Solo Wizard: What Spells Do You Prep?

[glitterbaby]

For the purposes of this thought experiment your character wants to grab the MacGuffin from the Fortress. Assuming Wizard 20 (full, no PrCs) and no party, what sorts of things become a priority? What spells would you prepare? What defenses would you cover? Would you head into the Polymorph line and beat face yourself or is that too risky? I find myself with an average handle on these kinds of things in theory but I'm always at a loss when it comes to putting them into practice so I'm interested in how others would do it.

I'm also curious to see what sorts of tactics everyone would take up if obvious things fail them. What do you do if divination fail you? Maybe the BBEG is Vecna-blooded or has Mind Blank up. How do you handle an AMF?

[ryu]

For the purposes of this thought experiment your character wants to grab the MacGuffin from the Fortress. Assuming Wizard 20 (full, no PrCs) and no party, what sorts of things become a priority? What spells would you prepare? What defenses would you cover? Would you head into the Polymorph line and beat face yourself or is that too risky? I find myself with an average handle on these kinds of things in theory but I'm always at a loss when it comes to putting them into practice so I'm interested in how others would do it.

I'm also curious to see what sorts of tactics everyone would take up if obvious things fail them. What do you do if divination fail you? Maybe the BBEG is Vecna-blooded or has Mind Blank up. How do you handle an AMF?

There's two ways to approach life as an optimized wizard. Either you look at literally every spell you consider valuable and prepare them all in bulk with various methods, or you use information gathering to learn what to expect in coming fights and prepare against it. That's offense.

There are separate lessons that must be taught for properly paranoid wizard defense, economy, utility, and good old-fashioned long term minionmancy.

First offense though. Which of the two methods are you wanting and what level of optimization? We can take this anywhere from moderately competent spellcaster that's always useful to godlike force of nature with a pointy hat.

[Tvtyrant]

Persisten sonorous hum shared with a familiar, lets you summon two elemental monoliths without stopping your other casting, which are more than capable of dealing with tanking.

Bind and then mind rape a Balor to get the ability to summon another, makes for a great ally.

Or just make a lot of ice assassins.

[glitterbaby]

There's two ways to approach life as an optimized wizard. Either you look at literally every spell you consider valuable and prepare them all in bulk with various methods, or you use information gathering to learn what to expect in coming fights and prepare against it. That's offense.

There are separate lessons that must be taught for properly paranoid wizard defense, economy, utility, and good old-fashioned long term minionmancy.

First offense though. Which of the two methods are you wanting and what level of optimization? We can take this anywhere from moderately competent spellcaster that's always useful to godlike force of nature with a pointy hat.

I'd be interested in seeing all approaches but for the purposes of this why don't we say practical optimization. We'll let the arbitrarily-high-every-number guys sit this one out.


Persisten sonorous hum shared with a familiar, lets you summon two elemental monoliths without stopping your other casting, which are more than capable of dealing with tanking.

Bind and then mind rape a Balor to get the ability to summon another, makes for a great ally.

Or just make a lot of ice assassins.

I'm seeing "concentration, up to round/level" on the duration of Summon Elemental Monolith. Am I missing something that lets you bypass this or are we looking at just one fight? Does it make sense to spend resources on Persisting the Sonorous Hum if that is the case?

[khadgar567]

I'd be interested in seeing all approaches but for the purposes of this why don't we say practical optimization. We'll let the arbitrarily-high-every-number guys sit this one out.



I'm seeing "concentration, up to round/level" on the duration of Summon Elemental Monolith. Am I missing something that lets you bypass this or are we looking at just one fight? Does it make sense to spend resources on Persisting the Sonorous Hum if that is the case?

for me via vanilla wizard probably gonna go with unlimited succubus works as starting point then probably go to experiment it until reach jade legion level than its done every day nearly every thing immune succubus legions attack the castle until it falls
actually why not use succubus's to get mind control castle slowly and steadily so it is solved

1. Planar Bind a Mirror Mephit, which has Simulacrum 1/day as a spell-like ability.

2. Cut off one of its fingers.*

3. Use the finger to make a Simulacrum of it (with the actual spell).

4. Order the Mirror Mephit Simulacrum to make another Mirror Mephit Simulacrum, giving you two in total.

5. The next day, order both Mirror Mephit Simulacra to each make a Mirror Mephit Simulacrum, giving you four in total.

6. The next day, order all four Mirror Mephit Simulacra to each make a Mirror Mephit Simulacrum, giving you eight in total.

7. Repeat until you feel you have enough Mirror Mephit Simulacra.

8. Order them all to start making Succubus Simulacra instead and to keep doing so every day for the rest of eternity.

9. Occasionally take one of your Succubus Simulacra to somewhere on the Material Plane that the moon is full and cast Steal Life on it, thereby allowing you to stay young forever.

10. Enjoy your Unlimited Succubus Works for all eternity.

[glitterbaby]

for me via vanilla wizard probably gonna go with unlimited succubus works as starting point then probably go to experiment it until reach jade legion level than its done every day nearly every thing immune succubus legions attack the castle until it falls
actually why not use succubus's to get mind control castle slowly and steadily so it is solved

1. Planar Bind a Mirror Mephit, which has Simulacrum 1/day as a spell-like ability.

2. Cut off one of its fingers.*

3. Use the finger to make a Simulacrum of it (with the actual spell).

4. Order the Mirror Mephit Simulacrum to make another Mirror Mephit Simulacrum, giving you two in total.

5. The next day, order both Mirror Mephit Simulacra to each make a Mirror Mephit Simulacrum, giving you four in total.

6. The next day, order all four Mirror Mephit Simulacra to each make a Mirror Mephit Simulacrum, giving you eight in total.

7. Repeat until you feel you have enough Mirror Mephit Simulacra.

8. Order them all to start making Succubus Simulacra instead and to keep doing so every day for the rest of eternity.

9. Occasionally take one of your Succubus Simulacra to somewhere on the Material Plane that the moon is full and cast Steal Life on it, thereby allowing you to stay young forever.

10. Enjoy your Unlimited Succubus Works for all eternity.



Jade Legion levels?

[khadgar567]

Jade Legion levels?

sorry I mean emerald legion levels

[GilesTheCleric]

It looks like the highest-level wizard I've statted up gets access to 3rd level spells, and a transmutation CL 20. With appropriate item support to replace the spells it doesn't have access to (foresight, mind blank, the works), it could probably beat any CR 20 challenge, because, you know, wizard. These spells were mostly geared for the character to survive the early levels until the non-wizard parts come online.

This isn't a straight wizard build, but you could easily replace the glut of transmutations and spellpool access with some conj, div, abj, or necro spells of your choice. Adding a reserve feat to burninate things is more fun than SoDs.

0: Mage Hand, Launch Item, No Light, Detect Magic x2, Caltrops

1: Nerveskitter, L Spider Form, S Expeditious Retreat x2, Path of Frost, Hoard Gullet (extend), Wall of Smoke

2: Continual Flame x3, Rope Trick (extend), Alter Self [continual flame for +money during downtime; trade goods are a bit cheesy]

3: Celestial Aspect x2, Spellpool x1

1: Lesser Spider Form, Nerveskitter, Sticky Floor, Wall of Smoke, Swift Expeditious Retreat, Path of Frost, Hoard Gullet

2: Heroics, Continual Flame, Rope Trick, Alter Self

3: Celestial Aspect, Bridge of Sound

1: Deflect, Obscuring Mist, Kelgore's Fire Bolt, Blades of Fire, Ray of Clumsiness, Shieldbearer, Spell Flower, Enlarge Person, Peacebond, Weapon Shift, Dragonmark Shield, Karmic Aura, Blockade, Stand, Vision of Punishment, Blade of Blood, Reaving Aura, Feather Fall

2: Dispelling Touch, Obscure Object, Ray of Retaliation, Dimension Hop, Kelgore's Gravemist, Sure Strike, Obscuring Snow, Locate Object, Master's Touch, Sense Weakness, False Life, Spectral Hand, Animalistic Power, Bear's, Bull's, Cat's, Fox's, Owl's, Eagle's, Blindsight, Enlarge Weapon, Frost Weapon, Halaster's Light Step, Lahm's Finger Darts, Legion's Magic Weapon, Mountain Stance, Greater Slide, Glitterdust, Sonic Weapon, Stretch Weapon, Suffer the Flesh, Whirling Blade, Wraithstrike, Listening Lorecall

3: Dispel Magic, Dweomer Vortex, Magic Circle, Nondetection, Sudden Aegis, Dimension Step, Engulfing Cube, Golden Dragonmail, Mass Mage Armor, Regroup, Alter Fortune, Circle Dance, Path of the Exalted, Glimpse of Truth, Healing Touch, Mind Poison, Shivering Touch, Willing Sacrifice, Air Breathing, Amorphous Form, Burrow, Crown of Protection, Dolorous Blow, Gaseous Form, Halt, Haste, Heart of Water, Investiture of the Chain Devil, Primal Form, Scorpion Tail, Shadow Phase, Mass Snake's Swiftness, Shape of the Hellspawned Stalker, Sense of the Dragon, Shrink Item, Slow, Spell Vulnerability, Spiderskin, Spider Form, Touch of Juiblex, Tremorsense, Undulant Innards, Weapon of Energy, Phantom Horse, Anticipate Teleportation

Spider, Amorphous, Primal, or Gaseous Form can grant access without teleports; Tremorsense and Burrow allow for movement once within; Shrink Item + Launch Item gets the Macguffin out. Use phantom horse/ glitterdust/ invisibility/ dimension hop/ ice path/ haste to escape if trouble happens.

Edit: I should note that the race is (outsider), for the delicious Alter Self choices.

[ryu]

Practical optimization without infinite everything eh? Well starting with the assumed proactive divinations you can find in any handbook you can find as much data as you dare before teleporting in with fresh spell slots and buffs tailored to the encounter you expect. There are many spells involved and I'm not entirely sure how familiar you are with the standard loadout and tactics. A high level caster fight is a game of counterplay equivalent to chess. A lot of basic optimization is learning these counters. You asked about AMF counters as well as vecna blooded counters. Starting with AMFs have you heard of the tinfoil hat strategy? For vecna blooded the required spells are ice assassin, mind rape, and wish if your DM rules that you can't find the hair of anyone you like in your spell component pouch despite it having no listed cost. Essentially an ice assassin of a person knows everything they know and can be freely mindraped. Part of the mindrape spell is that you now know all that the target knows. There are things the enemy wizard can accomplish to mitigate this tactic involving crafted contingent mind-rapes to hide information and cycling vecna blooded on and off regularly to remove all mention of themselves in history and the memory of all beings but themselves.

[Endarire]

Are we talking Iron Siege (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?board=72.0) levels of optimization?

[GilesTheCleric]

Are we talking Iron Siege (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?board=72.0) levels of optimization?Well, it seems like the goal is
grab the MacGuffin from the Fortress., so I don't think it really requires all that much planning. Taking something you know the location of is much easier than keeping something dead, finding the location of something, or keeping something from dying.

Of course, the details of this challenge don't say anything besides the resources you get (wizard 20), so it could be any CR. Is it worth it to optimize for ECL/ CR > 21? For CR > divine rank 0? For CR > divine rank 20? Since the difficulty is unknowable, the only way to reliably beat it is with TO.

[Zancloufer]

Greater Planar Binding can nab you Planatars. Only 14HD so you can advance them or summon 4HD of other outsiders with the same spell. Level 14 Outsiders that cast as level 17 clerics make for a VERY good 8th level spell summon. The Greater Dragon Ally spell isn't bad either. Mind you it's 9th level and only nabs you up to 21HD of Dragon (So Adult Copper and Bronze are on the table, 21HD dragon with 7th level Sorcerer casting.) Might not fit in the dungeon though.

Also Dragon Allies make great counters to AMFs. What's that no magic here? It's still a Huge Dragon with a few hundred HP, flight and a nasty full attack routine. Wizards be crazy trying to fight dragons WITHOUT magic.

There's all sorts of other things you can do true, but just surprised no one mentioned honestly summons 2-4 nasty critters and making your own party. Could probably find a Rouge equivalent between Dragons and Outsiders as well.

[glitterbaby]

Well, it seems like the goal is , so I don't think it really requires all that much planning. Taking something you know the location of is much easier than keeping something dead, finding the location of something, or keeping something from dying.

Of course, the details of this challenge don't say anything besides the resources you get (wizard 20), so it could be any CR. Is it worth it to optimize for ECL/ CR > 21? For CR > divine rank 0? For CR > divine rank 20? Since the difficulty is unknowable, the only way to reliably beat it is with TO.

Well the "grab the MacGuffin" is mostly there just to give the theoretical player something to do. The interest isn't really about how you're going to go through the fortress and get it but more about what spells you'd prepare as a solo wizard for the different situations of which I gave a few nonexhaustive examples.

[GilesTheCleric]

Well the "grab the MacGuffin" is mostly there just to give the theoretical player something to do. The interest isn't really about how you're going to go through the fortress and get it but more about what spells you'd prepare as a solo wizard for the different situations of which I gave a few nonexhaustive examples.

Ah, I see. In that case, I think the best spells to prep would be just a few: the defense menu, Gate, G Teleport x2, contingent/ quickened/ persisted Time Stop, contingent/ quickened G Celerity, Contact Other Plane, and Shapechange. Leaving all of the other slots open might not be a bad idea.

Between Gate and Shapechange, you can find a solution to nearly any problem. Anything those can't easily solve (divine rank 0+, or perhaps some epic creatures and elder evils), the rest of the spells will cover for you to regroup and return with a specific solution. Again, without knowing the challenges ahead, the only reliable solution is to 1) be able to extract yourself from the situation and return with an answer or 2) be prepared for every situation with overwhelming power and versatility. If you're looking for a single spell for #1, then it's celerity/ time stop+ teleport. For #2, it's gate/ shapechange/ wish.

[ryu]

Well the "grab the MacGuffin" is mostly there just to give the theoretical player something to do. The interest isn't really about how you're going to go through the fortress and get it but more about what spells you'd prepare as a solo wizard for the different situations of which I gave a few nonexhaustive examples.

First ideal step is spend time preparing by throwing a pile of divinations at the task to gather information. If that doesn't work due to say... vecna-blooded there's the method involving Ice assassins mind-raped for information that I mentioned earlier. There is no immunity to that short of not being known to the enemy in the first place. If you don't even know of anyone with proper access to relevant knowledge the next step is to make a probing attack with purely disposable resources to uncover knowledge of relevant people if possible. After whichever of those methods succeeds we move to stage two. Active preparation of resources for the operation and forming plans based on whatever information you gained. Note we could do it more simply than this. The above strategy is just dealing with it in the most likely way to win without infinite or arbitrarily high numbers. We could use other strategies within these limitations, but they would lower chances of success and would only be used with additional important constraints.

[Auron3991]

Just from my admittedly limited experience:

Priority 1: Teleports, quickened if possible (2 dimension door and 1 teleport at least); disjunction and dispels (silent/stilled when available); and spells that let you get information without being noticed (prying eyes is a personal favorite)

Priority 2: Spells that create walls (wall of iron's great if it will fill a corridor and wall of fire will make enemies think twice about pursuit), break line of sight (acid fog is fun), make it harder to reach you (Evard's black tentacles for instance), etc

Priority 3: Damage, preferably as quickly, quietly, and leaving as few remains as possible.


As long as you have a decent number in each category you should be fairly safe, but still be able to remove obstacles when they arise (or retreat until you can counter them). And it doesn't require you to spend longer prepping than actually getting the macguffin.

[glitterbaby]

So the wizard that goes in spells-a-blazin' is going to meet his end rather quickly, eh?

[ryu]

So the wizard that goes in spells-a-blazin' is going to meet his end rather quickly, eh?

Depends on how capable the enemy is. If two similarly powerful casters fight the one with more caution, paranoia, and preparation is likely to win. I gave that strategy assuming we're dealing with something that's a legitimate threat.

If the whole fortress is staffed by sword and board fighters? Lol no. Do what you want. I mean there's a base level of due diligence I guess, but you aren't likely to lose even with extremely straightforward tactics and minimal prep.

Also my word the forum is jumpy today. Wonder what's causing all the off and on maintenance.

[GilesTheCleric]

So the wizard that goes in spells-a-blazin' is going to meet his end rather quickly, eh?


Depends on how capable the enemy is. If two similarly powerful casters fight the one with more caution, paranoia, and preparation is likely to win. I gave that strategy assuming we're dealing with something that's a legitimate threat.

If the whole fortress is staffed by sword and board fighters? Lol no. Do what you want. I mean there's a base level of due diligence I guess, but you aren't likely to lose even with extremely straightforward tactics and minimal prep.

Also my word the forum is jumpy today. Wonder what's causing all the off and on maintenance.
It does, if all of these conditions are met:
It loses initiative
It doesn't have a contingency
It hasn't already cast Gate or Shapechange
It can die before it gets a chance to act and does not have Celerity or other swift/ immediates prepared
It does not have most other defensive buffs up
It is using its actual body, and is not Astral Projected, an Ice Assassin, Simulacrum, Magic Jarred, etc
It has chosen no versatility in its spells
I had written up an example of a wizard fighting big T and a Balor, but ryu's summary is far more succinct.

The forums were recently updated to include additional diacritics/ characters, so something unintended from doing that might be the cause [/speculation].

[ryu]

Understandable. So OP where do you wanna go from here? Learn more of the counters to use in plan making? Perhaps some of the higher OP options? Oh maybe you'd like to learn some of the other lessons at some given general amount of optimization?