Need Spellcasting School Help

[Falcos]

Hi all!

First order of business: If you're one of my players for the World of Magic setting, please do not read further. I'm discussing spoileriffic ideas here.

Now, to business: In my setting that I am running for my players, there is a magical school run by a group of six Epic-level teachers - A Wu Jen, a Stormsinger (who came from Bard), a Truenamer, an Artificer, a Shadowcaster, and an Abjurant Champion whose base class I haven't decided, but I want something appropriate gish-y for.

The idea is that they're all specialists in their field, no one of the Masters is a "do everything" wizard or sorcerer - the closest is the Wu Jen, who is focused on defensive magics and a metal thematic.

So in the story, a calamity will befall the school and there will be a need to find extra time for a solution to it - so I need every spell, trick, and technique available to the six that will allow an extension of available time - the only one I can think of off-hand is the Shadowcaster's Shadow Time.

Please help? I've got about a week and a half to think of what each of the six will be doing during the calamity.

(I also need to assign one of them to "evacuating the students", which I'm currently thinking would be the Wu Jen (with teleportation, or failing that, cloud chariot), but I'm open to alternative ideas.)

Thank you all in advance. :)

EDIT: Also, I'd prefer to steer away from the Wish that I know at least one Master can pack - I'll use it if I have no other options, but it feels a bit cheaty.

[TheFamilarRaven]

Why not have the calamity be that these highly respected professors either vanish, get captures, or become otherwise indisposed?

Not to be a negative nancy, but what exactly are the PC's supposed to do when there are epic level NPC's on staff? The whole things seem to set up like "okay guys, what you're doing is important, but the NPC's are really doing all the cool stuff."

Whats more is you want to know actual spells and stuff to show off what they're doing. Just hand wave it! No PC wants to sit around while you describe how an uber wizard is using timestop or teleportation.

If you wanna go through with it here's what I'd recommend. The school is in possession of a very powerful artifact capable of altering time within a large area. The drawback is that all 6 of the professors need to be present in order to power the device by channelling their magic or what-not. Thus all six are indisposed while the party has time to save the day. You don't need to have every caster statted, nor do you have to dive through tomes of books. It'll free up a lot more time :smallamused: for you to plan the adventure and gives the PC's more time to shine.

It can even be a heroic sacrifice type deal. The professors use the device long enough for the students to evacuate. The PC's are in charge of evacuation, they escape, BOOM, school and professors are gone, and now the PC's have the job of figuring out what happened and how to stop it in the future.

[Falcos]

I'm planning to have the Masters pause the disaster while the party goes off and looks for a way to fix it.

As for the "just handwave" argument, I dislike doing that when they're NPCs with defined classes and whatnot - I want to know what things they can and can't do and have a level of consistency set up. :)

[Buufreak]

I'm planning to have the Masters pause the disaster while the party goes off and looks for a way to fix it.

As for the "just handwave" argument, I dislike doing that when they're NPCs with defined classes and whatnot - I want to know what things they can and can't do and have a level of consistency set up. :)

Unfortunately, when casters reach epic levels, the answers to those are anything and nothing, respectively.

[TheFamilarRaven]

As for the "just handwave" argument, I dislike doing that when they're NPCs with defined classes and whatnot - I want to know what things they can and can't do and have a level of consistency set up. :)

Think of it this way. You're making up some sort of disaster. This disaster is part of the plot, meaning there are no prewritten rules about it. If there's no prewritten rules about it, then prewritten spells can't do much about it other than maybe Wish or Miracle. Both of which you've expressed an aversion to using.

You could write the disaster so that it can be dealt with by some of the higher level spells like Time Stop, but then you have to work within the constraints of how those spells work, making the disaster seem much less disastrous.

The long and short is; Your gonna have to hand wave it. No two ways around it. If you wanna have an idea of what a high level spell caster can do, just read through some of the higher level spells, and pick the ones you like. Building a high level character can be quite the endeavor, doing it 6 times for NPC's who shouldn't feature prominently anyway takes waway energy you need to make other parts of the adventure spectacular.