How to hide a magical artefact from a powerfull wizard at lvl 4?

[Garwain]

Title says it all...

We're lvl 4 Bard, Cleric, Sorc. and Fighter and came into possession of a magical artefact. Unfortunatly a powerful wizard (level unknown, but he alters complete islands, so out of our league) is aiming for the same. Carrying it on us does not seem like a good idea. At last not untill we have some proper power ourselves.

So, any clever ideas?

[Psyren]

Any high-level friends you can call on?

If he has any kind of divination (and a modicum of intelligence) you're pretty screwed.

[Saviour]

Yeah, you're in trouble. If you don't want to try to find a way to destroy it, you need to hide it. In a dead magic zone, or some other form of permanent antimagic. Either that, or turn it over to some powerful casters who can hide it. The Wizard will either come and just take it, or send minions of appropriate CR for your party. If it's the last one, then you may in fact have a chance of keeping it. For now.

[vitkiraven]

In an extradimensional storage item, in a lead box inside a coffin, in the area of effect of a weird stone, having been buried by a blind mortician, the coffin having been given to him, sealled by a rogue who can tell no truth about it, who received it from a mute person who could tell him nothing about, just had a note where to bury it. Make sure there are several coffins that are buried this way in different areas.
Make it so that there are no legends about it, so the gods can't see it (if it is an artifact, it is probably sacred to one deity or another, so you might be able to hope that COP might get some interference on that end (if the deity in question doesn't want the wizard to get it that is).
You should probably look up every divination effect or spell there is, and find out what the counter to it is. Weirdstones are outside your ability to purchase, but use someone else's. If they exist in the campaign setting, then the Bard should be ble to find out where one is.
Use each character's abilities to your best benefit. The Bard should know how things are found in legends, make sure that none of those methods are available. The cleric can pray to the deity for intercession, but probably will not get it. The fighter can evaluate how to make it more dangerous to attempt to acquire it (ongoing battles or dangerous areas that their mercenary friends are fighting in). The sorcerer may have know:arcana and/or spellcraft, and might be able to figure out the means with which you can hide something from divination.
Main thing is, you have to think outside the box, outside of your core abilities and to what the class is as a whole.
The blind mortician, lying rogue, and mute person were just to make it difficult to track down. But to really make it so that the Wizard cannot find it, you are going to have to be very crafty. Since the wizard doesn't already have it, the DM is obviously allowing you the chance to hide it in some way. Roleplaying ideas may be your best bet. Look into mythology for hidden things for ideas. Hell, if you can make it that it can only be found by an honest person, all the better!


EDIT: If all else fails, when the wizard shows up and you need to make sure the wizard doesn't get it, and are not adverse to a party member sacrifice, speaking is a free action, so say "Candlejack", or "Hastur, Hastur, Has

[lord pringle]

Don't forget Pazuzu Pazuzu Pazuzu.

[Psyren]

The lead box is a good start and will block most of the common stuff. There are ways around that though, e.g. Legend Lore and Vision.

[Malachei]

Nondetection is in your league, but the bad guy will probably easily make the check.

Acquire scrolls of Mislead (extended), perhaps, but probably too expensive for you.

Personally, I'd try to find a place that is warded, for instance the main temple of an important religion or the tower of a powerful (and morally adequate) wizard or wizard guild.

Normally, such a situation would be a story element, of course, wouldn't it? So the BBEG spellcaster will send his minions after you etc.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Find a temple of a magic hating god and hide it in there?

Really the only core wizard spell he could use to find the item is legend lore or vision and even those aren't guaranteed when it comes to locating something, if he's altering islands with epic magic then all bets are off.

[Venger]

nystul's magic aura is your friend.

in combination with any or all of the above strategies, don't forget to disguise the artifact as a less powerful magic item (or a nonmagical item if you're feeling ballsy, but I wouldn't recommend it) before you hide it, so if it's detected, it'll be mistaken for something the wizard isnt interested in.

[MesiDoomstalker]

nystul's magic aura is your friend.

in combination with any or all of the above strategies, don't forget to disguise the artifact as a less powerful magic item (or a nonmagical item if you're feeling ballsy, but I wouldn't recommend it) before you hide it, so if it's detected, it'll be mistaken for something the wizard isnt interested in.

I don't think Nystul's Magic Aura is strong enough to supress the aura of a FRIGGIN' ARTEFACT!

[Randomguy]

You could hide it in a rope trick, but that will run out eventually.

If you don't want to keep it, just give it as a free gift to a powerful dragon. He probably won't part with it willingly, and the wizard should have a hard time convincing him to let go of it.

[Rubik]

You could hide it in a rope trick, but that will run out eventually.

If you don't want to keep it, just give it as a free gift to a powerful dragon. He probably won't part with it willingly, and the wizard should have a hard time convincing him to let go of it.Buy a scroll of Plane Shift, retry your castings until you cast it successfully, and Shift to Celestia. Find a passing solar, tell it what's up, and see if it'll run the artifact to Bahamut for you, or take you with it to visit him.

Even high level wizards are somewhat wary of gods who know them by name and have reason to keep an eye on them.

[vitkiraven]

Buy a scroll of Plane Shift, retry your castings until you cast it successfully, and Shift to Celestia. Find a passing solar, tell it what's up, and see if it'll run the artifact to Bahamut for you, or take you with it to visit him.

Even high level wizards are somewhat wary of gods who know them by name and have reason to keep an eye on them.
Also known as "Let's you and him fight"? :smallbiggrin:

[Curmudgeon]

Fairly simple, layered approach:

Sheathe the item in clay and form a shape that looks like something else, such as part of a boat anchor.
Pour molten lead over the clay-protected item.
Toss this piece of lead in an old wooden box with other hunks of lead (pipe sections, broken fragments of sling bullets, & c.), plus gear to melt lead and molds to form new sling bullets.
Stay away from specific named locations.
Discern Location (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/discernLocation.htm) will tell a business name or place name, but if you're in some waste ground in a town, the spell will only give the name of that town. More refined divination spells will be stymied by the lead coating. The simple camouflage will foil most visual inspections.

[Stormageddon]

If all four of you were halflings this would not be a problem.

[Rubik]

If all four of you were kenders this would not be a problem.Fixed that for you.

[vitkiraven]

Fixed that for you.
One kender could do it, put it in his pack, and you will never find it.

[Rubik]

If you can find someone with a portable hole, try tossing it and your handy haversack into it. It'll be destroyed. If not, it'll be somewhere between the planes where nobody (including the wizard) can get to it. Maybe he could bind it as a vestige, but I doubt it'd be much good for anything else.

[Darrin]

Buy a scroll of flesh to stone, call of stone, or get chummy with a medusa/gorgon/cockatrice/basilisk. If you can't quite cast such a spell yet, quaff a potion of guidance of the avatar to add +20 to your UMD check.

Use summon monster or buy a monkey of some sort. Give it the artifact, then turn it to stone. The target's equipment is also turned to stone, and this will now befuddle most divination spells, including the normally untrumpable discern location. The monkey is in some sort of very weird quantum state where it's neither alive or dead. Cast shrink item on the monkey-statue, and toss it into a bag of holding or some other extradimensional space.

The spellcaster has to be very specific with his divination spells... he has to know he's looking for a stone statue holding a stone version of the artifact. If he tries to discern location on the artifact itself, he gets no result (it was turned to stone, and he presumably hasn't touched the monkey-statue). If he tries to discern location on the creature holding the artifact, he gets no result (the monkey-statue counts as an object, not a creature).

If you really want to bake this wizard's noodle, cast polymorph any object to turn the monkey-statue into another creature, such as a similarly-sized construct (permanent duration). If he was looking for an object and getting a location, those spells will now fizzle because the object he was looking for is now a creature.

If you can afford it, another way to foil discern location is create a Spellblade (+6000 GP, Player's Guide to Faerun) that makes you immune to that spell. Other divination spells may still work, but discern location is the most difficult to counter.

[deuxhero]

Use the artifact?

Honestly, unless the wizard doesn't know who you are and the artifact has a "can't scry on it" clause, you are boned. I suppose you could quickly make friends with a more powerful wizard.

[Curmudgeon]

Honestly, unless the wizard doesn't know who you are and the artifact has a "can't scry on it" clause, you are boned.
Good thing you can't scry on any artifact, then.
You can see and hear some creature, which may be at any distance.

[deuxhero]

"Scrying" being used as a general term for divinations (because "divining" gets confused with the spell beggars).

[Demonic_Spoon]

Buy a scroll of flesh to stone, call of stone, or get chummy with a medusa/gorgon/cockatrice/basilisk. If you can't quite cast such a spell yet, quaff a potion of guidance of the avatar to add +20 to your UMD check.

Use summon monster or buy a monkey of some sort. Give it the artifact, then turn it to stone. The target's equipment is also turned to stone, and this will now befuddle most divination spells, including the normally untrumpable discern location. The monkey is in some sort of very weird quantum state where it's neither alive or dead. Cast shrink item on the monkey-statue, and toss it into a bag of holding or some other extradimensional space.

The spellcaster has to be very specific with his divination spells... he has to know he's looking for a stone statue holding a stone version of the artifact. If he tries to discern location on the artifact itself, he gets no result (it was turned to stone, and he presumably hasn't touched the monkey-statue). If he tries to discern location on the creature holding the artifact, he gets no result (the monkey-statue counts as an object, not a creature).

This, but instead of throwing it into a extradimensional space, cast stone to mud on it and then purify water. Then throw it into the ocean.

[MesiDoomstalker]

This, but instead of throwing it into a extradimensional space, cast stone to mud on it and then purify water. Then throw it into the ocean.

I think we just stumbled upon a way to destroy artefacts pre-Disjunction.

[Doorhandle]

...amazing. If i ever enter a 3x game, I now have a standard procedure.

[Droodle]

Wouldn't the artifact get its own saving throw against being turned to stone? I don't think this would actually work.

[Snowbluff]

Would Nystul's magic Aura work? Can you cast it at that level?

[ericgrau]

I just noticed that scrying only works on creatures. A lead box will foil anything that works on objects. And problem solved at level 1. The wizard must be level 15 to break through.

You may need an NPC to help you just once in case the party is being scried while putting the object in the lead box. If the wizard already knows who the party is you're boned unless you can convince him the party doesn't have it.

Nystul's aura doesn't work on artifacts.

[Wavelab]

Evil overlord list to the rescue. No seriously, just put it in a safety deposit box in some good city, preferably one with a high level king or something. Even if he finds it he will have to break into the bank to get it, which is a bad idea.

[Curmudgeon]

Wouldn't the artifact get its own saving throw against being turned to stone?
Yes, attended magic items always use either their holder's saving throw or their own, whichever is higher.

Would Nystul's magic Aura work?
Nope.
If the targeted item’s own aura is exceptionally powerful (if it is an artifact, for instance), magic aura doesn’t work.

[Psyren]

Evil overlord list to the rescue. No seriously, just put it in a safety deposit box in some good city, preferably one with a high level king or something. Even if he finds it he will have to break into the bank to get it, which is a bad idea.

The trouble with "good cities" is that rarely will everyone in them be good. And even if they are, the high-level wizard merely needs an agent to infiltrate and steal it. The PCs at least have the advantage of being on the move.

[Darrin]

Wouldn't the artifact get its own saving throw against being turned to stone? I don't think this would actually work.

It's more of a DM's call. The spell only targets creatures, not objects, so it's not clear if the magic items carried would get a saving throw, or if the gear turning to stone is just an unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of the creature getting petrified. In general practice, you do not roll for every single magic item a creature carries when it gets turned to stone. It's usually assumed that the creature's Fort save is better than the magic item's, so you generally use the creature's Fort save vs. petrify to apply to all his carried gear. I'm not sure allowing an individual save for each magic item would be advisable... you'd get some very wonky results when certain pieces of equipment turned to stone and some didn't. This goes against the expected genre trope: petrification is an "all or nothing" effect.

Flesh to stone is a "divide by cucumber" type of spell. It creates some very weird corner cases in the rules, since the target creature is now an object and no longer counts as a "creature", "living", or "dead". It can't be dispelled (instantaneous duration), but despite not being an enchantment, it can be reversed with break enchantment. It's a good way to put someone (and his gear) effectively "in stasis" to buy some time and get the resources together to deal with a problem that's currently way out of your league.

If the creature is carrying an artifact... well, artifacts are always a wild card the DM can play at any time to change the rules. But if it's a minor artifact, then it has a caster level and probably a saving throw that's better than the creature carrying it. That might justify the DM declaring that the artifact gets a separate saving throw, and could thus escape the petrification effect.

A major artifact pretty much requires the DM to make an ad hoc ruling on the spot. Major artifacts don't have a caster level to calculate a save DC, so their save DC is either "infinitely high" or whatever the DM says it is. An artifact (minor or otherwise) escaping the genre trope of all-or-nothing petrification is an easy exception to make, since that's pretty much Plot Immunity in a nutshell.

In my own campaign, I decided petrification was all-or-nothing, artifacts be damned. Setup was somewhat typical: PCs + McGuffin vs. Evil 20th-level Spellcasters From Beyond the Sanity-Shattering Far Realms. So as you can see I put an absurd amount of thought into how they could foil high-level divinations... probably could have saved a lot of work to just say the McGuffin and anyone within 30' was immune to divination spells (although there are a couple counters for that as well). Since the PCs didn't have access to flesh to stone yet, I made sure they were able to get ahold of Incense of the Gorgon (6600 GP, A&EG p. 133), which worked quite nicely (and as a one-shot item, it also didn't throw WBL out of whack). They got the McGuffin and most of the vulnerable NPC "kidnap bait" turned into statues in one fell swoop. Actually, since the campaign involved a lot of chaos beasts and mutating plagues immune to remove disease, turning NPCs into stone became something of a running gag.

[Psyren]

When you get to a higher level, the Unname spell from ToM can destroy any artifact permanently, and they explicitly get no separate save.

Learn a commoner's truename (Or a famous aristocrat if the commoner is too obscure), then hand him the artifact and overpower his meager fort save to nuke him from reality. Even if the evil Wizard goes through all the Renaming trouble to bring him back, the artifact will stay gone, forever, and there's nothing he can do about it. Eat your heart out, Mount Doom :smalltongue: