Solo Adventure Idea For High-Level Wizard

[Malachei]

I'm running a solo adventure session tomorrow. While I have some ideas that fit the campaign (tying up loose ends), I might try something completely different.

The character is a 17th level wizard who just returned to his tower where he's also running a small wizards' academy. The tower is in the nation's capital, a coastal city with approximately 50,000 inhabitants.

Ideas?

[Gavinfoxx]

Really, a 17th level wizard can do anything, given sufficient preparation... just do your standard existential level threats to reality, and, if your player has even remotely decent optimization level, they should be fine...

[GreyMantle]

-He and another wizard of roughly comparable power (a longtime rival, if possible) have a bet as to who can chainbind more efreeti in some given period of time. Hilarity ensues.

-Pick your favorite apocalypse myth (Ragnarok, Judgment Day, etc.) and run with it. Bonus points for subverting it in some clever way.

-A demon thief steals the Elemental Chalice of Greed. As a result, mortals of < 5th level are no longer capable of feeling greed. Without this basic motivation, the world's economies are all falling apart. It's up to the wizard to either slay the demon and reinstate the status quo, or take advantage of the situation and turn the world into a giant socialist paradise.

-The wizard stumbles upon some sort of conspiracy to KILL ALL OF THE GODS. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on any number of possible factors.

-Pick some random event that happened in one of the first adventures in this campaign and blow it way out of proportion in some amusing and vaguely plausible way. Like maybe the wizard had the choice to save some kid's kitten in Session I, and the wizard didn't because he/she was more concerned with facestabbing the evil foozle. Now the cat's owner has become a 20th level adventurer and is determined to seek revenge.



Honestly, near epic play should be either extremely serious, grim, and somber, or just absurd.

[Malachei]

Really, a 17th level wizard can do anything, given sufficient preparation... just do your standard existential level threats to reality, and, if your player has even remotely decent optimization level, they should be fine...

Really, I know about what a high-level wizard can do. I was looking for adventure ideas.


-He and another wizard of roughly comparable power (a longtime rival, if possible) have a bet as to who can chainbind more efreeti in some given period of time. Hilarity ensues.

-Pick your favorite apocalypse myth (Ragnarok, Judgment Day, etc.) and run with it. Bonus points for subverting it in some clever way.

-A demon thief steals the Elemental Chalice of Greed. As a result, mortals of < 5th level are no longer capable of feeling greed. Without this basic motivation, the world's economies are all falling apart. It's up to the wizard to either slay the demon and reinstate the status quo, or take advantage of the situation and turn the world into a giant socialist paradise.

-The wizard stumbles upon some sort of conspiracy to KILL ALL OF THE GODS. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on any number of possible factors.

-Pick some random event that happened in one of the first adventures in this campaign and blow it way out of proportion in some amusing and vaguely plausible way. Like maybe the wizard had the choice to save some kid's kitten in Session I, and the wizard didn't because he/she was more concerned with facestabbing the evil foozle. Now the cat's owner has become a 20th level adventurer and is determined to seek revenge.

Honestly, near epic play should be either extremely serious, grim, and somber, or just absurd.

First, thank you for your input.

It is a solo session. Afterwards, the character continues the main campaign thread with the rest of the party, so I am not looking for world-changing events here. I don't necessarily think that everything a high-level character does needs to be world-threatening, and certainly not absurd.

I also think a wizard on his own develops enough paranoia by himself. And, also, can be quite vulnerable. But I don't want to kill him or get the rest of the party into something new. I want a reasonable, doable one-shot plot. Nothing on epic scale. Something that can be completed in 5 hours of play without messing up the whole town (or continent).

More ideas, please?

[Hirax]

Player versus ice assassin, aleax, inevitables, astral stalkers, or other bounty hunters.

[OracleofSilence]

Perhaps something simple. If you want to full campaign to follow this, and the player is an actually good roleplayer, then i personally, would suggest something along these lines.

The character "awakes" to find himself in some sort of ethereal dreamscape. After fighting his way through strings of hostile phantasms and the like (perhaps psionics flavored if that exists in campaign), he suffers a string of violent hallucinations that a) give him cause to join the party, and b) give vaguely misleading hints of future endgames (the latter should be just enough to make him paranoid in all the wrong directions). Of course, the character should get something out of this. Perhaps a unique spell, maybe XP (if appropriate) and possibly some sort of homebrewed benefit.

Of course, when he awakes in real life (he finds himself captured away from his tower, by some old (and preferably villainous or goodly which ever is appropriate) rival. The rival should act as the final boss, but be only just powerful enough to be a challenge. After this, the character discovers that he was not alone in being kidnapped (many high level mage's, priests, and etc were also) and while returning to his tower, he encounters the rest of his party.

As i said of course, this makes a lot more sense if the player is a good roleplayer.

[Gavinfoxx]

How exactly is a high level wizard kidnapped without realizing it from his place of power, surrounded by other wizards?

[Randomguy]

Pick 2d4 artifacts from the tome of artifacts and make something out of the suggested hooks. The world tree is a good one to include.


EDIT: Make it holiday themed. The villains (Who are of course elves) want to cut down the world tree to use as a Christmas tree! You have to stop them! Or something like that.

[jackattack]

In his absence, some of the mid-level students have delved into Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and unleashed eldritch horrors that are (currently) trapped within the tower.

Give the local lord's court magician a scorching case of purple pox and invite your wizard to take care of all of the domestic and/or political stuff the court magician does on a daily basis. Throw in some intrigue and diplomacy for good measure.

At the end of a long day of practical instruction, when he has memorized multiple instances of spells the DM might have nudged him towards, unleash the World's Greatest Thief(/sorcer?) (and his merry band?) in the tower.

One of the students needs a recommendation to get a job (guarding a caravan?) so the wizard has to talk to the potential employer on his behalf. A doting parent brings their child to the school to become a student/apprentice, and after establishing that the child has zero aptitude the wizard must convince the parent to take the child and go -- then he has to resist increasing bribes to take the kid anyway. The neighborhood association or he guild next door sends the local constabulary to complain about the noise and the lights and the smoke and the screaming. All part of the fun of running a school of wizardry.

[Namfuak]

He runs a school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but one of his prospective students has adoptive parents who don't want him to go to the school, so he has to convince them to send him, and in the end kidnaps him by having his huge groundskeeper go and take him by force.

Or: He comes home to find his wife in bed with another man. When he turns the man over, it's a clone he made of himself! How does he react?

[OracleofSilence]

Or: He comes home to find his wife in bed with another man. When he turns the man over, it's a clone he made of himself! How does he react?

Right, about now, i really wish GiTP had a +1 function...

And more seriously...

How exactly is a high level wizard kidnapped without realizing it from his place of power, surrounded by other wizards?

Well actually, when you think about it, that last bit there actually helps a little bit...