Hunting Casters

[Sqmach]

Hey everyone, long time reader, fairly new to posting here. I'm going to be playing in a gestalt game, and I'm trying to concoct something that can drop casters as easily and as quickly as possible. So my question is, what feats, class abilities, etc. lend themselves to this most? To clarify, I don't always need to kill, anything that just disables or weakens them enough for capture is good to.

My first thought was to combine lurk and soulknife to be able to do a lot of wis or int damage in a single strike, but I'm not exactly a fan of the soulknife component.

We're allowed any official 3.5 material, starting level looks like 4 or 6 at this point. I'd prefer to avoid full caster or psionic if posssible, and would like to be somewhat sneaky.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Kennisiou]

Honestly, if you want to drop casters generally you want to target their lowest stat for ability damage. This means str, wis, cha, or int depending on the caster, generally. After all, it's easier and far more relevant to deal 8 ability damage and immediately paralyze them/knock them unconscious than it is to work through their primary casting stat (often upwards of 30, sometimes even above 50!) slowly taking off some spell DCs and spells per day before eventually knocking them out.

You also want a way to dispel magical effects, to stop other magic effects from occuring, to move quickly to where they are and to keep them from magically escaping. The movement mantle from CPsi is good for giving you ways to quickly get places on a psionic chasis. Anything that lets you swift cast dimension door is good as well (or even cast it as a move action if you just need a single standard action to fell the enemy). For stopping casting, a selective antimagic field is a good choice. It'll often also auto-dispel several magical effects.

What this all really adds up to, though, is that generally the best anti-casters are, well, casters. They can swiftcast movement/teleportation spells, keep selective antimagic fields around that stop other casters while still allowing themselves and their magic items to function, and then just fire off something like a touch of idiocy or other source of mass ability damage to just instakill the enemy caster.

Edit: If you want to avoid full caster, then my suggestion is you look into ways to replicate a lot of these effects like swift movement and selective antimagic fields as a non-caster. There aren't a lot, and what there is is likely expensive magical gear, but it's what you'll want to really shut casters down.

[dascarletm]

Hey everyone, long time reader, fairly new to posting here. I'm going to be playing in a gestalt game, and I'm trying to concoct something that can drop casters as easily and as quickly as possible. So my question is, what feats, class abilities, etc. lend themselves to this most? To clarify, I don't always need to kill, anything that just disables or weakens them enough for capture is good to.

My first thought was to combine lurk and soulknife to be able to do a lot of wis or int damage in a single strike, but I'm not exactly a fan of the soulknife component.

We're allowed any official 3.5 material, starting level looks like 4 or 6 at this point. I'd prefer to avoid full caster or psionic if posssible, and would like to be somewhat sneaky.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Here is my 2c:

The biggest problem is successfully destroying/negating magical defenses, and being immune to divination.

For divination negation, get nondetection/mindblank. That should cover most all of that. Once the spell casting community becomes aware of an assassin targeting their kind, they will probably seek you out.

The problem you'll face is when you go to fight a fully prepared "paranoid" caster you'll need lots of different methods to successfully get to said caster. If they have their own demi-plane, how will you get there? etc. These are the question's you'll need to answer first before you actually get to the killing/disabling part.

[sideswipe]

just for lols build an ubercharger (look for a thread a couple pages back for a lvl 6 that does damage in the hundreds.

and wear lead armour so they cannot scry on you :) (i don't think its technically possible)

at level 6 i would go with fast movement and a lot of damage in one hit. casters are not known for AC or hit points.

if you target abilities. you will find it hard to get substantial damage at level 6 to make it viable. and you might pick a stat they have not dumped.

say you pick strength, that will only get frail ranged casters. clerics, buff wizards and druids will still usually have ok strength.

and say they have 10 and you manage to get 2 ability drain. or even d6 (without poisons) that is an average 3 attacks you must land to get the 10.

whereas if you hit most casters in the face with a big pointy stick really hard they die.

so. a character built either for moving fast and hitting hard (100+ damage or even just 50).
a character so stealthy that you cannot be seen. (i like ninja, but they are widely disliked as a class).

A whisper gnome ninja could sneak up and then stab them in the kidneys and if they survive say " enjoy being poisoned" then you have your ability damage.

[Osiris]

You could make a charging trippamancer who, after charging, drops his greatsword, quickdraws a reach weapon, and makes use of the Occult Slayer abilities, as well as Improved Trip and Mage-slayer feats.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The only thing that can capture a caster is a skillful counterspell specialist with a side of minionmancer, period. No non-caster stands any real chance of capturing a caster and destroying one is gods-awful difficult.

Here's my typical spiel for the non-caster mage hunter, pulled from the last time this came up. A few irrelevant bits have been removed from that post.


Only the most comically low-op wizards could get themselves caught in that trap. The tinfoil hat (the lead cone under permanent shrink object mentioned above) is a well-known counter to approaching while under an AMF and it's pretty close to a hard-counter to boot.

The only version of hitting the T1 with an AMF that works reasonably well, that I know of, is pinning it to his chest with an arrow via arcane archer 2. This can, questionably, be done by casting from a scroll but otherwise requires no less than 6 levels in a PrC that gets accelerated casting or that you be an out-and-out spellcaster to begin with. Almost any other method of employing an AMF leaves you vulnerable on approach or completely unable to approach. Either way you're hosed.

The next best AMF option isn't AMF at all but it's higher level cousin antimagic ray. It, unfortunately, requires a ranged touch attack and allows a will save. Get a staff if you don't wanna be an arcane archer or if your DM won't allow you to imbue arrows with scrolls.


Anyway, let's get on-topic now.


First and foremost, don't kid yourself. Luck will be a serious factor no matter how well you're built. Aside from that there are two other major factors necessary to defeat a caster as a non-caster. Planning and surprise.

You can't realistically immunize yourself against all of a wizard's tricks so don't even try. Defensively, your best bet is to get your saves and touch AC as high as you can, pick up evasion and mettle, maybe even spell resistance and immunize against the instant loss effects; paralysis, instant death, dimensional displacement, mind control, etc.

Next up, you need to be able to get to him through whatever he tries to put in your way. A ring of freedom of movement and one or more rods of cancellation are good starts for slipping away from or breaking through BFC spells like solid fog and force cage. 5 or more ranks in balance and as many ranks in tumble as you can swing to get past minions and hazard producing spells like summoned monsters and grease.

Then, you want dispelling effects. A caster with a full suite of buffs is a nightmare on a good day. You'll want a way to strip those buffs and the most powerful version of dispel magic you can afford is how you do that. A wand can be used to counterspell too.

Finally, you want a way to bypass the most prevalent of wizardly defenses and evasive abilities. Something to produce dimension lock and dimensional anchor are top-priority, since following a long-range teleport is, at best, difficult and choosing not to anchor yourself, while not necessarily a poor decision if you can reliably access tactical level teleportation, will leave you vulnerable to being insta-gibbed by plane-shift or blocked off by teleport trap and similar. Next up is flight. If you can't fly, you can't catch a flyer. A force weapon to bypass blink and a means of piercing illusory generated miss chance such as something to produce a trueseeing effect.

Then it's just a matter of hitting hard and fast in an ambush. It's extremely important to take a target caster down on the first try because, if he gets away, he's going to hunt you down and come at you prepared when you're not ready and crush you utterly.

Here's my preferred method of laying an ambush.

First and foremost, know your target. Figure out where he's going to be and what he wants then lay your ambush in his path or lure him into it. If possible (unlikely though it may be) try to find out what his favorite offensive combat tactic is and arrange a hard-counter if you can reasonably afford to do so. If he favors summoning, for example, pick up some scrolls of magic circle.

At the chosen ambush sight, preferably an enclosed space, lay down a dimension lock type effect. I prefer a scroll-cast forbiddance keyed to the alignment of the target wizard, since he won't know he's entered the field until you spring the attack unless he's got arcane sight up at all times and even then he may enter anyway if you have what he wants inside the field and the CL of the forbiddance is high enough to prevent him from easily breaking the effect. Naturally you'll want immunity to forbiddance one way or another. It's a pricey option but it covers a large enough area that it can't be easily left in a single action.

If you can't get the target into or keep him in an enclosed space or if your chosen dimensional anchor effect is too small to fill the available space you should open the attack with dimensional anchor targeting the caster, fired from concealment.

If you can't successfully lock the caster down dimensionally then abort. Without that debuff the caster will simply be too mobile and have too ready an escape route for you to have a realistic chance of success.

Once you've got him pinned to the battlefield rush him with everything you've got and hope that your defenses are up to the task. With a little luck you'll get him. Even if you fail you'll leave him wrung out for at least one day. Maybe he'll get offed before he gets the chance to rest.

If you do fail to drop him without dying, flee. Skip town, beat feet, get out of dodge. He will be coming for you and it will not end well for you. Find somewhere remote and magically inaccessible, go there, hunker down and hope he loses interest in hunting you down and murdering the crap out of you before you die of old age.

[Karoht]

I designed a caster around the concept of fighting potentially 4 other casters in a single round. Now, I couldn't kill them all, but I was able to reliably shut down most of their effects under some specific conditions, and then pick them off one by one the following rounds later. This was assuming they pulled a scry and die on me.

Things you need.
1-A way to know they are coming.
2-A way to react in a surprise round or deny them the surprise.
3-A means of denying them information if they try and scry you or otherwise gather intel on your abilities and tactics. This is critical. Chances are, if they know they are going in blind, they'll either leave you alone or they will try some initial probing with a focus on their own defenses. Note, this is a multi-faceted problem which requires a myriad number of defenses including redundant options.
4-A means of messing with teleportation effects. The 3.5 answer to this is Anticipate Teleportation.
5-A reliable means of surveilance. You need intel on your targets.
6-Dispel Magic and Greater.
7-Detect Scrying and False Scry. Give your enemies false intel any time you can. You can even use it as an answering machine service.
"Hi, you've reached Bob. Bob isn't in right now, but he's very interested in knowing who is trying to scry his party members and why. Bob is aware that his friends are wanted felons, and might be willing to work out some kind of deal rather than kicking your ass from here to Underbarrow and back. If you'd like to leave Bob a message, please give him a Sending shortly after Midnight, and he'll be expecting your call. Have a super day, and remember, a battle avoided is a battle won. Cheers."


Things that are nice.
1-A means of casting spells within an Antimagic Field. Lots of ways to pull this off. I mostly recommend Extraordinary Spell Aim.
2-Initiate of the Seven-Fold Veils. Typically banned by DM's because this is literally the easiest way to shut down other casters.
3-Rod of Absorbtion. Oh what's that? CasterA shut down my Antimagic Field and other important buffs while CasterB cast Dominate Monster on me? Rod of Absorbtion is 50K. It's saved my bacon plenty of times.
4-Ring of Spell Battle. Seriously, google it. It's 12K, and it might as well say on it "Required for fighting other casters if you want any hope of winning."
5-Belt of Battle. 12K. Worth having for the ability to get an extra action if/when you need it.
6-Earthglide or a Burrow Speed. 5ft of Solid Ground blocks line of sight and line of effect, and depending on your reading, also blocks most detection abilities such as Detect Magic and the like.
7-The ability to see through Snow and Fog. Worth it to hide in a Sleetstorm or Obscuring Mist.
8-Spell Parry. If you are going to counterspell another spell, might as well gain some advantage from doing so. Spell Turning is another fun layer of defense as well.
9-Celerity and Greater Arcane Fusion. The latter of the two needs to happen as part of a Contingency, preferably 'If I am attacked.'
10-A party of suckers willing to help you.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

I think the $64 question is "What kind of tactics do casters run by your DM generally use?" Forum dwellers like to forget this, but there are campaigns with casters so inept that Giacamo Monks trounce them regularly.

[Sqmach]

thanks for everything so far, a lot of this will be useful.

Some more info, in case anyone wanted it:

My GM tends to only throw 1 or 2 casters at us at a time, and generally they are not extremely optimized or anything. He pretty much tries to match the power level of the group, and none of us go for too much power, mostly for fun ideas. Of course, this gestalt game is a step up, as there is more allowed, but I don't expect him to be playing a god-level wizard or anything.

That said, I'm not looking for anything extremely optimized either(though anything is better than my original soulknife idea). I don't need the character to be amazing at everything, just highly specialized at taking down casters.

[Kraken]

Heh heh, if Gia hadn't been banned, I would love to see the result of several ToS runs between Pickford and Gia.

As for advice for the OP, I would:
-Optimize your melee reach, ranged weapons are easy to deflect, and the further you can strike from, the better.
-Optimize your damage, but don't overdo it. Get to the point where you can drop a caster in one hit, and then don't go much further. The hundreds of damage per hit builds that get thrown around generally aren't necessary, and you're better off spending resources elsewhere.
-Obtain multiple ways to full attack and move in the same round. Pounce via a 1 level barbarian dip combined with the twisted charge skill trick from Complete Scoundrel and sudden leap from Tome of Battle are good ways to do this.
-Get a good jump score, to allow you to ignore terrain impediments when charging. This is because jumping is not its own action, its done as part of other movement, so if you have good jump checks, charging on the ground becomes much easier. The leaping dragon stance in Tome of Battle is excellent for this purpose.
-Get flight, and consider being a dragonborn for it. Dragonborns can execute dive attacks which do double damage, which gives you another option to charging. Regardless of whether you get a source of flight with dive attacks, you'll want flight possibly more than anything else I'll mention in this post.
-Get a source of tactical teleportation, preferably with lots of use per day. This can be a good way to escape solid fog, web, and other bothersome battlefield control techniques.
-Obtain the ability to detect invisible or obscure opponents. This isn't always going to be as simple as a high spot check. For instance, in an another thread asking for wizard advice, I posted a strategy where a wizard could hide in a fog cloud (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fogCloud.htm), and using the flyby attack feat, use their move action to hover out, then back into the safety of the fog cloud, firing off a spell while they're on the outside. This is a situation where vision and tremorsense are useless.
-If you're going to try and get the ability to dispel things, you need to invest a lot into it. Dispelling generally favors the defender, due to the CL caps on the dispel line, and also it's easier to optimize defense against dispelling than it is to optimize dispelling. Especially because one of the best ways to increase defense against dispelling is simply to increase caster level via the various items and spells that exist for that purpose, something that all casters want to do anyway.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I can give you a more focused set of suggestions if you can give me a better idea of what's typical of your DM's casters.

Are they artillery?

Do they engage in trickery?

Do they create minions for themselves?

Do they run around without any active spell effects most of the time?

What's up?

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Assuming that you'll be dealing with casters that don't have piles of immunites, contingencies, etc and are just casting one decent spell a round.

I'd recommend grabbing Evasion and Mettle (Evasion for Fort and Will Saves) while maintaining decent damage and high saves and a few trump cards.


Warblade5/WitchSlayer5(Tome of Magic)//Rogue(or something else that grants Evasion and has lots of skills)

This should allow you to survive low-op spell barrages and dish out damage in return and Iron Heart Surge will let you get out of one scrape (probably).

[Sqmach]

Blasting is quite common, rarely illusions but that got more common towards the end of last campaign so I expect more this time around. Sometimes necromancy for minions, but generally no summons. Generally uses fly, sometimes invisibility.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Blasty and light on illusions. Minor undead servitors. That's actually not too bad.

I actually think a well made monk could hold up okay. I also think any wizard I've ever built sans my very first could eat that for breakfast and still have room for brunch an hour later but meh.

Good saves, evasion and/or mettle, and solid damage figures should be adequate. Flight, obviously, should also be aquired asap. I'd go with an enlightened fist build. Sorcerer 3/ monk 2/ enlightened fist X; where X is enough to get you to your starting level and will eventually run to 10. Simple, straight-foward, fun (IMO), and should hold up reasonably well against your DM's casters.

Just be wary of the DM stepping up his game with casters. If he does the loss of 4 caster levels will come back to bite you hard.

[Kraken]

If you can get a class with use magic device, you can activate blindly a tabard of valor (Complete Champion) to get improved mettle around the clock without have to be at half HP. Which is convenient, due to how few classes get it. However, one decent class that does get mettle that you might consider it witch hunter (or is it witch slayer?) from Tome of Magic. The occult slayer in Complete Warrior is another decent option.

[gorfnab]

That said, I'm not looking for anything extremely optimized either(though anything is better than my original soulknife idea). I don't need the character to be amazing at everything, just highly specialized at taking down casters.
This is something I've used in campaigns before as a DM to iritate semi newbie casters.

1. Ranger - B: Track, Weapon Focus: Guisarme, Arcane Hunter ACF (CM)
2. Barbarian - Spirit Totem: Lion ACF (CC), Whirling Frenzy ACF (UA), {Optional: City Brawler ACF (Drg#349)}
3. Barbarian - Nemisis (BoED): Arcanists, Wolf Totem ACF (UA)
4. Warblade
5. Warblade
6. Warblade - Mage Slayer (CArc)
7. Warblade
8. Warblade - B: Improved Initiative
9. Crusader - Blindfight
10. Crusader
11. Occult Slayer
12. Occult Slayer - Combat Reflexes
13. Occult Slayer
14. Occult Slayer
15. Occult Slayer - Pierce Magical Concealment (CArc)
16. Witch Slayer
17. Witch Slayer
18. Witch Slayer - Stand Still (XPH)
19. Witch Slayer
20. Witch Slayer

Note: The levels of Occult Slayer (CW) and Witch Slayer (ToM) can be switched around as needed.

Warblade (ToB) nets you the maneuvers Iron Heart Surge, Moment of Perfect Mind, and Action Before Thought. You also get Uncanny Dodge

Crusader (ToB) nets you the Thicket of Blade Stance (combos nicely with Stand Still, Combat Reflexes, and a reach weapon; wear spiked gauntlets or armor spikes to threaten nearby squares) and some healing maneuvers. it also nets you Indomitable Soul.

Witch Slayer nets you Mettle and Slippery Mind.

If playing human take EWP: Spiked Chain and WF: Spiked Chain instead of Guisarme.

[Haldir]

Use UMD and buy scrolls and wands. A soldier doesn't kill with a gun he built. Economics is your friend.