What Universe Couldn't a Fullcaster 20 Thrive In?

[unseenmage]

You're a level 20 full caster from D&D 3.x or PF. Is there a movie/tv/game/comic/etc universe you would definitely NOT want to mess with?

Your fullcasting self gets sent there and cannot leave.

What universe is safe from your fullcasting might?

Assume access to but not travel to the appropriate D&D cosmology.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Worm. (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)

Because everything sucks for everyone, no matter how powerful you might be.

Sure, you might be able to take on The Golden Man solo, but something will happen to make you regret ever stepping foot there, because the author hates happiness.

[RoboEmperor]

Dragon Ball

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Dragon BallOh, you could take on and take down the high-end players in the DB universe, just like you can with everyone else. You'd just have to optimize pretty hard, make sure you're as close to unkillable as you can be, stay out of punching range, and find ways to deflect energy blasts.

Astral projection is your friend.

That, and finding the dragon balls would be extremely easy. Then just use your wish intelligently instead of being a moron about it.

How hard would it be for one of the Z'ers to wish for the ability to bring people back to life (including yourself), instead of bringing everyone back one wish at a time? Or go for immortality? Or even the ability to grant immortality?

[unseenmage]

Dragon Ball

Step 1: Make a Simulacrum of Goku OR Vegeta

Step 2: Tell it the rules of magic say it cannot become more powerful.

Step 3: ???
(probably training and yelling)

Step 4: Profit.

[Nifft]

The universe where knowing even one spell will make your brain(s) explode, no save just boom(s).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Turren Toppa Gurren Lagann, if only due to the sheer scale. When opponents hurl galaxies at each other for their attacks, you miiiiight be a bit overmatched.

I'd say Sword Art Online, since you wouldn't be able to cast magic because your brain would be entrapped in a video game and there are no protocols for using magic in it.

[unseenmage]

Turren Toppa Gurren Lagann, if only due to the sheer scale. When opponents hurl galaxies at each other for their attacks, you miiiiight be a bit overmatched.
Hulking Hurler?

That and the mechs seem like they might be subject to Awaken Construct so at the very least they'd be Friendly towards you after.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Hulking Hurler?

That and the mechs seem like they might be subject to Awaken Construct so at the very least they'd be Friendly towards you after.Might wanna recheck the post you quoted. I edited it.

Also, the rod of construct control.

The main problem is targeting. They're literally bigger than entire galaxies and move FAR faster than lightspeed. How are you going to even see them at that scale?

[SangoProduction]

If we are saying the mages still 'have their spells' but are subject to the universe's rules, then Warhammer 40k. Because you are probably going to be eaten by chaos.
Also. No one thrives in 40k. No one.

[unseenmage]

Might wanna recheck the post you quoted. I edited it.

Also, the rod of construct control.

The main problem is targeting. They're literally bigger than entire galaxies and move FAR faster than lightspeed. How are you going to even see them at that scale?

Scry and Greater Teleport probably, they're locations at that scale too.

And I saw the edit. Was trying to figure out how it'd work.
If you're transported to the ingame world digimon style then your spells work just fine.
If you're transported to the Sword Art actual world then just dont put on the helmet.

It's only a gameender if you're transported there AND forced into the helmet simultaneously and even then there is probably a strong arguement for some Contingency or another triggering.

[RoboEmperor]

Oh, you could take on and take down the high-end players in the DB universe, just like you can with everyone else. You'd just have to optimize pretty hard, make sure you're as close to unkillable as you can be, stay out of punching range, and find ways to deflect energy blasts.

Astral projection is your friend.

That, and finding the dragon balls would be extremely easy. Then just use your wish intelligently instead of being a moron about it.

How hard would it be for one of the Z'ers to wish for the ability to bring people back to life (including yourself), instead of bringing everyone back one wish at a time? Or go for immortality? Or even the ability to grant immortality?

So we got child goku stronger than GOD of the earth
We got child goku killing the evil god of the earth (piccolo)
So we got... pre-SSJ goku fighting frieza at light speed. Only a persisted time stop can beat that.
Next we got Frieza's rage quit that destroys entire planets in minutes.
And then we got the androids who are stronger and faster than light speed frieza.
And then we got Buu's no-save-just-die candy beam, and if he eats a spellcaster then he becomes a spellcaster.
Buu is stronger than the god of the gods of the gods. I think. What is a supreme kai?
And then we got candy Vegito
Oh and SSJ2 is super stronger than light speed SSJ. And SSJ3 even stronger than that.
Then we got Hit the time stop spammer (skipped to Hit because i don't remember the other schmucks)
Oh and the Gods of Destruction who is no-save-just-disintegrate
And Golden Frieza who is even stronger than buu by miles and miles
And Jiren who is stronger than everyone here by miles and miles
And then we have pure instinct thing that is stronger than jiren by miles and miles

So you see how weak mr.planet-killing-light-speed-rage-quit guy is? Spellcasters doing well in DB? I just don't see it. Everyone has intiative 9999999999 at 9999999999speed whose speed requires you to do a persisted time stop to keep up (which doesn't work because time stop is instantaneous) whose every attack deals 999999999999 damage and I'm pretty sure they got an Ex ability that lets them have a celerity-like effect at-will and pretty sure their SR is gonna be infinite with +99999999999999 to dodge AC.


Step 1: Make a Simulacrum of Goku OR Vegeta

Step 2: Tell it the rules of magic say it cannot become more powerful.

Step 3: ???
(probably training and yelling)

Step 4: Profit.

Gotta be an Ice Assassin. They got way too high hd for simulacrum. And every ice assassin will fail and only make their target stronger.

[Telonius]

Anywhere with a character whose main shtick is plot armor. If I'm in Marvel, Squirrel Girl can beat me. I don't know how, and the details don't really matter, she'll be able to do it.

[unseenmage]

...

So you see how weak mr.planet-killing-light-speed-rage-quit guy is? Spellcasters doing well in DB? I just don't see it. Everyone has intiative 9999999999 at 9999999999speed whose speed requires you to do a persisted time stop to keep up (which doesn't work because time stop is instantaneous) whose every attack deals 999999999999 damage and I'm pretty sure they got an Ex ability that lets them have a celerity-like effect at-will and pretty sure their SR is gonna be infinite with +99999999999999 to dodge AC.



Gotta be an Ice Assassin. They got way too high hd for simulacrum. And every ice assassin will fail and only make their target stronger.
Could use the Dragonball Z: The Anime Adventure Game for comparison if anyone has it.

[Arael666]

call of cthullu, practially everything there is beyond compreension

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's not as long range, but a spellcaster could blow up the moon even more easily than the characters in Dragon Ball can. It's a 2nd/3rd level spell called rockburst. Any piece of stone greater than 8 cubic feet and within Medium range explodes. This includes VERY large rocks, such as continents or, yes, a moon.

Various contingencies, contingencies, and prior preparations mean that our spellcaster has an initiative of "yes." Doesn't matter if the opponent's is octillions of digits high, or even Graham's Number, they ain't getting the drop on us.

I can think of a few ways to act and react at-or-faster-than lightspeed. Many feats and character actions simply don't care about speed. For instance, Improved Combat Reflexes (using the below HD exploit) + Evasive Reflexes + Karmic Strike means that nobody with reach equal to or less than yours can ever hit you in melee. Or a psion and his psicrystal overlapping two affinity fields and manifesting synchroncity gets infinite actions, meaning infinite speed.

Also, it's fairly trivial to get 21+ HD at level 20 (curse of lycanthropy and the bard's Inspire Greatness both grant HD), so Epic Spellcasting is within your reach.

Adding vile damage to love's pain just doesn't care about the target's speed or reflexes or anything. Eventually the target's beloved will die, unless they have magic to overcome vile damage.

You're a wizard (or another assorted spellcaster). If need be, simply attack anyone you want in a way they can't retaliate against and are unable to defend against. Nobody ever said you had to fight fair. That's what morons (see: Goku) do.

[Lapak]

Anywhere with a character whose main shtick is plot armor. If I'm in Marvel, Squirrel Girl can beat me. I don't know how, and the details don't really matter, she'll be able to do it.This is the best answer. She is, after all, unbeatable.

Similarly, Discworld, where there are canonical reality-shattering magic-using characters but even they are subject to the fact that the universe there is made up of Narrativium, so you're going to lose if you throw your weight around because it will make a better story.

Anything where there are deity-level or above predators that prey on magicians. For example, the world of the Laundry Files - the more you use magic in that setting the worse the interdimensional predators you attract become, to the point where you are wrecking the world's day and not just your own. To say nothing of the fact that a 'does-the-magic-with-his-own-brain' caster in that setting ends up with major brain damage over time as micro-predators home in on the energy and take little bites out of your grey matter.

Any setting in which there are magic-draining resources that can use magical projections as a channel. A Darksword from the books of the same name would use the first spell you threw in its general area to force open a channel to you and suck you dry; it would probably see an Astral Projection as you being extremely considerate about blazing a trail for it.

Then there are settings where you'd generally prosper but would have to avoid specific threats. If you ended up in Saberhagen's Book of Swords you would be able to rule like a god unless you ran into someone wielding the Mindsword, someone willing to use Soulcutter, or someone waving Doomgiver around. Magicians apparently count as always-armed, so Shieldbreaker would ruin your day, and if you pissed off whoever was wielding Farslayer enough you're done. They can all both permanently kill gods and bypass deity-level defenses, so I don't think there's anything even a tier 1 caster could do to stay completely safe.

[Florian]

- Warhammer/40K. Very obvious.
- The world of the Twenty Palaces novels. Magic is a very painful thing there....
- Laundry Files. K Syndrom is a thing.
- MCO or anything I gm: Narrativum will eat you.

[ManicOppressive]

Also might be worth mentioning any universe with a character or characters who can perfectly mimic the powers of others. Peter Petrelli from Heroes, Ditto from Pokemon, etc. Ditto is a special note because, if equipped with a choice band, it likely wins initiative and hits you with whatever your nastiest spell is.

[Maat Mons]

Dragon Ball

Wasn't it established that Goku can teleport to/from the afterlife, and keeps all of his powers when dead? Is there any reason that wouldn't hold for the D&D caster too?

[BloodSnake'sCha]

A Dead Magic Universe.

[Eldan]

Also might be worth mentioning any universe with a character or characters who can perfectly mimic the powers of others. Peter Petrelli from Heroes, Ditto from Pokemon, etc. Ditto is a special note because, if equipped with a choice band, it likely wins initiative and hits you with whatever your nastiest spell is.

They'd have to be intelligent about it, though. The wizard at that level is probably never without buffs and contingencies, while the copier would have to cast them first. That gives the wizard a window of opportunity.

I'd say the two big ones are, as mentioned, universes where bigger fish snack on magic users and those where magic is inherently corrupting. If casting spells drains your soul and eventually kills you, a full caster wouldn't thrive.

[Ellrin]

Oh, you could take on and take down the high-end players in the DB universe, just like you can with everyone else. You'd just have to optimize pretty hard, make sure you're as close to unkillable as you can be, stay out of punching range, and find ways to deflect energy blasts.

Astral projection is your friend.

That, and finding the dragon balls would be extremely easy. Then just use your wish intelligently instead of being a moron about it.

How hard would it be for one of the Z'ers to wish for the ability to bring people back to life (including yourself), instead of bringing everyone back one wish at a time? Or go for immortality? Or even the ability to grant immortality?

In original DBZ, yes, a wizard 20 might stand a chance even against, say, Super Buu—with sufficient preparation, and assuming S.Buu acts like he does against everyone—ie, arrogant and slightly retarded, even beyond the usual slight retardation shounen fighting characters tend to exhibit. Keep in mind, though, at this point we're talking about forces at least an order of magnitude higher than forces that can casually destroy planets; characters for whom FtL is routine and at will. Goku literally has at will free action teleportation with no vagaries about landing point over any distance, potentially across planes as well, depending on your interpretation of how the afterlife works in that universe. Buu has an at will baleful polymorph that has a Fort DC of nigh infinite—it works on Vegito, who at the time probably had one of the two highest Fort saves in the known universe; the Will DC is probably kind of laughable, though. And there's even an extremely weak character that can time stop for as long as he holds his breath—if any of the characters who don't need to breathe learn that... I won't go any deeper into it, but there's actually a ton of versatility in DBZ abilities that usually doesn't come up in these kinds of discussions because DBZ is primarily focused on the punching and energy blasts; my point is just that it's a little more complicated than an HP-centric defense.

If you get into Dragon Ball Super, which I haven't been paying a lot of attention to but I understand might be canon now, you get into a completely new ball game. The major fighters now are well into what would be epic levels by dragon ball standards. Goku started thrashing on gods several orders of magnitude of power (and perhaps more importantly, speed) ago. There's an ubergod that can delete entire universes without breaking a sweat. You combine this absurd level of power creep with the preexisting versatility of abilities available, even to just the heroes, and we've got characters potentially capable of crushing a wizard during the wizard's own first turn before he even takes an action, because here's where the speed thing I mentioned earlier comes in—we're probably talking at minimum hundreds of times faster than the speed of light. For all I know, it might be hundreds of thousands times faster. And they can still react (and somehow magically even speak, yes) within the fractions of a microsecond that implies, meaning we're probably just talking initiative levels of yes, reflex saves of yes+improved evasion at the very least, free actions during the enemy turn, and really just action economy breakage on a level that D20 just isn't capable of representing. Combine that with absurdly strong bodies (Fort saves of ridiculous—yes, alternate timeline Goku died to a normal disease midway through Z, but we're talking beyond god Goku now, Con alone is probably off the charts) and the tendency of shounen heroes to just shrug off Will save-targeting effects, and now we have to take most save or lose spells off the table. I don't know any hard and fast figures, assuming there even are any at this point, but the one real saving point for even batman wizard in DBS is that all the characters are still shounen fighting characters and therefore at least slightly retarded, absurdly arrogant, and unlikely to act first, even if they can. Still, you'd better get all the significant threats in one go (time stop being your best friend here), or the rest are probably just going to squish you before you get to your next turn. Or possibly before you finish your current one.

Also, regarding a properly prepared wizard always getting initiative, regardless of the speed of his opponent, keep in mind that a prepared DB character can get his hands on the dragon balls and generally make even more sweeping wishes than wish (though there are some notable exceptions), which could conceivably at the very least duplicate any effect giving the wizard an initiative of always yes. Though of course, none of the canon characters would really think to do so.

The main issue here, though, is that regardless of whether a caster 20 could beat the main characters, would he have to to flourish in the DB universe? If he's just minding his own business, I'd say he's probably gravy; since the good guys, who always beat or convert the bad guys, would really have no beef with you if you weren't actively trying to screw with them or their friends. I mean, you could peacefully (and because DB characters are inherently stupid and selfish, enchantment spells would still count as peaceful) take over the governments of every inhabited planet in the universe and none of the fighters would care. Most of them probably wouldn't even notice. As long as you don't show yourself as being decent at throwing a punch, they'd ignore or possibly even befriend you.

[SangoProduction]

A Dead Magic Universe.

Even there, you can't underestimate the impact that 20 HD worth of skills and HP, and all that other junk. Hell, toss a wizard in to Earth, and they could probably go damned far even in boxing rings, if they took Imp. Unarmed Strike (and that's supposed to be their weak point). So, it would need to add a bit more challenge than simply negating their magic.

[AvatarVecna]

My basic thought is "any universe that's already got extreme cosmic forces in play". Marvel or DC would be bad even ignoring the plot-armor folks - there's just too many cosmic beings walking around who could take notice and squash you. Worm would be bad because that universe runs on the Rule Of Drama, and there'd be so much magic spacewhale bull**** getting thrown at the wall, that even if you didn't get suckerpunched by some dumb power combo you didn't realize you needed a counter to yet, you're going to end up regretting everything in the end because nothing goes well for anybody...and all that's assuming that you're optimized enough that you can take out Endbringers/Entities, which is by no means a guarantee - the ability to jump dimensions and engage on large scales by normal human standards maybe doesn't mean much when you're fighting something that has a planet's worth of mass in each of 1080 different dimensions. Hmm...depending on exact feats for the werespiders, particularly for the more powerful ones like Pennywise/Crimson King, and the exact mechanics of the barrier separating our universe from the outside-universe, going to the Stephen King Expanded Universe might very well pit you against malicious, hyperintelligent psionic illusionist monsters beyond mortal comprehension that are better at recovering in safespace dimensions than you are - which is more or less the exact same situation you'd have if you were dumped into a Cthulhu Mythos world.

[Crake]

The world where being a 20th level caster is a delusion inside your mind.

[AvatarVecna]

The world where being a 20th level caster is a delusion inside your mind.

So...real life? :smalltongue:

[Goaty14]

Ditto from Pokemon, etc. Ditto is a special note because, if equipped with a choice band, it likely wins initiative and hits you with whatever your nastiest spell is.

Uh, no. This first assumes that you play fair, and not like, summoning a couple of pokemon yourself and sending them in for you (even if the ditto can emulate them both, he still is outpaced via action economy.

[NichG]

Nobilis wouldn't necessarily be a bad place to end up, but you wouldn't stay top dog. Ultimately, the power of a 'fullcaster 20' (even assuming full TO cheese and favorable rules readings in play) is still relying on the idea that the way the rules is interpreted is somewhat sacrosanct, and Nobilis is all about entities where the only meaningful remaining mode of conflict to them that can't be trivialized or reduced to negotiation essentially involves edit-wars over the status of abstract concepts. It's not that any random Noble will as their first action the moment a fullcaster sets foot into creation say 'I pluck the weave itself out of the aether and trap it in a bottle, nyah' (any more than we should assume that a fullcaster's first priority will be to go to the top of the list of powerful entities in the universe and start murdering their way down), but rather that the fullcaster would have to think twice before trying to brute force their way through e.g. an imperator-excrucian conflict.

I don't think Worm would be so bad (although again there's going to be a handful of non-brute-forceable conflicts you'd want to stay out of or at least not just assume you can rules-cheese through - basically things involving Contessa or Scion directly). Pact on the other hand... a fullcaster would be powerful there, but that's just not a universe you want to let yourself get tangled in. You could have your instant god-king of Earth apotheosis and then the karma backlash would just ensure that nothing worth experiencing or living for ever happens around you again. Sort of like the DM deciding to stop running things seriously and just snark at you for the rest of the campaign when you get too OP, except that's actually a built in property of the setting.

Xian xia settings as a whole would also likely not be a great move for an FC20, because they tend to establish and enforce a sort of hierarchy of power that ends up being separated from what the power is 'supposed' to do. Meaning that generally someone with a higher realm of cultivation (or whatever the equivalent) is likely to just have the ability to say 'nope' to the entire moveset of someone from a lower realm (with a fairly standard main character gimmick of having some way to be at stage N but effectively take on threats at stage N+1 or N+2, to cries of 'but you're at stage N, we should have been able to crush you effortlessly!' from villains). It's a pretty standard trope that at at least one of these stages - often about a third to half of the way up the full power hierarchy no less - the practitioners start to define a little bubble universe around themselves which has natural laws they get to specify, and basically can only be overcome by someone else with the same ability that can override it. Also, in terms of a fullcaster just being able to carve out a nice life, it's pretty much an ironclad rule of these settings that anyone at any stage of the hierarchy will inevitably at some point randomly offend or catch the interest of some faction or force at stage N+whatever who will either come down and crush them, drive them to grow and overcome the stage boundaries, or get effortlessly crushed themselves because it was an MC with a stage-crossing gimmick in play (leading to the MC coming to the attention of forces at the next level up, repeat).

[Socksy]

If we are saying the mages still 'have their spells' but are subject to the universe's rules, then Warhammer 40k. Because you are probably going to be eaten by chaos.
Also. No one thrives in 40k. No one.

Hmm... if you knew what you were doing you'd have a decent shot at becoming a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch (arcane) / Nurgle (druid) instead of a Chaos Spawn. But "plaything of daemons forever" does look like the significantly most likely option.

[Eldariel]

Ultimately many worlds have vastly higher numeric power ceilings than D&D, but they lack scope and options. Dragon Ball is a good example, but this goes for many beings in Marvel and DC universes (but they do go high enough as to challenge even full TO casters): they just don't have the means to actually threaten a caster who's pulling out all the stops and the run-of-the-mill attacks are still extremely efficient in those worlds.

Something like Dragon Ball is all fine and good with their +9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999 to everything but that just means a Wizard can trivially create any number of underlings with +9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999 to everything with Ice Assassin or Simulacrum. And Dragon Ball characters have been pretty **** about hitting alternate dimensions so even etherealness would be a strong defense but it just so happens immunity to damage is pretty trivial to come by as a D&D character (Hide Life, persistent Delay Death or regeneration + non-lethal immunity as the most common ones) and Dragon Ball characters short of perhaps Hakaishins and Zenou don't seem to have any non-damage based attacks. And given Hakai was blocked by a simple energy blast in the universal tournament and withstood by both, Frieza and Goku pre-tournament, an argument could be made that it's more like Disintegrate, just doing an absurd amount of damage and disintegrating targets it kills, so damage immunity defenses would work. Zenou's ability is a bit more extreme and harder to become immune to as it just seems to unwrite everything but vs. everything short of Zenou, it seems like a D&D caster would have no problem completely ignoring everything they do and killing them with infinite clones of themselves. Also, for many of the big meatbags like Goku or Superman, magic seems to either be a blind point (Goku has shown no special resistance to magic and something as simple as Ginyu's Change seems to autowork on him if not interposed by something) or a clear weak point (Superman is as vulnerable to magic as a mundane creature) so magic-based attacks are actually probably a very efficient vector in either case.

[Cosi]

I nominate Fine Structure (https://qntm.org/structure). The Imprisoning God responds to violations of the laws of physics (at least, the ones that potentially threaten it) by killing whoever committed it, and making the violation impossible going forward. As soon as you tried to cast teleport you'd be killed, mindwiped, or trapped beneath the Earth. The best you could manage would be to never use any of your powers.


Worm. (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)

Because everything sucks for everyone, no matter how powerful you might be.

Sure, you might be able to take on The Golden Man solo, but something will happen to make you regret ever stepping foot there, because the author hates happiness.

Eh, I think it's kind of cheating to make arguments by appealing to the author. Like, yeah, Wildbow could have another Entity show up at full power and kill you, but a 20th level caster would still be at least as powerful as the Triumvirate and probably substantially stronger.


Laundry Files. K Syndrom is a thing.

Not really. There are like three or four different forms of immunity so far. Bob's Eater of Souls shtick keeps him safe. The V symbiote allows you to survive by transferring the damage to other people. Mo's violin prevented K syndrome, though it was intelligent and evil. The elves have some kind of immunization (although I'm pretty sure it's not perfectly effective). IIRC there's a passage in The Nightmare Stacks that at implies the existence of other things with similar effects to the V symbiote.

And if we're assuming D&D mechanics apply, K syndrome is just some drain/damage to your mental stats. Pop a restoration every couple of days and you're good to go. Alternatively, walk around in a dimension lock so the eaters can't show up (or just have anticipate teleport up and make sure you move at least 5ft every round you cast). You should also be strong enough to win the Ego check against the evil violin, or be able to use clone to feed V symbiotes without having to permanently kill anyone.


Marvel or DC would be bad even ignoring the plot-armor folks - there's just too many cosmic beings walking around who could take notice and squash you.

Do we mean "thrive in" or "dominate"? Because a 20th level caster would be easily strong enough to become a member of the Avengers/Justice League, which seems like a fine place to end up in one of those universes. You'd probably even be strong enough to conquer the Earth and take on most threats. The only MCU enemy a 20th level Wizard probably couldn't beat is Dormammu. Obviously that's not representative of the comics, but I don't think "can only conquer one planet" is a failure here.


Worm would be bad because that universe runs on the Rule Of Drama

Again, I think it's kind of unreasonable to assume the universe would escalate from what's established in-universe to screw you over. Yes, if Wildbow had decided to give a character 20th level casting, there probably would have been something that screwed them over, but by that logic most crappy universes beat 20th level casters regardless of power level. If you took the events of Canon Worm and the only change you made was that instead of her regular powers Taylor was a 20th level caster, I think things probably end up better than they did in canon. That's probably true if you make that swap for anyone but Contessa, particularly because that character presumably wouldn't be under the influence of a Shard.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Sorry on mobile separating paragraphs with titles is the best organisation I can do.

Worm/Discworld/Homebrew/crapsack world

I also don't care for the appeal to author writing a crapsack world that the Worm argument seems to be based in. I get the Discworld Narrativium as that's a stated property.

DBZ

DBZ characters also have a high degree of hack resistance. Ginyu's body switch worked, but we don't know if it would still work against the higher power level characters. Destructo Disc used to cut through everything *full stop* it dismembered Freeza who was at least a hundred times stronger than Krillin, but Cell took it without flinching. Turn to chocolate is referred to as no save just lose, but Vegeto was able to move in chocolate form. Basically things that seem to be autowin buttons let you punch above your weight class in DBZ, but you can be outclassed beyond your hacks. Further by Super all the relevant character's blasts (and maybe punches) can destroy things down to the molecular level and possiblity beyond. Unrestrained fights risk destroying the universe and they are using ki to reality bend punching.

Deadmagic/No magic

Invoke Magic let's the wizard do anything they could do in a standard Wizard in the real world scenario, just slower.

The extended Stephen King universe.

I don't really see the challenge. All the scary beings are immune or near immune to normal attacks, but highly vulnerable to [Good] and are only saved by the rarity of items and people who can generate [Good] attacks in their native world. Defensively Immunity to Fear would go a long way to escaping a chance encounter before the caster had established themselves.

Same goes for everything short of Azathoth from Lovecraft.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

If DBZ characters really hit as hard as we're told they do, characters wouldn't bounce off the scenery while still getting hurt. I mean, the Future Cyborgs Androids smacked Future Gohan into a pane of glass and he bounced off without breaking it. And he got hurt from it! Even in Super, characters are getting hit and bouncing off of rocks. Hell, super saiyan Goku got hurt by a rock tossed at far less than regular human maximum by Krillin in the days leading up to the Cell Games (presented by Hetap).

Honestly, if they're not smashing their way through whole planets on a single punch, they're not dealing nearly as much damage as they're understood to.

Frankly, Dragon Ball scaling is retarded, so a well-built level 20 character would probably be just fine.

[Ellrin]

If DBZ characters really hit as hard as we're told they do, characters wouldn't bounce off the scenery while still getting hurt. I mean, the Future Cyborgs Androids smacked Future Gohan into a pane of glass and he bounced off without breaking it. And he got hurt from it! Even in Super, characters are getting hit and bouncing off of rocks. Hell, super saiyan Goku can get hurt by a rock tossed at far less than regular human maximum by Krillin in the days leading up to the Cell Games (presented by Hetap).

Honestly, if they're not smashing their way through whole planets on a single punch, they're not dealing nearly as much damage as they're understood to.

Frankly, Dragon Ball scaling is retarded, so a well-built level 20 character would probably be just fine.

DB physics and scaling make no sense during actual fights. Master Roshi destroyed the moon in one of the first arcs of the series, and people who witnessed that freak out when Freeza destroys some large hills on Namek. People are fighting faster than light, but not only have time to speak between attacks, but that sound can be heard before attacks land, and people can see the action. Basically trying to bring real world physics or logic into DB works even worse than it does with D20.

Nevertheless, we can look at maximum demonstrated outputs, and if we accept the power creep presented (and we sort of have to since it's basically the whole point of the series), we get a pretty absurd picture. And while, as I stated, a wizard 20 might not have a lot to fear from the canon characters pre-Super, especially if he doesn't go picking a fight because why the hell would he, it's theoretically possible for a smart enough fighter in the DB universe to pick up a lot of the same tricks that batman wizard would usually use to deal with major threats at roughly the same level of proficiency or higher that a batman wizard could manage.

Or we could just pit our wizard 20 against Arale since she exists in that universe and then he just ties or loses, because I'm pretty sure Arale has the canon power of "can't be defeated" at this point.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Or we could just pit our wizard 20 against Arale since she exists in that universe and then he just ties or loses, because I'm pretty sure Arale has the canon power of "can't be defeated" at this point.

For anyone not in the know Arale is a gag character who approaches Bugs Bunny's level of I can do this cause it's funny.

She actually made an appearance in Super and true to form was able to scale up to the main characters. Interestingly though Gouku warned her that her tricks wouldn't work on Beerus so either his power level or more likely being a god of destruction granted immunity to gag character hacks. Nobody used God ki to fight Arele so we don't know if that would put Gouku and Vegeta out of her range to.

[zlefin]

With the OP, there's a couple different aspects: there's being able to thrive generally, and there's whether there's a lot of stuff in the setting way more powerful than you that can stop you.
Some settings may have quite a few bigger fish, but they may not care enough to deal with you, at least if you aren't causing trouble/aren't near their zones of interest.


At any rate, I did think of one that would be hard on the fullcaster if I remember right: pre time spiral Magic: the Gathering. pre time spiral planeswalkers were crazy powerful iirc, though it's been a looong time so I'm not completely clear on the details.

[Cosi]

A pre-Mending (which was the in-story event that depowered them) Planeswalker is probably around as strong as an optimized caster with access to Epic Spellcasting, though not abusing it to its full extent. Plus maybe a template that gives them at-will plane shift and some other stuff. Probably powerful enough that a D&D caster couldn't defeat them, barring the most extreme parts of RAW-legal optimization (e.g. arbitrarily large ice assassin army with arbitrarily good magical gear).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I also don't care for the appeal to author writing a crapsack world that the Worm argument seems to be based in.Remember, the OP specified:


You're a level 20 full caster from D&D 3.x or PF. Is there a movie/tv/game/comic/etc universe you would definitely NOT want to mess with?Nothing ever goes right in Worm. It seems to be a property of the universe at large. You do something, it will have soul-crushingly negative consequences. Granted, being a wizard instead of a parahuman might mitigate that, but just being present near an Entity might get you attached to a shard, which would potentially screw you up just as badly as everyone else.

It's not that you couldn't potentially overpower anyone else who threw their weight against you, because you almost assuredly could, especially with some research and preparation. It's that the universe itself runs on "rule of unnecessarily brutal drama," and just existing within it puts you at serious risk of getting your (metaphorical) heart crushed.

Is the psychological damage worth it, when the alternative is something like Equestria? Probably not.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Granted, being a wizard instead of a parahuman might mitigate that, but just being present near an Entity might get you attached to a shard, which would potentially screw you up just as badly as everyone
.

Well I don't know what a shard is, but if you say it might attach and apply the crapsack to the caster and you think there wouldn't be a defence, I can accept that and move on. The same way I accept that chaos corruption would be an issue in Warhammer and Narrativium in Discworld.

MtG

Can someone fill us in on what Planes walkers can actually do. I read a few MtG comics and the planeswalkers in those seemed about as strong as ok decks. They could summon monsters and cast the spells that did damage or killed creatures. They also didn't seem all that fast doing just one or two things in a time that seems roughly equivalent to a round. Do planeswalkers duels actually hobble them?

I also remember a narrative story of a duel from a WotC guidebook that explained how planeswalkers hade to reach out for leylines which was like drawing cards and playing lands. The planeswalkers explained that they would burn out if they walked around powered up.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well I don't know what a shard is, but if you say it might attach and apply the crapsack to the caster and you think there wouldn't be a defence, I can accept that and move on. The same way I accept that chaos corruption would be an issue in Warhammer and Narrativium in Discworld.Two multidimensional biological alien supercomputers have visited Earth (one died in transit, so there's only one left), and their reproductive process involves splitting themselves into huge numbers of pieces (shards), each of which contains vast processing power but very little intelligence. These shards are approximately the size of small continents or larger, residing on uninhabited alternate Earths, and open an interdimensional portal between themselves and a potential host, sending a tendril through, into the host's brain. This takes the form of a small brain tumor, which is like a graft in D&D terms; it's part of the host's body and heals along with it when subjected to healing abilities. Once the tumor is present, a particularly brutal emotional trauma (which occurs regularly in Worm) activates it, giving the host a random superpower (which is really just the supercomputer shard futzing with reality on a quantum scale), but it frequently screws up the host's personality via manipulating brain chemistry. Some people are relatively untouched, while others are driven completely insane. Almost all have a major drive for conflict, at the expense of self-preservation or even common sense.

Protection from [alignment] might work, but it's not a guarantee, since it's an actual physical change in the person's brain, rather than externally altering one's mind.

[Cosi]

It's that the universe itself runs on "rule of unnecessarily brutal drama," and just existing within it puts you at serious risk of getting your (metaphorical) heart crushed.

No it doesn't. The horrible stuff that happens in Worm isn't because of a property of the universe, it's because the people who get powers have horrible psychological issues, and getting powers makes those issues worse and drives them to seek conflict. None of that applies to a D&D character.


Can someone fill us in on what Planes walkers can actually do. I read a few MtG comics and the planeswalkers in those seemed about as strong as ok decks. They could summon monsters and cast the spells that did damage or killed creatures. They also didn't seem all that fast doing just one or two things in a time that seems roughly equivalent to a round. Do planeswalkers duels actually hobble them?

Oldwalkers (the ones in question) do thinks like create or destroy entire planes, build time travel devices, casually slaughter entire planes, and mind control gods.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Great explanation MaxiDuRarity, I have a few questions/ speculations.

I agree that protection from [alignment] may not work after a shard has attached, due to it possibly being considered part of the caster's body. It does seem like it would be adequate protection from a shard attaching in the first place, thoughts?

Does it effect your personality before you've suffered trauma and gotten powers? Without writer fiat the caster might be able to shield their loved ones.

What about Mind Block Vs the shard? Even if the tumor is part of you, shouldn't this block your connection with the alternate earth? Or would the shard have a subtle effect that would keep you from thinking of this?

Definitely seems like a world with unknowns that would make it a poor choice to travel to. The worst aspect might be that anyone you cared for could potentially get their own shard. I've been working under that assumption of caster is here because reasons, will they thrive? Rather than would this be a fun place to go and pwn. I'll go reread the OP and make sure that's within the intended spirit.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Great explanation MaxiDuRarity, I have a few questions/ speculations.

I agree that protection from [alignment] may not work after a shard has attached, due to it possibly being considered part of the caster's body. It does seem like it would be adequate protection from a shard attaching in the first place, thoughts?Maybe? It's a change on a purely physical level. In D&D terms, an (Ex) gate effect occurs in your brain, and a piece of the shard is physically implanted. Would the spell affect a graft that's been implanted?


Does it effect your personality before you've suffered trauma and gotten powers? Without writer fiat the caster might be able to shield their loved ones.Not before the trauma, no. At least, not that I'm aware of. The only way to know that someone has had it implanted is to physically scan the brain to see if the initial tumor is there. There might be other powers that could sense it, but that's specialized shard screwiness.


What about Mind Block Vs the shard? Even if the tumor is part of you, shouldn't this block your connection with the alternate earth? Or would the shard have a subtle effect that would keep you from thinking of this?Mind blank might block the shard from influencing your mind, but I don't think it would prevent the rest of it. Unfortunately, having an activated shard means that other shards can derive info from it, probably bypassing the mind blank's ability to protect you from divination. After all, you've got an implant in your brain that's both a part of you and yet separate, and that's actively interacting with other shards. It's kind of like having a familiar that's turned traitor and is telling other familiars about your goings on.


Definitely seems like a world with unknowns that would make it a poor choice to travel to. The worst aspect might be that anyone you cared for could potentially get their own shard. I've been working under that assumption of caster is here because reasons, will they thrive? Rather than would this be a fun place to go and pwn. I'll go reread the OP and make sure that's within the intended spirit.If magic neutered shards like it neuters magic, then you could go there and be fine. If not, then I wouldn't want to go there, even as a level 20 [insert T1 class here].

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Even there, you can't underestimate the impact that 20 HD worth of skills and HP, and all that other junk. Hell, toss a wizard in to Earth, and they could probably go damned far even in boxing rings, if they took Imp. Unarmed Strike (and that's supposed to be their weak point). So, it would need to add a bit more challenge than simply negating their magic.
Ok A Dead Magic Universe with High Level Martials everywhere.

Maybe a Plane full with Demons and No Magic Zones(A curse for the Demons or a special prison of a Evil dety/EPIC BBEG).

I can think of a lot of places that will not want to go to but it will be not fun to take the most Over Powerd options.

[Andor13]

... it's because the people who get powers have horrible psychological issues, and getting powers makes those issues worse and drives them to seek conflict. None of that applies to a D&D character.

What part of that sentence doesn't apply to professional murder-hobos?

[Hand_of_Vecna]

One more. What about just planeshifting to all these empty earths and destroy all the shards turning all the parahumans into normal people and eliminating the threat to your own mind?

Do they have anyway of defending themselves? Could anyone travel interdimensionally to try to stop you?

It seems like this would be doing the world a favour.

+Respect for the "I don't know" answers to metaphysics interactions.

Btw just reread Protection from Evil, it seems like it blocks effects without mentioning magic, so I don't think the effect being Ex matters. Could be wrong.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

One more. What about just planeshifting to all these empty earths and destroy all the shards turning all the parahumans into normal people and eliminating the threat to your own mind?

Do they have anyway of defending themselves? Could anyone travel interdimensionally to try to stop you?

It seems like this would be doing the world a favour.Possibly. It seems to me that most realities the shards inhabit are locked out from interdimensional travel, but that might just be from other shards and their wielders. There are shards that can bypass those restrictions, however.

The thought has occurred to me before this thread, that if this exact instance happened, I'd do that exact thing, if I could, so I've thought about it a bit. There are thousands upon thousands of shards, and the main body of the surviving progenitor is still mainly intact, meaning the Jupiter+ sized monster is comprised of many (hundreds of) thousands or millions of shards that are far more powerful than the ones it doles out. Plus, most of those shards have restrictions on what they pass on to their hosts, so they're significantly more powerful than them. Which is rather terrifying, as some of the hosts themselves have absolutely ridiculous amounts of power.

I'm also assuming that said shards are allowed to defend themselves, so going after them would be insanely dangerous.


+Respect for the "I don't know" answers to metaphysics interactions.Shard ***ery is weird, and any speculations we make would be fanfiction fodder, at best.


Btw just reread Protection from Evil, it seems like it blocks effects without mentioning magic, so I don't think the effect being Ex matters. Could be wrong.Probably. I'd say it would work, most likely, but it's still not a guarantee.

[khadgar567]

similar to warhammer 40k you have age of sigmar were magic depends on were the frack you are living and 99% of universe is out for your blood including the angels you summon your self.

[Lapak]

I don't think Mage: The Ascension (oWOD) has been mentioned yet, but it possibly deserves consideration with caveats. A Caster 20 could thrive if they stayed off the local Prime Material as some of the upper-tier Tradition Mages do, but trying to get by on Earth they would have nothing but troubles - Technocracy that's used to fighting reality-benders, local Mages with Spheres that d20 magic doesn't have good answers for (looking at Time and Entropy here, possibly Prime) but worst would be that they would run face-first into a massive Paradox backlash before they knew to avoid it.

[theMycon]

call of cthullu, practially everything there is beyond compreension
Have you read Call of Cthulhu?
Cthulhu shows up & gets accidentally KO'd by a drunk fisherman, who probably doesn't even notice. Even in the TTRPG, the monsters are a hard fight for untrained professors and journalists with random weapons.

The Great Old Ones are only dangerous because every PC's ego is a fragile flower that wilts as soon as someone suggests maybe monsters exist and they don't care about you.

[Rhedyn]

1. Overlord - Ainz Ooal Gown is a better caster than you, better at casting, and a better adventurer, plus his army of people who are also better than you.

2. The Irregular at Magic High School - Gary Stu main character would drop a nuke on you if you did anything too funny.

3. One punch man - Main character will auto-pass all saves, ignore your magic, and destroy you in one punch.

4. Nova Praxis - yeah yeah, your spells are great and all, but this is a post scarcity society where anyone can resleeve, be immortal, and have technology that is basically magic. With enough technology magic is stupid.

5. Hellfrost - you are really powerful, until you cast one too many spells (without Savage Worlds bennies) and the siphoning drains all your powers away forever.

6. Low Life - it just sucks to live here. Your super powers won't fix that.

[Calthropstu]

Depends on your definition of "thrive," who the person was and what they wanted to do.
A world of wild magic would be far worse than dead magic most likely.

In a world of major superpowers more powerful than the caster such as dbz, it could still thrive. Just because goku might be able to curb stomp him (or other powers) doesn't mean they will. Take an oracle for example. A healer would be of great use even to the z warriors.

And take the wizard. So he can't instagib Goku, does that invalidate all the amazing things he CAN do? And so what if his wishes are of lesser strength, his powers recharge every DAY. The Z warriors would be calling him twice a week, and Bulma would likely have you live at her place so she could figure out how magic could be turned into science.

And think of how much more overpowered these guys would be with some decent spell support.

[Cosi]

1. Overlord - Ainz Ooal Gown is a better caster than you, better at casting, and a better adventurer, plus his army of people who are also better than you.

I'm pretty sure that guy just is a 20th level D&D caster. I didn't watch the whole show, but nothing he did struck me as radically more impressive than just being a 20th level caster Lich.

[Calthropstu]

I'm pretty sure that guy just is a 20th level D&D caster. I didn't watch the whole show, but nothing he did struck me as radically more impressive than just being a 20th level caster Lich.

Actually, he displays access to epic spells and epic artifacts. The horn that hasn't been used yet can summon 5,000 mid level goblin warriors.

The world items are also all quite impressive and the resources at his disposal are nothing to sneeze at.

[Rhedyn]

I'm pretty sure that guy just is a 20th level D&D caster. I didn't watch the whole show, but nothing he did struck me as radically more impressive than just being a 20th level caster Lich.
He has 10th level spells and higher magics.

Yes, he is like a 20th level caster, but with epic levels and is a Lich AND has world class artifacts that can rewrite reality (which he only ever doesn't use out of sheer prudence because he always assumes that he is at a greater danger than he ever actually is).

[Calthropstu]

He has 10th level spells and higher magics.

Yes, he is like a 20th level caster, but with epic levels and is a Lich AND has world class artifacts that can rewrite reality (which he only ever doesn't use out of sheer prudence because he always assumes that he is at a greater danger than he ever actually is).

Ha, I finally ninja'd someone. But I'd like to point out, even outclassed by lord Ainz, that doesn't mean you can't flourish.
For example, you could ally yourself to Ainz. As long as you don't betray him and stay useful, you'd be fairly safe. You could also ally yourself to other powerful individuals there such as the dragon lord or even stay under the radar and silently enjoy life.
Ainz is not unbeatable and he knows it.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

General

I agree with Calthropstu that thrive doesn't need to mean conquer. In the case of worlds that couldn't be conquered we can ask if a caster sent there that for some reason couldn't return to a classic D&D setting would they come out and interact with the power players of the world or would they live in a demiplane, on Mars, etc.

In that spirit, though I think the ridiculous powers ale of DBZ puts it's fighters out of range of the caster, that doesn't mean they couldn't show up and befriend the heroes and supply handwavium. Also as someone already pointed out a caster could conquer through mind control as long as they don't broadcast on t.v from a throne of skulls about it.

OWoD Mage

Hmmmmm would Paradox apply? At first I was thinking no because WoD has non Paradox inducing casters : Shamany werewolves, Tremere, hedge wizards, and Fae come to mind. But the metaphysics as explained in the book lay out those things working because people kinda sorta almost believe in them, especially in the case of Fae who are the second most versatile casters after mages. If I remember correctly if you cast through items the item suffers paradox instead of you, so a crafter would work fine.

Rank 6-7 wizards with the weirder spheres could be a serious threat and there's a lot of unknowns. You would probably need to make friends specialized in the spheres that are the most alien to D&D, but you could still become a major power in the world.

I've always felt that the technocracy were really the good guys and just needed some help inspiring people. Make the coolest things you can and have them "invented" by a super cool maverick scientist with nice hair.

OPM

He's a parody, not a gag character like Arele. He could be beaten, there just isn't anything in his own world that comes close. As far as I can tell a single Ice Assassin would be 50/50, except it could be buffed to win easily.

[Cosi]

Actually, he displays access to epic spells and epic artifacts. The horn that hasn't been used yet can summon 5,000 mid level goblin warriors.

The world items are also all quite impressive and the resources at his disposal are nothing to sneeze at.

Sure, but he's basically an inside-context problem for a D&D caster. He's just a somewhat higher level caster. Presumably a 20th level character has had to deal with such before. There's nothing particularly complicated or unexpected going on there in the way that there is in a setting with superheroes or corrupting magic.

[Arbane]

OPM

He's a parody, not a gag character like Arele. He could be beaten, there just isn't anything in his own world that comes close. As far as I can tell a single Ice Assassin would be 50/50, except it could be buffed to win easily.

Don't you need some of his HAIR for that? :smallbiggrin:

Places Not To Go: Toon. Sure, maybe you can alter reality by being smart, but it's FULL of things that can alter reality be being STUPID, which is vastly easier.

Also, you can't die. But your dignity can.

[Calthropstu]

Don't you need some of his HAIR for that? :smallbiggrin:

Places Not To Go: Toon. Sure, maybe you can alter reality by being smart, but it's FULL of things that can alter reality be being STUPID, which is vastly easier.

Also, you can't die. But your dignity can.

Any reality where stupid trumps intellect would SERIOUSLY screw a wizard.

But behold! My int 3 sorcerer shall win the day!

[Tvtyrant]

Rick and Morty. No one thrives in that universe, your carefully built subdimensions are easily permeable, and there are already billions of clones and simulacrums running around of all the important beings.

[Rhedyn]

Ainz is not unbeatable and he knows it.

Which is why he is so dangerous. I've never seen a wizard of his paranoia outside of an optimization board.

Yes, he is an in-context problem. But he's both higher level and plays better than you do. Not to mention that he has minions that are technically stronger than himself, even though he can beat them in fights without his epic artifact equipment.

[Lapak]

Don't you need some of his HAIR for that? :smallbiggrin:

Places Not To Go: Toon. Sure, maybe you can alter reality by being smart, but it's FULL of things that can alter reality be being STUPID, which is vastly easier.

Also, you can't die. But your dignity can.
Toon! My favorite suggestion so far. So many of even the game-breaking tactics are neutralized there. Ice Assassins would get Fast-Talked into believing they were the original and destroy themselves. The most potent magics of destruction, the most all-encompassing enchantments, the most permanent of maladies would go away after making the target Fall Down for a few minutes. The idiot toon you are taunting through an Illusion or projection would go to strangle it and somehow actually succeed in throttling you. Marvelous.

[ManicOppressive]

Rick and Morty. No one thrives in that universe, your carefully built subdimensions are easily permeable, and there are already billions of clones and simulacrums running around of all the important beings.

Oh god. I can't think of a worse universe, because the whole point of R&M Universe is that the more power you have the worse off you are. Hell, Rick himself is at least comparable to a 20th level Artificer, including appearing to have 15 BAB or so. He carries the functional equivalent of a rechargeable Wand of Greater Plane Shift and has demonstrated items that produce effects similar to Disintegrate, True Sight, Detect Evil, the mother of all Divination, and a touch-range (that may not be touch-range but that's how he demonstrated) at-will Save or Die. And that's just some of the stuff he does that can be described. I could totally buy a character sheet for Rick Sanchez that put him well into epic levels.


Jesus! He's not a [bleep] god!

You don't know what I am! And you don't know what I can do! I'm Doctor Who in this [bleep]! I could be a clone. I could be a hologram. We could be clones controlled by robots controlled with special headsets that the real Rick and Morty are wearing while they're [bleep] your mother!

And for all of that, it STILL sucks to be him, and alternate reality Ricks STILL die constantly en masse.

[Azoth]

2. The Irregular at Magic High School - Gary Stu main character would drop a nuke on you if you did anything too funny.


I have to argue this one. Tatsuya specializes is disrupting systemic magic and to a lesser extend non-systemic magic by being able to read it's activation sequence and disrupt it. D&D/PF magic does not work by inputting a complex algorithm and manipulating reality in the same fashion. This means it is more like his own innate abilities (Elemental Sight), which he can't disrupt and cancel.

If you want to argue his effective Contingency (True Resurrection), he has to be conscious and aware of the damage inflicted to activate that spell's activation sequence. Any attack that results in instantaneous death or destruction of the brain means he can not use it on himself.

Demon's Right, his unique spell that rips apart objects and people on a sub atomic level ignoring Line of Effect can be handled by most basic wizard defenses.

As long as a Wizard is played competently, Tatsuya shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Rhedyn]

I have to argue this one. Tatsuya specializes is disrupting systemic magic and to a lesser extend non-systemic magic by being able to read it's activation sequence and disrupt it. D&D/PF magic does not work by inputting a complex algorithm and manipulating reality in the same fashion. This means it is more like his own innate abilities (Elemental Sight), which he can't disrupt and cancel.

If you want to argue his effective Contingency (True Resurrection), he has to be conscious and aware of the damage inflicted to activate that spell's activation sequence. Any attack that results in instantaneous death or destruction of the brain means he can not use it on himself.

Demon's Right, his unique spell that rips apart objects and people on a sub atomic level ignoring Line of Effect can be handled by most basic wizard defenses.

As long as a Wizard is played competently, Tatsuya shouldn't be much of a problem.
Buuut, his real power is Gary Stu. He'll just gain a new power and backstory to defeat any problem that gets in his way.

He also makes perfect decisions and never does anything bad and is always several steps ahead of you because of course he is.

[Azoth]

Buuut, his real power is Gary Stu. He'll just gain a new power and backstory to defeat any problem that gets in his way.

He also makes perfect decisions and never does anything bad and is always several steps ahead of you because of course he is.

Not so much in the light novels, or even in the anime adaptation. During the Magic Highschool Competition he was forced to use his resurrection ability because he was overwhelmed by an opponent's spell in an open head to head fight. Dude almost lost to AoE blaster mage for Pelor's sake.

If your argument is simply that a main character in an anime/manga/light novels/Manwha can't lose because of MC plot protection or they are overpowered within the narrative compared to others from their setting...then a D&D/PF wizard wouldn't flourish in ANY setting because the MC would stomp them.

Honestly Tatsuya is no worse than a Crafter Wizard that has permanent Arcane Sight, can counter spell as an immediate action, metamagics the Baator out of Disintegrate, and is immune to death by HP/ability damage. When you think of him like that, the setting is chump change because he is in the top 1% of powerful mages in his setting.

[theMycon]

I'm pretty sure that guy just is a 20th level D&D caster. I didn't watch the whole show, but nothing he did struck me as radically more impressive than just being a 20th level caster Lich.

Since most of the show fits 3.5 so well (all of it, if you include Tome of Battle), my BF & I have made a game of stating everyone up.

Most of the non-Nazarique crowd maxes at levels 5-7. The lowest Ainz could be is (Arcane caster)19/(Divine caster)2/(anything else)4, based on the epic feats he has & magic used. But he's most likely Vecna, so my real guess is wiz 20/clr 20.

[Azoth]

Since most of the show fits 3.5 so well (all of it, if you include Tome of Battle), my BF & I have made a game of stating everyone up.

Most of the non-Nazarique crowd maxes at levels 5-7. The lowest Ainz could be is (Arcane caster)19/(Divine caster)2/(anything else)4, based on the epic feats he has & magic used. But he's most likely Vecna, so my real guess is wiz 20/clr 20.

If you used Momonga as a level 20 character equivalent only Gazef, Brain, and people at their level would be level 6-7. The archmage being able to use 6th tier spells would be about level 11-12. Evil Eye is said to be equal to level 50 by Ygdrassil standards, so level 10 by D&D. Most other characters don't even reach level 3.

I personally don't feel Momonga (Ainz) is really an epic caster. Alot of his versatility comes from the Overlord Class that allowed him to use Dark Knowledge to expand his spells known by killing others. You can argue that Tier 10 spells or Super Tier magic are equal to epic spells, but the ones we have seen used are not really of the scope that Epic spells can achieve. Most likely 10th tier spells are D&D's 9th level spells, the actual 10th tier if you count Cantrips-9th.

Abilities like "The Goal of All Life is Death" are more like class features than actual spells. Same for the ability to use Sudden + Metamagic on his existing spells.

[Zanos]

Worm. (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)

Because everything sucks for everyone, no matter how powerful you might be.

Sure, you might be able to take on The Golden Man solo, but something will happen to make you regret ever stepping foot there, because the author hates happiness.
Not at all, you just have to earn it.

Unfortunately, I prepared greater bypass character development.


Since most of the show fits 3.5 so well (all of it, if you include Tome of Battle), my BF & I have made a game of stating everyone up.

Most of the non-Nazarique crowd maxes at levels 5-7. The lowest Ainz could be is (Arcane caster)19/(Divine caster)2/(anything else)4, based on the epic feats he has & magic used. But he's most likely Vecna, so my real guess is wiz 20/clr 20.
The author is explicitly a fan of 3.5, and Ainz is just an epic wizard with some embellishments for how the writer wanted the setting to work.

Spell names, metamagic, etc. are all stuff the author cribbed from D&D, he likes it quite a lot.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Not at all, you just have to earn it.

Unfortunately, I prepared greater bypass character development.That's not 'happiness.' That's 'a bullet in the brain.'

I know they're difficult to tell apart, but please focus. :smallamused:

[theMycon]

I personally don't feel Momonga (Ainz) is really an epic caster. Alot of his versatility comes from the Overlord Class that allowed him to use Dark Knowledge to expand his spells known by killing others. You can argue that Tier 10 spells or Super Tier magic are equal to epic spells, but the ones we have seen used are not really of the scope that Epic spells can achieve. Most likely 10th tier spells are D&D's 9th level spells, the actual 10th tier if you count Cantrips-9th.


Lightning & fireball have been referred to as 3rd tier magic, so that's unlikely. I'll agree that his biggest spells are closer to "what the epic handbook suggests" than "what an intelligent caster would use epic magic for", but take a peek at d20 srd, then sigh & shake your head at what's suggested.

I feel like I've seen Shalltear stack enough metamagics on a spell to make it 12th level. She could have used some metamagic reduction abilities, or could be a better caster than her boss, her using 12th level apwlls strongly suggests that his 10th level spells are actually 10th level spells. How casually he casts Gate, vs actually talking about super-tier spells, makes me think the latter is epic magic.

He's also clearly mostly an arcane caster, but was able to resurrect an outsider. Might be an arcane class that gets access to True Resurrection, but any wizard can do that with epic magic. His melting 5 million gold to do it also suggests "epic ritual" more than 'true Resurrection" to me.

I kinda half remember early season one his mentioning making some epic items -a ring that makes him immune to some element or another, I think? I'm almost entirely certain he's mentioned crafting some of his items (the ring of three wishes?) though they may not be the epic ones.

So it's possible that he's got a build capable of casting dual 9's, decent weapon & armor proficiencies, subordinates capable of 12th level spells, that super-tier magic is just non-standard 9ths, and he's got all the treasure of a guild full of 20's. But that's enough weird ifs & maybes that it seems simpler that he's just got epic casting & improved spell capacity.

[Nifft]

Unfortunately, I prepared greater bypass character development.

Love that spell.

It's in the same book as teleport without drama and clone character sheet, right?

[Florian]

clone character sheet

Nah. That one is over in Complete Killer GM. The PF version is in Ultimate Noob.

[Azoth]

Lightning & fireball have been referred to as 3rd tier magic, so that's unlikely. I'll agree that his biggest spells are closer to "what the epic handbook suggests" than "what an intelligent caster would use epic magic for", but take a peek at d20 srd, then sigh & shake your head at what's suggested.

I feel like I've seen Shalltear stack enough metamagics on a spell to make it 12th level. She could have used some metamagic reduction abilities, or could be a better caster than her boss, her using 12th level apwlls strongly suggests that his 10th level spells are actually 10th level spells. How casually he casts Gate, vs actually talking about super-tier spells, makes me think the latter is epic magic.

He's also clearly mostly an arcane caster, but was able to resurrect an outsider. Might be an arcane class that gets access to True Resurrection, but any wizard can do that with epic magic. His melting 5 million gold to do it also suggests "epic ritual" more than 'true Resurrection" to me.

I kinda half remember early season one his mentioning making some epic items -a ring that makes him immune to some element or another, I think? I'm almost entirely certain he's mentioned crafting some of his items (the ring of three wishes?) though they may not be the epic ones.

So it's possible that he's got a build capable of casting dual 9's, decent weapon & armor proficiencies, subordinates capable of 12th level spells, that super-tier magic is just non-standard 9ths, and he's got all the treasure of a guild full of 20's. But that's enough weird ifs & maybes that it seems simpler that he's just got epic casting & improved spell capacity.

Resurrecting Shalltear Bloodfallen was a feature of her being a floor guardian of the Tomb of Nazzeric. It is a feature of his guild hall not one of his spells. So probably wonderous architecture. When he resurrects the lizardmen, he specfically uses an item to do it because he doesn't know resurrection magic.

Shalltear is odd, because some of those abilities are said to be racial, and some class. Not actual spells.

[tiercel]

Ravenloft? No one really thrives there. Your best-case scenario is you’re getting a Halloween special, where the Mists grab you up for a creepy monster mash and your optimization-fu is strong enough to let you survive until the Mists throw you back like an unwanted fish.

In the rather more likely instance that your power level attracts the attention of the Dark Powers? They don’t have stats; they can’t be bargained with; they can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you wish you were dead... (Which they probably won’t allow, won’t allow to stick, or will only allow in Extra-Strength Undead flavor.)

[Heliomance]

One more. What about just planeshifting to all these empty earths and destroy all the shards turning all the parahumans into normal people and eliminating the threat to your own mind?

Do they have anyway of defending themselves? Could anyone travel interdimensionally to try to stop you?

It seems like this would be doing the world a favour.

+Respect for the "I don't know" answers to metaphysics interactions.

Btw just reread Protection from Evil, it seems like it blocks effects without mentioning magic, so I don't think the effect being Ex matters. Could be wrong.

One big issue is that none of this stuff about shards is common knowledge in setting. There's less than ten people in the world that know about it, probably, so finding out that you even need to take precautions is a challenge in itself. It's very hard to prepare for unknown unknowns.

[Calthropstu]

On the overlord discussion:

It hasn't hit the Anime yet, but Ainz DEFINITELY casts epic spells.
He casts a single spell that wipes out 100,000 troops and folliows it with a spell that summons the equivalent of 5 balors in one shot
He and his primary minions are all epic. Primary being the main floor guardians. The sisters are all around lvl 10-15.

Evil Eye is definitely at least lvl 12 (vermin bane is basically cloudkill and she casts it more than 6 times in a single fight) possibly as high as 15.

She also applies maximize and penetrating to a 2nd lvl spell which is 6th I believe.

And it's clear she's a sorcerer. So 12 is minimum. She also has great combat skills so my guess is monk 3, sorcerer 12 and she's also undead so she's got LA as well.

[Rhedyn]

Resurrecting Shalltear Bloodfallen was a feature of her being a floor guardian of the Tomb of Nazzeric. It is a feature of his guild hall not one of his spells. So probably wonderous architecture. When he resurrects the lizardmen, he specfically uses an item to do it because he doesn't know resurrection magic.

Shalltear is odd, because some of those abilities are said to be racial, and some class. Not actual spells.No, it was the staff that could resurrect her, it was only expensive because she is high level.

Ainz also has a wand of resurrection that works on regular people. He only doesn't use it because it might attract attention.

[Quertus]

So, DBZ is kinda my go-to "yes, please!" destination for a metagaming level 20 D&D Wizard (or other similarly powerful reality traveler). Because NI power and NI idiocy make for the best minions. Whether directly, or as Simulacra / Ice Assassins / whatever. Also, there's few worlds where I'd be more likely to farm weapons-grade stupidity from, and add it to the list of ingredients like Liquid Pain, than DBZ.

As an added bonus, by cannon, anyone can learn their tricks. So, a few million years of study, and my Wizard will be the über buffed, with crazy at-will world-destroying powers, dimension hopping, etc. Few worlds could possibly be better.

No, a Wizard 20 wouldn't thrive anywhere that they don't know not to trust their divinations when they tell them not to stick their noses in things beyond their kin, or those places that run on Narritivium that would also actively oppose or dislike the Wizard.

So, WH40K, where the Warp runs on Concensus, and Concensus says that life ****s? That would be tough. Although, with sufficient metagaming, it might be possible; without that, not really. Unless, like the Necrons, the Wizard was somehow immune to the Warp?

That's probably the only one I'm aware of giving the Wizard 20 any real trouble with the whole "thriving" thing. Being a **** and taking over may not be advisable in some worlds (like, say, many D&D worlds!), but that's different from "thriving", at least in my book.

Speaking of, any Combat as Sport D&D worlds kinda inhibit "thriving", because you'll always be encountering something threatening...

EDIT:
Ravenloft? No one really thrives there.

Well, this one time, I ran a character who just loved Ravenloft. I mean, sure, it had horrible things, but it also had water and trees and forests. The place was paradise! The only way Ravenloft found to make him depressed was to get rid of him.

[Goblin_Priest]

The prime world (i.e. real life) in the TV series "Once Upon a Time", because there's no magic there, and you are no better off than a lvl 20 commoner. ;)

[Armyguyclaude]

Anywhere with a character whose main shtick is plot armor. If I'm in Marvel, Squirrel Girl can beat me. I don't know how, and the details don't really matter, she'll be able to do it.

I love your avatar. Such a great movie. Also great point. Plot Armor op as ****. Batman. xD

[Rhedyn]

I love your avatar. Such a great movie. Also great point. Plot Armor op as ****. Batman. xD
I play RPGs with plot armor, it's strong but not impossible to overcome.

There is a big difference between that and being a Gary Stu/Mary Sue character. Those characters will constantly pull new powers out of their backstory or effortlessly invent new powers to deal with the new threat.

Irregular at magic high school MC would only have to survive contact with the level 20 wizard AND not already have a nonsense power that let's him auto-win, before shorty inventing new revolutionary but obvious magic that let's him overcome the level 20 wizard.

Like his world hadn't invented flying magic yet. He does it in like a week (AND I think he found a way to make it mass marketable). Flying would be cool right? Obviously every mage ever tried to invent it right? But only glorious MC-san figures it out because he is just so special.

I forgot that he could resurrect himself (or blocked that out of my mind).

He's a nonsense character that will probably counter every spell you have and then drop a nuke on your magic immune golems and kill them anyway because he only split atoms with magic thus the blast wasn't magical or some other poop.

Characters like him never have an established power set, because his real power is being the bestest person in the world at basically everything (except he has no emotions boo hoo because they interfered with his super magical might so the government got rid of them)

[AnonymousPepper]

Well, this one time, I ran a character who just loved Ravenloft. I mean, sure, it had horrible things, but it also had water and trees and forests. The place was paradise! The only way Ravenloft found to make him depressed was to get rid of him.

What, was he from Athas or something? :smallamused:

[enderlord99]

Well, this one time, I ran a character who just loved Ravenloft. I mean, sure, it had horrible things, but it also had water and trees and forests. The place was paradise! The only way Ravenloft found to make him depressed was to get rid of him.

Kalidnay, is part of Ravenloft. It has none of those things.

[Quertus]

What, was he from Athas or something? :smallamused:

Maaaaaybe.... :small tongue:

Really, he's more like from "Bob's Athas"; ie, something that looks like Athas on the surface, but it's probably completely different under the hood. Like most every instance of someone running an "official" setting.


Kalidnay, is part of Ravenloft. It has none of those things.

Good thing the GM didn't know about that. Was it part of the original Ravenloft?

[Segev]

Worlds to avoid: Ravenloft (the Dark Powers are Bigger Than You(tm), no matter how awesome you might be). WB Toonverse (Bugs Bunny is bad enough, but even the most powerful wizard is screwed if the Warner Brothers (and the Warner Sister) decide he's their Special Friend). House of Cards (while I'm not SCREWED there, the sheer amount of 'burn it to the ground and start over from single-celled organisms' required to make it not filled with hateable people is just...more work than I want to put into it).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

WB Toonverse (Bugs Bunny is bad enough, but even the most powerful wizard is screwed if the Warner Brothers (and the Warner Sister) decide he's their Special Friend).Not of you're reasonably genre-savvy. Just decide you love them back in a way that annoys them more than they could possibly annoy you.

In other words, treat them like they treat everyone else.

And YOU have bona fide magic backing you up.

[Segev]

Not of you're reasonably genre-savvy. Just decide you love them back in a way that annoys them more than they could possibly annoy you.

In other words, treat them like they treat everyone else.

And YOU have bona fide magic backing you up.

Magic won't help against them; they're reality-warping eldritch horrors.

But yes, staying on their good side would help. I'm not sure I could out Law of Funny them, though, enough to elude their powers or turn them back upon them.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Magic won't help against them; they're reality-warping eldritch horrors.

But yes, staying on their good side would help. I'm not sure I could out Law of Funny them, though, enough to elude their powers or turn them back upon them.I was thinking of using said magic the same way they use the Toon Force. For instance: stand in full view in front of them, make them want to avoid you entirely by engaging them with your boring/annoying/creepy hobbies ("Let me tell you about my level 20 chicken farming barbarian!"), then when they turn around to run, you're right there 'cuz you dimension door'd behind them.

[Braininthejar2]

On Ainz.

Super tier magic is clearly intended to represent epic - spells above the normal tiers, that are like SLA on cooldown instead of using mana (similarly to how epic spells don't use normal spell slots). Fallen Down is quite similar to some uninspired examples of epic spells from the handbook - just massive damage expanded over a large area and mitigated by increased casting time.

[Ellrin]

except he has no emotions boo hoo

I feel like you might be portraying this no emotions thing a bit inaccurately.

Either that or the manga is.

[Azoth]

I play RPGs with plot armor, it's strong but not impossible to overcome.

There is a big difference between that and being a Gary Stu/Mary Sue character. Those characters will constantly pull new powers out of their backstory or effortlessly invent new powers to deal with the new threat.

Irregular at magic high school MC would only have to survive contact with the level 20 wizard AND not already have a nonsense power that let's him auto-win, before shorty inventing new revolutionary but obvious magic that let's him overcome the level 20 wizard.

Like his world hadn't invented flying magic yet. He does it in like a week (AND I think he found a way to make it mass marketable). Flying would be cool right? Obviously every mage ever tried to invent it right? But only glorious MC-san figures it out because he is just so special.

I forgot that he could resurrect himself (or blocked that out of my mind).

He's a nonsense character that will probably counter every spell you have and then drop a nuke on your magic immune golems and kill them anyway because he only split atoms with magic thus the blast wasn't magical or some other poop.

Characters like him never have an established power set, because his real power is being the bestest person in the world at basically everything (except he has no emotions boo hoo because they interfered with his super magical might so the government got rid of them)

He didn't invent a spell that allowed mages to fly. He developed a CAD system that could handle the computations required for repeated castings of a flight spell. A mage could fly in the light novels, but their CAD system could not handle the stacking computations and commands of activating multiple instances of the spell everytime a variable such as direction or speed needed to be changed. After 5 variable changes the CAD would basically crash and the mage would drop back to the ground before they could recast the spell.

His specialized CAD was developed to basically chain cast the spell as a new instance everytime the variables changed fast enough to not have the mage drop back to the ground.

It was also a project he had been working on for a considerable amount of time before it is officially brought up in the series. His production team comments that he has brought them a "new prototype" for a CAD system to try and make true "flight" a real thing.

Even then, the system is excessively draining for a mage's magic. Completely draining and exhausting the entire testing team in a manner of minutes. A flaw he comments will need to be fixed before making them public knowledge let alone available to the public.


The 12 episodes of the anime do not go on long enough to explain or showcase the full extent of his abilities. He does have clearly defined abilities and limitations in the light novels.

While he is over powered compared to most people in his world there are characters that are on his level and can take advantage of his limitations.

[Ellrin]

Dragon's Dogma? While there aren't any threats in that world a fullcaster 20 couldn't crush under his heel, if he tried getting involved with the cycle, he'd probably end up as the new seneschal, which means something like thousands of years (or maybe even an eternity, since you are so much stronger than anything else in that world) of being restrained to essentially oversee the world. Potentially impotently, and depending on interpretation, doing so may even drain his will over time.

You could try to game the system with the dragon's wish, but that comes with all the pitfalls of normal wishing, and since it's strongly implied the sacrifice can be something other than a person, you'd probably have to sacrifice whatever is dearest to you in order to get that wish, instead of just whoever, so even an aloof, "I don't need human[/elf/dwarf/etc.] connections" caster 20 is affected.

He might do pretty well with sufficient system mastery/metagaming to know what awaits him if he tries getting involved with the cycle, but even then, there's not a lot of information regarding how powerful the dragon's wish is, so if an arisen made the sacrifice, it's possible he'd be able to screw with our caster's plans somehow.

He'd probably do pretty well on Bitterblack Isle, though finding it—or even knowing of its existence—might be pretty difficult, since only arisen and pawns can go there, and even most arisen and pawns don't know it exists. I suppose it's possible plane shift or something similar may be able to bring a caster there without being an arisen. Still, extended time on BBI would probably require frequent Will saves vs. Wis damage and some insanity effects, and depending on whether you interpret the respawning of monsters and Daimon as a mere game mechanic or an actual feature of the island, you might have to deal with frequent annoyances, even if none of them are particularly dangerous to a well-prepared caster 20. Not to mention Death would probably keep showing up, and his scythe swing is a no-save-just-lose; as long as you stay out of reach, that's no problem, but you'll definitely want some contingencies in place for him, since he's a persistent bastard who likes to drop in without much warning.

[Arbane]

Anywhere addition is non-commutative.

[Calthropstu]

Anywhere that "opposite day" was real. "Teleport? More like rooted in place!."

[Heliomance]

Final Destination?

[Lord Raziere]

Lets try to instead come up with archetypes instead of looking at actual franchises:

The Reality Warper Universe:
In this universe, everyone is a reality warper. Any consistent rules is won through agreement between people in completely normal conversation, as they can automatically without fail detect any attempt to warp reality to persuade them forcefully, and battles are a constant improvised reality warping exchange that is much faster than a fullcasters six second rounds.

The Magic Hating Universe
This is not a dead magic universe. This is a universe that actively hates and destroys magic as apart of it laws of physics, any form of it from any source. It is alive, it knows any form of magic you can possibly name, hates all of them and destroys all of them when detected, as well as those who cast it.

The Preparation Hating Universe:
This is a universe that hates people preparing for things. Any planning ahead is destroyed with the full force of fate and the world behind it. Planning to have toast for breakfast tomorrow? too bad, all the toast is gone, have some soup.

The Immune Universe:
Something about the universe simply makes it immune to anything Vancian-casting related. Everything works, but anything even tangentally related to vancian casting has no effect on anything.

The Fatalist Universe:
Anyone who comes into this universe has no free will, no save. Everything is determined by fate and you can't escape it, no matter how hard you try, and the wizards fate is not to thrive. If you have free will, your not in this universe.

Sapient Black Hole Universe:
A universe of what is basically black hole elementals. any matter or energy that touches one gets sucked in beyond the event horizon and makes that one bigger, unable to escape.

The Undying Universe:
The inhabitants of this universe are hostile and cannot die by any means. They will eventually break out of any binding or containment, eventually break through any defense, they do nothing but battle forever and cannot persuaded to do otherwise.

The God AI universe:
A universe taken over by a post-singularity godlike artificial intelligence. This AI is far more intelligent than any wizard and has nanobots and femtobot swarms, capable of fabricating any technological weapon, calculating all possible scenarios, and has every galaxy under their control.

Sapient Writing Universe:
All forms of writing, script, tattoos, carvings, drawings and so on all are sapient, hostile to all other lifeforms and any form of these things that come within this universe instantly become the same as them, and thus try to kill the person carrying them.

The Fragile Universe
A universe where casting a single spell causes all of reality to instantly implode on itself from how little sense magic makes while the wizard is still within it, killing him along with it.

[ShurikVch]

Even there, you can't underestimate the impact that 20 HD worth of skills and HP, and all that other junk. Hell, toss a wizard in to Earth, and they could probably go damned far even in boxing rings, if they took Imp. Unarmed Strike (and that's supposed to be their weak point). So, it would need to add a bit more challenge than simply negating their magic.How about the Wild Magic Universe?

Also, Krynn.
Why?
Well... once our supposed Fullcaster 20 will appear there, he would be promptly kicked out by the gods - because they're already had Raistlin, and don't need repeats of that debacle
I'm pretty sure you're can't "thrive" somewhere, if you're just isn't "there" anymore
Oh, and if our Fullcaster 20 would try to fight the gods to prevent that all "being kicked out"?..
Even if he will, eventually, win it - devastation would be so severe, it would be completely impossible to thrive there

[theblasblas]

The world of To Aru Majutsu no Index, because not only are there espers who are essentially limited reality warpers that can use their abilities at will, there exists in that world a living embodiment of anti-supernatural that reincarnates every time you kill him because the world itself yearns for his existence. The best you can do is try to appease his current incarnation, but as long as you're planning on doing anything that will significantly impact the world, the very laws of existence state that he will somehow find you and shatter your illusions. All your magic items and constructs shatter like glass and if you happen to be an "outsider" you'd likely get erased the moment his right hand touches you.

[Segev]

The world of To Aru Majutsu no Index, because not only are there espers who are essentially limited reality warpers that can use their abilities at will, there exists in that world a living embodiment of anti-supernatural that reincarnates every time you kill him because the world itself yearns for his existence. The best you can do is try to appease his current incarnation, but as long as you're planning on doing anything that will significantly impact the world, the very laws of existence state that he will somehow find you and shatter your illusions. All your magic items and constructs shatter like glass and if you happen to be an "outsider" you'd likely get erased the moment his right hand touches you.

Because his ability requires touch, it can be thwarted as long as what you do never requires contact with him to work. Admittedly, you're going to be spending a great deal of time Contingent teleporting away, and otherwise taking advantage of the fact that he exists only in one place at a time. Minions will be quite useful. Preferably minions who are loyal due to non-magical, or instantaneous effects. (It is shown that he cannot undo the left over results from instantaneous effects. He can't restore damage done by magical fire, he can't bring back the dead, he can't heal permanent injuries to major organs caused by magical damage.)

[Nifft]

The world of To Aru Majutsu no Index, because not only are there espers who are essentially limited reality warpers that can use their abilities at will, there exists in that world a living embodiment of anti-supernatural that reincarnates every time you kill him because the world itself yearns for his existence. The best you can do is try to appease his current incarnation, but as long as you're planning on doing anything that will significantly impact the world, the very laws of existence state that he will somehow find you and shatter your illusions. All your magic items and constructs shatter like glass and if you happen to be an "outsider" you'd likely get erased the moment his right hand touches you.

*one wiki-walk later*

Apparently after being punched by the illusion-shattering hand guy you learn how to live your life properly and you get a free little girl (as a consolation pet). So if you don't mind being required to live your life properly, the "continued existence" tax is basically (1) one face-punch from a teenager, and (2) raising a random kid.

If that's the cost of being a level 20 Wizard, I can afford to pay it.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

I gave it some more thought and I have to go back on my agreement that Paradox would hit caster 20 in the OWoD. Caster 20's magic is nothing like spheres; OWoD mages have ranks in magical skills like Space or Life and creates effects that draw from one or more spheres. Space can do things like create unending hallways, teleport, and remote viewing, but it can also be used to cast a spell remotely. Because caster 20 doesn't construct effects on the fly like this they're more like an off the charts hedge mage so no paradox.

[Cosi]

I gave it some more thought and I have to go back on my agreement that Paradox would hit caster 20 in the OWoD. Caster 20's magic is nothing like spheres; OWoD mages have ranks in magical skills like Space or Life and creates effects that draw from one or more spheres. Space can do things like create unending hallways, teleport, and remote viewing, but it can also be used to cast a spell remotely. Because caster 20 doesn't construct effects on the fly like this they're more like an off the charts hedge mage so no paradox.

I'm not a WoD expert, but paradox doesn't hit other magical creatures like Vampires or Werewolves, right? If that's the case, there's no reason it would hit a D&D Wizard.

[theblasblas]

Because his ability requires touch, it can be thwarted as long as what you do never requires contact with him to work. Admittedly, you're going to be spending a great deal of time Contingent teleporting away, and otherwise taking advantage of the fact that he exists only in one place at a time. Minions will be quite useful. Preferably minions who are loyal due to non-magical, or instantaneous effects. (It is shown that he cannot undo the left over results from instantaneous effects. He can't restore damage done by magical fire, he can't bring back the dead, he can't heal permanent injuries to major organs caused by magical damage.)

Imagine Breaker is... a bit more complex than what can be easily described by using DnD terms. It essentially works by resetting the world into its "natural" state, hence why it's more apt to call it "anti-supernatural" than "anti-magic". Suffice to say if effect can be removed via greater dispel or break enchantment his Imagine Breaker can affect it even if the effects are instantaneous.

As for contingent spells, what'll it be? "If Kamijou Touma enters within 10 feet cast teleport"? This is assuming your character already knows about him, and knows to look out for him specifically. Whereas for Touma its like the laws of causality that guides him. One of the characters literally does a controlled experiment of "If I create a situation that has no relation to Kamijou Touma, but requires Kamijou Touma to resolve, will he appear?" and he did appear despite the fact the experiment was in a magically enclosed space in the middle of nowhere. He's like a Behelith from Berserk.

I think the biggest question here is how much preparation time you'll get. If before you get transported to this world you're allowed to make use of magic tricks to get 99999999 pearls of power and gather enough materials in your bags of holding to last you a century, you could probably take over, or whatever "thrive" means, no problem(as long as you don't piss of the gods that can destroy and recreate the world in the blink of an eye). But if you just have WBL 20, you'll run out of spells eventually, whereas most esper powers work on "short rest" rules, and he has allies that can teleport or fly at supersonic speeds. On the magic side there also seems to be plenty of "No save, just die" spells.


*one wiki-walk later*

Apparently after being punched by the illusion-shattering hand guy you learn how to live your life properly and you get a free little girl (as a consolation pet). So if you don't mind being required to live your life properly, the "continued existence" tax is basically (1) one face-punch from a teenager, and (2) raising a random kid.

If that's the cost of being a level 20 Wizard, I can afford to pay it.


While I would definitely love to spend my days taking care of a loli as cute as Last Order, I wouldn't say "Being burdened with responsibility and a moral code" to be "thriving" as a 20th level spellcaster

[Nifft]

While I would definitely love to spend my days taking care of a loli as cute as Last Order, I wouldn't say "Being burdened with responsibility and a moral code" to be "thriving" as a 20th level spellcaster

Meh, I had the good alignment flaw already.

[Zancloufer]

On the Index/Railgun note; Is there anything that a full caster 20 could do to feasibly stop Accelerator? I mean other than run away or try to blow up the planet.

I mean you would probably have to go out of your way to piss him off but if you did is there any method for the caster to reasonable stop him without some really dodge RAW abuse or infinite loops?

Also I'm pretty sure Index/Railgun teleporters are ALOT deadlier than D&D ones. They can telefrag. TELEFRAG. Literally get within ~1km of a pissed off Move Point and your entire cranium is now replaced with sharp point metal objects. Not sure what that does by D&D RAW rules but reasonably it would probably be instant death. Unavoidable instant death.

[Calthropstu]

On the Index/Railgun note; Is there anything that a full caster 20 could do to feasibly stop Accelerator? I mean other than run away or try to blow up the planet.

I mean you would probably have to go out of your way to piss him off but if you did is there any method for the caster to reasonable stop him without some really dodge RAW abuse or infinite loops?

Also I'm pretty sure Index/Railgun teleporters are ALOT deadlier than D&D ones. They can telefrag. TELEFRAG. Literally get within ~1km of a pissed off Move Point and your entire cranium is now replaced with sharp point metal objects. Not sure what that does by D&D RAW rules but reasonably it would probably be instant death. Unavoidable instant death.

To be fair, telefrag exists in 3.5 as well in the form of decerberate.

[Quertus]

I gave it some more thought and I have to go back on my agreement that Paradox would hit caster 20 in the OWoD. Caster 20's magic is nothing like spheres; OWoD mages have ranks in magical skills like Space or Life and creates effects that draw from one or more spheres. Space can do things like create unending hallways, teleport, and remote viewing, but it can also be used to cast a spell remotely. Because caster 20 doesn't construct effects on the fly like this they're more like an off the charts hedge mage so no paradox.


I'm not a WoD expert, but paradox doesn't hit other magical creatures like Vampires or Werewolves, right? If that's the case, there's no reason it would hit a D&D Wizard.

Like vampires and werewolves, D&D Wizards use static magic. They do not bend reality (no matter what most people wrongly say), and they would not garner Paradox.

And this is why WoD would be deadly for them.

Because static mages can be taught True Magic, can be taught to actually bend reality. At which point, they lose all of their static magic.

So, yeah, in addition to "casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction on an artifact", add "learn real Magick" to the list of ways to permanently lose the ability to cast spells forever.


While I would definitely love to spend my days taking care of a loli as cute as Last Order, I wouldn't say "Being burdened with responsibility and a moral code" to be "thriving" as a 20th level spellcaster

One could just as easily argue that it is the only way for a Wizard 20 to thrive :smallwink:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

So, yeah, in addition to "casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction on an artifact", add "learn real Magick" to the list of ways to permanently lose the ability to cast spells forever.Well, if it's spelled with a 'k,' it's an abomination and must be utterly obliterated, and I'm definitely not learning that crap.

[Eldariel]

On the Index/Railgun note; Is there anything that a full caster 20 could do to feasibly stop Accelerator? I mean other than run away or try to blow up the planet.

I mean you would probably have to go out of your way to piss him off but if you did is there any method for the caster to reasonable stop him without some really dodge RAW abuse or infinite loops?

Also I'm pretty sure Index/Railgun teleporters are ALOT deadlier than D&D ones. They can telefrag. TELEFRAG. Literally get within ~1km of a pissed off Move Point and your entire cranium is now replaced with sharp point metal objects. Not sure what that does by D&D RAW rules but reasonably it would probably be instant death. Unavoidable instant death.

Index-level stuff is really tame by D&D standards. First of all, Foresight plus Celerity means nobody is ever touching you. D&D Teleport is also hundreds of miles. Hide Life, Delay Death or equivalent also means that those who cannot interact with magic are completely powerless to harm you. Add Freedom of Movement, Mind Blank, etc. and they can't even touch you.

Touma...is basically a warrior with regards to his combat prowess: forget level 20, as long as you're flying a bit higher, he'll never touch you. But Foresight + Contingencies and Celerity ensure that it supernever happens. Now that which the arm is sealing is a bit more formidable but eminently beatable by D&D standards, as evident by the ease with which it was beaten when Touma had his arm chopped.

As for espers like accelerator, they're basically just Warlocks. Who cares about all day if their stuff doesn't do very much at all? Mindrape seems like an easy answer as well as Magic Jar, Dominate Person, Finger of Death, etc. that don't have an energy vector to interact with. You can also just ignore him since his existence is irrelevant to you except as Simulacrums/Dread Warriors/minions. He can't affect you so whatever. He also needs to actively defend to use his abilities so just overwhelming his mind or attacking from an alternat plane of reality ought to work. Someone like the Railgun is even less relevant.

No, the things you care about are all on the Magic side but their powers are pretty pathetic compared to yours. Your usual time manipulation, minionmancy, planar travel, shapeshifting and company far outstrip what they can do. The casters in that universe don't compare favourably to level 11 casters, let alone level 20. They have bigger, wider radius booms but that is quite irrelevant.

[Mystral]

You're a level 20 full caster from D&D 3.x or PF. Is there a movie/tv/game/comic/etc universe you would definitely NOT want to mess with?

Your fullcasting self gets sent there and cannot leave.

What universe is safe from your fullcasting might?

Assume access to but not travel to the appropriate D&D cosmology.

Warhammer 40k. You're the most powerfull magician in the universe? Great, make a will save every time you cast a spell. When you fail your head explodes and becomes a demon portal.

[MeimuHakurei]

Warhammer 40k. You're the most powerfull magician in the universe? Great, make a will save every time you cast a spell. When you fail your head explodes and becomes a demon portal.

What exactly happens is dependent on what kind of full caster you are - arcanists like Wizards and Sorcerers can get killed while casting because of Tzeentch's Curse, which is just as planned. Divine casters like Clerics will have to deal with the gods of that world being much more picky in the spells they want to grant, eliminating those they don't particularly like. Psions and other manifesters are the ones who are driven insane and eventually physically ripped apart by the warp.

[theblasblas]

Index-level stuff is really tame by D&D standards. First of all, Foresight plus Celerity means nobody is ever touching you. D&D Teleport is also hundreds of miles. Hide Life, Delay Death or equivalent also means that those who cannot interact with magic are completely powerless to harm you. Add Freedom of Movement, Mind Blank, etc. and they can't even touch you.

Touma...is basically a warrior with regards to his combat prowess: forget level 20, as long as you're flying a bit higher, he'll never touch you. But Foresight + Contingencies and Celerity ensure that it supernever happens. Now that which the arm is sealing is a bit more formidable but eminently beatable by D&D standards, as evident by the ease with which it was beaten when Touma had his arm chopped.

As for espers like accelerator, they're basically just Warlocks. Who cares about all day if their stuff doesn't do very much at all? Mindrape seems like an easy answer as well as Magic Jar, Dominate Person, Finger of Death, etc. that don't have an energy vector to interact with. You can also just ignore him since his existence is irrelevant to you except as Simulacrums/Dread Warriors/minions. He can't affect you so whatever. He also needs to actively defend to use his abilities so just overwhelming his mind or attacking from an alternat plane of reality ought to work. Someone like the Railgun is even less relevant.

No, the things you care about are all on the Magic side but their powers are pretty pathetic compared to yours. Your usual time manipulation, minionmancy, planar travel, shapeshifting and company far outstrip what they can do. The casters in that universe don't compare favourably to level 11 casters, let alone level 20. They have bigger, wider radius booms but that is quite irrelevant.


I think the unfavourable comparison only exists if you interpret them very strictly via DnD terminology giving them levels, classes and such, but most characters don't work that way. Essentially rather than converting archetype and powerlevel to DnD classes and levels, we need to convert non-DnD feats into stats. Also, in these instances, fluff is important.

Firstly, Kamijou Touma. He has a "natural sixth sense". It allows him to block Accelerators wing barrage which was wayyyy more than 5 attacks per round.While his HP, Fort save and Stats might be that of a normal person his Ref, Wil, and Attack is boosted to very high levels via virtue of his natural sixth sense. If you fly away he can always just ask on of his harem members that have the ability to fly or jump really really high. Heck, if it came down to it, he could just ask one of the Saints(who essentially have epic level stats) to drag him along and use his right arm as weapon. I also don't know how foresight is supposed to help against him specifically, it's more like a spidersense and doesn't help you plan in advance, also it's doubtful foresight would work against him as he's been shown to be able to negate supernatural forms of detection before.

Secondly, Accelerator. Any spell that has line of effect, references distance in any way or makes it seem ad if your doing anything that requires something going towards accelerator(reaching into his mind, looking at him, etc.) can be blocked. This is one of the instances where fluff is important. Also, aside from endangering Last Order, he'll also be trouble for you if Touma asks for a favor. Heck if Touma asks the sisters for help, he'll inevitably get dragged along.

Lastly, the magic side. As mentioned before they have "no save, just die" spells, the only way to defend against them is perhaps spell resistance and immunity. Arguably reflex saves could work as well, but some of them require ridiculouly high reflexes as you're having to dodge things like light and sound. A example of magicians you'll inevitably piss off if you try to conquer the world is Fiamma of the Right, who has a spell that destroys anything that isn't a god, and a spell that allows him to attack you from anywhere on Earth in an instant.

It all comes down to preparation really, if you're allowed to copy all the spells, and get near-inifinite resources before getting transported you have a chance, if you're just a WBL 20 fullcaster sent to the To Aru Universe you're ****ed.

[Quertus]

So, um, is the challenge to "thrive", or to "Dominate"? Is it to do well by one's self, or to singlehandedly conquer the universe?

[theblasblas]

So, um, is the challenge to "thrive", or to "Dominate"? Is it to do well by one's self, or to singlehandedly conquer the universe?

The OP really should clarify this. It depends on your definition of "thrive" really. I guess you can technically "thrive" anywhere except somewhere like Warhammer 40k if your definition of "thrive" is "Relax in my extradimensional space". I personally think interpreting "thrive" as "dominance" would make a more interesting discussion.

[Calthropstu]

The OP really should clarify this. It depends on your definition of "thrive" really. I guess you can technically "thrive" anywhere except somewhere like Warhammer 40k if your definition of "thrive" is "Relax in my extradimensional space". I personally think interpreting "thrive" as "dominance" would make a more interesting discussion.

See, we all have different ideas of "thrive." For the "A certain magical index" universe, you really would have little trouble thriving.

You'd be very wealthy in a short time, could have all sorts of fun, be essentially immortal and help people by the millions. That, by any definition, is thriving.

Sure, maybe Touma could stop you from aking over the world but so what? As long as you don't try to hurt people en masse, take over the world or try to directly affect the touma forces, Academy City, The English Puritan Church or the Roman Orthodox Church you're pretty much free to do as you please.

[unseenmage]

So, um, is the challenge to "thrive", or to "Dominate"? Is it to do well by one's self, or to singlehandedly conquer the universe?

The OP really should clarify this. It depends on your definition of "thrive" really. I guess you can technically "thrive" anywhere except somewhere like Warhammer 40k if your definition of "thrive" is "Relax in my extradimensional space". I personally think interpreting "thrive" as "dominance" would make a more interesting discussion.

See, we all have different ideas of "thrive." For the "A certain magical index" universe, you really would have little trouble thriving.

...
I used the word 'thrive' exactly so each kind of discussion could happen because I know not everyone has fun the same way.

This does mean that utopian or heroic worlds tend to have a 'sit back and relax' solution but that's cool too. They're happy ending worlds.

Then again, if you consider shaking things up and wrecking face to be what is best in life then that's fine too.

It does occur to me though, that one would have to actually cast spells to properly be considered a thriving spellcaster.
Just a thought.

[Segev]

Imagine Breaker is... a bit more complex than what can be easily described by using DnD terms. It essentially works by resetting the world into its "natural" state, hence why it's more apt to call it "anti-supernatural" than "anti-magic". Suffice to say if effect can be removed via greater dispel or break enchantment his Imagine Breaker can affect it even if the effects are instantaneous.

As for contingent spells, what'll it be? "If Kamijou Touma enters within 10 feet cast teleport"? This is assuming your character already knows about him, and knows to look out for him specifically. Whereas for Touma its like the laws of causality that guides him. One of the characters literally does a controlled experiment of "If I create a situation that has no relation to Kamijou Touma, but requires Kamijou Touma to resolve, will he appear?" and he did appear despite the fact the experiment was in a magically enclosed space in the middle of nowhere. He's like a Behelith from Berserk.This is addressed already, so I'll just reiterate that the contingencies and other protections that keep a wizard from being splattered by a fighter wearing an anti-magic field kick in here, too: you never let anybody touch you in combat, so the melee-range disjunction on two legs that is Touma is, at worst, going to chase you off temporarily.


While I would definitely love to spend my days taking care of a loli as cute as Last Order, I wouldn't say "Being burdened with responsibility and a moral code" to be "thriving" as a 20th level spellcasterI don't see why not. Leaving Segev Stormlord out of this and dropping myself in with the powers of a 20th level wizard, I'd love to have a kid. Several, honestly. Now, I just need to find a wife, and I'll definitely be thriving. ("Being a 20th level wizard" covers pretty much all the non-family parts of thriving.)


Warhammer 40k. You're the most powerfull magician in the universe? Great, make a will save every time you cast a spell. When you fail your head explodes and becomes a demon portal.Mind blank should do the trick. And, as a necromancer, I have additional contingencies in case of death.

[Rhedyn]

And in Overlord you could appease Lord Ainz or be dead.

I do not think you need to dominate to thrive, but you should be able to or you aren't really transcending the limits of the world you are in.

Like a fullcaster in the real world could just live a quiet life of infinite wealth but if the world ever went crazy on him, he could just assert dominance, create a new age of legends, and then fade into the background once the world is less silly.

For Index, a full caster could just cast tensors tranformation and shoot the MC with a gun.

For the 40K universe, if we assume your powers work as normal (because I consider that being a fullcaster), then you aren't threatened with demon possession just for using magic. The issue becomes scale. 40K armies are dangerous and many of them can counter magic and have reality bending powers. I think a careful wizard could become a faction in the 40K universe that strikes from an extra-dimensional fortress with hordes of Golems. He could also bind Demons of the warp to his service and through sheer force of will conjure and bind good aligned outsiders. The warp is pretty flexible so a really clever wizard would try to instill good aligned deities to counter all the bad ones, but that's probably more of an end-game goal and seems really hard to pull off. A full caster could live in the 40K universe, but they couldn't thrive.

[theblasblas]

This is addressed already, so I'll just reiterate that the contingencies and other protections that keep a wizard from being splattered by a fighter wearing an anti-magic field kick in here, too: you never let anybody touch you in combat, so the melee-range disjunction on two legs that is Touma is, at worst, going to chase you off temporarily.

The moment he touches you with his right hand, all your contingent magics will disappear as they are placed on your body, along with most of your magic items, so really the only relevant one here would be "If Kamijou Touma comes within 10 feet cast teleport" which again, you'll run out of contingencies and spells before he runs out of thing to chase you with if we're going by WBL. Even if it wasn't Touma, you'd lose in a fight with a Saint. They can move and fight at supersonic speeds and one attack is enough to kill you, in DnD terms that's like having 20 standard actions and 20 move actions per turn as a conservative estimate.

Now even if you're in the side of good, the fact that you're a powerful magic user puts you in Aleister Crowley's hit list, the guy hates magic and can create and kill gods using science. He's the man pulling the strings in the world of To Aru, the moment he finds out about you, there's little doubt that he'd immediately start planning ways to kill you, which might involve Touma.


I used the word 'thrive' exactly so each kind of discussion could happen because I know not everyone has fun the same way.

Ahh, okay. Since you used the phrase "What universe is safe from you arcane might" I was leaning towards dominance, but if the thread is supposed to be open, I'll just discuss with the guys who want to discuss this on the perspective of dominance.

Could you please clarify another thing? You mentioned "Assume access to but not travel to the appropriate D&D cosmology." Does that mean that spells like "Contact Other Plane" contacts something from the DnD cosmology? One of the main strengths of casters is their ability to plan ahead, them being in another world which the deities of DnD would no nothing about is a pretty big issue.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Actually, where dealing with epic threats such as Ainz is concerned, it's really not difficult to access epic spells as a level 20 caster. Any effect that grants HD or allows you to gain levels would nab you access to Epic Spellcasting at 21 HD, so feel free to contract lycanthropy (curse of lycanthropy comes in handy here) or subcontract a bard (Leadership? Thrallherd? A relatively small amount of gp?) to use Inspire Greatness on you.

Also, with fusion/astral seed stuff, it's not hard to gain additional HD or to super-gestalt yourself to gain an entire character's worth of abilities, thereby (essentially) doubling your levels. We also have fast time demiplane access (with acorn of far travel to add insult to injury), so researching and casting epic spells on the fly isn't too hard, either, especially with hivemind shenanigans going on.

Once you hit level 9 spells and 21+ HD, with a bit of optimization, level kind of loses all meaning, dunnit? After that, it's more "how much harder can you pound the rules into submission" and less about what level of spellcaster you might be. Nor is it difficult to actually gain additional levels at will, for that matter.

[Segev]

The moment he touches you with his right hand, all your contingent magics will disappear as they are placed on your body, along with most of your magic items, so really the only relevant one here would be "If Kamijou Touma comes within 10 feet cast teleport" which again, you'll run out of contingencies and spells before he runs out of thing to chase you with if we're going by WBL. Even if it wasn't Touma, you'd lose in a fight with a Saint. They can move and fight at supersonic speeds and one attack is enough to kill you, in DnD terms that's like having 20 standard actions and 20 move actions per turn as a conservative estimate.

The majority of wizard protections don't require you to have "if they come within 10 feet" to have "they won't touch me" come into play. As mentioned, foresight + celerity means they don't get to finish their attack on you before you can act. This applies even to the "supersonic saints" attacking you. Touma or one of those saints launches an attack; you fire off celerity as an immediate action and use its granted standard action to cast teleport or any other suitable "nope" spell. Whatever they were going to do to you now fails to strike you.

And this assumes it's "you" they're fighting, and not a simulacrum or your astral projection. Touma might threaten that last one, if he strikes at your silver cord, but again, you just teleport the heck away when you see somebody punching towards that.

This is barely even one layer of the kinds of defenses a wizard can carry around. We have barely started to optimize, with the highest-op thing being use of astral projection as a defense rather than a travel spell. The use of clone as a fallback should be obvious, too. Not even Touma's Imagine Breaker will stop the already-extant clone from being a receptacle for your spirit.

Anything that assumes they're going to hit you before your defenses kick off is being overly optimistic on the part of your attackers.

[unseenmage]

...

Could you please clarify another thing? You mentioned "Assume access to but not travel to the appropriate D&D cosmology." Does that mean that spells like "Contact Other Plane" contacts something from the DnD cosmology? One of the main strengths of casters is their ability to plan ahead, them being in another world which the deities of DnD would no nothing about is a pretty big issue.

You have presumed correctly. Tough luck that some of your divinations might not work though. But that depends on how leniently we allow Portfolio Sense to function.

Modern-ish worlds might even have tabletop roleplaying game books which mention such beings. Maybe these beings sense such. Lotta folks sure seem to treat their written rules as holy texts after all.

[Rhedyn]

Actually, where dealing with epic threats such as Ainz is concerned, it's really not difficult to access epic spells as a level 20 caster. Any effect that grants HD or allows you to gain levels would nab you access to Epic Spellcasting at 21 HD, so feel free to contract lycanthropy (curse of lycanthropy comes in handy here) or subcontract a bard (Leadership? Thrallherd? A relatively small amount of gp?) to use Inspire Greatness on you.

Also, with fusion/astral seed stuff, it's not hard to gain additional HD or to super-gestalt yourself to gain an entire character's worth of abilities, thereby (essentially) doubling your levels. We also have fast time demiplane access (with acorn of far travel to add insult to injury), so researching and casting epic spells on the fly isn't too hard, either, especially with hivemind shenanigans going on.

Once you hit level 9 spells and 21+ HD, with a bit of optimization, level kind of loses all meaning, dunnit? After that, it's more "how much harder can you pound the rules into submission" and less about what level of spellcaster you might be. Nor is it difficult to actually gain additional levels at will, for that matter.Well, Ainz is basically a D&D caster with epic spells, so my argument is whatever you can do, he can do but better. And then he compounds that with allies that are technically stronger than him even though he does beat them in fights.

Secondly, I think if you are pumping your HD, you stop being a level 20 fullcaster and are more in the realm of Pun-Pun and Omnificer

[theblasblas]

The majority of wizard protections don't require you to have "if they come within 10 feet" to have "they won't touch me" come into play. As mentioned, foresight + celerity means they don't get to finish their attack on you before you can act. This applies even to the "supersonic saints" attacking you. Touma or one of those saints launches an attack; you fire off celerity as an immediate action and use its granted standard action to cast teleport or any other suitable "nope" spell. Whatever they were going to do to you now fails to strike you.

And this assumes it's "you" they're fighting, and not a simulacrum or your astral projection. Touma might threaten that last one, if he strikes at your silver cord, but again, you just teleport the heck away when you see somebody punching towards that.

This is barely even one layer of the kinds of defenses a wizard can carry around. We have barely started to optimize, with the highest-op thing being use of astral projection as a defense rather than a travel spell. The use of clone as a fallback should be obvious, too. Not even Touma's Imagine Breaker will stop the already-extant clone from being a receptacle for your spirit.

Anything that assumes they're going to hit you before your defenses kick off is being overly optimistic on the part of your attackers.

Again, you're in error for limiting non-DnD characters to DnD limitations. Celerity is an immediate action, "immediate" does not mean instant in this case, it's compared to "swift actions" which are compared to "free actions" like "dropping prone" which obviously takes time, it's only stated not to take time for the purpose of the game. You shouldn't be able to interrupt characters moving at supersonic speeds with it. If you're going to stick with it being able to interrupt anything, then we'll have to give fast moving characters a trait like "Supersonic:Cannot be interrupted with immediate actions except by creatures that are also supersonic", for it to make sense or else we'll end up with nonsense like you being able to interrupt the Flash.

And again, you'll eventually run out of spells, even if you manage to teleport away from everything, plenty of characters in To Aru can find and catch up to you, from at will teleporters, to clairvoyants(which go by such a different system that they shouldn't be under magic/psionics transparency), to hypersonic jets, to microscopic cameras. And now that I've realized that you'll make an enemy out of Crowley for simply being a very powerful magic user, trust me, he'll find the real you, and when he does he'll send more hypersonic jets than you have spell slots to wipe you out.

Now another problem I just realized with being in another world. Things like "Dimension door" and "Astral Projection" might not work if you only have access to but cannot travel through DnD cosmology. Fluff is important.

Lastly, another big problem is that... you have no way of replenishing XP. The only ones who could probably give you any are high ranking officials in magic cabals.. or high schoolers. If you choose either of those you'll be making an enemy of half of the world.

[Eldariel]

I think the unfavourable comparison only exists if you interpret them very strictly via DnD terminology giving them levels, classes and such, but most characters don't work that way. Essentially rather than converting archetype and powerlevel to DnD classes and levels, we need to convert non-DnD feats into stats. Also, in these instances, fluff is important.

Firstly, Kamijou Touma. He has a "natural sixth sense". It allows him to block Accelerators wing barrage which was wayyyy more than 5 attacks per round.While his HP, Fort save and Stats might be that of a normal person his Ref, Wil, and Attack is boosted to very high levels via virtue of his natural sixth sense. If you fly away he can always just ask on of his harem members that have the ability to fly or jump really really high. Heck, if it came down to it, he could just ask one of the Saints(who essentially have epic level stats) to drag him along and use his right arm as weapon. I also don't know how foresight is supposed to help against him specifically, it's more like a spidersense and doesn't help you plan in advance, also it's doubtful foresight would work against him as he's been shown to be able to negate supernatural forms of detection before.

Secondly, Accelerator. Any spell that has line of effect, references distance in any way or makes it seem ad if your doing anything that requires something going towards accelerator(reaching into his mind, looking at him, etc.) can be blocked. This is one of the instances where fluff is important. Also, aside from endangering Last Order, he'll also be trouble for you if Touma asks for a favor. Heck if Touma asks the sisters for help, he'll inevitably get dragged along.

Lastly, the magic side. As mentioned before they have "no save, just die" spells, the only way to defend against them is perhaps spell resistance and immunity. Arguably reflex saves could work as well, but some of them require ridiculouly high reflexes as you're having to dodge things like light and sound. A example of magicians you'll inevitably piss off if you try to conquer the world is Fiamma of the Right, who has a spell that destroys anything that isn't a god, and a spell that allows him to attack you from anywhere on Earth in an instant.

It all comes down to preparation really, if you're allowed to copy all the spells, and get near-inifinite resources before getting transported you have a chance, if you're just a WBL 20 fullcaster sent to the To Aru Universe you're ****ed.

You seem to be under the impression that a WBL20 full caster isn't able to get the basic immunities. They don't even need WBL to that end, allday spells alone suffice for at least immunity to death effects, negative energy, damage, movement restriction, mind-affecting, ability damage, ability drain, etc.

Yes, Touma has some superhuman traits but without his aides he's nothing. You don't care about his numbers, he can never touch you no matter what. He isn't even onk 20 and Monk 20s are the laughing stock of D&D. Abilities that require touch are outdated by 20; generally negated by default and worst case scenario, negated by Celerity.

And yes, accelerator can block a lot of things but he's purely passive. Hard to affect, can't move even at light speed let alone anything comparing to teleportation, can't influence parallel planes, his abilities are just anti-mundane. Whether abilities that "just happen" work on him is guesswork but even if he's completely immune to everything including time travelling to past and killing him as a child, he still can't DO anything a Wizard 20 cares about.

And yes, the magic side is a bit hard to adjudicate since we don't have a good gauge for how they interact with e.g. spell resistance or magic immunity (both trivially available to Wizard 20) but they lose out hardcore in terms of speed, minionmancy and information gathering. D&D spells like Contact Other Plane and Commune are just worlds above what the world possesses as well as Contingency/Contingent spells, Celerity, Ice Assassin/Simulacrum/Planar Binding, etc. And this is without getting into what you can do with Genesis + Planar Bubble.

The world is just too slow, too one-dimensional for a Wizard 20. A Wizard 11 would make for a fairer inclusion that could thrive but not trivially dominate. 9th level spells make it insanely one-sided: Ice Assassin, Genesis, Hide Life, etc. on the strategic scale and Foresight, Shapechange, Astral Projection, Gate, etc. on the tactical.

[Rhedyn]

What about the pathfinder spell that let's you negate a particular spell, even anti-magic?

lol your magc (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/aroden-s-spellbane/)

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, Ainz is basically a D&D caster with epic spells, so my argument is whatever you can do, he can do but better. And then he compounds that with allies that are technically stronger than him even though he does beat them in fights.

Secondly, I think if you are pumping your HD, you stop being a level 20 fullcaster and are more in the realm of Pun-Pun and OmnificerSo you're saying that, even if you were set against people with nigh infinite ultimate cosmic power and had the ability to fudge things to match them (and no party members to balance yourself against or DM to nix things for being "unbalanced") that you would just sit there and take whatever they decided to throw at you?

[theblasblas]

You seem to be under the impression that a WBL20 full caster isn't able to get the basic immunities. They don't even need WBL to that end, allday spells alone suffice for at least immunity to death effects, negative energy, damage, movement restriction, mind-affecting, ability damage, ability drain, etc.

Yes, Touma has some superhuman traits but without his aides he's nothing. You don't care about his numbers, he can never touch you no matter what. He isn't even onk 20 and Monk 20s are the laughing stock of D&D. Abilities that require touch are outdated by 20; generally negated by default and worst case scenario, negated by Celerity.

And yes, accelerator can block a lot of things but he's purely passive. Hard to affect, can't move even at light speed let alone anything comparing to teleportation, can't influence parallel planes, his abilities are just anti-mundane. Whether abilities that "just happen" work on him is guesswork but even if he's completely immune to everything including time travelling to past and killing him as a child, he still can't DO anything a Wizard 20 cares about.

And yes, the magic side is a bit hard to adjudicate since we don't have a good gauge for how they interact with e.g. spell resistance or magic immunity (both trivially available to Wizard 20) but they lose out hardcore in terms of speed, minionmancy and information gathering. D&D spells like Contact Other Plane and Commune are just worlds above what the world possesses as well as Contingency/Contingent spells, Celerity, Ice Assassin/Simulacrum/Planar Binding, etc. And this is without getting into what you can do with Genesis + Planar Bubble.

The world is just too slow, too one-dimensional for a Wizard 20. A Wizard 11 would make for a fairer inclusion that could thrive but not trivially dominate. 9th level spells make it insanely one-sided: Ice Assassin, Genesis, Hide Life, etc. on the strategic scale and Foresight, Shapechange, Astral Projection, Gate, etc. on the tactical.

Firstly, Touma won't be on his own, he can always just have one of the Saints carry him along with his arm to you, and some of them can move at hypersonic speeds. No way you can dodge that, and even if you have a contingency ready you'll eventually run out.

Secondly, Accelerator is a white winged angel of death, so I don't know where you're taking "He's passive" from. Unless you only like, watched one season of the anime. He had a wingfist fight with an angel that's essentially equivalent to a DnD intermediate deity.

Laslty, I'm pretty sure you haven't read any of the lightnovels if you think the world of To Aru has nothing on the level of a 20th level fullcaster.To Aru characters have better means of information gathering and they can use it more than a Level 20 spellcaster can, psychic abilities, their own versions of commune, or microscopic camerabots, they have teleporters and jets that move at supersonic speeds, subliminal mindcontrol capable of brainwashing entire cities, and yes some can even create something like a demiplane. The fact that it's not just a single person that have these abilities is rendered moot by the fact that most of them are under the control of one person that absolutely hates magic. On the magic side we have Saints that can move at hyperrsonic speeds, and Fiamma who can destroy anything in one hit and can hit you in an instant no matter where you are.

PS. As per OP comment above, it's highly doubtful DnD versoin of Commune or Contact Other Plane will work.

[Segev]

Again, you're in error for limiting non-DnD characters to DnD limitations. Celerity is an immediate action, "immediate" does not mean instant in this case, it's compared to "swift actions" which are compared to "free actions" like "dropping prone" which obviously takes time, it's only stated not to take time for the purpose of the game. You shouldn't be able to interrupt characters moving at supersonic speeds with it. If you're going to stick with it being able to interrupt anything, then we'll have to give fast moving characters a trait like "Supersonic:Cannot be interrupted with immediate actions except by creatures that are also supersonic", for it to make sense or else we'll end up with nonsense like you being able to interrupt the Flash.

And again, you'll eventually run out of spells, even if you manage to teleport away from everything, plenty of characters in To Aru can find and catch up to you, from at will teleporters, to clairvoyants(which go by such a different system that they shouldn't be under magic/psionics transparency), to hypersonic jets, to microscopic cameras. And now that I've realized that you'll make an enemy out of Crowley for simply being a very powerful magic user, trust me, he'll find the real you, and when he does he'll send more hypersonic jets than you have spell slots to wipe you out.

Now another problem I just realized with being in another world. Things like "Dimension door" and "Astral Projection" might not work if you only have access to but cannot travel through DnD cosmology. Fluff is important.

Lastly, another big problem is that... you have no way of replenishing XP. The only ones who could probably give you any are high ranking officials in magic cabals.. or high schoolers. If you choose either of those you'll be making an enemy of half of the world.

At this point, you're entering "well, you don't actually get to play a D&D Wizard 20, even though I said you were" territory. This is approaching the point where you argue that Superman would lose a fight to a Space Marine in Warhammer 40k because kryptonians don't exist and Superman is therefore just a man in spandex, which isn't even really armor.

Foresight + celerity means that you have the awareness to know when an attack is incoming, and a spell that literally lets you react fast enough to cast another spell before the attack can land. If it makes you feel better, it literally lets you slow time to such a crawl that even the "supersonic saint" is moving slowly enough to be unable to close the distance between his fist and your body in the time it takes you to cast your "Get me out of here" spell.

Celerity even says it's borrowing time from your future to let you do this.

If "you can't access other planes" means more than "you can't leave the world you're talking about in order to avoid it," then we are, again, not dealing with a true Wizard 20, but some nerfed thing designed to let somebody win an internet argument by holding up this straw man and pretending it's a Wizard 20.

[Zancloufer]

And yes, accelerator can block a lot of things but he's purely passive. Hard to affect, can't move even at light speed let alone anything comparing to teleportation, can't influence parallel planes, his abilities are just anti-mundane. Whether abilities that "just happen" work on him is guesswork but even if he's completely immune to everything including time travelling to past and killing him as a child, he still can't DO anything a Wizard 20 cares about.

Accelerator's ability to "passively block anything" is just scratching the surface of what he can do. He pretty much has a white-list that effects anything that involves any kind of movement even things like ultra-violet rays and nuclear bombs. He subconsciously gives the sun a tan. Since stuff like Domination and teleportation (which is explicitly 11 dimensional in setting so he can even block/intercept plane shift and gate if he gets close enough to them) he can redirect, pretty much anything with an AoE or target is deflected and anything with an actual attack roll is returned to sender. Since he as been exposed to magic there is nothing saying he can't redirect it with enough practice so he is defiantly not just "anti mundane".

On the offensive he has demonstrated the ability to make super plasma hurricanes in minutes (so Control Weather on steroids) implode people by poking them (Implosion) and even redirect the entire rotational power of the planet for ~5 seconds into a super kinetic burst (IDK what that is but it's probably epic level equivalent).

I'm not even sure if time traveling to the past would stop him (though it might be your best bet) as he's shown the ability to passivity stop entire army columns by the age of 5 so his power has been pretty high for a long while.

[Rhedyn]

So you're saying that, even if you were set against people with nigh infinite ultimate cosmic power and had the ability to fudge things to match them (and no party members to balance yourself against or DM to nix things for being "unbalanced") that you would just sit there and take whatever they decided to throw at you?
The question isn't what Universe Pun-Pun couldn't thrive in.

If you are adding HD to yourself, you are now a level 20 Fullcaster + HD of X, which is outside the scope of the question.

It's like saying you would kill tons of monsters until you outleveled Ainz. Outside the scope of the question.

[theblasblas]

At this point, you're entering "well, you don't actually get to play a D&D Wizard 20, even though I said you were" territory. This is approaching the point where you argue that Superman would lose a fight to a Space Marine in Warhammer 40k because kryptonians don't exist and Superman is therefore just a man in spandex, which isn't even really armor.

Foresight + celerity means that you have the awareness to know when an attack is incoming, and a spell that literally lets you react fast enough to cast another spell before the attack can land. If it makes you feel better, it literally lets you slow time to such a crawl that even the "supersonic saint" is moving slowly enough to be unable to close the distance between his fist and your body in the time it takes you to cast your "Get me out of here" spell.

Celerity even says it's borrowing time from your future to let you do this.

If "you can't access other planes" means more than "you can't leave the world you're talking about in order to avoid it," then we are, again, not dealing with a true Wizard 20, but some nerfed thing designed to let somebody win an internet argument by holding up this straw man and pretending it's a Wizard 20.

The problem is not with the effect of celerity but rather the fact that Celerity takes an "immediate action" to cast. Immediate actions are comparable to the time it would take to fall prone. I'm saying you'll be dead before you can even cast Celerity. Foresight only lets you know the danger is coming, reacting to it is up to you. By the time it took your brain to process "DANGER!" it would already be chopped off.

Eh, I'm not the one making the rules. In any case, again, even with teleportation you still lose.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The question isn't what Universe Pun-Pun couldn't thrive in.

If you are adding HD to yourself, you are now a level 20 Fullcaster + HD of X, which is outside the scope of the question.

It's like saying you would kill tons of monsters until you outleveled Ainz. Outside the scope of the question.The level 20 caster gives himself a buff using a single spell (curse of lycanthropy), granting him access to epic feats (and at least one feat to spend on them). That implies that a caster can't buff himself because the OP didn't say he could cast buffing spells because it's not a plain-Jane level 20 caster with nothing added.

Yes, it's ridiculously powerful. Yes, in most cases, it would potentially wreck a game. This is not a game; this is you escalating to play with the big boys in a real (fantasy) life scenario. The rules give you the ability to ramp your power up to ridiculous levels, and you're not taking advantage of it for your own survival? That makes no sense at all.

[Rhedyn]

The level 20 caster gives himself a buff using a single spell (curse of lycanthropy), granting him access to epic feats (and at least one feat to spend on them). That implies that a caster can't buff himself because the OP didn't say he could cast buffing spells because it's not a plain-Jane level 20 caster with nothing added.

Yes, it's ridiculously powerful. Yes, in most cases, it would potentially wreck a game. This is not a game; this is you upping your game to play with the big boys in a real (fantasy) life scenario. The rules give you the ability to ramp your power up to ridiculous levels, and you're not taking advantage of it for your own survival? That makes no sense at all.
If you gained HD, you are no longer a 20th level fullcaster. You are something else now and outside the scope of this thread.

I'm not making any of the other statements you are trying to straw-man.

[OgresAreCute]

The level 20 caster gives himself a buff using a single spell (curse of lycanthropy), granting him access to epic feats (and at least one feat to spend on them). That implies that a caster can't buff himself because the OP didn't say he could cast buffing spells because it's not a plain-Jane level 20 caster with nothing added.

Yes, it's ridiculously powerful. Yes, in most cases, it would potentially wreck a game. This is not a game; this is you escalating to play with the big boys in a real (fantasy) life scenario. The rules give you the ability to ramp your power up to ridiculous levels, and you're not taking advantage of it for your own survival? That makes no sense at all.

I agree with this. A werewolf wizard isn't any less legitimate than an elf wizard, I'd say. And before anyone goes "Aha, but then I'll just stack templates until I'm ECL 800!!", using a self-buffing spell is hardly the same as doing that.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

If you gained HD, you are no longer a 20th level fullcaster. You are something else now and outside the scope of this thread.

I'm not making any of the other statements you are trying to straw-man.One buff spell, which you can cast at any time. Yeah, it gives you HD, because that's a result of the spell. Would you say the caster couldn't use divine power or Tenser's transformation because it turns you into a wizard 20 with full BAB? Or shapechange into a chronotyryn because it gives you wizard 20 + 2 turns per round? Or astral projection because it turns you into wizard 20 + free res when you die? Or genesis + acorn of far travel because it gives you 10 turns per round and free metamagic on every spell you cast?

[Nifft]

Accelerator's ability to "passively block anything" is just scratching the surface of what he can do. He pretty much has a white-list that effects anything that involves any kind of movement even things like ultra-violet rays and nuclear bombs. He subconsciously gives the sun a tan. Since stuff like Domination and teleportation (which is explicitly 11 dimensional in setting so he can even block/intercept plane shift and gate if he gets close enough to them) he can redirect, pretty much anything with an AoE or target is deflected and anything with an actual attack roll is returned to sender. Since he as been exposed to magic there is nothing saying he can't redirect it with enough practice so he is defiantly not just "anti mundane".

So something like forcecage would work since it's not aimed at him, but rather at the space around him.

Then remove the air around him, or work out whether the 10 ft. windowless cell doesn't have enough oxygen for 40 hours of human life.

[Rhedyn]

I agree with this. A werewolf wizard isn't any less legitimate than an elf wizard, I'd say. And before anyone goes "Aha, but then I'll just stack templates until I'm ECL 800!!", using a self-buffing spell is hardly the same as doing that. Perhaps, but in this case it's being used to gain epic feats, which are normally beyond a 20th level casters reach.

There are other "weird" haxs in 3.5 that give you infinite HD and unlimited power. Those tricks are always an insta win in anything forever.

Once you even start to touch epic spells in 3.5, you win. Ainz is only an interesting character because his epic spell system has tighter rules that do not let him turn into an infinite HD dracolich vampire that is immune to the sun.

[Rhedyn]

One buff spell, which you can cast at any time. Yeah, it gives you HD, because that's a result of the spell. Would you say the caster couldn't use divine power or Tenser's transformation because it turns you into a wizard 20 with full BAB? Or shapechange into a chronotyryn because it gives you wizard 20 + 2 turns per round? Or astral projection because it turns you into wizard 20 + free res when you die? Or genesis + acorn of far travel because it gives you 10 turns per round and free metamagic on every spell you cast?
I too think this straw-man you are arguing with is wrong.

[theblasblas]

So something like forcecage would work since it's not aimed at him, but rather at the space around him.

Then remove the air around him, or work out whether the 10 ft. windowless cell doesn't have enough oxygen for 40 hours of human life.

Depends highly on what force is. If it's literally "force" then Accelerator can control it. Force isn't very well defined, but some people liken it to something that exerts an amount force outwardly that is equal to the force necessary to stop anything at its boundary point. If it's like that, then Accelerator can control it. In these kinds of discussions, fluff really is important.

[NichG]

IIRC the usual epic spell mitigation cheese is to use contributed spell slots, so unmolested prep time matters (at least enough to Genesis and start churning out minions to feed the ritual). So native fullcasters/time traveling response teams/etc have one week to discover the threat via divinations and intervene...

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I too think this straw-man you are arguing with is wrong.You say that I can't buff myself using curse of lycanthropy because it would make me too strong and that it would change the paradigm we're working under. That using one spell to gain access to Epic Spellcasting is unacceptable. Not that it doesn't work, but that it's somehow wrong to do so. It's not even a high level spell. It just grants a template which includes extra HD (plus feats and skills, as normal). The HD-based feat can be used for anything you qualify for, as normal. It just so happens that one of the feats this qualifies me for at level 21 is Epic Spellcasting, putting me on parity with another epic spellcaster, as everything else said epic spellcaster has I can get easily.

Tell me: What is it that I'm doing that is not according to RAW? It's not even a combo of effects; it's a single buff spell. Why is buffing myself with my own spells somehow "wrong"? And why is casting curse of lycanthropy not comparable to polymorph or divine power? Both of those grant abilities I wouldn't have had before, making me significantly stronger. The first even grants additional racial abilities, much like said template-granting spell does. Would a bard not be allowed to use Inspire Greatness? Would a greater collar of umbral metamorphosis not be allowed to grant the dark creature template? Would wish be unable to grant ability score bonuses, alignment subtypes, or magic items, despite being clearly written in that it does so?

I think you're nixing optimal and clever use of abilities for no reason other than "it would break my games, so I'd ban it," which doesn't apply here whatsoever.

[Rhedyn]

You say that I can't buff myself using curse of lycanthropy because it would make me too strong and that it would change the paradigm we're working under. Man that guy sounds crazy. You should stop him.

[Calthropstu]

You say that I can't buff myself using curse of lycanthropy because it would make me too strong and that it would change the paradigm we're working under. That using one spell to gain access to Epic Spellcasting is unacceptable. Not that it doesn't work, but that it's somehow wrong to do so. It's not even a high level spell. It just grants a template which includes extra HD (plus feats and skills, as normal). The HD-based feat can be used for anything you qualify for, as normal. It just so happens that one of the feats this qualifies me for at level 21 is Epic Spellcasting, putting me on parity with another epic spellcaster, as everything else said epic spellcaster has I can get easily.

Tell me: What is it that I'm doing that is not according to RAW? It's not even a combo of effects; it's a single buff spell. Why is buffing myself with my own spells somehow "wrong"? And why is casting curse of lycanthropy not comparable to polymorph or divine power? Both of those grant abilities I wouldn't have had before, making me significantly stronger. The first even grants additional racial abilities, much like said template-granting spell does. Would a bard not be allowed to use Inspire Greatness? Would a greater collar of umbral metamorphosis not be allowed to grant the dark creature template? Would wish be unable to grant ability score bonuses, alignment subtypes, or magic items, despite being clearly written in that it does so?

I think you're nixing optimal and clever use of abilities for no reason other than "it would break my games, so I'd ban it," which doesn't apply here whatsoever.

Ummmm, where does it say it grants you a feat? I see you getting the base animal feat.

[Segev]

The problem is not with the effect of celerity but rather the fact that Celerity takes an "immediate action" to cast. Immediate actions are comparable to the time it would take to fall prone. I'm saying you'll be dead before you can even cast Celerity. Foresight only lets you know the danger is coming, reacting to it is up to you. By the time it took your brain to process "DANGER!" it would already be chopped off.

Eh, I'm not the one making the rules. In any case, again, even with teleportation you still lose.

Sounds like you're describing being caught by surprise. You know, not knowing there's danger until it's too late for you to act on it. Which foresight expressly prevents. Thus, with foresight active, you have sufficient warning to cast celerity before the supersonic saints smack you.

Magic is weird, but it works: if they try to hit him, he'll have just enough time to get his celerity -> greater teleport combo off to vanish right before they hit him. Because they can't catch him by surprise, no matter how fast they move.

[Rhedyn]

Ummmm, where does it say it grants you a feat? I see you getting the base animal feat. You gain the base animals HD and since you have more than 3 int, you can take whatever feat you qualify for.

Though the thread isn't about what universe a 20th level fullcasting wolf that can shapeshift couldn't thrive in.

It's not the spell giving you epic spells, it's the adding of HD to your character sheet that does it.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Man that guy sounds crazy. You should stop him.You make no sense.


Ummmm, where does it say it grants you a feat? I see you getting the base animal feat.You gain X HD, based on whatever animal you're basing your lycanthropy on. Those HD are added to your other HD to determine whether you gain feats for those additional HD (at 1, 3, 6, 9, etc), as you normally would. Absolutely nothing in the lycanthrope template specifies how you must spend the feats you gain in this way, so the general rules for gaining HD-based feats apply. And those rules state you can use them for whatever feats you qualify for. And at 21+ HD, you qualify for [epic] feats, no matter how you got those HD.

Basically, you're using the general rules for HD, which includes how you gain feats. Since there's nothing about the template that overrides those rules, that's what you go with, because there are no rules for them anywhere else.

[theblasblas]

Sounds like you're describing being caught by surprise. You know, not knowing there's danger until it's too late for you to act on it. Which foresight expressly prevents. Thus, with foresight active, you have sufficient warning to cast celerity before the supersonic saints smack you.

Magic is weird, but it works: if they try to hit him, he'll have just enough time to get his celerity -> greater teleport combo off to vanish right before they hit him. Because they can't catch him by surprise, no matter how fast they move.


You do know that there's such a thing as something moving to fast for you to react even if you know it's coming, right? For example, if I stood in front of you and aimed a gun at your chest and told you "I'm going to shoot" and then shoot you, would you be able to dodge it? No, no you would not, because even if you know I'm going to shoot the bullet travels faster than you can react. You weren't surprised, you knew it was coming but you're just too slow to react. Same with the 20th level Fullcaster and the Saint.

Remember that Foresight does not put you at the top of initiative order, it merely gives you a bonus to initiative. It's still up to the caster to react. Immediate actions are you reacting to the danger, but in this case there's not enough time to do an immediate action.

[Eldariel]

Accelerator's ability to "passively block anything" is just scratching the surface of what he can do. He pretty much has a white-list that effects anything that involves any kind of movement even things like ultra-violet rays and nuclear bombs. He subconsciously gives the sun a tan. Since stuff like Domination and teleportation (which is explicitly 11 dimensional in setting so he can even block/intercept plane shift and gate if he gets close enough to them) he can redirect, pretty much anything with an AoE or target is deflected and anything with an actual attack roll is returned to sender. Since he as been exposed to magic there is nothing saying he can't redirect it with enough practice so he is defiantly not just "anti mundane".

On the offensive he has demonstrated the ability to make super plasma hurricanes in minutes (so Control Weather on steroids) implode people by poking them (Implosion) and even redirect the entire rotational power of the planet for ~5 seconds into a super kinetic burst (IDK what that is but it's probably epic level equivalent).

I'm not even sure if time traveling to the past would stop him (though it might be your best bet) as he's shown the ability to passivity stop entire army columns by the age of 5 so his power has been pretty high for a long while.

But that's what I'm talking about: if you have the standard level 20 immunities, none of that affects you. He can't actually interact with your immunities and he can't hurt you so he's irrelevant. You're immune to weather phenomena, explosions and damage of any kind, or energy in general. If you wanna kill him through time travel, just destroy that which would become him, i.e. stop him from ever being born. If you must destroy him in the present, use an arbitrary number of copies of him or destroy the planet or whatever. I'm not sure how domination actually involves movement; it's literally just an effect that happens. D&D doesn't go into the details of how magic brings about an effect, but it might or might not involve some energy field or reality just deciding that things are now like this instead of like this. If that's the case, nothing Accelerator can do affects that. If it involves some energy surging into him, he could certainly stop any direct attacks so you fall back onto making a bunch of copies of him and sending those to fight him instead and simply outvector him with numbers (his bodyparts shouldn't be hard to find with that hair).

Soft immunities include stuff like construct shape, heart of water, mind blank, etc. Then you either go to a random location within the Earth and make yourself indistinguishable from the surrounding soil and then Astral Project, or you enter an alternate plane and then Astral Project. This way you're pretty immortal but if something goes wrong, you still never die. Add a Clone or two and if things go superhorribly wrong you still revive instantaneously.


As for speed, Celerity seems to take pretty much no time at all but if you argue the cast time is too long, use your 20 Contingent Celerities instead: Contingency goes off with no time delay and you can bind it to like Foresight which acts ahead of time so you're actually reacting to actions that have not yet been taken but will be in pockets of time that take no real time. Future sight plus perfect information plus instantaneous actions. Admittedly you'd have to recraft the spent Celerities but 20 should be more than enough for most engagements and the actual Contingency-spell can be an additional as well as all the other Contingency-like effects in the system.

[theblasblas]

Really, putting a DnD character in another universe is really problematic, mostly due to the fact that DnD rules are abstractions of the character's actual prowess. To give an example of how problematic this is, our Level 20 fullcaster gets transported to a world of flames, fortunately his has immunity to fire. He goes to the Fire King and challenges him, the Fire King can create flames 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun. Now considering our caster is immune to fire, will the Fire King being able to hurt him with flames? Please answer this in your head before continuing.

Was your answer, "No"? Well, how about after reading this excerpt from Searing Spell: "A searing spell is so hot that it ignores the resistance to fire of creatures affected by the spell, and affected creatures with immunity to fire still take half damage." So now it's been established that a hot enough flame can damage a creature that's immune to fire. So the Fire King's flames could indeed harm the caster. However we would not have known this if we hadn't gone to look for Searing Heat. Now would this apply to the other elements as well? A super corrosive acid, or electricity of a high enough voltage and amperage? We don't know because this part of the lore hasn't been explained.

The only aspects explained by the rules of DnD are those that are necessary to play the game. There's aren't hypersonic fighters, or vector control, or superheated laserbeams in DnD, so how such things would affect the mechanics are not explained, but inserting a DnD character in another setting and having them interact with its characters requires that such questions be answered as such we should use logic to interpret fluff, and not just formfit the RAW of DnD into the other world.

[Zanos]

Arguing that celerity is less fast than "supersonic" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Celerity literally steals time from the future. Even the Flash has to strain pretty hard to mess with time. Supersonic is not that fast. It's 768 MPH. That's about 7000 feet per round, which is fast as hell in D&D terms but not unachievable with spell stacking.

Similarly "one attack kills you" is a bad gauge. One attack with a crossbow can kill a normal person in D&D too, but level 20 characters not normal people from a durability standpoint. HP clearly do something.

I'm not familiar with this universes antimagic either, but many D&D spells are explicitly not vulnerable to antimagic, even of the most powerful forms available. Constructs would be vulnerable since they are considered magic items, but undead and all instantaneous spells with persistent effects are completely immune. Anyone who's only power is disabling magic stuff is going to be pretty unpleasantly surprised when a cloud giant skeleton beats them to death.

I don't generally like crossovers for similar reasons as the ones you mention, but assuming that the caster's abilities don't work as presented in the books without a very strong basis seems like it's against the premise of the question.

[theblasblas]

Arguing that celerity is less fast than "supersonic" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Celerity literally steals time from the future. Even the Flash has to strain pretty hard to mess with time. Supersonic is not that fast. It's 768 MPH. That's about 7000 feet per round, which is fast as hell in D&D terms but not unachievable with spell stacking.

Similarly "one attack kills you" is a bad gauge. One attack with a crossbow can kill a normal person in D&D too, but level 20 characters not normal people from a durability standpoint. HP clearly do something.

I'm not familiar with this universes antimagic either, but many D&D spells are explicitly not vulnerable to antimagic, even of the most powerful forms available. Constructs would be vulnerable since they are considered magic items, but undead and all instantaneous spells with persistent effects are completely immune. Anyone who's only power is disabling magic stuff is going to be pretty unpleasantly surprised when a cloud giant skeleton beats them to death.

I don't generally like crossovers for similar reasons as the ones you mention, but assuming that the caster's abilities don't work as presented in the books without a very strong basis seems like it's against the premise of the question.

1. For the Nth time, I'm not arguing that celerity is slower than supersonic, I'm arguing that "immediate actions" are slower than supersonic. The caster wouldn't even be able to cast celerity.

2. Level 20 characters are hardier than normal people, yes, but they still die when vorpal weapon procs. Saints can slice through metal with ease, there's little doubt one could chop a caster's head off.

3. Imagine Breaker specifically "returns the world to it's natural state" i.e. one without magic. The power is essentially the will of the world. Anything not of that world will be destroyed. It's meant to be the ultimate fallback in case magicians f*ck the world up too much, so suffice to say that it can negate any enchantment or transmutation even if its instantaneous.

4. I'm not assuming that the ability doesn't work as presented, but rather clarifying what's presented, i.e. "Immediate doesn't mean instant", "Foresight doesn't necessarily give you the time to react" If you're not convinced about how I'm interpreting it I'll try again with another example. Let's say there's a rogue hiding in the shadows, the caster has foresight on, now will foresight tell the caster that's a rogue in the shadows or will it go off after the Rogue attacks? Since Foresight isn't stated to have the function of revealing hidden hostiles it should be the latter, right? Same for the Saint attacking, Foresight won't just suddenly go off early just to give the caster enough time to react, it'll go off when the Saint starts attacking, but by then it's already too late.

[Calthropstu]

You gain the base animals HD and since you have more than 3 int, you can take whatever feat you qualify for.

Though the thread isn't about what universe a 20th level fullcasting wolf that can shapeshift couldn't thrive in.

It's not the spell giving you epic spells, it's the adding of HD to your character sheet that does it.

You need to reread lycanthropy. You get the feat the base animal has. You can't pick it.


Feats: Add the base animal’s feats to the base creature’s. If this results in a lycanthrope having the same feat twice, the lycanthrope gains no additional benefit unless the feat normally can be taken more once, in which case the duplicated feat works as noted in the feat description. This process may give the lycanthrope more feats than a character of its total Hit Dice would normally be entitled to; if this occurs, any “extra” feats are denoted as bonus feats.

It’s possible that a lycanthrope cannot meet the prerequisites for all its feats when in humanoid form. If this occurs, the lycanthrope still has the feats, but cannot use them when in humanoid form. A lycanthrope receives Iron Will as a bonus feat.

[Nifft]

3. Imagine Breaker specifically "returns the world to it's natural state" i.e. one without magic. The power is essentially the will of the world. Anything not of that world will be destroyed. It's meant to be the ultimate fallback in case magicians f*ck the world up too much, so suffice to say that it can negate any enchantment or transmutation even if its instantaneous.

I remember reading about an anti-disjunction trick whereby you build a room out of magical effects, such that negating the effects invokes some kind of death-trap. Something like a wall of stone ceiling holding up a lot of poison / acid / heavy rocks. Pair this with a floor made of a wall of stone over a huge gelatinous cube / pool of acid / spiked pit.

Granted, that's a very dungeon-specific example -- in a world with less narrative justification for dungeon-delving, you might not reasonably expect a superpower to walk into a small room and fight at full force.

But it seems like it might be applicable to this guy, too.

[Zanos]

1. For the Nth time, I'm not arguing that celerity is slower than supersonic, I'm arguing that "immediate actions" are slower than supersonic. The caster wouldn't even be able to cast celerity.
That's arguing 4 then, that the caster's abilities don't work as presented.



2. Level 20 characters are hardier than normal people, yes, but they still die when vorpal weapon procs. Saints can slice through metal with ease, there's little doubt one could chop a caster's head off.
Yes, and a 1st level commoner wearing +20 full plate is still easily one shot with wraithstrike by a 1d8 weapon. An adamantine weapon easily slices through metal too and has no additional effect when used on D&D characters.

HP is a combination of both durability and an ability to avoid damage, so clearly their heads are much more difficult to remove than a normal persons. Whether you attribute that do having particularly durable tissue or being able to avoid the damage is up to you.

Are saints using vorpal weapons?



3. Imagine Breaker specifically "returns the world to it's natural state" i.e. one without magic. The power is essentially the will of the world. Anything not of that world will be destroyed. It's meant to be the ultimate fallback in case magicians f*ck the world up too much, so suffice to say that it can negate any enchantment or transmutation even if its instantaneous.
You'll need to provide examples. If it can remove wounds or restore the dead to life if they were wounded or killed with magic I would cede the point, but as far as D&D is considered once an undead is created, fabricate is cast, or a fireball is thrown the magic is gone, the state is just as natural as anything else and you can't remove the magic to heal the wounds, restore the dead, destroy the undead, or destroy fabricated objects. D&D treats all these states as equally non-magical.



4. I'm not assuming that the ability doesn't work as presented, but rather clarifying what's presented, i.e. "Immediate doesn't mean instant", "Foresight doesn't necessarily give you the time to react" If you're not convinced about how I'm interpreting it I'll try again with another example. Let's say there's a rogue hiding in the shadows, the caster has foresight on, now will foresight tell the caster that's a rogue in the shadows or will it go off after the Rogue attacks? Since Foresight isn't stated to have the function of revealing hidden hostiles it should be the latter, right? Same for the Saint attacking, Foresight won't just suddenly go off early just to give the caster enough time to react, it'll go off when the Saint starts attacking, but by then it's already too late.
It 100% will make the caster not flatfooted against the rogues attack. It will also give the caster a general idea how to best protect himself from the incoming event. It might not reveal exactly where a hostile is, though. Getting a divination warning that you might want to peace out, armor up, or summon something is not the same as revealing the rogue.

For an in lore example, Foresight specifically gave an FR character enough time to escape dying due to literally all magic in the realms failing and his city failing out of the sky. Foresight is a divination spell. It divines the future, literally. There isn't some weird period between when an event is initiated and when it occurs that it operates in.

[Rhedyn]

You need to reread lycanthropy. You get the feat the base animal has. You can't pick it.
HD gives you feats separately.

I think it's dumb for different reasons though.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You need to reread lycanthropy. You get the feat the base animal has. You can't pick it.The feats that the animal gets are considered bonus feats. However, you still have X Hit dice, and thus you should gain feats for having those HD, since nothing about the template text changes those rules.

If nothing else, by level 20+ you could easily have access to ways to swap out feats, such as limited wish for psychic reformation, retraining, or the dark chaos spells for shuffling them out.

[Calthropstu]

The feats that the animal gets are considered bonus feats. However, you still have X Hit dice, and thus you should gain feats for having those HD, since nothing about the template text changes those rules.

If nothing else, by level 20+ you could easily have access to ways to swap out feats, such as limited wish for psychic reformation, retraining, or the dark chaos spells for shuffling them out.

Negative.

Reread what I posted from open game content. The feats you get ARE the ones you get for increasing hd. IF you gain more feats than hd would normally allow (ie, if the animal has bonus feats) the EXTRA counts as bonus feats.

You're flat wrong on this.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Negative.

Reread what I posted from open game content. The feats you get ARE the ones you get for increasing hd. IF you gain more feats than hd would normally allow (ie, if the animal has bonus feats) the EXTRA counts as bonus feats.

You're flat wrong on this.Note that the sample animals have the listed feats, but it's entirely possible to train animals to have different feats. Since you have 3+ Int, you're fully justified in choosing different feats than the ones they get, just as a rakshasa doesn't have to have the same feats in its entry. But you still have X HD, meaning you gain feats based on those HD. The feats you gain from your lycanthrope HD would be different, because you get to choose them by default.

Though again, if you always get the same feats by default, swap 'em out. Epic Spellcasting is definitely worth the 500 XP it costs to DCFS a feat.

[Calthropstu]

Note that the sample animals have the listed feats, but it's entirely possible to train animals to have different feats. Since you have 3+ Int, you're fully justified in choosing different feats than the ones they get, just as a rakshasa doesn't have to have the same feats in its entry.

Though again, if you always get the same feats by default, swap 'em out. Epic Spellcasting is definitely worth the 500 XP it costs to DCFS a feat.

Errr, no. It CLEARLY says you gain the base animal feats. Not retrained feats. Not selectable feats. Not retrainable feats.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Errr, no. It CLEARLY says you gain the base animal feats. Not retrained feats. Not selectable feats. Not retrainable feats.And any animal can have any feats it qualifies for, which don't have to be the same ones listed in the books. A horse could be trained to have Track, for instance, or it could've grown up in a place where Skill Focus (Hide) was more conducive to survival than Run, and so it learned to do that, instead.

Animal gains X feats, you gain +X feats. It doesn't have to have the default ones; those are just what they tend to have if they have no training, no extra intelligence (such as being a 3+ Int [N]PC would have), and just grew up in the wild with no interference.

Say you just got lycanthropy. You didn't grow up in those conditions at all, so the feats you gain would be different. You got +X Hit Dice, so you would gain feats appropriately.

Even if that wasn't the case, DCFS doesn't care what feat it affects. 500 XP and three spell slots for Epic Spellcasting? Yes, please.

[Calthropstu]

And any animal can have any feats it qualifies for, which don't have to be the same ones listed in the books. A horse could be trained to have Track, for instance.

Animal gains X feats, you gain +X feats. It doesn't have to have the default ones; those are just what they tend to have if they have no training, no extra intelligence (such as being a 3+ Int [N]PC would have), and just grew up in the wild with no interference.

Say you just got lycanthropy. You didn't grow up in those conditions at all, so the feats you gain would be different. You got +X Hit Dice, so you would gain feats appropriately.

Even if that wasn't the case, DCFS doesn't care what feat it affects. 500 XP and three spell slots for Epic Spellcasting? Yes, please.

Except it clearly states Base Animal feats, which means the ones that appear in their stat array.

Again, you are flat wrong.

Other stuff building off it is fine though. Keep in mind it's not class skills though. You need a base form adding 2 hd minimum to put one into spellcraft and one into knowledge arcana/religion/nature

[theblasblas]

That's arguing 4 then, that the caster's abilities don't work as presented.



Yes, and a 1st level commoner wearing +20 full plate is still easily one shot with wraithstrike by a 1d8 weapon. An adamantine weapon easily slices through metal too and has no additional effect when used on D&D characters.

HP is a combination of both durability and an ability to avoid damage, so clearly their heads are much more difficult to remove than a normal persons. Whether you attribute that do having particularly durable tissue or being able to avoid the damage is up to you.

Are saints using vorpal weapons?



You'll need to provide examples. If it can remove wounds or restore the dead to life if they were wounded or killed with magic I would cede the point, but as far as D&D is considered once an undead is created, fabricate is cast, or a fireball is thrown the magic is gone, the state is just as natural as anything else and you can't remove the magic to heal the wounds, restore the dead, destroy the undead, or destroy fabricated objects. D&D treats all these states as equally non-magical.



It 100% will make the caster not flatfooted against the rogues attack. It will also give the caster a general idea how to best protect himself from the incoming event. It might not reveal exactly where a hostile is, though. Getting a divination warning that you might want to peace out, armor up, or summon something is not the same as revealing the rogue.

For an in lore example, Foresight specifically gave an FR character enough time to escape dying due to literally all magic in the realms failing and his city failing out of the sky. Foresight is a divination spell. It divines the future, literally. There isn't some weird period between when an event is initiated and when it occurs that it operates in.

1. Again, rules are abstractions, Making those abstractions concrete does not misrepresent them.

2. No, but they can target your neck. Again HP is an abstraction. If your so adamant about discussing this in DnD terms: Saints have +300 to hit and damage, have 20 standard and movement actions per turn, and have a trait that allows them to target body parts, and prevent getting interrupted by immediate actions. That is what an abstraction of the abilities of a saint would look like.

3. It doesn't matter how DnD goes about it, even if in DnD the spell specifically says that it goes through spell immunity, since Imagine Breaker works through different mechanics it will still negate it. Imagine Breaker is the world itself rejecting the existence of something not natural to it. Also, fireballs being nonmagical once released is blatantly false as spell resistance works against it. In anycase Imagine Breaker can negate lightning bolt created by manipulating electrons through esper powers, the lightning itself is natural, but he was able to block it due to coming from a supernatural source. He's also negated memory loss and mind control. Negate the momentum of a golem's punch. The list goes on.

4. When and to whom does the Foresight thing happen, are there similar examples of it? The +2 insight bonus to AC and reflex signifies the amount of insight the spell bestows to the caster, it's not some all powerful divination. Regardless, in the Rogue example, it's not something that would allow the caster to act before the Rogue even if the Rogue beats him in initiative, but he can still do immediate actions and such as their operating under normal speeds,in the case with the Saint however, it's already over the moment she begins to act.

[Arbane]

One based on sufficiently free-form rules that this sort of interminable nitpickery won't fly.

[Zanos]

2. No, but they can target your neck. Again HP is an abstraction. If your so adamant about discussing this in DnD terms: Saints have +300 to hit and damage, have 20 standard and movement actions per turn, and have a trait that allows them to target body parts, and prevent getting interrupted by immediate actions. That is what an abstraction of the abilities of a saint would look like.
Hide Life makes HP damage irrelevant, but I'll argue for arguments sake: I don't see why you're assigning them arbitrarily high bonuses to hit and damage. +20 to hit and damage is enough to instantly kill any normal armored person if that's your metric.

D&D characters can presumably aim for vitals; those stats are simply baked into critical threat ranges, multipliers, and attack/damage bonus already. Or power attack.

Why would they have 20 standard actions per turn? D&D is pretty explicit that the actual attack rolls per turn aren't the only attacks, they're just the blows that are decisive enough to matter. It's assumed (and the book say this) that there is other stuff going on than an attack roll every 6 seconds(or 4 attack rolls for a high level character).

Why 20 movement actions? You can jack up your speed pretty high in D&D and attack between moves with a selection of feats.

Why are they immune to immediate actions? It seems like it's just because you feel like it. If you must argue "reaction time", a 20th level wizard can easily have an initiative bonus that eclipses that of a greater deity. "They're really fast" is an argument for a high movement rate and dex score, not a bypass of a fundamental mechanic.



3. It doesn't matter how DnD goes about it, even if in DnD the spell specifically says that it goes through spell immunity, since Imagine Breaker works through different mechanics it will still negate it. Imagine Breaker is the world itself rejecting the existence of something not natural to it. Also, fireballs being nonmagical once released is blatantly false as spell resistance works against it. In anycase Imagine Breaker can negate lightning bolt created by manipulating electrons through esper powers, the lightning itself is natural, but he was able to block it due to coming from a supernatural source. He's also negated memory loss and mind control. Negate the momentum of a golem's punch. The list goes on.
The fireball is magical, the damage it causes it's not. Presumably this antimagic can't remove burns after the fact? If I use magic to fly somewhere else, can Imagine Breaker "block" that and put me back wherever I was before I started flying? Can it, again, revive someone killed by magic? Destroy a person created by magic? D&D has a clear concept of magic no longer being present in the equation. A War Troll is a creature created by selective magical experiments on trolls, but can exist through entirely biological process also. Will Imagine Breaker simply unmake it because magic was involved in breeding it? If I use magic to create food and I eat it, do I retroactively starve to death?

The concept of what is "natural" is a difficult one. Most D&D settings arcane magic is natural, and governed by deities as old as the setting. Undead are almost certainly natural.


4. When and to whom does the Foresight thing happen, are there similar examples of it? The +2 insight bonus to AC and reflex signifies the amount of insight the spell bestows to the caster, it's not some all powerful divination. Regardless, in the Rogue example, it's not something that would allow the caster to act before the Rogue even if the Rogue beats him in initiative, but he can still do immediate actions and such as their operating under normal speeds,in the case with the Saint however, it's already over the moment she begins to act.
Larloch, who escaped the destruction of Netheril after the God of Magic died, causing all magic to fail. He was warned of it by the spell with enough time to escape by flying away on a dragon.

Foresight provides you knowledge of the future, not the present. It's a 9th level spell, so it actually is an all powerful divination. In fact the warning is clearly a separate power, because you can use it on someone else to get warnings about them but not the bonus.

[NichG]

Hide Life makes HP damage irrelevant, but I'll argue for arguments sake: I don't see why you're assigning them arbitrarily high bonuses to hit and damage. +20 to hit and damage is enough to instantly kill any normal armored person if that's your metric.

The thing is, under the same standards as one can argue that a D&D wizard's stuff should 'work as stated', there's no particular reason why we must consider a non-D&D universe's abilities to map to a specific numeric range under D&D except when there are direct correlates (e.g. 'if I can life X amount, I should have an effective strength score of Y'). It's no more reasonable to request that some OP entity from an anime be statted out as a 20HD D&D character than it would be to request that the 20HD fullcaster be statted out within the anime's system. Which is why numerical comparisons in things like this tend to be fundamentally meaningless. If, holding the fluff constant, the numbers can possibly matter, then it is at least possible to conceive of a version of the setting where the D&D scaling ends up on the losing side of that equation.

Which means that the universe the fullcaster can't dominate in (if depending on numbers) is just the version in which those abilities are interpreted as absolute powers rather than just 'sufficiently better than 1HD commoners to appear godlike'.

With respect to scale, To Aru's fluff has lots of examples of e.g. characters whose ranged attacks extend tens of thousands of miles and hit ~colossal-sized targets by accident (a satellite in geostationary orbit getting taken out by a redirected shot). If we really ran the numbers for that D&D style, the range increment penalties would end up making for an attack bonus in the hundreds of thousands. It's a silly way to stat it (better to use an autohit mechanic), but one could argue for it if pressed. So if someone wants to stat things as having +300s to this or that, well, there's room for it.



The fireball is magical, the damage it causes it's not. Presumably this antimagic can't remove burns after the fact? If I use magic to fly somewhere else, can Imagine Breaker "block" that and put me back wherever I was before I started flying? Can it, again, revive someone killed by magic? Destroy a person created by magic? D&D has a clear concept of magic no longer being present in the equation. A War Troll is a creature created by selective magical experiments on trolls, but can exist through entirely biological process also. Will Imagine Breaker simply unmake it because magic was involved in breeding it? If I use magic to create food and I eat it, do I retroactively starve to death?

The concept of what is "natural" is a difficult one. Most D&D settings arcane magic is natural, and governed by deities as old as the setting. Undead are almost certainly natural.


The first thing you see it do in the series is to unmake a set of enchanted clothing - not even clothing made via a magical process as far as I know, just clothing that had received an enchantment. So presumably, yes, it could destroy a person or entity created by magic or who had magical processes as an essential component of its conception or birth. Canonically, it takes out golems at a touch as well, and it's suggested (in the form of angels being unwilling to touch the character) that it would also affect outsiders - though it looks like that effect might be banishment rather than destruction... Rather than negating 'magic', its represented more as negating or excluding the existence of the non-mundane. There's also evidently a window of 1.25 seconds in which it retroactively removes the natural consequences of hostile magical effects (which, according to the various wikis, is established in the series by the ability to negate the consequences of cuts made by a particular dimension-cutting magical sword within 1.25 seconds of the cut being made). The effect also seems to retroactively cancel healing magic (since at some point, someone tries to heal the character and it looks like it's working until it gets to his arm, at which point all of the benefits so far are lost).

As far as what is natural, the standard to use would be that of the To Aru universe since the question isn't 'could To Aru characters thrive in D&D-verse?'. If, in that universe, undead are not natural, then it doesn't matter if they would be natural in D&D - the power belongs to the host universe, so its the host universe that gets to decide it's mechanics.

[Quertus]

The first thing you see it do in the series is to unmake a set of enchanted clothing - not even clothing made via a magical process as far as I know, just clothing that had received an enchantment. So presumably, yes, it could destroy a person or entity created by magic or who had magical processes as an essential component of its conception or birth. Canonically, it takes out golems at a touch as well, and it's suggested (in the form of angels being unwilling to touch the character) that it would also affect outsiders - though it looks like that effect might be banishment rather than destruction... Rather than negating 'magic', its represented more as negating or excluding the existence of the non-mundane. There's also evidently a window of 1.25 seconds in which it retroactively removes the natural consequences of hostile magical effects (which, according to the various wikis, is established in the series by the ability to negate the consequences of cuts made by a particular dimension-cutting magical sword within 1.25 seconds of the cut being made). The effect also seems to retroactively cancel healing magic (since at some point, someone tries to heal the character and it looks like it's working until it gets to his arm, at which point all of the benefits so far are lost).

As far as what is natural, the standard to use would be that of the To Aru universe since the question isn't 'could To Aru characters thrive in D&D-verse?'. If, in that universe, undead are not natural, then it doesn't matter if they would be natural in D&D - the power belongs to the host universe, so its the host universe that gets to decide it's mechanics.

So, the series opens with them striping someone of clothing which may or may not have been inherently magical? That's not a very useful data point. To make your case, what you need is "and then he destroyed clothing that I know for a fact was completely mundane, crafted in a mundane fashion, and had an enchantment added". Or "and then they punched someone back to life who had been killed by magic".

OTOH, what the opposing PoV would need is "and then they were sad that someone died from magic (instead of just punching them back to life)".

-----

As to the importance of the host universe.... "Physics" is an unnatural abomination in a Loony Toons universe. If brought there, should they be able to punch away physics? Death by gunshot?

[NichG]

So, the series opens with them striping someone of clothing which may or may not have been inherently magical? That's not a very useful data point.

It establishes that the scope of the effect is more aggressive than D&D equivalents. Which just goes to the point that comparing non-D&D power sets to their nearest D&D equivalent isn't a good way to model the boundaries of those powers.



As to the importance of the host universe.... "Physics" is an unnatural abomination in a Loony Toons universe. If brought there, should they be able to punch away physics? Death by gunshot?

It would follow that an equivalent concept character could, yes. Rather than Imagine Breaker, it might be Scene Transition or Episode Boundary - all those 'natural' consequences of the actions just depicted? Well, the episode is over so just forget about them. The next scene is a thousand miles away and in the past? Don't sweat the small stuff. If you try to force things to make sense or impose logic on the Tooniverse to get stuff done, Scene Transition will touch you and make your head explode comically. That sort of thing... Maybe Roadrunner would be the actual example.

The Imagine Breaker character themselves should likely be totally powerless in Toon, and missing an arm (until they reveal that it was just tucked into their sleeve I suppose). The arm is a manifestation of a local cosmic phenomenon - 'the universe actively objects to the supremacy of magic and manifests an avatar to undermine it' - which just doesn't exist in Toon.

[Segev]

You do know that there's such a thing as something moving to fast for you to react even if you know it's coming, right? For example, if I stood in front of you and aimed a gun at your chest and told you "I'm going to shoot" and then shoot you, would you be able to dodge it? No, no you would not, because even if you know I'm going to shoot the bullet travels faster than you can react. You weren't surprised, you knew it was coming but you're just too slow to react. Same with the 20th level Fullcaster and the Saint.

Remember that Foresight does not put you at the top of initiative order, it merely gives you a bonus to initiative. It's still up to the caster to react. Immediate actions are you reacting to the danger, but in this case there's not enough time to do an immediate action.
Immediate actions interrupt. That is what they do. The Init Order is interrupted because they’re that fast. If I have an immediate action I can pull off, I can do it before the rogue’s shot hits me.

And Imagine Breaker specifically fails to reverse a plot significant permanent injury to a prominent character relatively early in the series. He manages to fake not being so crippled pretty well, but some do figure it out. And it is even important later that he is so crippled, or one of the plots later would have been resolved before it went anywhere.

It can’t fix harm caused by magic. It can’t reverse most instantaneous effects. I imagine it would destroy skeletons, zombies, and golems, but those are rare and weird instantaneous effects that clearly leave something magical behind.

And the speed of immediate actions is almost moot because of Contingent spells, anyway. The fallback of a Time Stop that goes off if anything would hit you in spite of all other defenses gives plenty of time for any defense you need.

[Arbane]

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I don't care what sort of powers you have, SOMEONE out there has a Stand that can ruin your day. (Don't look at any rainbows...)

[OgresAreCute]

"My anime can beat up your anime!"

If immediate actions aren't allowed to interrupt abnormally fast/strong characters, then any shonen manga/comic book universe will be impossible to deal with for any D&D character. You'll be face down in a pool of your own blood faster than you can say "Mary Sue".

[Calthropstu]

"My anime can beat up your anime!"

If immediate actions aren't allowed to interrupt abnormally fast/strong characters, then any shonen manga/comic book universe will be impossible to deal with for any D&D character. You'll be face down in a pool of your own blood faster than you can say "Mary Sue".

Anime, anime not.

[Quertus]

Regarding adjudicating ridiculous speed vs immediate actions... I blame MTG for my mindset.

MTG has the notion of interrupting actions. Actions use "The Stack". Which is, simply, a stack - last in, first out. Pretty much everyone and everything has the opportunity to interrupt any given action. Even triggered effects ("when X, do Y") use The Stack.

However, they have a few spells with a mechanic called Split Second. Spells which are so fast, nothing can react to them. I believe - but could be mistaken - that even effects of the type "whenever a spell is cast, do X" do not register them (if they do, that happens after the spell has already resolved).

So, since that's the same company that made 3e, I'll contend that the company believes that there are things faster than immediate actions. Still, personally, I would only include things that are too fast for physics (yes, most fast things make sonic booms, but I move too fast for the air molecules to register that I'm there), or things that involve manipulating Time itself.

WotC didn't seem as discriminating.

[Nifft]

"My anime can beat up your anime!"

"This isn't even my final episode!"


Anime, anime not.

What's an "anime not"?

[Calthropstu]

"This isn't even my final episode!"



What's an "anime not"?

Say it as "an i may"

Alternatively:
Obviously a group of anime tied together in no discernable pattern.

[Segev]

Regarding adjudicating ridiculous speed vs immediate actions... I blame MTG for my mindset.

MTG has the notion of interrupting actions. Actions use "The Stack". Which is, simply, a stack - last in, first out. Pretty much everyone and everything has the opportunity to interrupt any given action. Even triggered effects ("when X, do Y") use The Stack.

However, they have a few spells with a mechanic called Split Second. Spells which are so fast, nothing can react to them. I believe - but could be mistaken - that even effects of the type "whenever a spell is cast, do X" do not register them (if they do, that happens after the spell has already resolved).

So, since that's the same company that made 3e, I'll contend that the company believes that there are things faster than immediate actions. Still, personally, I would only include things that are too fast for physics (yes, most fast things make sonic booms, but I move too fast for the air molecules to register that I'm there), or things that involve manipulating Time itself.

WotC didn't seem as discriminating.

An interesting notion, but just begs the question: can you make a mechanic that is so fast it can interrupt a split second?

Either you can have an ever-increasing speed of action, or you can't and there's a ceiling somewhere. Contingent effects happen as soon as their criteria are met. Can something happen so fast that the "as soon as" description is not fast enough? This seems like "nuh uh, mine's faster!" arguments and unlikely to get anywhere.

It would be akin to arguing that having super-high initiative means your reaction time is so good that the supersonic saint can't dodge, since the attack came too fast. After all, the supersonic saint doesn't have an AC rating and relies on "real world motion" to move out of the way.

But that's not how initiative works. Just as "can fail to go off fast enough if something is just plain faster" isn't how immediate actions (let alone Contingencies) work. There ARE things that can interrupt immediate actions and even contingencies: other immediate actions and contingencies performed in response to them. Much like the MtG stack, actually.

So, if one wishes to argue that supersonic saints get as many immediate actions as they want and can move and attack as an immediate action in response to somebody trying to dodge or otherwise avoid their other immediate action attacks, they do, indeed, beat the D&D wizard. Of course, they also beat Touma, because they just grab him with totally nonmagical ropes, tie him to a hospital bed, and inject him with an IV of nutrients and knockout drugs, all of which happens in one planck time and have him helpless for the few seconds it takes to KO him, with him already in their secret underground bunker.

The whole "they're fast enough that you can't defend no matter what" argument just feels like fan wankery more than a serious analysis of abilities. Maybe it's true, but I doubt it.

[unseenmage]

Agreeing as to who is fastest being a bit of a dead horse at this point.

In other news, I find myself wondering how well the fullcaster performs in fantasy horror universes.

Not full on Far Realm, of course, more Hellraiser where a high Int can theoretically actually get you somewhere.


Also, IIRC the world of Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascension etc have various very bad end apocalypse scenarios spelled out as part of their canon.
A trapped fullcaster doesnt get to do much thriving in a pre apocalypse world either one imagines.

[Zanos]

Agreeing as to who is fastest being a bit of a dead horse at this point.

In other news, I find myself wondering how well the fullcaster performs in fantasy horror universes.

Not full on Far Realm, of course, more Hellraiser where a high Int can theoretically actually get you somewhere.


Also, IIRC the world of Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascension etc have various very bad end apocalypse scenarios spelled out as part of their canon.
A trapped fullcaster doesnt get to do much thriving in a pre apocalypse world either one imagines.
Depends on what they're messing with. A street level mage is a squishy mortal with goofy but potent powers that dies when too much red stuff comes out of it or you bonk it on the head too hard.

Masters of spheres are essentially masters of that aspect of reality. A mage with mastered Time can time travel back and forth effortlessly and is personally immune to the passage of time, and do terrible stuff with time to other stuff with the correct spheres. That's not even getting into...I think they're called Archspheres? Which aren't even printed in the book because they're so dumb.

Mage's usually have Paradox to "balance"(lol) their phenomenal cosmic power, but it's not much of a limiter if you're smart, and casting in the presence of other supernaturals instead of ignorant mortals gives you a more generous table.

[Quertus]

There ARE things that can interrupt immediate actions and even contingencies: other immediate actions and contingencies performed in response to them. Much like the MtG stack, actually.

So, if one wishes to argue that supersonic saints get as many immediate actions as they want and can move and attack as an immediate action in response to somebody trying to dodge or otherwise avoid their other immediate action attacks, they do, indeed, beat the D&D wizard. Of course, they also beat Touma, because they just grab him with totally nonmagical ropes, tie him to a hospital bed, and inject him with an IV of nutrients and knockout drugs, all of which happens in one planck time and have him helpless for the few seconds it takes to KO him, with him already in their secret underground bunker.

The whole "they're fast enough that you can't defend no matter what" argument just feels like fan wankery more than a serious analysis of abilities. Maybe it's true, but I doubt it.

Bingo. On pretty much all counts.


Agreeing as to who is fastest being a bit of a dead horse at this point.

Well, Animate it so we can all ride off into the sunset!


Also, IIRC the world of Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascension etc have various very bad end apocalypse scenarios spelled out as part of their canon.
A trapped fullcaster doesnt get to do much thriving in a pre apocalypse world either one imagines.

Meh. One can thrive quite well until one's inevitable demise. And, until then, as I said before, their biggest worry is their curiosity causing them to learn real magic, and losing access to their former power.


Mage's usually have Paradox to "balance"(lol) their phenomenal cosmic power, but it's not much of a limiter if you're smart, and casting in the presence of other supernaturals instead of ignorant mortals gives you a more generous table.

If you're smart? More generous table? Which edition are you using, and care to explain?

[Zanos]

I'm thinking Ascension, nevermind. Sometimes i forget the nWoD games exist.

[Blue Wizard]

The most hilarious part of all this fanwanking over supersonic saints or lightspeed DBZ characters is that the OP never limited this caster to first party material only, and I've got a third party spell that sets zones of "this is the maximum speed anything can go in here."

So, set it for something leisurely like 50mph, and it'll never inconvenience me. As a wizard if I need to go faster than that I just teleport. Magic is nifty in that this spell does not cancel out my bioelectricity or any important functions like that. But if one of these theoretical speed monkeys slaps into my invisible field... well, his first few molecules strike the zone and slow WAAAY down, forcing all of his follow-on mass to run into that at whatever bazillion mph you want to allow for their move. They can't shift the first few molecules out of the way because that layer is already going as fast as my altered-physics zone will allow... so, we pretty much get the "Bug Meets Windshield" phenomina, only yuckier.

"Perceive problem, stop, and completely reverse course - all within a distance of ten molecules or less when going bazillion mph" is not an ability I've seen promoted for any of these ultra fast nasties. So, done deal.

And what's even funnier, is that if this is one of the DBZ character's, they'll likely believe that whatever field I've got up is some kind of wall. And their answer to that? MORE POWER!!

You'd have effectively a bugzapper for super-powerful, lightspeed aliens, each one struggling with the rest to be the first to punch it down.

[unseenmage]

The most hilarious part of all this fanwanking over supersonic saints or lightspeed DBZ characters is that the OP never limited this caster to first party material only, and I've got a third party spell that sets zones of "this is the maximum speed anything can go in here."

....
Theoretically, if the super speed is Su in any way a simple Energy Transformation Field should shut it down just fine.

[ben-zayb]

An interesting notion, but just begs the question: can you make a mechanic that is so fast it can interrupt a split second?Split Second can still be interrupted by Triggered Abilities, which are passive in nature, and by special actions such as turning a face-down creature face up (which then could have a triggered ability to counteract the Split Second spell)

[Quertus]

Split Second can still be interrupted by Triggered Abilities, which are passive in nature, and by special actions such as turning a face-down creature face up (which then could have a triggered ability to counteract the Split Second spell)

... Really? Huh. Never really played with (or against, or otherwise had experience with) the ability, but I'm still sad that I got it wrong.

[NichG]

Theoretically, if the super speed is Su in any way a simple Energy Transformation Field should shut it down just fine.

Energy transformation field only absorbs activated abilities though. If it's passive, or if it's initially activated outside of the area of the ETF (such as entering the field with an already-cast Haste effect), then there's explicitly only cosmetic effects...

[Eldariel]

An interesting notion, but just begs the question: can you make a mechanic that is so fast it can interrupt a split second?

Either you can have an ever-increasing speed of action, or you can't and there's a ceiling somewhere. Contingent effects happen as soon as their criteria are met. Can something happen so fast that the "as soon as" description is not fast enough? This seems like "nuh uh, mine's faster!" arguments and unlikely to get anywhere.

It would be akin to arguing that having super-high initiative means your reaction time is so good that the supersonic saint can't dodge, since the attack came too fast. After all, the supersonic saint doesn't have an AC rating and relies on "real world motion" to move out of the way.

But that's not how initiative works. Just as "can fail to go off fast enough if something is just plain faster" isn't how immediate actions (let alone Contingencies) work. There ARE things that can interrupt immediate actions and even contingencies: other immediate actions and contingencies performed in response to them. Much like the MtG stack, actually.

So, if one wishes to argue that supersonic saints get as many immediate actions as they want and can move and attack as an immediate action in response to somebody trying to dodge or otherwise avoid their other immediate action attacks, they do, indeed, beat the D&D wizard. Of course, they also beat Touma, because they just grab him with totally nonmagical ropes, tie him to a hospital bed, and inject him with an IV of nutrients and knockout drugs, all of which happens in one planck time and have him helpless for the few seconds it takes to KO him, with him already in their secret underground bunker.

Actually, Miniatures Handbook indeed describes immediate actions as using stack [last in first out for those not familiar with MTG] but there's no proviso for Contingencies being interrupted in 3.5. Similarly, effects that have been cast during Time Stop and take place immediately after (e.g. Maw of Chaos) have no proviso for any sorts of interrupts. And the use of Contingency with Foresight I outlined would actually make the response take space a qualitative amount of time before the action is even taken.

[Segev]

Also, IIRC the world of Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascension etc have various very bad end apocalypse scenarios spelled out as part of their canon.
A trapped fullcaster doesnt get to do much thriving in a pre apocalypse world either one imagines.As others said, little prevents thriving right up until the end, and even if he's trapped to the point he can't hop into a pocket dimension to escape, the amount of paradox-free (not-True) magic that he can bring to bear would make him a formidable ally for any group of Mages or other supernats who would take his help, and said world-ending might be averted. The scenarios are written to be not mechanically solvable, but the mechanics of a d20 20th level wizard are good enough to help facilitate any plot-driven solutions you care to name.


Split Second can still be interrupted by Triggered Abilities, which are passive in nature, and by special actions such as turning a face-down creature face up (which then could have a triggered ability to counteract the Split Second spell)Ah. So Contingent Spells should go off properly in response.


... Really? Huh. Never really played with (or against, or otherwise had experience with) the ability, but I'm still sad that I got it wrong.I never played with (or against) Split Second, but morph creatures were a thing in the last cycle I played of M:tG. I don't know if activating Morph to let them flip would only count as "flipping and triggering" or if it is its own thing that you'd have to allow Split Second to go off before you could do, though.


Actually, Miniatures Handbook indeed describes immediate actions as using stack [last in first out for those not familiar with MTG] but there's no proviso for Contingencies being interrupted in 3.5. Similarly, effects that have been cast during Time Stop and take place immediately after (e.g. Maw of Chaos) have no proviso for any sorts of interrupts. And the use of Contingency with Foresight I outlined would actually make the response take space a qualitative amount of time before the action is even taken.Right. So Contingencies would still likely trigger before the supersonic saints or anything else could smack you, but if they have infinite immediate actions, they can always be sure to be on top of the stack ahead of your own.

Foresight, then, doesn't help you with celerity because it takes its own immediate action, even if you're not technically surprised. Their infinite immediate actions just means they take one in response to you casting it to go before it goes off. You're going to need your Contingent defenses to automatically activate.

[NichG]

Mage is probably fine (lots of ways to solipsize out if one wants). Exalted though might be annoying, since it has a lot of infinity+1 type stuff that you might not be able to really do anything about without having explicit rules text overrides against them. Social combat is also probably not a great arena for a fullcaster, though I suppose if they come from a Tippyverse setting they might have experience defending against Diplomancers which could transfer. I don't even want to try to analyze fullcaster meets true fae...

[Eldariel]

Right. So Contingencies would still likely trigger before the supersonic saints or anything else could smack you, but if they have infinite immediate actions, they can always be sure to be on top of the stack ahead of your own.

Foresight, then, doesn't help you with celerity because it takes its own immediate action, even if you're not technically surprised. Their infinite immediate actions just means they take one in response to you casting it to go before it goes off. You're going to need your Contingent defenses to automatically activate.

However, you can get Celerity off Contingency tied to Foresight, which solves this issue nicely.

[Segev]

Mage is probably fine (lots of ways to solipsize out if one wants). Exalted though might be annoying, since it has a lot of infinity+1 type stuff that you might not be able to really do anything about without having explicit rules text overrides against them. Social combat is also probably not a great arena for a fullcaster, though I suppose if they come from a Tippyverse setting they might have experience defending against Diplomancers which could transfer. I don't even want to try to analyze fullcaster meets true fae...Exalted is actually one of the easier ones. You aren't surviving combat if you stay in it, but you set up your Contingencies, foresight + celerity, etc. as usual and you just never stay in it. Teleportation via d20 magic is better than anything that Exalted has to offer in that regard.

You're not beating an Exalt in a fight, and you want mind blank and protection from [alignment of your choice] up when dealing with anything that might possibly have supernatural persuasion abilities, but you're still formidable and worth dealing with, even for high-up Elder Exalts and gods.


However, you can get Celerity off Contingency tied to Foresight, which solves this issue nicely.True. I was going to say you don't need foresight in that case, but it does keep you from having any "but you don't know it's coming, and waste your standard action wondering why the Contingency activated" shenanigans if you have foresight up.

[NichG]

Exalted is actually one of the easier ones. You aren't surviving combat if you stay in it, but you set up your Contingencies, foresight + celerity, etc. as usual and you just never stay in it. Teleportation via d20 magic is better than anything that Exalted has to offer in that regard.

You're not beating an Exalt in a fight, and you want mind blank and protection from [alignment of your choice] up when dealing with anything that might possibly have supernatural persuasion abilities, but you're still formidable and worth dealing with, even for high-up Elder Exalts and gods.


I'd worry about Sidereal stuff essentially predicting where your contingent teleport comes out and just waiting to ambush you there. Randomly poking around the wiki, it looks like there's a Sidereal charm "Of Things Desired and Feared" that tells you a sequence of actions that guarantees the achievement of a stated goal, but forces a cost proportional to difficulty.

[Malphegor]

The Simpsons. It's not that you wouldn't thrive, by all means you will for your one day or so, you have a Very Large Amount Of Cosmic Powaaaa. But it'll be meaningless, because the universe always reverts back to the same basic template, focused around a family of 2 parents with 2.5 children, a dog, a cat, and an extended cast of their friends, family, and random other people.

You are just a comedy relief character. an actual wizard in a part of the world where that makes sense for a bit. The universe will actively deny you any major changes, and it's probably a Halloween episode anyway so it won't stay even if you do.

(This might be too doylist)

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The Simpsons. It's not that you wouldn't thrive, by all means you will for your one day or so, you have a Very Large Amount Of Cosmic Powaaaa. But it'll be meaningless, because the universe always reverts back to the same basic template, focused around a family of 2 parents with 2.5 children, a dog, a cat, and an extended cast of their friends, family, and random other people.

You are just a comedy relief character. an actual wizard in a part of the world where that makes sense for a bit. The universe will actively deny you any major changes, and it's probably a Halloween episode anyway so it won't stay even if you do.

(This might be too doylist)Well, if you stayed well away from Springfield and ensured that nothing you did affected it in any noticeable way...

[Cosi]

You're not beating an Exalt in a fight, and you want mind blank and protection from [alignment of your choice] up when dealing with anything that might possibly have supernatural persuasion abilities, but you're still formidable and worth dealing with, even for high-up Elder Exalts and gods.

How high of optimization are we assuming here? Because I don't think even Exalts would be able to beat things like Improved Familiar (Mirror Mephit) infinite simulacrum armies. You'd have to have strong, resilient, and interlocking defenses or you just go down in the first round to a million casts of whatever spell hits a defense you don't have.

[Segev]

I'd worry about Sidereal stuff essentially predicting where your contingent teleport comes out and just waiting to ambush you there. Randomly poking around the wiki, it looks like there's a Sidereal charm "Of Things Desired and Feared" that tells you a sequence of actions that guarantees the achievement of a stated goal, but forces a cost proportional to difficulty.Sidereals could be a problem, but the cost to take down the level 20 wizard would be prohibitive. Likewise, the smart wizard finds a few wyld pockets to stash redoubts in, and maybe attunes a demesne or manse or two. Things which disrupt Astrology.

But the question wasn't "where couldn't he thrive if the whole setting were against him," but "where couldn't he thrive?" There are only 100 Sidereals. Don't make yourself a problem for them. Not that you can't defend yourself, but they are one of the more persistent and annoying types to have to defend against. Lunars are somewhat worse for persistence, but less troublesome for ease-of-avoidance.


How high of optimization are we assuming here? Because I don't think even Exalts would be able to beat things like Improved Familiar (Mirror Mephit) infinite simulacrum armies. You'd have to have strong, resilient, and interlocking defenses or you just go down in the first round to a million casts of whatever spell hits a defense you don't have.It might take Heaven Guardian Defense and its upgrade that lets you keep it up for a whole flurry, etc., or Invulnerable Moonsilver Skin at sufficiently highly-pumped soak, but they definitely could defend against that. Could. Not all of them will have the right Charms.

And remember how I said not to make yourself a problem for the Sidereals? This is not how you avoid being a problem for the Sidereals. The Divine Ninja Janitor Squad will be after you if you're this disruptive, and while you HAVE defenses, they're annoying to have to keep up at this level for the rest of your life.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'm not well-versed in Exalted. Does the wyld count as a planar trait, and would planar bubble grant reasonable protection in a direct confrontation?

The wiki says very little about it.

[Arkhios]

Ours. As far as I can tell, it would seem that our universe is all a big anti-magic field. Have fun being a fullcaster in an universe of anti-magic! :smalltongue:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Ours. As far as I can tell, it would seem that our universe is all a big anti-magic field. Have fun being a fullcaster in an universe of anti-magic! :smalltongue:There's a minor chance that ours is not an antimagic plane (Friendship is Magic, after all), but is instead just a place with no native magic. After all, we have old tales of wizards and sorcerers casting spells to turn victims into pigs and whatnot. It may just be that magic is a recessive trait and has died out over time, and the fey, demons, angels, dragons, elder things, and other mythical creatures it came from are barred from entering our world until the stars align once again.

[Segev]

I'm not well-versed in Exalted. Does the wyld count as a planar trait, and would planar bubble grant reasonable protection in a direct confrontation?

The wiki says very little about it.

There are ways to achieve this. Solar Exalted have a Charm that does the opposite and brings the Laws of Creation (i.e. the laws of physics and magic by which Creation operates) into the Wyld (and any other realm) with them.

But it isn't a separate plane so much as regions where the laws of nature break down into weirdness and malleability. Creation rests within the Wyld, and is surrounded by it. Wyld pockets are just parts of Creation where its laws have broken down enough that the Wyld is what's left.

Places that might qualify as other planes are Malfeas (the hell-prison of the demons and their Yozi masters), the Underworld (a dark reflection of Creation that is the home of the dead), and Yu-Shan (Heaven, the Celestial City, and home of the gods).

[Rhedyn]

There's a minor chance that ours is not an antimagic plane (Friendship is Magic, after all), but is instead just a place with no native magic. After all, we have old tales of wizards and sorcerers casting spells to turn victims into pigs and whatnot. It may just be that magic is a recessive trait and has died out over time, and the fey, demons, angels, dragons, elder things, and other mythical creatures it came from are barred from entering our world until the stars align once again.
People think in illogical loops, so some sort of irrationality is in this universe.

No natural law prevents divination in the form of guessing correct information. Probabilistically low, but possible.

Also the universe being the way it is, is hard to logically justify.

[Xar Zarath]

Sorry if I missed it cos I skipped to the end of the thread, but has anyone mentioned Rick and Morty yet?

To me, that's probably not only survivable but said Wizard can thrive, only depends on their personality. Maybe a council of interdimensional Wizards etc.

As long as you don't mess with Rick and probably get high with him, it seems like you can do most anything.

[Tvtyrant]

Sorry if I missed it cos I skipped to the end of the thread, but has anyone mentioned Rick and Morty yet?

To me, that's probably not only survivable but said Wizard can thrive, only depends on their personality. Maybe a council of interdimensional Wizards etc.

As long as you don't mess with Rick and probably get high with him, it seems like you can do most anything.

The problem is that nothing works out in R&M. It is the antithesis of MLP: FiM where all plans and events end in everything being okay. Rick is an epic level character who can't keep his own family alive, much less prosperous.

[Quertus]

Ours. As far as I can tell, it would seem that our universe is all a big anti-magic field. Have fun being a fullcaster in an universe of anti-magic! :smalltongue:

Others have addressed this previously. To reiterate, while adding my own take:

D&D casters have canonically interacted with this world in, I believe, every edition I've played. In some of those editions, this world was statted as currently being a low-magic world; in others, magic worked just fine.

Even in a low magic or antimagic this world, casters in 3e have spells to deal with that.

Even if they didn't, 20 HD, insane intellect, massive skills, and a small moon of gold? That sounds better equipped thrive than most anyone else on this rock.


There are ways to achieve this. Solar Exalted have a Charm that does the opposite and brings the Laws of Creation (i.e. the laws of physics and magic by which Creation operates) into the Wyld (and any other realm) with them.

But it isn't a separate plane so much as regions where the laws of nature break down into weirdness and malleability. Creation rests within the Wyld, and is surrounded by it. Wyld pockets are just parts of Creation where its laws have broken down enough that the Wyld is what's left.

Places that might qualify as other planes are Malfeas (the hell-prison of the demons and their Yozi masters), the Underworld (a dark reflection of Creation that is the home of the dead), and Yu-Shan (Heaven, the Celestial City, and home of the gods).

Exalted's Creation most closely resembles a dream, surrounded by the chaos of the dream realm, to a 3e Wizard.


The problem is that nothing works out in R&M. It is the antithesis of MLP: FiM where all plans and events end in everything being okay. Rick is an epic level character who can't keep his own family alive, much less prosperous.

That does bring a good new definition of "thrive" into play.

[Rhedyn]

I would argue that evil Morty is thriving.

Rick's terribly inconsistent morality inhibits him. If he wanted to dominate, he could, especially after season 3, he has like no limits.

[ShurikVch]

What Universe Couldn't a Fullcaster 20 Thrive In?Well...

How about the empty universe? I mean - completely empty, with nothing in there besides our Fullcaster?
Or - for a less strict variant - universe isn't empty, but still no life? (Or - there is life, but no sentient life?)

What's if it's an Idiocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy) universe? How to thrive there, if everybody are idiots?

Caveman Science Fiction (http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/) - you're think "Caveman Fantasy" would be more successful?

For a scary option - SCP Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation).

About the anime:
If you're think Raildex would be bad for a Fullcaster 20, then how about the Medaka Box (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medaka_Box)?

Haruhi Suzumiya (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruhi_Suzumiya) controls the universe. Considering she's sci-fi inclined (for example, she's created aliens), wouldn't she endanger our Fullcaster with a loss of magic (or even - with complete disappearance)?

The Road of Worlds setting: the eponymous Road is an infinite (presumably, extraplanar?) road, and by it's sides are numerous windows which are lead to other worlds.
The thing there is: Road would entrap and digest anybody who would travel by it for three years (in total) like the world's slowest sundew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosera).
I'm pretty sure - Fullcaster 20 wouldn't have enough power to fight the infinite plane, and going away through on of windows may violate the "no going to another world" condition
Also, the Road also can warp bodies of those who travel it, and give them fake memories - which may either make it difficult to remember the real stuff, or just overwrite all memories completely (two humans who're traveled the Road are turned into the koala cub and flightless bird with arms in place of wings)

Also, if the worlds on the Road of Worlds are count as their own separate universes...
There is "A violet world" short story
(See, worlds on the Road of Worlds may be scanned with "Indicator of worlds", results are color-coded, and "violet" means "improbable and impossible world")
So, the world in question?
It's a kid's scribble.
No, it doesn't mean it just "looks like a kid's scribble", nor even "started as a kid's scribble" - it literally is a kid's scribble.
Kid (some little girl) would think: "Who's drawn that man with a pointy hat on my paper?" Than, use eraser. Game over.

[Quertus]

How about the empty universe? I mean - completely empty, with nothing in there besides our Fullcaster?
Or - for a less strict variant - universe isn't empty, but still no life? (Or - there is life, but no sentient life?)

Gate to elemental plane of Air for, well, air. Wall of Stone for ground. Play God. Create whatever species, if any, you care to create. I'd say that this is nearly optimal conditions to thrive.


Caveman Science Fiction (http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/) - you're think "Caveman Fantasy" would be more successful?

Could be annoying if also completely null-magic; otherwise, I'm not seeing a problem.


So, the world in question?
It's a kid's scribble.
No, it doesn't mean it just "looks like a kid's scribble", nor even "started as a kid's scribble" - it literally is a kid's scribble.
Kid (some little girl) would think: "Who's drawn that man with a pointy hat on my paper?" Than, use eraser. Game over.

This one had me stumped for a bit, until I remembered Divinations and Invisibility. Although that's more "survive", less "thrive". Create a new civilization on the "dark side of the scribble", maybe?


What's if it's an Idiocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy) universe? How to thrive there, if everybody are idiots?

I take back my certainty that a Wizard 20 could thrive in this world.

[Segev]

So, the world in question?
It's a kid's scribble.
No, it doesn't mean it just "looks like a kid's scribble", nor even "started as a kid's scribble" - it literally is a kid's scribble.
Kid (some little girl) would think: "Who's drawn that man with a pointy hat on my paper?" Than, use eraser. Game over.

1) Wizard is in ink or crayon; eraser doesn't work.
2) Charm person on the low-will-save kid. "Who's drawn that man with a pointy hat on my paper? Oh, he's nice! And has such great ideas of what to draw!"

[Cosi]

How about the empty universe? I mean - completely empty, with nothing in there besides our Fullcaster?

Repeated true creation to create a universe filled with whatever you want. Then planar binding for friends.


Or - for a less strict variant - universe isn't empty, but still no life? (Or - there is life, but no sentient life?)

In the first case, permanency + animate objects + awaken construct gives you a civilization of intelligent robots to rule or befriend. Or simulacrum/ice assassin if you're a narcissist. In the second you have those options, but also awaken.


What's if it's an Idiocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy) universe? How to thrive there, if everybody are idiots?

polymorph them into animals, cast Maximized awaken on them, wait for polymorph to wear off. Now everyone's a genius (subject to your resource constraints). Also, it's not like you can't conquer a world of idiots. There's just not much point because they're idiots.


For a scary option - SCP Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation).

The Foundation's power and behavior varies pretty wildly. You might end up locked up in a windowless cell made of telekill alloy, but you also might end up basically uncontained as long as you aren't hostile. Hell, if you got an ice assassin chain going, you might end up personally classed as a Group of Interest. If you're an Artificer, you could probably join the Church of the Broken God.

[liquidformat]

Pretty sure the dnd wizards are SOL in the universe from Warlock of the Magus World, since they do exist there and are more or less treated as lab rats by the Magi...

[NichG]

If we're going to the far boundaries, any universe with intrusive meta-game or 4th wall breaking awareness. The wizard can do whatever they want, conquer the universe, etc, but at some point they will discover that all of those accomplishments amount to no more than a group of mundane humans saying the words 'now such and such happens' and, as soon as those humans get bored of the exercise, the wizard will cease to exist as anything other than memories. And there is nothing that the wizard can do about it.

[Malphegor]

Ours. As far as I can tell, it would seem that our universe is all a big anti-magic field. Have fun being a fullcaster in an universe of anti-magic! :smalltongue:

I forget if it was fanon, but I'm pretty sure Elminster went to (a version of) our world and met Gary Gygax in a book somewhen. Came back with a D&D shirt and horrifying knowledge.

[OgresAreCute]

I forget if it was fanon, but I'm pretty sure Elminster went to (a version of) our world and met Gary Gygax in a book somewhen. Came back with a D&D shirt and horrifying knowledge.

He went to Canada to hang with Ed Greenwood at one point at least.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

An early example of modern self-insert fanfiction. :smallannoyed: