Wizard's First Rule? "Never let them touch you!"

[Dormammu]

Please don't read if you are playing in Matt R-K's Evil Quest campaign.

Ok here's the situation:

You are a level 13 Core Only Elf Wizard (Transmuter Forbid Enchantment & Necromancy), Feats yet to be determined. You are super mad at the PCs who are Level 10 Badasses, see below for details.

You don't want to nuke them from orbit just yet though. After all there is a slim chance that you could negotiate some kind of reparation that would be to your benefit.

You are not an idiot, they are PCs and have you trumped in the action economy. Any of the 3 fighters could easily kill you with a single hit, you have a CON of 8 and 22 Hitpoints.

If you get tagged you are toast.

How do you approach to parley. When the parley goes awry how do you get ready to throw down?

I was thinking something like Project Image with a contingency to put a Resilient Sphere up if about to take damage.

But I wondered if you had any thoughts.

[

1. Heavy Hitter: spiked chain 15 Foot Reach, power attack-leap, attack, battle-jumper (one hit will kill you)

2. Heavy Hitter: Giant Ogre. 15 Foot Reach with enlarge self powers and a +1 Flaming, Shocking Vicious, Large Greatclub (one hit will kill you)

3. Assassin Rogue type with bows & poisons and sneaky skills. (one hit will kill you)

4. Spring attack fighter, with a cleric cohort. (one hit will kill you)

5. Sorceress who loves using Magic Jar has a rod of quicken, likes to cast Quickened Lighting Bolt followed by Sudden Maximized Lightning Bolt and has a lot of undead crawling around. (one hit will kill you)

[Grod_The_Giant]

Your best bet is not to be at the meeting at all. Hole up in your fortress a thousand miles away or, preferably, on another plane entirely. Off the top of my head:

Send a Simulacrum. It's under your complete control, so you can just tell it "pretend you're me and negotiate for the thing"-- slap on a Telepathic Bond if you want more feedback.
Use (Greater) Scrying and Message to negotiate without any actual presence.
Dominate a poor sap, Polymorph them into a duplicate of yourself, and use Telepathic Bond to keep constant control.

[Garktz]

What about planar binding a nightmare and the using astral proyection?
Its as safe as you can get without much cheese

[Jack_Simth]

Please don't read if you are playing in Matt R-K's Evil Quest campaign.

Ok here's the situation:

You are a level 13 Core Only Elf Wizard (Transmuter Forbid Enchantment & Necromancy), Feats yet to be determined. You are super mad at the PCs who are Level 10 Badasses, see below for details.

You don't want to nuke them from orbit just yet though. After all there is a slim chance that you could negotiate some kind of reparation that would be to your benefit.

You are not an idiot, they are PCs and have you trumped in the action economy. Any of the 3 fighters could easily kill you with a single hit, you have a CON of 8 and 22 Hitpoints.

If you get tagged you are toast.

How do you approach to parley. When the parley goes awry how do you get ready to throw down?

I was thinking something like Project Image with a contingency to put a Resilient Sphere up if about to take damage.

But I wondered if you had any thoughts.

[

1. Heavy Hitter: spiked chain 15 Foot Reach, power attack-leap, attack, battle-jumper (one hit will kill you)

2. Heavy Hitter: Giant Ogre. 15 Foot Reach with enlarge self powers and a +1 Flaming, Shocking Vicious, Large Greatclub (one hit will kill you)

3. Assassin Rogue type with bows & poisons and sneaky skills. (one hit will kill you)

4. Spring attack fighter, with a cleric cohort. (one hit will kill you)

5. Sorceress who loves using Magic Jar has a rod of quicken, likes to cast Quickened Lighting Bolt followed by Sudden Maximized Lightning Bolt and has a lot of undead crawling around. (one hit will kill you)


Simulacrum and Telepathic Bond. Pricy, but core, and you can teleport away immediately after dropping the simulacrum off in the general vicinity. Greater Scrying on your sacrificial minion is also viable. Advantage: No particular method for them to tell, besides a good Spot check. Disadvantage: Expensive.

Another option would be Dominate Person or Charm Monster), Greater Scrying, and Message. Capture disposable minion with enchantment of choice. Greater Scry on minion. Send minion to hang out with the PCs for a while. Use Message through the Greater Scry on your minion to talk to the PCs. With the charm route, the instructions can be something like "I've got quite a few people I need to talk to today, do you mind acting as a relay? I'll make a magical sensor follow you around, along with a few other people, and you just walk up to them and I'll use another spell to talk to them. I'll have you visit four or five different people, and am willing to pay you [number of GP] for your time." or something like that. Advantage: Dirt cheap. Disadvantage: Makes it very clear you don't trust them, and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

[Segev]

The simulacrum is what I would use. Arm it with a mirror image spell so that it can have as much chance to not even be the target of an attack as possible. Maybe give it displacement as well for a 50% miss chance.

If you're evil, you should consider the Mother Cyst feat. You can do a lot with forced minionization through necrotic cyst, necrotic scrying, and necrotic domination. Heck, I think you are at the level you can cast necrotic tumor.

If you're not evil, still have your simulacrum prepare a chained command undead; this will let you steal control of some of the sorceress's undead and pit them against her and her minions.

You should also consider planar binding. Bind a Celestial of some sort to do your negotiating. Have it pretend to be on a divine mission from a good deity of your choice and condemn them for the wrongs they've committed against you, and order them to make restitution, or something. If they're not the kind to care about that, don't bother, and just have it deliver your message.

When you face them, you should have at least twice as many bodies on the field as they do, by simply binding that many creatures. Turn action economy to your favor. Get things which can rebuke, command, or destroy undead easily if you want to really turn the tables.

[John Longarrow]

Lesser Planer Binding to bring a Succubi to you. Scry / Message (or be in range of its telepathy) to have it do the negotiations for you. You offer it some pretty good bribe (babies, lots of babies) to handle the negotiations for you. Wizards are not known for their diplomacy/sense motive.

If the party attacks, they drop a succubi. You then know where they are and have something nasty laid out to deal with them.

[Deeds]

The wizard needs a meeting spot that is to his advantage. Say the PCs are trying to keep a low-profile. Perhaps the wizard could meet them in downtown Village City. If the PCs cause a commotion then they will trigger the town guards (as if the guards stand a chance) and the people will be fleeing in the streets causing chaos. It's easier to disappear when the town is in an uproar.

If this tactic isn't valid then the wizard could meet them on his home turf: his tower, underground labyrinth, university, etc. In this case, the wizard can set all sorts of nasty traps and have minions ready to pounce once things turn sour.

I'm assuming the wizard has already researched his opponents. Don't ignore Legend Lore or Srying. Surely the wizard will be prebuffed to resist electricity, have an illusion of (your imagination here,) and a Planar Binding ally. A contingent Dimension Door is simple enough give the wizard some breathing space before he lays the smack down.

[MisterKaws]

For the emergency traps, I'd suggest TONS of somehow disguised explosive runes surrounded by a trap with a low-level dispel in it, though that will obviously kill the PCs if you don't control it.

[Malroth]

I was going to reccomend Faerie Mysteries Initiate for an extra 91HP but Then i remembered "core only" and was sad.

[Deca4531]

According to Terry Goodkind's book called "The Wizards First Rule" the rule SPOILERS is "People are stupid, they will believe anything if they want it to be true, or they're afraid it is."

Sorry, I saw the thread title and couldn't help it.

To try to contribute to the topic though, do the PCs know they overpower you? It might be posible to scair them into thinking youre too risky to fight.

[Ikitavi]

If the wizard genuinely wishes to talk, instead of it being an opportunity for one or the other side to ambush each other, you need to have an audience who would be markedly unimpressed by one side or the other engaging in perfidy, or have communication done at a distance, out of line of sight.

The wizard can set things up so that whatever the PCs do, it works for him. If they kill his mouthpiece, they will have an embarrassing corpse on their hands after swearing to peace in negotiations.

Have the wizard hire a decent level bard with a good perform check to be the messenger. Have an arrangement to rez said bard and give him a bonus if the bard manages to perform so well that the PCs kill him. This is the Iron Man III Mandarin ploy.

One of the things that I have established in the game I run is that violating Hospitality, particularly the peace oath of the Demeter analog, is a Bad Thing. Her wrath is generally easy to avoid, but the curse of food poisoning and spoiled food is rather unpleasant. Likely won't kill anyone, but making them WISH they were dead is a bit easier. If you want the negotiation to happen, simply have a relatively neutral priest swear both sides to peace within their household or territory.

[Ikitavi]

For a more, "You BASTARD!" solution:

Assuming that there is a powerful church or organization that COULD be a go between, have the wizard rig things up so that the party swears an oath to someone they BELIEVE is a representative of that organization. If things go south, the wizard has a dupe decked out as a representative of that organization who reprimands the PCs for slaughtering an emissary under an oath of peace. With luck, from the wizard's perspective, they nuke said dupe, in public, resulting in them being publicly on the outs with that organization.

If the wizard really wants a certain item back, he can basically offer to testify about the real sequence of events, retrieving the party's reputation, (for the most part), and he gets his toy back.

Perhaps the wizard sets up the meeting in the campaign equivalent of the Mongol hordes, or any other nation that have a particular bloody minded attitude towards people who kill diplomats.

Additional fun:
If the players are inclined to KILL an emissary, they are 100% reliable to LOOT said emissary. Who will be carrying items unique enough for a high powered Locate Object spell of considerable range. It should be somewhat easier to track objects in player's possession than to track the players themselves. Or simply have said object reported stolen, and again, arrange a confrontation whereby the players can fight their way out, but only by getting their asses outlawed.

[Crake]

I was going to reccomend Faerie Mysteries Initiate for an extra 91HP but Then i remembered "core only" and was sad.

Yeah, so was I :smalltongue:

Unfortunately all the suggestions to charm or mother cyst are out, because his banned schools are enchantment and necromancy. Simulacrum is probably your best bet. Do remember though, that as 13th level wizard you have access to 7th level spells. This includes forcecage and reverse gravity, both of which are no save movement lockdowns (assuming you're in an open field for reverse gravity, and none of them have a fly speed)

Project image is a good starting point, perhaps add in greater invisibility and overland flight and fly around above the battlefield while your projected image makes out to cast spell after spell and the party focuses all their attacks on it instead of looking for you.

Alternatively, if the party has no means of tactical teleportation a barred forcecage followed by a few castings of acid fog will kill them off, each casting is 26d6 damage over 13 rounds, while also preventing them from being able to see you to target you with attacks, spells or other abilities and you have 26 hours to re-prepare spells and cast it again if necessary. Open in your surprise round with a force cage and a quickened fog cloud (so they can't target you in the first round) then just drop the acid fog in round 2 and onward, easy win, nothing they can do without tactical teleportation.

[Eldariel]

Contingent (Greater) Teleport to mouthing a (non-sensical) word. Mouthing because Silence, and since speaking is a free action that can be taken out of turn order, it can be mouthed whenever. If he's personally present. Otherwise, yeah, intermediary. He can talk through a fiend, a simulacrum, an undead, an illusion or whatever. Hell, perhaps he Magic Jars something for the duration of the meeting. Perhaps he permanently Magic Jars something (doable by basically chaining Magic Jars): that's a good way to get rid of a ****ty body if he's into that sort of thing. And yes, Polymorph is of course available for disguise. Perhaps he binds something Telepathic and has the creature act as an intermediary essentially communicating telepathically with the party. That's a few options off the top of my head.

[Crake]

Contingent (Greater) Teleport

Contingency is limited to a spell whos level is no greater than 1/3rd of your caster level (maximum 6th), so at 13th level teleport is not an option, and greater teleport will never be a possible option.

[Eldariel]

Contingency is limited to a spell whos level is no greater than 1/3rd of your caster level (maximum 6th), so at 13th level teleport is not an option, and greater teleport will never be a possible option.

Oh yeah, been too long. Just go with the old stand-by Dimension Door then; it gets enough distance to safely Teleport away generally.

[Jack_Simth]

Contingency is limited to a spell whos level is no greater than 1/3rd of your caster level (maximum 6th), so at 13th level teleport is not an option, and greater teleport will never be a possible option.
Teleport just requires some CL boosters. UMD DC 21 will get you use of a Bead of Karma (use the device as though you had levels in a class - only requirement is divine spellcasting, so pretend to be a 1st level Cleric.)

[John Longarrow]

Yeah, so was I :smalltongue:

Unfortunately all the suggestions to charm or mother cyst are out, because his banned schools are enchantment and necromancy. Simulacrum is probably your best bet. Do remember though, that as 13th level wizard you have access to 7th level spells. This includes forcecage and reverse gravity, both of which are no save movement lockdowns (assuming you're in an open field for reverse gravity, and none of them have a fly speed)

Project image is a good starting point, perhaps add in greater invisibility and overland flight and fly around above the battlefield while your projected image makes out to cast spell after spell and the party focuses all their attacks on it instead of looking for you.

Alternatively, if the party has no means of tactical teleportation a barred forcecage followed by a few castings of acid fog will kill them off, each casting is 26d6 damage over 13 rounds, while also preventing them from being able to see you to target you with attacks, spells or other abilities and you have 26 hours to re-prepare spells and cast it again if necessary. Open in your surprise round with a force cage and a quickened fog cloud (so they can't target you in the first round) then just drop the acid fog in round 2 and onward, easy win, nothing they can do without tactical teleportation.

He'd like to talk to them first, not toast marshmellows over their smoldering corpses... :smallsmile:

[Quertus]

People already posted most of my ideas (sending a messenger, sending a proxy, finding an even more powerful host / a host with strong legal standing for the peace talks, making attacking you costly).

The only things I have left to add are

winning the action economy. Hire large numbers of powerful guards / maugs / whatever - significantly more of them than there are party members.
making killing the messenger costly. If they kill your messenger, and loot the body, make them pay. Sure, traceable items and calling the law are good. But the wizard could create custom cursed items, tailored to the party, to shut them down. Items with curses that only trigger in your presence or some such.
making killing you temporary. Don't just plan to have your messenger res'd, make plans to have yourself res'd when things go south and the PCs somehow manage to defeat your master plan.
making attacking you stupid. "Gank the squishy wizard" is the standard D&D tactic. You know that, be prepared for it. Make sure you are not the biggest threat per unit of squishiness in the room.
making killing you not beneficial. Don't go in with all your items; only carry the few things you actually need (a contingency figurine, a spell component pouch, and perhaps a few scrolls). Make sure the rest of your defenses are spell-based. Which brings me to,
maximizing your defenses. Pay someone else to cast buffs on you. Go in as twice the wizard you've ever been.

[Eldariel]

The only things I have left to add are

winning the action economy. Hire large numbers of powerful guards / maugs / whatever - significantly more of them than there are party members.

Again here, both Planar Binding and Simulacrum provide great tools in spite of lacking Necromancy (Animate Dead) and Enchantment (Dominate). In fact, he can Bind and control e.g. Succubi and use them as proxies to dominate people should he be interested in this.


making attacking you stupid. "Gank the squishy wizard" is the standard D&D tactic. You know that, be prepared for it. Make sure you are not the biggest threat per unit of squishiness in the room.

With magic, you could easily also not appear as the squishy Wizard. You can have another creature (with Telepathy) masquerading as the Wizard and doing the talking while you look like some big muscle magical beast or such (Polymorph).

[Crake]

He'd like to talk to them first, not toast marshmellows over their smoldering corpses... :smallsmile:

Having a plan B is always nice :smalltongue:

[Dormammu]

According to Terry Goodkind's book called "The Wizards First Rule" the rule...

Oh I know the reference. I just think the first rule in D&D should be "Never engage in melee."


He'd like to talk to them first, not toast marshmellows over their smoldering corpses...

Heh, this is great.

Thanks everyone for the top notch suggestions! I've read them all and will be playing this Saturday.


I'll let you know how it goes!