Wizard vs. Dread Necromancer (sort of)

[molten_dragon]

This isn't a 'who would win in a fight' thread. That's got an obvious answer.

One of the things that gets brought up a lot with dread necromancers is the wightpocalypse.

So let's say that an Evil dread necromancer is trying to touch off a wightpocalypse so that he can rule the world of the dead.

His archrival, a good wizard, finds out, and sets out to stop him.

The question is, how far along does the wightpocalypse have to get before the wizard isn't able to stop it any more?

Assume the wizard is a wizard 20, the Dread necromancer is a dread necro 20. Both are reasonably well optimized. Limited to things that an 'everyman' DM would reasonably allow.

Let's say the dread necro starts with one wight in a small town of a few hundred people. If he completely controls that town, it's about 2 days walk from a larger city of about 5,000.

[eggynack]

What does stopping the wightpocalypse mean? Wights can't really hurt a 20th level wizard, so the wizard will inevitably win a war of attrition.

[molten_dragon]

What does stopping the wightpocalypse mean? Wights can't really hurt a 20th level wizard, so the wizard will inevitably win a war of attrition.

At what point are there enough wights that the wizard can't stop them from turning every humanoid in the world into more wights. What's the critical mass of wights as it were.

[Emperor Tippy]

Wizard creates a Simulacrum of a Solar and sticks it in his bag of holding before casting casts Mind Blank, Fly, and Greater Invisibility. Then he casts Shapechange and then uses Wish to drop him off in the air twenty feet above the Dread Necromancer's head, at which point the Solar uses it's 1/day wish to throw up a Forbiddance over the whole area, the Wizard free action shifts to Iron Golem form and then casts Quickened Imprisonment (Greater Rod of Quicken) on the Dread Necromancer followed by a regular Imprisonment in the even the Necro made his save.

Pushing the save DC to the point where the Dread Necro needs a natural 20 to make it isn't that hard. And if he does there is pretty much nothing that he can really do to you.

Not ideal but unlikely to be anything a DM takes issue with and its core only.

---
Imprisonment is actually one of the better ways to deal with a Lich, none of that pesky questing to find their soul jar and generally much more permanent than death.

---
Or there is get the Solar, give it a Portable Hole and Bag of Holding, have it Wish its self next to the Necro and then stuff them together. The Necro is now permanently lost (not dead so no returning).

[molten_dragon]

Wizard creates a Simulacrum of a Solar and sticks it in his bag of holding before casting casts Mind Blank, Fly, and Greater Invisibility. Then he casts Shapechange and then uses Wish to drop him off in the air twenty feet above the Dread Necromancer's head, at which point the Solar uses it's 1/day wish to throw up a Forbiddance over the whole area, the Wizard free action shifts to Iron Golem form and then casts Quickened Imprisonment (Greater Rod of Quicken) on the Dread Necromancer followed by a regular Imprisonment in the even the Necro made his save.

Pushing the save DC to the point where the Dread Necro needs a natural 20 to make it isn't that hard. And if he does there is pretty much nothing that he can really do to you.

Not ideal but unlikely to be anything a DM takes issue with and its core only.

---
Imprisonment is actually one of the better ways to deal with a Lich, none of that pesky questing to find their soul jar and generally much more permanent than death.

---
Or there is get the Solar, give it a Portable Hole and Bag of Holding, have it Wish its self next to the Necro and then stuff them together. The Necro is now permanently lost (not dead so no returning).

The point isn't really to kill the dread necro though. The dread necro is only there to start off the wightpocalypse and help support/protect it while it's still growing.

The wizard still loses if he kills the dread necro but everything else is wights.

[Emperor Tippy]

The point isn't really to kill the dread necro though. The dread necro is only there to start off the wightpocalypse and help support/protect it while it's still growing.

The wizard still loses if he kills the dread necro but everything else is wights.

Remove the controlling intelligence and the Wight horde goes from a real threat to nothing much. They don't have the unity and cohesion to be a major threat.

Incidentally, once the Necro is dead you and the Solar go to town. With at will Holy Smite and it's magic circle against evil the Solar is pretty much built for this while with Shapechange you can easily track down and kill the leakers and thin numbers (shift between Young Adult Red Dragon form and Young Adult Gold Dragon form to use your flaming breath weapon every round).

Oh yeah, if by some miracle the Necro make's it's imprisonment saves, the Solar uses it's at will Imprisonment SLA on the Necro every round until said Necro fails.

[Chronos]

What does stopping the wightpocalypse mean? Wights can't really hurt a 20th level wizard, so the wizard will inevitably win a war of attrition.
Not necessarily. There's still a limit to how many wights the wizard can kill per spell slot, and therefore a limit to how many he can kill per day. If there are enough wights, they'll be converting more than that per day, and thus gain numbers on net.

[eggynack]

Not necessarily. There's still a limit to how many wights the wizard can kill per spell slot, and therefore a limit to how many he can kill per day. If there are enough wights, they'll be converting more than that per day, and thus gain numbers on net.
There is also a limit to the number of wights that can exist on the basis of this wightpocalypse, set at the population of the world. If the wizard can kill the population of the world, in the form of wights, then the wizard's victory is inevitable. I suspect that he can kill that many wights, so he will win the war of attrition.

[Emperor Tippy]

Not necessarily. There's still a limit to how many wights the wizard can kill per spell slot, and therefore a limit to how many he can kill per day. If there are enough wights, they'll be converting more than that per day, and thus gain numbers on net.

A couple extended shapechange's to cover the whole day and then shift back and forth between Young Adult Red and Gold dragon forms every round while having Wing's of Flying activated so that they can hover and using a standard action each round to use their 10d10 Cone of Fire Breath Weapons.

You have 10,000 or so rounds of fire-breathing in a day. If you figure 10 dead Wight's per round then you can kill a hundred thousand in a 24 hour period.

Or you Greater Planar Bind 12 Planetar's and order them to surround the Wight's and work their way in. They fly three times as fast as a Wight can move and get to Holy Smite as a standard action every round while also being level 17 Cleric's.

Or you Gate chain Titan's and let them wipe out the whole problem in 2 rounds.

[molten_dragon]

Remove the controlling intelligence and the Wight horde goes from a real threat to nothing much. They don't have the unity and cohesion to be a major threat.

Wights are intelligent, and if there are a lot of them they're still dangerous. Their natural behavior is to feed on other things and turn them into wights. That's pretty much the behavior that continues a wightpocalypse.

[Zanos]

Pushing the save DC to the point where the Dread Necro needs a natural 20 to make it isn't that hard. And if he does there is pretty much nothing that he can really do to you.

How are you pushing up the save DC so high? Highest I can figure at level 20 is 19 base DC, 36 int(18+2+5+5+6) for a DC of 32, which suitably equipped character still has a reasonable chance of making.

[Story]

I think the answer is that the Wightpocalypse would have to already be complete.

If there's even one person left alive, the Wizard can just divine who it is, port over and save them, thus stopping the Wightpocalypse. And then kill the existing wights at his leisure.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Teleport Through Time back to before the wightpocalypse (pinpointed by divination spells). Splatter the dread necromancer with extreme prejudice.

[Vaz]

Shapechange into a Brain in a Jar, Rebuke as if 20th level Cleric. Optimize Rebuke. Stop the DN as per Tippy.

[Chronos]

It's a peculiar definition of "victory" that includes depopulating the entire planet, or saving only a handful of survivors.

[Tvtyrant]

A psion makes a Dorje of Time Regression and simply travels back in time to prevent the wightocalypse. His name is Chuck Goodman.

[Fouredged Sword]

Really, I think it boils down to barrier conditions. The wizard can nuke X miles of wights a min, and a wight destroied area expands Y miles a min.

So long as X is greater than Y, the wizard can contain the situation. The wizard is constrained by space, and he can only be a few places at once. If he can grow his zone of control faster than the wights, he wins.

This is likely to be done through chain gateing solars (I don't think they will mind in this case)

This means that the wizard can throw nigh unlimited numbers of level 20 cleric// 20 warriors at the problem. He can generate solars faster than any conceivable wight population can make wights. His growth is exponential and has no barrier condition that curbs his expansion. The wights grows is ALSO exponential, but is constrained by the speed they can cross the landscape and the number of living things they can get their hands on.

Even if the wights gained a serious head start, the wizard can beat them. It simply becomes a matter of how much damage they can do before he stops them.

[The Trickster]

I realize that I will show everyone what a big, fat noob I am if I ask this...but my google-fu is failing me.

Wightpocalypse? I mean, I understand the concept but, how does the DN cause an apocalypse of wights?

Please don't smite me for my ignorance. :smalleek:

[Fouredged Sword]

Any creature killed by a wight's negative energy attack becomes a wight 1-3 rounds later. One becomes ten becomes ten thousand. A DN can easily create a wight to start off the chain.

[Gnaeus]

Wights are intelligent, and if there are a lot of them they're still dangerous. Their natural behavior is to feed on other things and turn them into wights. That's pretty much the behavior that continues a wightpocalypse.

Their natural behavior also includes not forming into giant converting armies, but lurking around in small bands not more than 6-11. Anything larger than a village should have a good chance of destroying 11 wights. Anywhere with 1 10th level hero or mid level adventuring party should be pretty safe.

Lacking a directing boss, the wights from that first town would likely scatter. Local caves, bogs and graveyards would be unusually dangerous for a while, but wight fluff does not indicate that they travel long distances looking for people to convert.

[angry_bear]

Presumably, if the wizard is good aligned; he has to first transport any mortals to safety. With a couple of teleportation circles in place, he can evacuate entire communities relatively quickly. Throw up some prismatic walls beforehand, and the Wights won't have a chance to interfere with the process. Ideally the locations you send the wights will be protected from divination, and be relatively fortified... Seeing as it's a level 20 wizard handling the situation, he's probably cleaned out more than a few dungeon crawls that should work nicely.

What would a level 20 Dread Necromancer's will save be? It's a safe bet that it's relatively high, but a maximized command undead might work on it. (It becomes a Lich at 20 right? Been a while since I've looked at the class) And if that works, he commands the DN to order it's minions to destroy each other.

[molten_dragon]

Teleport Through Time back to before the wightpocalypse (pinpointed by divination spells). Splatter the dread necromancer with extreme prejudice.


This is likely to be done through chain gateing solars (I don't think they will mind in this case)

These are probably going to fail the "things an average DM would allow" test.

[molten_dragon]

I realize that I will show everyone what a big, fat noob I am if I ask this...but my google-fu is failing me.

Wightpocalypse? I mean, I understand the concept but, how does the DN cause an apocalypse of wights?

Please don't smite me for my ignorance. :smalleek:

The dread necro creates a wight under his control. That wight kills a commoner. The dead commoner becomes another wight, under the control of the first wight. And so on and so forth. With a sufficiently dense population of low-level humanoids, the wights can double in numbers every 2.5 rounds on average.

[Gnaeus]

The dread necro creates a wight under his control. That wight kills a commoner. The dead commoner becomes another wight, under the control of the first wight. And so on and so forth. With a sufficiently dense population of low-level humanoids, the wights can double in numbers every 2.5 rounds on average.

OK, but how many wights would it take to conquer Waterdeep, or Greyhawk, or WhateverthecapitalofThayis? Marching overland from some other conquered village, not starting inside the walls.

Assume that the Wiz 20 kills the DN, and then immediately falls over dead from a heart attack. I propose that no number of wights that would plausibly be raised from the surrounding countryside could take a big D&D metropolis. No ranged attacks. No cavalry. No magic defenses. No flight. No good way to kill things that are immune to level drain. No real defenses at all other than hiding. A ranger on a horse in a plain could kill wights until he ran out of arrows. A gnome wizard with a reserve feat on a dire bat could kill wights until he got tired and went home to rest. The golems protecting the various residences and wizards guilds in a big city could kill wights literally forever. As long as there is any natural or manmade defense or bottleneck, no number of wights could reasonably beat the dozens of high level casters and thousands of characters with class levels.

In this way, the wight army is actually much, much weaker than an orc army, which has lots of missile weapons and some caster support. Shadows, on the other hand, fly, are much faster, and go right through walls. Much bigger threat.

[Karnith]

WhateverthecapitalofThayis?
Eltabbar, though Bezantur is bigger and probably better-suited to resist a siege by wights. Pre-Spellplague/4e lore, of course.

[Fouredged Sword]

Wights kill cites through starvation. They don't want control, they want easy prey. They make it dangerous to farm and make it hard to repopulate the countryside.

Yes, you kill most of them, but there will be a few who sink themselves into some bog somewhere to rise up later once the clerics move on to the next hotspot.

The city suffers from starvation while the powers that be decide weather or not to use their divine casters to go forth and defeat wights or stay home and cast create food enough to blunt the lack of crops.

If it happened at the wrong time, the harvest would be ruined even without a protracted occupation or harassment. A hungry city is a dead city.

[Emperor Tippy]

A proper undead apocalypse is done with Wraith's.

First you gather yourself 500 commoners. You are a decently high level caster so this shouldn't be a problem.

Then Shapechange (use a scroll if necessary) into a Dread Wraith. Now go down the line of commoners killing each of them. An average of three rounds per commoner should be enough.

Now you have 500 patient zero Wraith's under your control that don't count against HD control limits and will obey you with total loyalty until you die (so don't do that).

Now stuff all of them into a bag of holding (they will all fit into a Type 1).

Now greater teleport to a smallish town at 3 AM or so local time and unleash your Wraiths to kill the whole town with orders to order their spawn to obey your orders and join in the slaughter (while passing on the same orders to their own spawn). A town of five thousand or so can be emptied in less than an hour. Now go and hit some more.

Once you have a hundred thousand or so Wraith's stuffed in your bag of holding you go and visit a major city, at which point you have the newest wraiths (as they make the best canon fodder) invade the city from underground and in the walls with orders to all strike simultaneously.

If you time things right and have your attack plan pre-scouted you can depopulate a kingdom in a single night, and Wraith's are much harder to stop than Wights.

---
Although I really like shapechanging into an Incarnum Wraith and then turning a few thousand people with essentia pools into Incarnum Wraith's (if you have a handy psion then a Dominate Person + Psychic Reformation can make anyone have an essentia pool via feats). So long as you turn them all you have no real risk or issue.

Now you cast a Selective Shaped Invisibility Sphere set to cover only your square and yet exclude you and have all of your nasty little friends hang out in the same square. Most people will never know that they are there and they can make a very nasty surprise for your enemies. I also like to stuff them into a Belt of Many Pockets, because it makes a cool visual when they all come streaming out.

The benefit of Incarnum Wraith's is that they can only reproduce via those with essentia pools, which means you have a lot more control over them and they make a better weapon if you don't want to overrun the world with undead.

Now the best part is when you are all done with your Wraith's (of any type), you order them all into the same square and hit it with a CL 15+ Holy Word.

How much XP do you get for killing a hundred thousand CR 5 undead at once? ;)

[angry_bear]

Any GM who lets you arbitrarily change your alignment after committing mass genocide like that deserves to be banned from ever running a game again. Aside from that though your idea works well enough barring interference from forces capable of shutting you down.

[Emperor Tippy]

Any GM who lets you arbitrarily change your alignment after committing mass genocide like that deserves to be banned from ever running a game again. Aside from that though your idea works well enough barring interference from forces capable of shutting you down.

That's why you Mind Rape yourself afterwords. Right back to whatever alignment you desire.

Incidentally a great method to bypass some detection methods, especially if combined with a Craft Contingent Break Enchantment to fix your alignment at a specific time/occurrence.

[Gnaeus]

Wights kill cites through starvation. They don't want control, they want easy prey. They make it dangerous to farm and make it hard to repopulate the countryside.

....

If it happened at the wrong time, the harvest would be ruined even without a protracted occupation or harassment. A hungry city is a dead city.

Inconvenient, yes. Wightocalypse/world of the dead/army of wights overrunning countries, not so much.

As Tippy says, the wraiths will work much better.

[Talya]

There is also a limit to the number of wights that can exist on the basis of this wightpocalypse, set at the population of the world. If the wizard can kill the population of the world, in the form of wights, then the wizard's victory is inevitable. I suspect that he can kill that many wights, so he will win the war of attrition.

I think the premise is, if the world is all wights, the wizard lost. Merely killing all the undead is not enough. The wizard is the hero here, they have to save the world.

Is there a tipping point, after which recovery is impossible for the lone wizard to prevent the horrifying disaster from befalling all the innocent people? How soon do they need to stop this?

There are too many factors to actually calculate where that point of no return would be, but without a means to rapidly deal with all the current undead, I have to think the wizard will lose this war before he wipes them out.

[Angelalex242]

Spectres do it even better then wraiths, what with 2 negative levels per hit and incorporeal touch to work with.

[Emperor Tippy]

Is there a tipping point, after which recovery is impossible for the lone wizard to prevent the horrifying disaster from befalling all the innocent people? How soon do they need to stop this?

No. You just need progressively greater and greater levels of optimization and/or cheese.

[JaronK]

Because of Teleport Through Time, there is no tipping point. The Wizard simply divines the exact location of the Dread Necromancer just before he started the chain, pops back to a little bit in advance of that, and sets up an ambush.

JaronK

[Segev]

It's worth noting that an Imprisoned Dread Necromancer would not be dead, and nothing in Imprisonment says it breaks the controls he might have over his own undead minions. He might not be able to speak to them, but his standing orders would still hold. "Go forth, my minions, and bring about the wight/wraithocolypse" would still leave those who were directly bound to the Dread Necromancer bound to obey, and thus their spawn would be bound to obey them in this quest, and so on and so forth.

A DN being as canny as the multi-contingent Wizard would also leave orders with his direct-reports to find ways to get in touch with him if they lose contact.

And now, let the level 20 wizard move on to another plane as he goes on his epic adventures elsewhere, and you have the set-up for a lower-level party's major quest: stop the Wight Lords from spreading their power across the world, and discover they're out to release their dread master from his prison. Now stop that, too!

[Talya]

Ugh. Time Travel...

[Angelalex242]

I suspect Most GMs aren't going to let you play Chrono Trigger with events like that.

[JaronK]

I suspect Most GMs aren't going to let you play Chrono Trigger with events like that.

Most DMs won't let you make a wightpocalypse either.

JaronK

[Talya]

Most DMs won't let you make a wightpocalypse either.

JaronK

But they might start one for you to stop...

[eggynack]

I think the premise is, if the world is all wights, the wizard lost. Merely killing all the undead is not enough. The wizard is the hero here, they have to save the world.

Is there a tipping point, after which recovery is impossible for the lone wizard to prevent the horrifying disaster from befalling all the innocent people? How soon do they need to stop this?

There are too many factors to actually calculate where that point of no return would be, but without a means to rapidly deal with all the current undead, I have to think the wizard will lose this war before he wipes them out.
Sure, if everyone is wights, the wizard loses, but what if everyone is wights except for one not-us character? Where's the line defined where the world qualifies as saved? Can you just create a stronghold which allows members of the not-wight populace, and slowly kill off the wights from your tower of happiness? It's an odd thing in general, I think.

[Talya]

I'm trying and failing to come up with an appropriate "Two wrongs don't make a wight" pun.

Obviously I'd make a poor bard. :smallfrown:

[Segev]

I'm trying and failing to come up with an appropriate "Two wrongs don't make a wight" pun.

Obviously I'd make a poor bard. :smallfrown:

No, you're just working with it backwards. You see, murder plus undead enslavement are two wrongs. And together, they do make a wight!

[mostlyharmful]

I'm trying and failing to come up with an appropriate "Two wrongs don't make a wight" pun.

Obviously I'd make a poor bard. :smallfrown:

If the world's all wight then what's your problem?:smallwink:

[Talya]

If the world's all wight then what's your problem?:smallwink:

Gah! It's horrible!

Thank you!

[mostlyharmful]

Gah! It's horrible!

Thank you!

I KNOW!!:smallsmile:

It's Wight out of the big book of bad puns TM

[Angelalex242]

Sounds so wong, feels so wight...

[molten_dragon]

Because of Teleport Through Time, there is no tipping point. The Wizard simply divines the exact location of the Dread Necromancer just before he started the chain, pops back to a little bit in advance of that, and sets up an ambush.

JaronK


No. You just need progressively greater and greater levels of optimization and/or cheese.

Yeah, but the point is to find the tipping point for a wizard that would actually be allowed in a game run by an average reasonable DM. Not a TO wizard.

[angry_bear]

No. You just need progressively greater and greater levels of optimization and/or cheese.

It's not even super high levels of optimization or cheese. All you need to do is scry for an area that the wights can't readily access, and drop a few teleportation circles to save one village at a time. Assuming that the wights are traveling in one big mob, you save one settlement like this, then use your mojo to wipe the horde out. If you fail to take them all out, you get to the next nearest settlement and do the process again. They don't have the mobility to outrun your teleportation or flight after all.

Heck, if you've already taken out the DN; locate the oldest of the wights and cast command undead. Then order them to have their servants kill each other.

[Vaz]

Define saved. And define optimized.

Without even going into Mindraped Ice Assassins disguised to look like normal people and sitting on his Demiplane capable of timewarping back into the past or Astral Projecting, he has enough Contacts now to warn him through judicious use of his Magic Item creating abilities to gift them stuff like Sending Stones. A network of Stones would allow the Users to interact with each other in a defined 'radio check routine' several times a day (1/hour?), with a single missed call resulting in code black.

This causes Scrying attempts and other more involved Divinations by the Wizards underlings, who then alert said Wizard. Before long, the Wight army will be found, and easily Wiped out, leaving the Wizard free to locate splinter groups, and the Dread Necromancer. One control undead and he will tell you where his Phylactery is, and a Wiz should have enough Pearls of Power 7 to ensure one failed Save (or pump save through the roof: snowcasting etc). Destroy the Phylactery then remove the DN from existence.

However, combat between the DN and the wizard is rocket tag. A DN with a spellstave of Mindrape (and similar DC boosting) means that it takes a dispelled mindblank and the Wizard is toast. Of course that then brings in Crafted Contingencies until the arms race gets so high you get bored and say okay Teleport through time is allowed.

[captain fubar]

I think looking at a level 20 weightocolips is the problem as there are much better undead that can make spawn that a level 20 derad necro could get ahold of and a level 2 ilumen deread necro with fell drain could make (though not control) 2 weights a day + any spawn.

so the question becomes what will a level 2 wizard do against a weightocoplis that has likely been going for weaks befor the wizard even notices its going on.