Lvl 5 Wizard

[Duskranger]

Dear Playgrounders,

I was searching for help with a lvl 5 wizard.

Race: half elf (storywise this is certain)
Stats: 18, 15 ,11, 13, 8, 10.

I am the DM and this will probably (if the party does not kill him) a reoccuring villain.

So what can you semi-optimise for me. I ask this mostly because I suck at making wizards, so everything from spells to item loadout should be helpfull.

[Gavinfoxx]

Sent you a message on MSN/WLM... reply to me? I have a very evil half-elf Wizard I'm playing in a game, at level 5, optimized extremely highly...

[Duskranger]

Sent you a message on MSN/WLM... reply to me? I have a very evil half-elf Wizard I'm playing in a game, at level 5, optimized extremely highly...

How did you send a message to msn? I mean I do not think I know you?

[Gavinfoxx]

I used the contact information in your profile??

[Duskranger]

I used the contact information in your profile??

I did not even know I had them. I added you. Speak to you there.

But the information can also be put here, my players probably won't come here.

[Gavinfoxx]

Okay, messages sent!

[Gavinfoxx]

Also, the party will never catch that character I sent you when he is asleep. With Rope Trick, a 5' rope, and a Lesser Rod of Extend Spell, he is in a rope trick every night...

[Story]

Does he Undectable Aura it? Smart players might Detect Magic the area.

[Waker]

Dear Playgrounders,

I was searching for help with a lvl 5 wizard.

Race: half elf (storywise this is certain)
Stats: 18, 15 ,11, 13, 8, 10.

I am the DM and this will probably (if the party does not kill him) a reoccuring villain.

So what can you semi-optimise for me. I ask this mostly because I suck at making wizards, so everything from spells to item loadout should be helpfull.

I ask this everytime someone posts these, but what is your goal for this character? Did you want him to threaten the party with a bunch of conjured minions? Is he an off-scene threat that harries the party with illusions and enchanted foes? Is he an in-your-face blastomancer?.....
Tons of stuff that he could potentially do, though we need you to help narrow it down beyond "is a half elf." Also what is your party makeup? And what sources do you have available?

[ericgrau]

Solo or with a party? With a party standard control/support tactics work well. Without one not so much. Solo I'd strongly suggest fireball above all else. With a party you get haste or sleet storm. Can I assume NPC WBL, or did you give him more money just like you gave him more ability scores?

The setup is also important. If he knows the PCs are coming a day in advance then invisibility is king. If they get the drop on him it's only for running away. Which is important, ya, but in the first case you get it twice in the second only once.

- - - - - - - -

Since advice for it is less common, I'll do the solo build. Half-elf Evoker 5, banned abjuration and illusion. So 4/5/4/3 spells per day.

Abilities Scores: Int 18, Con 15, Dex 13, whatever.

Major Gear: lesser rod of extend spell, scythe or alternatively a light pick to save weight
Other Gear: Scrolls are always nice, or potions for banned schools. Remember that NPCs pay 5x for expendables to keep things fair on a one time fight. As a reoccurring villain give him duplicates or replenish him between fights.

Spell List Outdoors:
0: daze x 2 (sucks but daze > crossbow), detect magic, prestidigitation
1: mage armor x 2, feather fall, magic missile, expeditious retreat
2: flaming sphere, false life, swift fly x 2
3: fireball x 2, deep slumber

Strategy: Rod extend mage armor 20 hours a day and false life 10 hours a day. Swift fly and fireball first couple rounds, then land near the ranged and let the melee come to you. Deep slumber getting as many foes as possible, remembering you are immune. Coup de grace the following round or withdraw then expeditious retreat if in trouble. If you get a buff round expeditious retreat before the fight begins for faster kiting and fleeing. Heaven help you if the PCs have a ranger to track you, but invisibility wouldn't be any different. Once you hit level 7 dimension door is the obvious reoccurring villain spell.

Surprised Straegy:
Round 1: swift fly, fireball, back away
Round 2: swift fly, expeditious retreat, flee 90 feet
Round 3+: continuing fleeing as you cast, withdraw without casting if PCs somehow get too close. If things look bad do a full retreat.

If he has extra time for whatever reason have him cast flaming sphere for sustained damage.

Spell List Indoors:
Swap swift flies for another extended false life and whatever else. Maybe more damage spells, maybe levitate or spider climb if the ceiling allows, maybe web, maybe rope trick. Strategy is about the same, but you're not as safe. So you probably want a roomy lair or to ambush the party outdoors. Naturally both sets of spells and a little more should be in his spellbook if the PCs loot him. Sleep must be in there even though he no longer prepares it.

Warnings: Assuming the party is fighting him at level 3 for a "difficult" fight, ~17 or ~9 damage fireballs might lead to a couple party deaths with some bad rolls. d4s give around 17 hp while d12s give around 31 hp. His hp with false life is around 37 give or take. This is not a very saturday morning cartoon villain friendly build. I don't like pulling punches so rather than making a kiddie build that disables the party and runs, maybe you could let the party hit level 4 before fighting him. Or let the PCs get the drop on him instead of vis versa, using the "surprised" strategy.

If your group doesn't optimize much, swift fly may be a bit too much and unfair to the party. Without it you use the "indoors" strategy and expeditious retreat kite.

[Duskranger]

I ask this everytime someone posts these, but what is your goal for this character? Did you want him to threaten the party with a bunch of conjured minions? Is he an off-scene threat that harries the party with illusions and enchanted foes? Is he an in-your-face blastomancer?.....
Tons of stuff that he could potentially do, though we need you to help narrow it down beyond "is a half elf." Also what is your party makeup? And what sources do you have available?

Answertime:
What he is does not really matter at this moment, I was thinking myself about a abrubt jaunt conjurerer. He needs to be annoying and controlling.

Party make-up:
Sorceror, Fighter, Swordsage, Bard

Everyone is lvl 3.

I have almost all 3.5 books available for use and will maybe even pick some stuff out of Vile Darkness.
Thee wizard is by the way only a flunky, he needs to be slightly defeatable, though very hard and should be able to live and fight another day preferably.



Solo or with a party? With a party standard control/support tactics work well. Without one not so much. Solo I'd strongly suggest fireball above all else. With a party you get haste or sleet storm. Can I assume NPC WBL, or did you give him more money just like you gave him more ability scores?

The setup is also important. If he knows the PCs are coming a day in advance then invisibility is king. If they get the drop on him it's only for running away. Which is important, ya, but in the first case you get it twice in the second only once.

- - - - - - - -

Since advice for it is less common, I'll do the solo build. Half-elf Evoker 5, banned abjuration and illusion. So 4/5/4/3 spells per day.

Abilities Scores: Int 18, Con 15, Dex 13, whatever.

Major Gear: lesser rod of extend spell, scythe or alternatively a light pick to save weight
Other Gear: Scrolls are always nice, or potions for banned schools. Remember that NPCs pay 5x for expendables to keep things fair on a one time fight. As a reoccurring villain give him duplicates or replenish him between fights.

Spell List Outdoors:
0: daze x 2 (sucks but daze > crossbow), detect magic, prestidigitation
1: mage armor x 2, feather fall, magic missile, expeditious retreat
2: flaming sphere, false life, swift fly x 2
3: fireball x 2, deep slumber

Strategy: Rod extend mage armor 20 hours a day and false life 10 hours a day. Swift fly and fireball first couple rounds, then land near the ranged and let the melee come to you. Deep slumber getting as many foes as possible, remembering you are immune. Coup de grace the following round or withdraw then expeditious retreat if in trouble. If you get a buff round expeditious retreat before the fight begins for faster kiting and fleeing. Heaven help you if the PCs have a ranger to track you, but invisibility wouldn't be any different. Once you hit level 7 dimension door is the obvious reoccurring villain spell.

Surprised Straegy:
Round 1: swift fly, fireball, back away
Round 2: swift fly, expeditious retreat, flee 90 feet
Round 3+: continuing fleeing as you cast, withdraw without casting if PCs somehow get too close. If things look bad do a full retreat.

If he has extra time for whatever reason have him cast flaming sphere for sustained damage.

Spell List Indoors:
Swap swift flies for another extended false life and whatever else. Maybe more damage spells, maybe levitate or spider climb if the ceiling allows, maybe web, maybe rope trick. Strategy is about the same, but you're not as safe. So you probably want a roomy lair or to ambush the party outdoors. Naturally both sets of spells and a little more should be in his spellbook if the PCs loot him. Sleep must be in there even though he no longer prepares it.

Warnings: Assuming the party is fighting him at level 3 for a "difficult" fight, ~17 or ~9 damage fireballs might lead to a couple party deaths with some bad rolls. d4s give around 17 hp while d12s give around 31 hp. His hp with false life is around 37 give or take. This is not a very saturday morning cartoon villain friendly build. I don't like pulling punches so rather than making a kiddie build that disables the party and runs, maybe you could let the party hit level 4 before fighting him. Or let the PCs get the drop on him instead of vis versa, using the "surprised" strategy.

If your group doesn't optimize much, swift fly may be a bit too much and unfair to the party. Without it you use the "indoors" strategy and expeditious retreat kite.

He has NPC wealth, the stats were because I rolled them. For more (reocurring) villains I prefer to use the same methods the players used.

Note of importance: at this moment the party is in a city and gets invited to this guys house. So the first encounter will be indoors.

[ericgrau]

Oh that high op huh. Ya can't beat abrupt jaunt. Go conjurer then. Fireball still works well, except for pesky collatoral damage. But it's his fault for bringing the PCS inside; hard to safely damage them at all. Can only piss them off with debuff and run.

Unless he has a stone house?

Conjurations to swap in: web, stinking cloud. If the house is really big then sleet storm half of it instead.

[HunterOfJello]

Abrupt Jaunt is pretty hardcore and be a good defense against melee attackers (although it is still limited to the number of Immediate Actions available).

the 5th level Spontaneous Divination ACF is also a strong option

[Waker]

Abrupt Jaunt, the Enhanced Summoning variant from UA, perhaps the cloudy conjuration feat. Those are all fairly decent choices.

[ArcturusV]

Well, generally since this is a villain, and you want it to be defeated eventually, I wouldn't go TOO optimized for it.

Evocation and blasting/defensive buffs as mentioned above is a pretty good way to do it.

One of my favorites is busting out all the Illusions. Remember the only real weakness of Illusions, is one that no longer applies to you. Basically DM screw. But you're the DM. So you don't have to worry about the DM saying an Illusion wouldn't work, or you can auto disbelieve, etc. :smallbiggrin:

Now... an Illusionist, with prep time, can be a good wizard for harassing the players long term. The longer he survives (And since he's an illusionist, he probably won't be directly leaping out, challenging them, etc, increasing his lifespan), the more dangerous he becomes to the players.

Just keep playing Mindgames with the Players until they're in a situation where they honestly don't know what's real or not, or doubt everything their senses tell them.

Ghost Sound, Ventriloquisim, Silent Image, Minor Image, Major Image, all good bread and butter. Disguise Self means he can get close to the players without them going, "Ah ha! It's the purple robed asshat wizard! SMITE EVIL!"... which can allow for things like casting Misdirection, which can really start messing up players.

Even Nystul's Magic Aura, and yes, Leomund's Trap, can really mess with the minds of players.

Since you're not directly challenging them, they're not likely to kill your Villain/Henchman before you're ready. And depending on the level of screwing with the players you use? By the time they actually DO throw down with this guy they are going to be pumped up to smite him something fierce.

[ericgrau]

That's a good point that abrupt jaunt isn't as good 1v4. I'd add in a 2nd form of kiting like expeditious retreat or fly so that way you're less likely to need it more than once. Small spaces really aren't your friend; they're the friend of melee. But at least they'll let you web and maybe area damage a little better.

Actually against a party of 4 PCs all within a 40 foot diamater circle fireball isn't being nice, it's the cruelest thing you can do. I set it up for 1-2 deaths and with really bad luck a TPK. Solo with conjuration spells are actually a problem because all you do is delay the PCs heavily without hurting them, or hurting them very little. It needs a party to work well. OTOH it makes it easy to taunt and get away.

A good compromise might be to make him a semi-coward with both offensive spells and spells to trap and get away. Then at least he has a reason for it. ArcturusV's idea to messing with the PC's heads for the sake of messing with their heads is a good idea too, then next time you switch spell lists.

[Gavinfoxx]

Agreed on needing Expeditious Retreat, access to Flight or a Climb Speed or Burrow or similar. What he wants to do is use Abrupt Jaunt as an 'oh ****!' card, but he wants to primarily be flying or on the ceiling out of the reach weapons of the party...

[Malachei]

I don't really like Abrupt Jaunt much, and I consider it a cheap trick. If you want to give your players a rather frustrating experience, you can use it, but IMO there are better ways to show how challenging wizards can be rather than relying on an INT/day half-broken ACF. Moreover, your players may all want to play an abrupt jaunt conjurer afterwards.

A single wizard is a challenge to effectively play against a party, because the action economy is 4:1 in their favor.

A lone wizard often has the issue of getting enough spells out before the PCs effectively engage him and use their action economy advantage. In that case, after setting up his BFC, he's dead.

If you pump up the volume, you can easily make him too dangerous, which likely produces PC deaths, for instance if you play him much like a sorcerer and bomb the place with multiple fireballs. Ericgrau pointed out in his scenario above why this is not unlikely to result in PC deaths at level 3.

I suggest tweaking the action economy:

Make him a summoner who has used a scroll of lesser planar binding so he is accompanied by a minion. Alternatively, have him be prepared and summon in advance.
Give him bodyguards or servants (simply hired or charmed, for instance)
Preferably, one of the minions will have good spot and listen skills to reduce the chances of being surprised
Give him a wand of celerity with a few charges left so you can make sure he gets an action when he needs one


Build and spell selection depends on his role, of course. If you want him to continually haunt the PCs, I'd suggest an illusionist. If he's a master controller type, make him an enchanter. Of course, a conjurer is probably strongest, in general.

For spells, I'd enjoy:

(3+1+1): Benign Transposition, Grease, Mage Armor, Nerveskitter, Wall of Smoke
(2+1+1): Baleful Transposition, Cloud of Bewilderment, Glitterdust, Seeking Ray
(1+1+1): Fly, Reverse Arrows, Stinking Cloud


(Spells per day assume specialist wizard and bonus spells due to 18 INT. You can increase that with Focused Specialist)

Tactics: Try to detect the PCs and prepare (Fly, Reverse Arrows). Use Nerveskitter to hopefully win Initiative. If prepared, cast Glitterdust, followed by Stinking Cloud, depending on how the PCs are spread across the battlefield. Target individual PCs with Seeking Ray.

If caught unprepared, cast Fly and try to move to a place that provides total cover. Cast Reverse Arrows, possibly further moving to a place that still provides total cover. Emerge, cast Glitterdust or Stinking Cloud.

Ideally, the terrain would be advantageous for the wizard. A bridge would be perfect.

Defense: Rely on Fly, Reverse Arrows and Mage Armor. The wizard will not have time to buff up with more than 1-2 spells anyway. Consider a pearl of power, spell level 1, so he can cast Mage Armor twice out of combat, for a total of 10 hrs per day. Use Potion of Invisibility for retreat.
Possibly add Insight of Good Fortune (or Alter Fortune) for a better chance of making an important save.

Miscellaneous: Load up on scrolls. In the spell selection, I've not included single-target debuffs, if you like, add Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Clumsiness (good with Grease), Unluck, or Drown. Also, Cloud of Knives may be interesting for the free attack, if the wizard has time to prepare.

Power Word Pain might be nice for hit-and-run tactics, if the PCs have enough healing power.

[ericgrau]

Since you have a lot of money, you could get a +2 int item. But only if a lot of your spells have saves. A whip feather token is also nice, and even nicer if given to a minion to activate. It has a high chance to take a PC out of the fight with its grapple ability, plus it does about 3 damage a round against AC 20. That makes it another good disable. It has 15 hp and 7 hardness if the PCs try sundering it instead. As a 500 gp expendable it's basically 2,500 gp out of his budget which isn't too shabby for how nice it is. My only concerns are that the wizard would get even harder for a level 5 fight with 1 PC down and that it's boring to play the grappled PC. But such is the case with all disables.

[Eldariel]

Honestly, I'd use BFC; try to isolate the party and take them down one by one. Stinking Cloud is a good opener; breaks vision, can disable people and gives them an incentive to split up.

Major Image is also useful, for phantom duplicas, extra walls, reinforcements, whatever you can think of. Sleet Storm is probably the third convenient control spell.


Either way, it's very hard to defeat 4 people at once. AOE save-or-Xs; Glitterdust, Web, Stinking Cloud, etc. would allow picking the enemy apart one by one for executions (e.g. through Color Spray).

[Duskranger]

Actually, the first time the party meets the wizard will be on his terms. They will be in his house, and if they are unlucky will drop in to the sewers (trapdoor).

They need to start to hate and fear the guy, not immediatly kill him. This guy is a small fish, compared to the real BBEG.

So I think that Illusions and BFC are key here. I think about Silent Image paired with ventriloquism to make the image speak. While the real bad guy is behind a wall (if they find him and are able to fight they maybe can win, though the fight will be heavy.

Thanks for all suggestions.