elaborate things such as the pointy wizard hat :smallcool: ) Only way to shut down a wizard with an AMF is to find a way to keep him there, and that's hard.


Best way to challenge a spellcaster is for the enemy to have spellcasters of his own.

[erikun]

First, I would recommend talking to the player. Tell him that his playstyle is intentionally disruptive and causing the rest of the party to feel useless. The biggest problem isn't him playing god, it's him playing god over the party and stomping all their fun. It may actually be more practical to just kick him out than to try adjusting the game to match his playstyle. Be sure to let him know this beforehand, though.

Second, a few things to take note of.

Neither Arcane Sight nor See Invisibility work against a good hide check or disguise spell. The wizard still needs a successful spot check to catch it.
Ring of Counterspells (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#counterspells) stores a single spell, which is then expended if that exact spell is cast upon the wearer. The wizard would need to cast another Dispel Magic after the first one is expended to make use of the ring again. (Greater Dispel Magic would still work just fine, though.)
You cannot store "a counterspell" in the Ring of Counterspells, because "a counterspell" is not a spell you can cast into the ring. You would need to store the exact spell being cast you wanted to prevent - Darkness to keep someone from casting Darkness to counter your Light spell, for example. (It also would not prevent people from using Light or Deeper Darkness as a counter, either.) It would apparently stop someone using Dispel Magic as a general counterspell, though, because counterspelling targets the spellcaster - although it would consume the Dispel Magic inside the ring.
You can only quicken one spell each turn. Quicken Spell uses up a spell slot four higher than the spells actual level, so he should only be capable of quickening 2nd level spells or less. I don't see how the character can have that many 5th/6th level spell slots, either.
Greater Invisibility can be countered by See Invisibility, as your player has so thoughtfully pointed out.
The counters to Rope Trick tend to get debated, although as the wizard refuses to come out of his hidey-hole, the easiest solution would be the best: continue running the campaign. Have something show up to fight and/or chase the party off, leaving the wizard alone and unable to participate unless he feels like coming out. There is also the question of what happens when Dispel Magic targets the 3-foot by 5-foot window the spell leaves behind. You could also use a variant of an Ethereal Filcher (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/etherealFilcher.htm) that uses Plane Shift rather than Ethereal Jaunt to get into his pocket dimension and steal his stuff.


I don't really have anything you can use against his spell selection, primarily because such a spell selection works. That's the main reason it is recommended. Of course, most people recommend using it to support the party, not negate it. Anything that can sneak up on the wizard (say, a choker) would likely kill him quite shortly. Beyond that, you're best off keeping the campaing moving and not allowing him to nap for 8 hours anytime he wants. He'll either need to conserve his spells or feel invalid for the other 15 hours 45 minutes of the workday.

[ILM]

Ok another question for the people of the playground. I recently allowed another member into my DND group. He told me he wanted to be a wizard (party is at level 12 he started at 11 to use XP for crafting). He asked me if any spells or items were banned or restricted in the campaign and I asked him to keep it Handbook and DMG only. I originally thought his character would be a welcome addition to the party, however, he took the opening given to create a wizard based purely to annoy the gods. First he has permanence on Arcane Eye and See invisibility, a ring of couterspell against counterspells and a ring of counterspell against dispel magic, the ability to quicken spells (allowing him 1-4 a turn), and instead of having team helping spells or high damage ones he spams Cloudkill, evards tentacles, glitterdust, acid fog, greater invisibility, rope trick, and wall of force. Each encounter starts with him firing off evards tantacles, acid fog, and wall of force to block off the enemies from the party and then will either hide in a rope trick or greater invisibility to hide. While I would normally applaude him for his ingenuity its turning the rest of the party aggravated because their job has gone from adventurer to spectators for this party. He also is managing to successfully throw a wrench in every encounter I make. So my question for help here is what creatures or builds could I throw at the party that could circumvent these tricks and/or possibly render them less effective. Not so much to punish the character but to help equal gameplay out so the rest of the party can feel like they are needed members of the group.
Sound like you have a player who know his bag of tricks. However, like many people already pointed out, much of what you describe is actually cheating.

Frankly, any time anyone comes here asking "I'm a Wiz, what spells should I take," the answer given to them is Black Tentacles, Glitterdust, Wall of Force, Cloudkill, etc. They're the optimal choice. Still, as a player he should work with the party and it sounds like maybe your problem lies more with the player than with the character.


Forgive me but RAW? And I was unaware of that restriction to quickened spells. See the new player used to DM and because of that he sometimes exploits knowledge he knows against me in some ways.
You're the DM. You don't need to defer to anyone's knowledge. Check everything. Half the time when a player starts breaking a campaign, there's a rules misunderstanding somewhere.


Third I've tried extending the encounters so that he'll run out of spells and he just rope tricks n hides for 8 hours and the party members are too nice to leave him behind as it would also split the party.
While he's away, the world stops? No, encounters continue - except the team's one man down. There are places (dungeons and generally hostile places controlled by an opposing force) where it is unwise to just hang around. Now of course, he can take the party members with him in the rope trick, but then what are they going to find when they exit? A simple Detect Magic sees there's a Rope Trick active there, it's a trivial thing to park an army outside and just wait for whatever's hiding to emerge - and nuke it if it doesn't cooperate. Little extreme, but you can still hang that threat over their heads.

Plus, if he hides in his Rope Trick during combat, his ring(s) of counterspells don't work anymore, so feel free to (greater) dispel his stuff. In the future, make sure you give him only the spells you can handle as a DM (and if that makes you feel guilty, don't forget that whatever you do, he gets a free pick for two spells every level).

[NichG]

Start planning a timeline of events that just happen unless the party is there in time/interrupts. Make it clear that the party starts missing opportunities or fails to get there in time to stop bad things because they're wasting too much time in the Rope Trick. Make downtime a valuable resource - the faster you finish the dungeon, the more downtime you have for things like earning spare gold, retraining, item crafting, and spell research. Furthermore, make environments reactive - if the party kills the sentries and then Rope Tricks, the locals will discover that they're under attack and will go on high alert, hide their loot, appear in bigger clusters, set ambushes, refresh traps, and even may search for and mess with the Rope Trick (an enemy caster shouldn't dispel it - he should embed it in a thick Stone-to-mud-to-Stone style coffin so the party shunts when they exit).

Once the infinite spellcasting is taken care of, the wizard can be effective in bursts but will have to start rationing his abilities, which will help the rest of the party be relevant. Similarly, try to avoid 'one fight' scenarios with big time gaps in between - throw in a number of mook fights beforehand in the same area.

As for the other things, if enemies have some access to short-range battlefield teleportation a lot of those tricks will become less effective. Tome of Battle-using enemies can have the Shadow X (Blink, etc) maneuvers to cleanly exit grapples and force wall cages and the like. If you mix in a lot of different creature types, there will be things for the wizard to target and things the rest of the party should handle (golems, other things immune to cloudkill, etc).

Another thing you can do is you can have traps or situations that partially separate the party in combat. Two locations need to be attacked by the party simultaneously, or an enemy teleports away the party members one at a time to deal with individually, or all sorts of things.

[SiuiS]

Use a two headed magebred undead beholder. Two antimagic cones, two full rounds worth of actions a round (though maybe only on attacks), immune to con damage, can disintegrate walls of force, and isn't too irritated by being grappled (except he's irritated at being grappled, because it's undignified.

The cleric can lay some anti-undead damage on it, the fighter can rip it apart because of it's low-ish hp, and as soon as the wizard tries to put the smak on it, it will focus fire on him, letting the rest of the party maneuver and be useful.

[faceroll]

Cloud spells are dispersed by a strong breeze. A second level spell, gust of wind, gets rid of them. The enemy could be using a wand of it with use magic device, or simply have a creature there with 3 or 4 levels of wizard, druid, or sorcerer casting.

Or it could be a windy day.

Black Tentacles are fairly weak against anything that's large size or greater. Hill Giants, for instance, are only CR 7, and have a grapple check of +20. The wizard's tentacles are only +18. A mess of hill giants and a young adult dragon would be an appropriate encounter. The dragon is huge, with a grapple check of +37. He gets to pretty much ignore those tentacles, and his breath weapon catches everybody. Gust of Wind on a partially charged wand (say ten or so charges) easily handles whatever cloud spells the wizard can lay down. The dragon can also use see invis himself and strafe the party with fire breath. The hill giants can be using their superior reach and good tactics (as the dragon supervises them) to cause problems for the rest of the party. The hill giants can also have potions of see invis, cures (get hurt, fall back, take a drink), and bull str/bear's endurance/cat's grace. Oils can make their weapons magical. The best part about potions and oils is that they're cheap for monsters to have and the party can't use 'em once the enemy does. Partially charged wands are even cheaper, and with the dragon and his 5th level casting, he can be putting up a bunch of buffs.

[LordBlades]

Black Tentacles are fairly weak against anything that's large size or greater. Hill Giants, for instance, are only CR 7, and have a grapple check of +20. The wizard's tentacles are only +18. A mess of hill giants and a young adult dragon would be an appropriate encounter. The dragon is huge, with a grapple check of +37. He gets to pretty much ignore those tentacles, and his breath weapon catches everybody. Gust of Wind on a partially charged wand (say ten or so charges) easily handles whatever cloud spells the wizard can lay down. The dragon can also use see invis himself and strafe the party with fire breath. The hill giants can be using their superior reach and good tactics (as the dragon supervises them) to cause problems for the rest of the party. The hill giants can also have potions of see invis, cures (get hurt, fall back, take a drink), and bull str/bear's endurance/cat's grace. Oils can make their weapons magical. The best part about potions and oils is that they're cheap for monsters to have and the party can't use 'em once the enemy does. Partially charged wands are even cheaper, and with the dragon and his 5th level casting, he can be putting up a bunch of buffs.

TBH, the only thing that matters in that encounter is the dragon. That might prove more or less of a challenge, depending on what dragon it is and what spellcasting he has.

Hill giants are trivial because they don't fly(even with potions of fly, they're one area Dispel away from not flying again), and a 11th level wizard usually does. Now, make them Half Dragon Hill Giants (CR 9) or Dragonborn for no CR increase (if it works, I'm away from books and not sure it can be applicable for giants) and we're talking.

Let's say you've succeeded in making a pretty good encounter consisting of a couple of Half Dragon Hill Giants and a Young Adult Dragon. The wizard is now challenged. But what about the rest of the party? I really don't see a Monk or a Swashbuckler/Duelist going toe to toe with any of these guys and probably neither the cleric (if he was using CoDzilla tricks, he probably wouldn't feel left behind by the wizard). So they're again relegated to being spectators.

[faceroll]

TBH, the only thing that matters in that encounter is the dragon. That might prove more or less of a challenge, depending on what dragon it is and what spellcasting he has.

Hill Giants with a few buffs will have enough damage output (especially vs. squishier things, like casters) to be a threat, and with 100+ HP, they will take at least a full round to take down, given current party composition. And boulders are quite scary.


Hill giants are trivial because they don't fly(even with potions of fly, they're one area Dispel away from not flying again), and a 11th level wizard usually does. Now, make them Half Dragon Hill Giants (CR 9) or Dragonborn for no CR increase (if it works, I'm away from books and not sure it can be applicable for giants) and we're talking.

AoE Dispel will turn off one spell, targeting the highest level spells first. If there are multiple highest levels spells of the same level in effect, Dispel will randomly target one. And again, boulders. Judging by party composition and what the wizard is doing, I doubt the wizard has a lot going on vs. that sort of stuff other than flee.


Let's say you've succeeded in making a pretty good encounter consisting of a couple of Half Dragon Hill Giants and a Young Adult Dragon. The wizard is now challenged. But what about the rest of the party? I really don't see a Monk or a Swashbuckler/Duelist going toe to toe with any of these guys and probably neither the cleric (if he was using CoDzilla tricks, he probably wouldn't feel left behind by the wizard). So they're again relegated to being spectators.

The hill giants can escape the wizard's current tricks (clouds are blown away, grapples the beat). If the rest of the party isn't flying (and I doubt they are), they can deal with the hill giants. The hill giants can ignore anything the wizard does, and either the wizard has to fly away, or he gets pounded by hill giants hurling boulders at him.

4 CR7 monsters vs. 3 level 10 melee PCs should be fair.

[Amphetryon]

1.There is no 'counterspell' spell, so as far as I know, you can't have a ring of counterspell(counterspell).

2.The rules on counterspelling, near as I can tell, don't 'target' the caster, and therefore, shouldn't activate his ring of counterspells

3.A ring of Counterspell wouldn't protect against targeted dispel magic spells which are aimed at places other than the wizard in question, such as his previously cast Evard's Tentacles.

4.He can only wear two rings. You have available far *MORE* forms of dispelling, if you're willing to look outside core.

5.Two rings = two charges. Blow them, and he has to spend his slots to renew them.

6.A 12th level wizard has 3 6th and 4 5th(school slots), not counting bonus spells, which shouldn't be more than 4 additional slots. That means as many as 11 slots, or 2.75 per encounter if you do 4 per day. Try pushing him through *8* before allowing him to rest by giving the team a hard deadline. Then, when they're done, give them another *hard* deadline with significant encounters per day. Continue to do this until he learns more moderation.

7.If he's blowing his 'wad' early in combats, have 'bait' fights, which are nothing more than things to be ground up by his spells, such as a suicide squad of lvl 1 orcs, sworn to the service of their CR 14 Chief and his 30 CR 10 guards.

8.Detect Magic will see a Rope Trick. See invisibility will foil invisibility. Both can be made permanent for a trivial amount of xp for an NPC of CR 12(less than 10% of the xp required to level).

----------------

RAW = Rules as Written

1. A Ring of Dispel Magic is, for most intents and purposes, a Ring of Counterspell.

2. While the spells have been restricted to Core, it may well be that other sources are allowed for character creation in general. That makes it easier to alter a spell's valid target.

3. Rules lawyering may disagree, but usually correct.

4. There's an item in the DMG that allows for a 3rd ring.

5. What?

6. Discounts scrolls and wands and similar, as far as I can tell. Given the others in the party, pushing them through more encounters to 'exhaust' the Wizard's spells is likely to be at least as bad for his teammates, as HP are a finite resource.

7. As with #6, this seems similarly likely to gak the party in the interest of reigning in the Wizard.

8. Detect Magic will work if they target the right spot, at the right elevation and angle. See those caveats there? The same applies to See Invisible. See also #6 & 7; this would appear likely to create a DM vs Player Arms Race mentality that rarely ends well.

* * *

Consider talking to him? "Hey, Mr. Wizard, you made a great character. Really, you did. He's so great, in fact, that adventuring is becoming unfun for the others. Could you tone it down so that they still feel like they're relevant to the game, please? It's about the whole group having fun, after all...."

[Yuki Akuma]

Be sure to tell him "Also, you can only quicken one spell in a round, so stop cheating".

[CTrees]

I try not to use Rope Trick anymore not because it's easy for an annoyed DM to counter, but because it's fun for an annoyed DM to creatively counter. A couple ideas have already been floated, and it really is trivial to find with Detect Magic.

-The party is on a tight timeline. Trying to save the princess before she's sacrificed to the evil god, perhaps? It should not be difficult to come up with something the party has a limited amount of time to handle.

-Thirty guards with spears and readied attack actions for when something pops out of the Rope Trick the enemy wizard told them about?

-Bonfire built under the opening to the Rope Trick would be hilariously nasty.

-Say he goes into a Rope Trick deep in a dungeon. "Room filling with water" is a common trap room style... surprise! Hope you prepared Waterbreathing during your little nap.

-Plane shift. Dispelling effects. Etc.

-Force Cage around where the wizard/party is going to come out. Hey, now you're all trapped. Thanks, wizard!

-Invisible Spell'd Cloudkill, cast from range.

Really, not at all a difficult tactic to counter. Have fun with it! Make the rest of the party hate him for it! Enjoy yourself! The rest, he's mostly either cheating, or proving why wizards are T1, but in ways you can counter ("the enemy wizards have summoned air elementals - you're really going to try cloud spells?")

[LordBlades]

Hill Giants with a few buffs will have enough damage output (especially vs. squishier things, like casters) to be a threat, and with 100+ HP, they will take at least a full round to take down, given current party composition. And boulders are quite scary.

You mean the +8 ranged attack boulders? Any wizard worth his pointy hat can have way more than 28 AC at level 12.


AoE Dispel will turn off one spell, targeting the highest level spells first. If there are multiple highest levels spells of the same level in effect, Dispel will randomly target one. And again, boulders. Judging by party composition and what the wizard is doing, I doubt the wizard has a lot going on vs. that sort of stuff other than flee.


Given that potions and oils are limited to 3rd level or lower spells, there's a good chance Fly is the highest level spell. There are only a few other Sor/Wiz
spells that make good candidates for pre-battle potion drinking (Prot. from Energy, Heroism, Rage, Displacement).


The hill giants can escape the wizard's current tricks (clouds are blown away, grapples the beat). If the rest of the party isn't flying (and I doubt they are), they can deal with the hill giants. The hill giants can ignore anything the wizard does, and either the wizard has to fly away, or he gets pounded by hill giants hurling boulders at him.

Solid Fog, Grease, Glitterdust, all good wizard spells Hill Giants can't ignore. For boulders see above.

[faceroll]

OP- Cloudkill is a poison that doesn't work on objects. Undead and Constructs, and anything immune to poison, don't care.


You mean the +8 ranged attack boulders? Any wizard worth his pointy hat can have way more than 28 AC at level 12.

A wizard can do a lot of things. We're talking about a specific wizard that novas on walls of force and cloudkill. But if it's really necessary- Brutal Throw.


Given that potions and oils are limited to 3rd level or lower spells, there's a good chance Fly is the highest level spell. There are only a few other Sor/Wiz
spells that make good candidates for pre-battle potion drinking (Prot. from Energy, Heroism, Rage, Displacement).

All the same, fly isn't necessary. There is a huge dragon in the air (nom nom nom).

And I'm wrong about AoE dispel magic. You hit every one in the spell, but start with the highest CL spells first. You could easily buy a potion of a zero level spell (or from a scroll or something) with a CL of 6. The cost for such a thing is quite cheap. And if the wizard likes to open with solid fog, well, you've got a nice long time to drink 'em down before rising out of the fog glowing with buffs. Alternatively, dragon opens up with something like a scroll of bless with CL6 before combat.

[quote]Solid Fog, Grease, Glitterdust, all good wizard spells Hill Giants can't ignore. For boulders see above.

Solid Fog gets blown away by a gust of wind, or gives the giants as many rounds as the please to buff themselves. Grease and Glitterdust give the wizard a minute to flee. Incidentally, the latter two spells require melee to pull their weight. If you missed the first two posts in the thread, the OP was complaining about Cloudkill and walls of force doing all the work for them.

Grease, while certainly very good, especially if players can make multiple AoOs in a round, knocks a creature out for a round or two. Anything in the Grease can simply crawl out (note that you only have to make balance checks for walking, and then the "can't move" part is triggered by failing that check). And, even then, you can still attack from the grease, albeit at -4.

Anyway, this encounter would be a challenge. I would expect the players to be able to handle 2 to 6 of them in a day, depending on how judicious they were in using resources, and what their actual stats were. Without knowing their to hits and ACs, it's difficult to judge appropriate monsters.

[LordBlades]

A wizard can do a lot of things. We're talking about a specific wizard that novas on walls of force and cloudkill. But if it's really necessary- Brutal Throw.

The OP tells us nothing about this dude's defensive buffs (if any), so i assumed he optimizes at least a bit defensively.




All the same, fly isn't necessary. There is a huge dragon in the air (nom nom nom).

This gets us back to what I said earlier: only the dragon is a threat to the wizard



Solid Fog gets blown away by a gust of wind, or gives the giants as many rounds as the please to buff themselves. Grease and Glitterdust give the wizard a minute to flee. Incidentally, the latter two spells require melee to pull their weight. If you missed the first two posts in the thread, the OP was complaining about Cloudkill and walls of force doing all the work for them.
It's not like these things wouldn't shut down a bunch of Hill giants anyway. Also, if this guy is really thinking instead of just copying stuff from some guides, he'll have quite a lot of back-up tricks

[Telonius]

Is the character in question Small? If so, you can have some real fun with Ring Gates when the Rope Trick ends. Place the "Exit" ring directly under the window. Place the "Enter" ring under that. Instant permanent fall. :smallamused:

Also, check his character sheet to see how much he's carrying. If he's the typical shrimpy Wizard, he probably has a low Strength; there's a decent chance he's Encumbered. Apply penalties as necessary. If he's not encumbered, it's almost certainly because he has a Bag of Holding.

If he takes a Bag of Holding into the Rope Trick, Bad Stuff Happens (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#bagofHolding).


If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in the space: Bag and hole alike are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane: The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, destroying the portable hole and bag of holding in the process.

That's for a Portable Hole specifically, but it also works for all other extradimensional spaces generally.

[Keld Denar]

Simple counter to the wizard? Spread out. Hill Giants are actually pretty scary one by one at that level. Make sure they stay ~15-20' apart. That keeps him from doubling/tripling up on any one fog/tentacles/glitterdust/dispel. All of a sudden, he has to burn 3-4 spell slots just to CC 3-4 bruisers, all the while ducking and weaving under a strafing dragon. Dispel, especially, he probably doesn't have more than 1-2 prepped. If there are 4 giants, all at least 20' appart and flying, chances are he's only gonna get to ground 2 of them with 2 standard actions. If he flies solo away from the giants, he's dragonbait. If he flies with the whole group away from the giants, he's burning a whole bunch of resources of flight (or a high level slot on Mass Fly).

Its not hard to really tax a high level wizard at high levels. Simply denying him the opportunity to overlap spell effects on several foes is the simplest way.

[cfalcon]

First he has permanence on Arcane Eye and See invisibility, a ring of couterspell against counterspells and a ring of counterspell against dispel magic, the ability to quicken spells (allowing him 1-4 a turn),

Arcane Eye.. did you mean http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/arcaneSight.htm (Arcane Sight)?

Arcane Eye is a good piece more powerful as a permanent spell, because you essentially always have an invisible spy ready to go. If you already OKed this, you could either retcon it by explaining to the player, or just try to go ahead and run it like you vetted it. Permanent Arcane Eye alone won't wreck your game.

As has been pointed out, counterspelling is an action, and you probably shouldn't have given out a ring of counterspell against counterspells. I would actually suggest you take that interpretation out, as you both probably misunderstood the rules and it has created a situation that you don't like. Remember that the way these rings work (in the book) is that you cast a spell into them, and then, if that spell is cast *at you*, the ring empties itself to counter that spell. So he has two of them, and he can cast a spell into each, and then if that spell is cast at him, it's countered.

You might, and this might seem a bit harsh, say that someone attempting to counter his spell is not targetting him, but his casting. This is not what the rules say, and it is kind of harsh given what he thought he was buying with the rings. However, even with these two rings, if you play them such that he has to cast the spell into them, even then, you still have other options, as was linked earlier.

A readied fireball, all by itself, can pretty easily disrupt a wizard's casting.


and instead of having team helping spells or high damage ones he spams Cloudkill, evards tentacles, glitterdust, acid fog, greater invisibility, rope trick, and wall of force.

These are pretty money spells. I personally banned black tentacles back in 2ed, mostly because of the number of die rolls it inflicted until the last rev of D&D.

Cloudkill is likely being combined with the tentacles or the acid fog, right?

Glitterdust is a pretty good status debuff, but the saving throw on it shouldn't be too ludicrous by 10th-ish. In other words, him casting glitterdust is often going to waste a round (or his swift, should he quicken it). Pathfinder nerfs the spell to allow affected enemies to save each round to clear the blind status. It is definitely one of the stronger 2nd level spells, especially if you can nail it on a bunch of enemies at once. It does have a pretty small area of effect, however.


Each encounter starts with him firing off evards tantacles, acid fog, and wall of force to block off the enemies from the party and then will either hide in a rope trick or greater invisibility to hide.

Remember that actually climbing into the rope trick takes an action (and he might even have to make a climb check, though the DC baseline is only 5).


While I would normally applaude him for his ingenuity its turning the rest of the party aggravated because their job has gone from adventurer to spectators for this party.

This thread has some good advice already in it as regards the wizard. I would suggest that maybe what you can throw this party up against just went up by quite a bit by inclusion of a skilled arcanist. It sounds like they can plunder more dangerous opponents, or at least more of the same. Consider offering them some more important missions with greater rewards, and see if they take you up on them.

Note that the following general tricks will often be employed by those who may be hunted by wizards, or adventuring parties in general:

1)- Murder holes in ceilings or walls (you should probably assign a DC to spot these)
2)- Trapdoors to ambush a party (these would probably have to be searched for)
3)- Numbers approaching from multiple directions on a prearranged sign.
4)- Grappling the wizard
5)- Potions of See Invisibility aren't that expensive, and groups of largely mundane orders (small brotherhood of knights, cultists) will often have these available, along with their own glitterdust.
6)- Readied actions from archers can shut down a spell cast. Remember that these archers will likely at this level have a few adamantine arrows in their loot table. Note that they can also hit a wizard who is invisible directly *after* their cast, if they have a readied action and can discern where the spell was cast from. The mere threat of archers should give him pause.
7)- Many monsters have good abilities, high intelligence, and clever tricks. A couple demons working together have a very good chance of harrying the party, wizard included.
8)- Many monsters have incredible senses
9)- You can create custom monsters! A monster that floods the room with AoE every 1d4 rounds while having a ton of hit points rewards the party that buffs the fighters and monks. Custom monsters should be interesting, but not designed *just* to make the wizard feel insignificant. However, they should make him wish he'd brought Greater Heroism or something!

Remember that ignorant or primitive groups will still likely attack the spell caster as soon as they recognize him as such, in an attempt to prevent him from casting.

If low level divine magic is available (most primitive humanoids / impoverished demihumans still have a spiritual leader):
1)- Coin with silence cast on it throw at the wizard / pick pocketed onto his person / cast at the air above him / cast directly at him (and giving him a save)
2)- Invisibility Purge can be cast to great effect in close quarters


If the enemy includes arcanists:
1)- Illusions of threatening situations- these can often cost spells. Project Image can allow clever access (that your PCs might find a way to turn against him, which is even more exciting!) to attack an incoming party as they make their way to attack you.
2)- Even mid level casters can lock down higher level casters for a couple rounds. Presumably your enemies won't know about the ring of counterspells, but not every enemy will simply ready an action to counterspell with dispel magic.
3)- Enemy casters who have a weaker but more numerous host, but are individually higher level than the PCs present an interesting challenge. I would caution that this wizard may simply not care about the danger or his allies enough to play his role properly, so one of these may TPK the group.
4)- Antimagic can play a part of any encounter.





I'll come up with more later I think. In the meantime, try and imagine situations where the wizard does all this, and the party *still* has plenty to do: in other words, a situation that would be much harder without the wizard. You can, of course, award XP an treasure in proportion to such a more difficult encounter.

Another thing brought up is that the wizard appears to blow his wad, and then hide in rope trick. While enemies actually finding a rope trick is almost unheard of, your arch-enemy wizard resting for the night instead of tracking you down (and it's only 11 AM!) means that you have an entire extra day of nasty deeds, which could include fleeing, repopulating lost monsters, or succeeding on your plot to win. Essentially, I'm suggesting you have encounter design where you track the progress of the enemy, and they have a time schedule. They shouldn't be quest NPCs waiting to be slaughtered: they grow in power, murder innocents, complete their task, move on, summon demons, whatever. A party that clears a room and naps is something you can tolerate at times, but it should not be the standard method! Simply having more encounters in a day will greatly reduce the output of the wizard, as he attempts to save spells for when they are really needed- or unwisely blows them all early.


Good luck! Try to think of this player as an asset, even if he's sort of determined to break stuff.

[NichG]

8. Detect Magic will work if they target the right spot, at the right elevation and angle. See those caveats there? The same applies to See Invisible. See also #6 & 7; this would appear likely to create a DM vs Player Arms Race mentality that rarely ends well.


The Rope Trick spell produces a 3ft by 5ft invisible window that can be sensed with See Invisibility. In addition, See Invisibility isn't a 'ping' for invisible effects, it actually modifies the person's sight for the duration. So I'd say it should be pretty trivial for a scout with See Invisibility to just accidentally happen upon it.

[cfalcon]

This is also true. Rope Trick is far from a safe haven if you are invading a lair of intelligent beings with access to low level spells or greater. However, if you are slowly progressing through a dungeon with no timer, it's a full reset. Of course, in such dungeons, who knows what evil lurks...

[Gamer Girl]

First he has permanence on Arcane Eye and See invisibility, a ring of couterspell against counterspells and a ring of counterspell against dispel magic, the ability to quicken spells (allowing him 1-4 a turn), and instead of having team helping spells or high damage ones he spams Cloudkill, evards tentacles, glitterdust, acid fog, greater invisibility, rope trick, and wall of force. .

1.So he can detect magic and invisibility? Not that big of a deal. First there are other ways to be unseen then invisibility. A xorn can be 'invisible' in a stone wall, for example.

2.For counterspells, just use more spells. Avoid core spells that can be countered. Use some of the other 500 spells out there. Also spellcasters don't have to target spells on him.

3.One quickened spell a round is not all that much.

4.The Spells. Yup, a wizard can do a lot with them spells...vs lowly opponents. Sure a couple orc thugs will be killed in no time by a Cloudkill/Wall of Force combo, but not more powerful stuff. Also, don't have the monsters bunch up.

By Spell:

Cloudkill:Only effects living creatures, so undead and constructs are immune. Plus all creatures that are immune to poison. Any creature that moves can avoid the cloud, especially flyers and burrowers.

Evard's Tentacles:Only effects land bound creatures. Anything that can fly can go right over them. Plus lots of monsters have great grapples, so use some of them. And don't forget teleport and magical movement. The tentacles would hold a demon for only a round then they could teleport away.

Glitterdust:Lots and lots of creatures don't even use sight. Look through the MM, tons of creatures use senses other then sight. So blindness it not a big deal.

Acid Fog:Just does damage

Greater Invisibility:As noted above, lots of monsters have other senses. And lets not forget they have see invisibility too. And don't forget the area blast: you don't need to know the exact spot a foe is in to breathe a cone of fire across the area.

Rope Trick:Search the forums for this.

Wall of Force:Can stop a lot of foes. Except the ones that can burrow or teleport or fly. And that is a lot of monsters right there.

[cfalcon]

Acid Fog also serves as a solid fog, so it deals damage to a creature that is taking several actions to get free, normally, and is likely being combined with cloudkill.

[Eldariel]

First, realize that he's intentionally toning himself down. What he's doing is nothing to the degree of encounter trivialization Wizards of 11th level are capable of. He's basically trying to be a team player, allowing the team to defeat the opponents as he focuses on disabling them. So don't be too hard on him; he's really trying to fit in with the rest of the party. Those are team-helping spells; it's just that they're so darn good at helping the team that against weaker opponents, they'll just get the whole job done.

It's just, the way the game is designed, casters get a lot of toys other classes don't so they tend to simply perform better, especially as you get to higher levels (where survivability isn't a problem). Though what others have said about Quicken is correct; you can only Quicken one spell per turn and you have to prepare the Quickened spell in a slot 4 levels higher so unless he has some way of reducing the metamagic costs (or is using a Rod of Lesser Quicken Spell or Circlet of Rapid Casting), the highest he can prepare as Quickened at the present is 2nd level spells.


Generally, your high level encounters should be less beatsticks and more opponents with magic of their own. The biggest categories of easy opponents to throw at them include:
- Outsiders: Many are natural spellcasters or have lots of spell-likes along with good senses, and they're pretty well-rounded in general. They're also easy to introduce to fights thanks to spell capable of calling them to the material plane (and their own desire to get there and wreak some havoc), making them very logical adversaries. Their natural teleportation capabilities make them quite solid against spellcasters.
- Dragons: They have natural spellcasting and large hoards allowing for magic items of their own (think to the tune of Rods of Cancellation, Greater Dispel Scrolls, etc.). They're also very mobile and have good saves and senses being resistant to much you can throw at them.
- Undead: This especially includes things like Liches, Vampires and company. Basically, undead with class levels. These can, obviously, be just plain standard casters or so. Another big Undead category is incorporeal creatures; they can be extremely troublesome too since they're very hard to pin down (the singular best spell level 11 Wizards have against them is Disintegrate, but there aren't too many strong Wizard-spells against Undead), and Ghosts can be leveled undead. Though of course, generally Ghosts should mostly act as puzzles since they can't die unless you basically solve the thing that bound them to this world in the first place.
- Humanoids: Humanoids with class levels are very scary; they can have the same spells the party runs and a ton more while at it. Blasphemy, Control Winds, Sleet Storm, Ice Storm, Stinking Cloud, there's a ton of spells around these levels that will make fights more challenging for casters too. Then there's of course Dispels; the Rings can absorb one but they won't protect his spells, just him. And note that Rope Trick, if seen cast (or if the caster can see Invisibles), is perfectly dispellable too.
- Aberrations: Lots of them have wonderful magical (or psionic, generally) abilities and they make for some awesome (and strange) fights. Beholders, Illithids, Aboleths, there's a ton of scary, intelligent Aberrations in there.

Note, I'm not saying have encounters with only casters; rather, have encounters with some casters that can engage the party casters leaving a bunch of melee guys for your melee guys to deal with. As long as the caster can't spare the actions to lock the enemy melee down (or the enemy caster correspondently counteracts his lockdown spells; note that not all of them can be Dispelled - only those with SR: Yes are generally dispellable, but things like Clouds tend to have weaknesses to simple stuff like Wind), or if the mooks are buffed by the enemy caster (most of the lockdown spells can be countered by longlasting buffs like Freedom of Movement and perhaps Deathward or so, and Walls of Force can be disintegrated).

Yeah, magic is hugely powerful on high levels. If you've watched Jackie Chan adventures, you'll know: "MAGIC MUST DEFEAT MAGIC!" You can't just go in to pummel a caster and expect to get anything done; there's tons of ways to disable enemies who can't cast themselves. But every enemy group can have spellcasters and there are magic items that replicate some of the spells.

Invisibility? Well, there's See Invisibility, True Seeing, various forms of Blindsense and high Spot-and-Listen checks (see the skill rules for details) that enable locating someone Invisible (and in some cases, even seeing). And Permanencied See Invisibility is pretty cheap; there's no reason some enemies couldn't have it too.

Fogs? Freedom of Movement is the primary counter, though Teleportation does a lot too. And of course, most Fogs can be dissipated by Wind; there's spells like Control Weather and Control Winds. And violent explosions can also accomplish the same.

Evards Tentacles? Freedom of Movement again; there's also big, strong creatures with high Grapple-checks and awesome things like Dispels, Teleport and so on.

Wall of Force? Teleport, again. And the obvious: Disintegrate. The spell description even says as much.


As for how to actually threaten him? Dispels are v. good. Fortitude-based save-or-dies in conjunction with magic denial are strong (though they aren't immediately lethal). Anti-magic is obviously quite strong (though counterable) and obviously, did I mention dispels?

Melee attacks aren't too useful; ranged attacks will probably force him to spend some actions tho. Especially readied ranged attacks (or spells) to disrupt casting; it's not foolproof but it can again put some pressure on him. Just be careful not to single him out so that the rest of the party has something to do. You can offer them some mooks to beat up on.

Of course, one option would also be to check if you could rebuild some of the ones with trouble contributing to be of a bit higher powerlevel so the different characters could deal with about similar challenges; as it stands, it's obvious the Wizard is leaps and bounds beyond the rest. Simple spell selection tips would get every spellcaster in the party up to speed but non-casters need either copious amounts of magic items or some heavy rebuilding.


One thing to understand about the game; damage isn't usually the best way to win fights. Generally, damage is a good way to finish opponents off but generally you want to use ways to make the opponents less dangerous while you start bringing them down so you can kill them with minimal damage and danger (since, unless you kill them, they still attack with full power meaning opponents your party cannot kill in a single round are probably better off disabled first and killed at your leisure).

EDIT: Oh yeah, and time constraints generally force a Wizard to spend his resources a little less haphazardly; generally, if something needs to be done now, Wizards will know to hold back (good Wizards always hold back but this sounds like a Wizard-in-training still; he has the right idea but he's too wasteful)

[Tyndmyr]

Yea wizards tend to do that.
One thing though: arcane eye and see invisibility are, by RAW not able to be made permenant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm)

Er, See Invisibility is explicitly in the Permanency list. That's RAW.

Arcane Eye, well, no. That said, scrying pretty much handles whatever a permanencied arcane eye would be good for.

[cfalcon]

That said, scrying pretty much handles whatever a permanencied arcane eye would be good for.

Sort of. Long ago I had a psion player with a creative view of the book. I generally trusted him to read the rules right, which he sort of didn't. I had a nice dungeon prepared for him and some other friends before he was coming into town, along with a series of encounters that *could* occur. The small group pretty much went straight to the dungeon, but then things broke down. He made a literal TON of mind-linked astral constructs as tiny little things that went around spying for him (the mistake here was mostly that you probably can't mind link one of those, and certainly not like, the horde he would summon). Then, of course, they would scout out every single thing that they could, scry across that, repeat. The strategy was ludicrously risk averse, and after about the first fifteen minutes I essentially just started drawing in large sections of the map at a time, in hopes that they would at least get to deal with encounters.

This would be not dissimilar from the permanent arcane eye: while scrying requires an expenditure of resources to answer ONE question, this becomes a solution you can use over and over again. In fact, if you can find a way to get a 1-inch hole in a door or wall reliably, you can scout a room pretty nicely.

Is it broken? I still don't think so, but it's powerful enough that I personally wouldn't allow it- at least, not at the mere cost of a permanency spell. But it's definitely better than having to waste a cast of scrying, especially if you don't have extradimensional storage for your scrying-mirror.

However, I still suspect the actual spell was Arcane Sight.

[Eldariel]

However, I still suspect the actual spell was Arcane Sight.

Guys? OP posted this like 7th post last page:


Second it was my fault I mistyped arcane sight.

[cfalcon]

Additionally, I haven't brought this up yet, but *technically*, I *think*, you can dispel the permanencied spells. I think they just go away.

I play that as a suppression effect for a week. But you are under no obligation not to go by the book. Notice that this could be dispelled either with the targetted dispel magic (which would trigger his ring, countering the the dispel), or even the *area* dispel, which has a chance to dispel either the permanency or the original spell (for both permanent effects)- but of course, only *one* of those four, when cast as an area thing.

That's kind of fiat-ish, even if it's within the rules, of course. It also makes permanency probably too weak. However, if you need that edge, there you have it.

[Togo]

Inivisible or rope tricked wizard? Check out flying swarms. Auto damage, concentration checks, most of them can easily detect invisible creatures, and can certainly enter a crampt confined space like a rope trick. It's only inviisible, there is nothing to stop anyone else going in there.

Anything with scent can attack invisible wizards.

Elementals can ignore most of the spells you list. Earth elementals can ignore almost all of them.

But the main thing is to stop him resting all the time. The problem isn't just that he's overwhelming the party so much as they're bending over backwards to support a playstyle that optimises him.

Give him and the rest of the party bags of holding, and/or other extradimensional items, and the rope trick will soon disappear.

[GoatBoy]

I think everyone here has valid suggestions, but I doubt the approach in this case should be "finding ways to defeat the wizard." We have a player whose knowledge of the game far outstrips the DM (no offence, we all had to start somewhere) and who obviously will ignore the rules as long as he can get away with it. Any challenge for him will simply be point-blank annihilation for the party, and probably make them very bored while the encounter plays out.

I don't think there's any in-game solution for this situation, except for making sure the OP is aware of any rules this guy might be breaking. Even when played by the rules, wizards are capable of ridiculous things. Taking an in-game approach would be akin to a commoner throwing down the gauntlet to a dragon.

Educate this fellow on Rule 1 (Everyone has fun) and suggest he play within the bounds of the party structure, rather than as a one-man demolition crew. Even better, let him flex his optimization muscles by having him help the rest of the party with their characters. Just make sure he isn't telling them exactly what to do during the game.

Best of luck.

[Eldariel]

Also note the things even low level casters can deploy against other casters; Swarms are good, but for most encounters they don't make much sense. However, if a group of humanoids has a low level Druid (or if some monster is a Druid, of a somewhat comparatively low level), Summon Swarm makes it a whole lot more logical. And Silence from the Cleric-list is exceedingly efficient as a readied AoE; when the Wizard begins casting, AoE Silence is cast near his location. This has no save and while he can just move out of it, the spell will fail.

Indeed, low level spellcasters have a lot of ways to harass higher level ones. They of course have absolute 0 chances of actually defeating the high level casters but they can be pestersome (and give him something to do while at it, especially in numbers; they'll love trading actions up), and they don't relevantly count towards the encounter level (note that in the name of fairness, they can also be pestersome to the rest of your PCs; Stinking Cloud, Slow, Soften Earth and Stone, Glitterdust, Web, Pyrotechnics, Grease, Entangle, Darkbolt and company are all low level spells that can be annoying even on higher levels, especially if they happen to hit your weak save or are bothersome even with a save, like Web/etc.).


So you don't really need to have high level hostile casters in every encounter (indeed, that would be illogical); never discount the effect low level opponents can have (even non-casters have Aid Another and Trips but that's just not on the same plane of usefulness, of course).

Like, a band of Ogres with a couple of Ogre Adept 6s and a couple of Ogre Barbarian/Fighters (with Steadfast Determination [PHBII], Resolute [Complete Champion] or some such to soup up their Will-saves a bit) can be quite challenging even for an 11th level party even though the Ogres aren't near them in terms of CR/level. This goes doubly for all kinds of Giants and, of course, Humanoids. Like, Ogre Adept 6 is what, CR 6? And I think Ogre Cleric-or-Druid 6 would be CR 7. And they both have tons of things that can really annoy a Wizard, if not seriously threaten him.

[cfalcon]

Inivisible or rope tricked wizard? Check out flying swarms. Auto damage, concentration checks, most of them can easily detect invisible creatures, and can certainly enter a crampt confined space like a rope trick. It's only inviisible, there is nothing to stop anyone else going in there.


I'm not entirely certain about that, but it's a pretty valid way of interpreting the invisible windows. Note that the swarm wouldn't necessarily go into the actual space- I'm not sure if they can detect across that area.

Rope Trick is kind of open to some interpretation, of course. How big is the extradimensional space? The first time this happens, expect the purchase of 7-N dogs, where N is the number of PCs. 4 players, 3 Fidos, and a rope fully utilize the space and no other creatures (the swarm would have to count as at least one creature, right?) can get in, etc. Not to say you can't work around these things as well.

Pathfinder makes you keep the rope visible and out of the space.


Anything with scent can attack invisible wizards.

Totally. Lots of non-silly counters for invisibility.


But the main thing is to stop him resting all the time. The problem isn't just that he's overwhelming the party so much as they're bending over backwards to support a playstyle that optimises him.

Nail on head.


Give him and the rest of the party bags of holding, and/or other extradimensional items, and the rope trick will soon disappear.

The Haversack is normally the more desirable one because of this. However, this remains a great point. Note that the rope trick doesn't disappear- it just becomes a place where SOME of the PCs rest.

Eventually you have to deal with Magnificent Mansion too, but honestly, that's at least 7th level so most DMs (me included) are much happier with that spell than the sketchy-sounding rope trick.

I mean, the target of the spell is "one rope". The extradimensional space entirely removed from the rest of the multiverse? Oh, that's just down here, in the text. PAY NO ATTENTION THIS SPELL IS ABOUT A ROPE

[Metahuman1]

Introduce the former monk to the following.

ToB Melee classes and martial maneuvers. (Can even maintain that Swashbuckler Feel with some schools, Like Diamond Mind, Shadow hand, and White Raven.)
PHB II Duskblade. (It IS proficient with a number of light weapons and allowed to take Weapons Finnesse and Shadow Blade, and it's not required to wear heavy armor or use a shield.)



Or if he's hell bent on the archatype of dashing swordsman, Daring outlaw, Rouge 4 + Swashbuckler 16. Give him a ring of blinking, and tell help him to pump the crap out of his Int and Dex when he builds the character. Now, Tell him to take shadow Blade from Tob and use a listed weapon for that feat, or house rule that it just applies too all Finnessable weapons + any that are listed but not Finnessable. Then have him buy a ring of Blinking. Finally, have him take Knowledge Devotion, buy masterwork Tools for all the knowledge Skills he takes, and house rule that if he has knowledge devotion he can buy pass immunity to sneak attack on creatures which he can make the knowledge devotion check for for at least the +1 bonus. +2 if you want to make life a little harder for him. For Six skill points a lvl x4 at first lvl, fifty GP a skill, and the cost of raising the Int stat as high as possible even though you want that anyway for a Swashbuckler or a Rouge, that means always, he can now Sneak attack more or less every time he makes and attack roll and hits, everything else that would normally effect it is now irrelevant. Which means he's doing very relevant amounts of damage but he still should have some skills too keep him relevant outside of combat.

Offer to let him take low impact flaws at character creation to get a couple of these feats worked in. I'd also offer a feat too add Int too Atk rolls as a home-brew, but that's not critical for the build. (Nice mind you, very nice, but not inherently essential. )

Finally, I've heard that there's a feat out there some where, I don't know if it's homebrew, splat book, or Dragon Magazine, that let's you use Int in place of Con for HP and I think Fort save. I'd give him that, and even if it doesn't apply to fort save apply it anyway, because form a mechanics stand point the only two stats he needs are Int and Dex. Cha would be nice particularly with Force of Personality if he can spare the feat, but he can get by with out it.

If he really wants Duelist PRC, let Daring outlaw stack with Swashbuckler and Rouge AND Duelist, and go Rouge 4 Swashbuckler 6 Duelist 10.

Regardless, he get's like a +16 BAB at 20th lvl, Int+Dex mod too attack and damage + Knowledge Devotions boost (Handy since he can't power attack on this build, light weapon restrictions.), and basically every attack he makes he can add sneak attack damage too. And if he's pumped Int like he needs too, he's still got points left after knowledge devotion too do one or two other things fairly well, such as scouting, Stealth, Social interaction, or lot's of movement skills like tumble and jump with a few gems like UMD.

Let me know if you need clarification on anything here, sources for this stuff (I know all of them except Int too HP feat. I've only heard of that one, and don't know where it comes form.), help writing any suggested home brew feats/tweaks too feats, or advice on Pumping the ever loving crud out of those two key stats.

=)



Edit: And the reason your doing this is that, quite frankly, your wizard is even in a core game, holding back a fair margin of what he could REALLY do if he got it into his head to break the game. He should not be punished becuase the rest of the party is having a hard time keeping pace with his low power level for his class. Instead the rest of the party, Particularly the Ex Monk, should be built up in power level to be as close to what he's playing at as possible. The above can help accomplish that for the Ex Monk. Any of the three suggestions would do that, and the last one was so involved becuase it's using classes that aren't mostly pre-optimized.

And for the Cleric, rule that Night sticks stack for there effect, drop like five or six or seven of them in his lap along with the means to do some very heavy duty boosting too his Con score, and have him Take DMM either for Persistent Spell, or at least Quicken spell, and show him some of the great Self/party Buffs cleric gets. Divine power and Righteous might just for core off the top of my head suggestions. Nothing further really required for him to get up too speed.

[faceroll]

I think everyone here has valid suggestions, but I doubt the approach in this case should be "finding ways to defeat the wizard."

Yeah. The best advice is coming from Eldarial and Keld, about how to challenge the wizard and keep **** relevant for the party.

[sparkyinbozo]

I love some of the suggestions here...also a big fan of finding creative ways to deal with it. So it's time to play dirty.

Not sure if these will all work, but might give you some ideas regardless:

If he doesn't have still/silent spell, you could assault those avenues; teleporting and grappling can be fun, blinding, poisoning, illusions, diseases, traps, Nightmare spells. If I remember right, there's a chime that can force them to make concentration checks, which can be a pain.

Also, be sure to address the rules violations (esp. multiple quickened spells)!

Edit: You could also use the other party members against him, especially because he sounds like a difficult player to deal with. Things like him needing other spells for the slots he normally uses to help the group, peer pressure, etc.

[Analytica]

What character in a fantasy novel, movie or comic would ever do five-minute days in-between eight-hour rests in a little hole at the top of a rope? If the rules of the game world allows that, and makes it an efficient solution, it makes for a pretty silly game world and resulting story. In my opinion, that is a perfectly valid reason for banning a spell like Rope Trick, and it works for plenty of others as well. Making teleportation work only across shorter ranges and limiting what shapes spells can turn you into could serve a similar purpose.

Nerfing spells is hardly unfair to a wizard, as they can have as many as they want - of the ones you allow - anyway. Just make sure also not to allow them to NPCs if you go down that route.

[Geigan]

I think we're all jumping a bit too hard on this to make this one player's time ingame a bad one. If you stoop to someone's level that is disrupting the game you are wasting more of your precious game time on a trivial contest that as a DM you can win without a thought. It is not "clever" to target a player ingame who is being intentionally disruptive. You're wasting more time on this person who has already wasted so much. If he's being disruptive talk to him. He should be able to work with the party and cooperate on the use of his spells to not try and win everything by himself. If he refuses to cooperate then you can kick him out. There is no need to waste your time in a futile struggle between you the DM and the player. It will only result in angry feelings on both sides, and will waste time and effort you could have put into preparing content for the players who would cooperate.:smallannoyed:

[Cerlis]

remember, if you build the encounters around the mages abilities (making antimagic field counterspelling casters or whatever) its still Dungeons and Wizard, not dungeons and dragons.

like people said the best thing to do is to point out all the "mistakes" (its best to assume they misinterpreted) they made and ask him to cool it down a bit.

[cfalcon]

So broadly, the suggestions thus far have been:

1)- Change your encounter style so it doesn't cater to the wizard.
2)- Include challenges that specifically challenge the wizard, or play to his weaknesses.
3)- Buff the hell out of the other guys (presumably followed by, then give them more challenges)
4)- Simply include more enemies who are valid targets for his extensive CC- in other words, buff the encounters largely with numbers.
5)- Spend as much time as he has looking over spells that are generally good against casters, and have some encounters use those.
6)- Simply ask the wizard character to tone it down: the rest of the crew isn't running super powered stuff.

Ultimately, which you go with is up to you and what you think is best for your game.

[Tyndmyr]

Guys? OP posted this like 7th post last page:

Missed it. In which case, yes...it's on the permanency list as well. And it's not at all broken.

Dispel does in fact work on permanencied spells. If you lose the permanency, sad times. I would not advise doing it just to make him waste his xp/gold, but it'll probably come up naturally at some point. Having defenses against dispel is a good thing.