BIG PROBLEMS (players from 5 weapon campaign don't read)

[PoeticDwarf]

We are playing a campaign for like 3/4 year. Beginning with HOTDQ but now it is a campaign about 5 mighty weapons (one of them is Hazirawn). We are a level 15 party, a backstapping changeling rogue, a mighty high-elf wizard, a dumb but strong type paladin (has this character from beginning). We also have a hilldwarf ranger, that's my character because my monk was last session killed by the wizard (see the thread, how fun is death). I played the monk from the beginning, so it is maybe difficult to play a ranger, but it's a nice build and I will try. Today we are going to play again, we didn't do it for a long time (like two weeks).

Now the problem, the (artificer) wizard is going to swap artificer with necromancer (the DM allows if the wizard uses an ASI and finds a level 15+ necromancer to learn everything). And I heard from another player (paladin) that the wizard is going to do bad things with true polymorph. The wizard is also going to take on every adventure wights with him (names like deathbringer). The paladin and me want to stop the wizard, before level 17. But metagaming attacking isn't right. So my question, how can you stop a crazy wizard, who wants to make the rogue a vampire and who wants to kill everyone with an undead army.

I think the thread of my DM, OH CRAP, is about this, but I'm not allowed to read it.

[JoeJ]

My first thought is talk to the wizard's player and tell him that what he's doing is making the game less fun for some of the others.

[PoeticDwarf]

My first thought is talk to the wizard's player and tell him that what he's doing is making the game less fun for some of the others.

It's not less fun, I still enjoy all the games, and the player is always playing evil characters (I'm always CG). The point is, this is our first high level campaign, so finally he can begin his evil plans, and I want in character to stop him, but I can't simple. Out of character it isn't a problem.

[Takewo]

Then you need to find a way to find out his intentions in campaign.

[HoarsHalberd]

Quite simple really. The paladin should be on high alert after he goes Necromancer, and the instant he turns into a vampire, it should be obvious. So then he simply slashes him with whatever sword he has and his highest level smite. Considering he'll be a vampire with none of his class features 2d6+5+1.3+7d8 should really put the hurt on him. And his low AC means you might be able to do it twice. 16AC means by level 17 you should be hitting on a 5. The paladin should also use his free interaction to shout for aid from his party members as a vampire is attacking. Then the wizard is butchered, turns back into a wizard, and the paladin feels it is his duty to kill: the undead (devotion) the wilful spreader of an unnatural taint: (Ancients) or the evil before him (Vengeance)

[mephnick]

The moment someone realizes he's using necromancy, which shouldn't be long, the entire party kills him and the problem is solved.

[Shining Wrath]

The DM has a role here as well as the players; would not a powerful necromancer cause temples and kings to take note? Guys like that are a threat to the established order in some (not all) places. Also, every druid in the campaign pretty much has to respond.

Setting aside the mortals, the Fey are also pretty much dead - set (you should pardon the expression) against necromancers. MM doesn't have a lot of powerful fey yet, but DM can port things from 3.5 that will give a level 15 necromancer heartburn.

Also, what does the powerful necromancer who is going to be teaching this guy want in return? Evil NPCs typically don't share powerful knowledge out of the non-existent goodness of their hearts.

So, talk to your DM about how the universe will respond.

As to the characters, you can at a minimum refuse to help him. Carry oil, burn corpses so they can't be made into minions. Steal his black onyx stones required for Create Undead - you're Chaotic Good, this does seem like a time when a little lawlessness serves the greater good.

If he tries to kill you for interfering with his plans the rest of the party has to choose sides. The paladin will choose yours; how will the rest fall?

[LordBlades]

Quite simple really. The paladin should be on high alert after he goes Necromancer, and the instant he turns into a vampire, it should be obvious. So then he simply slashes him with whatever sword he has and his highest level smite. Considering he'll be a vampire with none of his class features 2d6+5+1.3+7d8 should really put the hurt on him. And his low AC means you might be able to do it twice. 16AC means by level 17 you should be hitting on a 5. The paladin should also use his free interaction to shout for aid from his party members as a vampire is attacking. Then the wizard is butchered, turns back into a wizard, and the paladin feels it is his duty to kill: the undead (devotion) the wilful spreader of an unnatural taint: (Ancients) or the evil before him (Vengeance)


All of this of course assumes a very dumb wizard who would do this kind of stuff straight in front of a paladin without any kind of plan of dealing wuth said paladin.

If I were playing evil in a party with a paladin, the moment the paladin sees me doing evil in plain sight is one of his last because he is seconds away from the unavoidable demise I have engineered for him.

[HoarsHalberd]

All of this of course assumes a very dumb wizard who would do this kind of stuff straight in front of a paladin without any kind of plan of dealing wuth said paladin.

If I were playing evil in a party with a paladin, the moment the paladin sees me doing evil in plain sight is one of his last because he is seconds away from the unavoidable demise I have engineered for him.

Not going to really work against a paladin. Anything they get to save against has +cha to saves. Anything that gets damage isn't going to get him before he can get the rest of the party involved and can heal.

Against any other class the Wizard would have a good chance. But a paladin is the ultimate anti-caster class. When he goes up against the paladin he needs back up.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I think the thread of my DM, OH CRAP, is about this, but I'm not allowed to read it.

Maybe you're not supposed to read it, but ImSAMazing has been commenting in that thread, so...

In that thread, the general feeling is that one of the wizard's plans might be okay, because it imposes significant costs and restrictions on him if he goes through with it, but the vampire plan we've all pretty much dismissed out of hand. The advice to Dire_Stirge has mostly been "don't let him do that."

[LordBlades]

Not going to really work against a paladin. Anything they get to save against has +cha to saves. Anything that gets damage isn't going to get him before he can get the rest of the party involved and can heal.

Against any other class the Wizard would have a good chance. But a paladin is the ultimate anti-caster class. When he goes up against the paladin he needs back up.

Even so, a Paladin will not be profficient in all saves. Even with Cha to all saves his bonus to a non-profficient save will be way behind the wizard's DC. That,and the wizard will almost guaranteed get a surprise round.

It's also no guarantee whose side the party will take, since the wizard would have had time to work on their motivation beforehand.

[Fizban]

So my question, how can you stop a crazy wizard, who wants to make the rogue a vampire and who wants to kill everyone with an undead army.
I haven't read the other thread, but I'd say the first thing is by reminding the DM said wizard cannot create vampires. Then wait until you see him carting a bunch of Wights around, at which point you crush him because he's wasted his high level slots on controlling weak undead that won't stand up to player characters. And even if he did get an "army" it'd top out at a few dozen zombies.

More importantly, you've written yourself into a corner. You don't want him to reach level 17 and become able to do bad stuff, but you won't act until he's done bad stuff because that would be "metagaming." The solution is to not passively accept other characters doing stuff while you somehow don't notice. If he says "I snuck out" you say "When and how?, Roll it." Your characters have eyes with spot checks and ears that hear spellcasting. If he goes off to learn necromancy, well he just left the game while the rest of the party can keep adventuring and leave him in the dust.

Mr. Blades, what spell exactly is it that will cripple the Paladin so fiercely that he will be unable to fight the Wizard? Sleep is hp, Finger of Death is hp, Power Word Kill is defeated by hp, Dominate requires concentration and is easily broken by subverting instructions and stubbing your own toe. You've said "if he catches me doing evil he dies," but if he's seen you in the act you don't get a surprise round, you get to roll initiative.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I haven't read the other thread, but I'd say the first thing is by reminding the DM said wizard cannot create vampires.

The player has found a way to do it within the RAW, but most people seem to agree that the DM can and should ban it.

[Fighting_Ferret]

I'd be interested in how he found a way to do it RAW...

[LordBlades]

Mr. Blades, what spell exactly is it that will cripple the Paladin so fiercely that he will be unable to fight the Wizard? Sleep is hp, Finger of Death is hp, Power Word Kill is defeated by hp, Dominate requires concentration and is easily broken by subverting instructions and stubbing your own toe. You've said "if he catches me doing evil he dies," but if he's seen you in the act you don't get a surprise round, you get to roll initiative.

What I meant wast the following:

You seem to have assumed that the wizard would turn into a vampire straight in front of the paladin. I said that any wizard who does that without having a plan to instantly deal with the paladin is an idiot.

The only situations where I would see a wizard played to his in-character Int do that would be:

-He has already converted the majority of the party to his side and/or has set in motion another plan that would see the paladin killed/arrested/similar outcome (even so it would be marginally dumb to be a vampire instead of a wizard for the highly likely confrontation that would follow)

-He wants to provoke the paladin. Usually, using magic that keeps your mental stats and alignment like Shapechange to turn into an evil creature would probably not register as evil for most PCs' moral compass (even good aligned PCs) so if the paladin attacks he might find himself without the support of the party. Doubly so if the wizard has spent a while engineering stuff that's OK with other PCs but against the paladin's code (therefore fostering hostility between himself and the paladin) and/or has been painting the paladin as a loose cannon/ too set in his own rigid code to see reason behind his back.

I fully agree that, if a non-diviner is caught red-handed by a paladin his best bet is to Wall of Force and GTFO as there isn't much he can do, barring favorable circumstances (like wizard has flight or a mount, paladin does not etc.)

[Fizban]

Ah, my bad, I hadn't noticed the root comment you were responding to was attacking the wizard as soon as he transformed. I'd assumed that we were talking about attacking as soon as he saw the vampire-form attacking the rogue, which for the sake of the premise he must have been caught doing.

I don't like to guess or assume tactics that far, especially when I'm pretty sure the mechanics don't hold up. That's always been the balancing factor of spellcasters, that the player is likely to make mistakes and fail to meet theoretical potential, and of course 5e has significantly less instant win spells. So without a quick spell answer to how he'd beat the Paladin if caught, I figure he won't. (I'd say his best bet is chain polymorphing into a t=rex over and over, but smiting would probably wreck concentration immediately).

[Millface]

My first thought is talk to the wizard's player and tell him that what he's doing is making the game less fun for some of the others.

There seems to be a stigma in the playground on letting PCs interact with each other in any way other than super positive lawful butterflies who worship teamwork and friendship.

Characters don't outright fight each other very often, but sometimes personalities clash and you have to duke it out, I don't see any reason for a DM to interfere with that or any reason why that wouldn't be fun for the group as long as everyone can separate in game from real life.

I've killed my best friend and blamed it on some wandering brigands, my best friend has left me in a volcano to die, we laugh it out and tip our hats. I don't go in looking for that interaction, but if I'm playing anything non-good the possibility is there, and I think that's OK. Sometimes trying to figure out how to get away with murder and unleashing a nefarious and well thought out plot can be insanely fun and rewarding.

Myself and the players I've played with have always enjoyed the rare moments when the party fractures, lines are drawn, you see who your friends really are. Sure, people die, but the story is always worth telling, even if you're the one on the end of a party member's sword.

[LordBlades]

There seems to be a stigma in the playground on letting PCs interact with each other in any way other than super positive lawful butterflies who worship teamwork and friendship.

Characters don't outright fight each other very often, but sometimes personalities clash and you have to duke it out, I don't see any reason for a DM to interfere with that or any reason why that wouldn't be fun for the group as long as everyone can separate in game from real life.

I've killed my best friend and blamed it on some wandering brigands, my best friend has left me in a volcano to die, we laugh it out and tip our hats. I don't go in looking for that interaction, but if I'm playing anything non-good the possibility is there, and I think that's OK. Sometimes trying to figure out how to get away with murder and unleashing a nefarious and well thought out plot can be insanely fun and rewarding.

Myself and the players I've played with have always enjoyed the rare moments when the party fractures, lines are drawn, you see who your friends really are. Sure, people die, but the story is always worth telling, even if you're the one on the end of a party member's sword.

The problem is that, hurt feelings aside (people who get their feelings hurt over a game should probably learn to take games a bit less seriously IMO), the problem with that approach is that if PvP is something that regularly occurs it kind of introduces 'must be good at PvP' as a more or less mandatory requirement for character building. Not everybody is cool with that (some people enjoy support/less combat-capable characters and they would be punished for it) and even if they are, not everyone is equally skilled at that which might easily lead to an active or passive bullying scenario where a more skilled optimizer can lead the party pretty much everywhere he wants under the real or perceived threat that he will kill the characters that fail to comply.

That being said, in my group we pretty much had PvP on the table and we've had fun numerous times with it. Tbh only time I have not looked forward to PvP is with my current char, because killing people with a diviner wizard is no challenge whatsoever.

[Fizban]

There seems to be a stigma in the playground on letting PCs interact with each other in any way other than super positive lawful butterflies who worship teamwork and friendship.
Well that is what the game is selling, and the general assumption is that if they're asking for help it's because they're not okay with what's going on. I've got no problem with some friendly PC on PC action, but everyone has to know that's a possibility before the game starts or it's just not fair to let one bonehead ruin someone else's day. Here we have a guy who's decided to suddenly go evil for what (if we check the other threads) is no reason other than seeing he wasn't using his full available power, with no respect for the fact that will pit him against another player character.

Heck, I'm probably guilty myself. A couple games ago I had very little compunction against threatening the other players with my own character who could quite visibly take any or possibly all of them at once. While me and the tank had discussed plenty how a fight would go and he was generally cool with expected loss in a vacuum, that didn't make the fact that I could just force my way with threat of violence okay. I was trying to use it to spark some actual in-character discussion but all that happened was everyone got sick of it and the DM stopped allowing prisoners.

[Millface]

The problem is that, hurt feelings aside (people who get their feelings hurt over a game should probably learn to take games a bit less seriously IMO), the problem with that approach is that if PvP is something that regularly occurs it kind of introduces 'must be good at PvP' as a more or less mandatory requirement for character building. Not everybody is cool with that (some people enjoy support/less combat-capable characters and they would be punished for it) and even if they are, not everyone is equally skilled at that which might easily lead to an active or passive bullying scenario where a more skilled optimizer can lead the party pretty much everywhere he wants under the real or perceived threat that he will kill the characters that fail to comply.

That being said, in my group we pretty much had PvP on the table and we've had fun numerous times with it. Tbh only time I have not looked forward to PvP is with my current char, because killing people with a diviner wizard is no challenge whatsoever.

You make some good points here, what this does is force players to look at yet another side of their character's personality, another strength/weakness point in their overall compilation. If you are playing a confrontational character who needs backup to be good in a fight you either develop the ability to manipulate other party members over to your side before you make a move or you die. If you are more of a support character (not good at PVP) and you typically avoid confrontation or play mediator then you're typically safe.

Our table always has one or two who literally just bolt when party confrontation occurs, or they simply do nothing and watch it play out. It's assumed that you think about all of this while building the PC, and it's realistic that if you play a confrontational character who can't hold his own one on one and has no stealth/manipulation tactics that he or she would end up getting their face beat in. I don't run my mouth to people who can kick my ass in real life, probably should be careful with that in character as well, right?

That's not to say that the best PVP'er ultimately has the most control, if you use your 1v1 toughness to bully people the party is going to band together and take you down when they get sick of it. I agree 110% though that it's not for everyone, and should be discussed beforehand to make sure everyone can handle occasionally coming to blows with their friends at the table in character. You definitely have to have the ability to separate.

It sounds like the necromancer here is doing things that other characters wouldn't jive with, there are steps you have to take here. The first is that you can't let knowing what he plans to do in real life leak into how you act with your character. If he's being stealthy enough about it (he shouldn't have let the players themselves know to begin with) then you should let it play out. If you catch onto him in character you need to communicate with other party members and plan a course of action. None of this should be done player to player, definitely needs to be character to character. From what I've read this does seem like a typical case of poor RP on the Wizard's end.