View Full Version : How to Kill An 18th Level Wizard in An Accident (automatically)
Another thread:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?578286-Can-this-automatically-kill-an-18th-level-wizard
Has asked the question:
The correct way to do it would of course have been asking
"i need a way to get this level 18 wizard NPC die or vanish in a accident"
And I was wondering if people have any ways for that to happen. So we have to kill a high level wizard in some sort of accident.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-12, 06:26 PM
Do you mean just die in some fashion, or specifically in an accident?
Do you mean just die in some fashion, or specifically in an accident?
I think an accident would be most keeping in the spirit of what was asked in the original scenario (which was a cave-in caused by a natural earthquake). But if that's not manageable we could broaden it a bit. The only thing I think that we should avoid is killed by a more powerful and canny wizard (or similar).
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-12, 06:34 PM
I think an accident would be most keeping in the spirit of what was asked in the original scenario (which was a cave-in caused by a natural earthquake). But if that's not manageable we could broaden it a bit. The only thing I think that we should avoid is killed by a more powerful and canny wizard (or similar).
Well, that is extremely unlikely to happen to any level 18 Wizard who isn't underwear on head stupid.
They're just too powerful and flexible.
Well, that is extremely unlikely to happen to any level 18 Wizard who isn't underwear on head stupid.
They're just too powerful and flexible.
Well presumably something like a Supernova might work, depending on how rapidly it takes place and whether the wizard has the appropriate contingencies. I'm sure that there are lesser means though that could cause similar things.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-12, 06:49 PM
Well presumably something like a Supernova might work, depending on how rapidly it takes place and whether the wizard has the appropriate contingencies. I'm sure that there are lesser means though that could cause similar things.
Just having a Contingent Greater Teleport or Wish would be enough to survive that. As would Resilient Sphere.
With Foresight, the Wizard will always be warned about anything dangerous and then they could either activate their Contingency spell or cast Celerity followed by whatever spell they wish.
Just having a Contingent Greater Teleport or Wish would be enough to survive that. As would Resilient Sphere.
With Foresight, the Wizard will always be warned about anything dangerous and then they could either activate their Contingency spell or cast Celerity followed by whatever spell they wish.
Greater Teleport could get you away, but you'd have to have a destination in mind that would be outside the blast radius, so that might or might not work. A contingent wish could be used to plane shift away, so that might work. A lot would depend on if the Wizard understood exactly what was happening though.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-12, 06:58 PM
Greater Teleport could get you away, but you'd have to have a destination in mind that would be outside the blast radius, so that might or might not work.
It likely would, there's not limit on the distance you can teleport.
A contingent wish could be used to plane shift away, so that might work.
Considering that supernovae don't cross planar boundaries? Yes, yes it would.
A lot would depend on if the Wizard understood exactly what was happening though.
Foresight warns the user and tells them what to do to get to safety.
EDIT: And even if you somehow managed to kill them, Astral Projection means they didn't actually die.
It likely would, there's not limit on the distance you can teleport.
True, but if the explosion is covering every single location you know... that would probably limit your options somewhat, no?
Considering that supernovae don't cross planar boundaries? Yes, yes it would.
Well there aren't any formal rules for supernovae, so it might be ruled that it could. I don't think that's necessarily a safe bet though. They'd also have to have contingent wish up, instead of contingent greater teleport (which might fail as they wouldn't know any locations to teleport to and certainly Foresight wouldn't offer something that specific.
Foresight warns the user and tells them what to do to get to safety.
Foresight gives you general insight, but not specific insight. So a lot depends on what the DM reads into that one. Suffice it to say that I'm not sure that RAW it works as a get out of jail free card. I mean "Get away from the explosion" is general insight on what best to do to get to safety. And that might not let you know that the explosion might include every planet you've ever traveled to.
Silva Stormrage
2019-01-12, 07:15 PM
It would have to be something 1) Unpredictable or 2) Utterly devastating to the multiverse such that all of the wizard's back up bases or contingencies were rendered moot.
1) Is usually the better option since 2) destroys the setting in most instances unless you plan on playing a post ragnorok setting (Which can be interesting and quite fun).
So here are a couple options, these are not mechanically derived but merely something that the DM could say "Happened in the past" and wouldn't blow the player's suspension of disbelief.
1) The wizard found and was researching a newfound well of enormous arcane energy hidden by a forgotten God of Secrets many eons ago. He set up a fortress and attempted to maximize his power draw from the well and accidentally disabled some of the security wards the former god placed. The well unleashed an arcane equivalent of a solar flare which the Wizard's divinations did not predict due to the god's anti divination wards on the well. This solar flare disrupted the wizard's spells as a disjunction like effect and the sheer power of the effect destroyed the wizard's very soul. Now the region is constantly on the watch for the equivalent of a magical super volcano occasionally going off in the center of the continent.
2) The wizard was researching on his personal demiplane as they tend to do when a calamity struck the astral plane from two magical empires unleashing new super weapons or gods clashing. The wizard of course with his insane divinations knew of the clash ahead of time but his divinations told him he would not be harmed so he didn't bother to worry too much about it, the conflict was beneath him. Unfortunately the clash disrupted his demiplane's time trait causing the material plane to experience tens of thousands of years for every second on his demiplane. Now technically the wizard isn't dead but he is effectively locked in his demiplane none the wiser that time is passing as he is busy reading a very good book.
3) The standard classic, "Wizard tries to absorb too much power and exploded". Maybe it was a ritual he tried to merge with, maybe he tried to take a god's domain and the backlash destroyed his soul preventing his resurrection tricks.
The main thing is play up the wizard is still mortal and can misinterpret or be caught off guard. Mind blank, Vecna blooded and dieties can still block divinations and without something like foresight preventing them from being caught flat footed they CAN still die. It's just a tad bit contrived. But thats not really an issue for an NPC in the past.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-12, 07:16 PM
True, but if the explosion is covering every single location you know... that would probably limit your options somewhat, no?
Depends on the Wizard.
Well there aren't any formal rules for supernovae, so it might be ruled that it could.
And that ruling would be nonsensical, it's not a magical effect.
I don't think that's necessarily a safe bet though. They'd also have to have contingent wish up, instead of contingent greater teleport (which might fail as they wouldn't know any locations to teleport to
Using Wish is probably a better idea anyway.
and certainly Foresight wouldn't offer something that specific.
Foresight gives you general insight, but not specific insight. So a lot depends on what the DM reads into that one. Suffice it to say that I'm not sure that RAW it works as a get out of jail free card. I mean "Get away from the explosion" is general insight on what best to do to get to safety. And that might not let you know that the explosion might include every planet you've ever traveled to.
That is incorrect:
Once foresight is cast, you receive instantaneous warnings of impending danger or harm to the subject of the spell. Thus, if
you are the subject of the spell, you would be warned in advance if a rogue were about to attempt a sneak attack on you, or if a
creature were about to leap out from a hiding place, or if an attacker were specifically targeting you with a spell or
ranged weapon.
You are never surprised or flat-footed. In addition, the spell gives you a general idea of what action you might take to best protect yourself—duck, jump right, close your eyes, and so on—and gives you a +2 insight bonus to AC and Reflex saves.
Foresight does tell you how to avoid danger.
gooddragon1
2019-01-12, 07:18 PM
Wizard is doing an experiment that involves usage of their soul or if you want to be even more tied in, their silver cord through astral projection. A planar event occurs which severs it and kills them. Or does worse such that their clone contingencies and others cannot accommodate for it.
OracleofWuffing
2019-01-12, 08:55 PM
Turns out when the Level 18 Wizard made their secret demiplane, it nudged another demiplane belonging to a Level 19 Wizard 3 inches to the left, which ruined everything that Level 19 Wizard was doing.
MaxiDuRaritry
2019-01-12, 09:02 PM
This is what happens when the DM accidentally brings his 4e books instead of his 3e ones.
Buufreak
2019-01-12, 09:18 PM
Is it at all possible that the wizard is accidentally slung into a black hole that doubles as an antimagic field?
This is what happens when the DM accidentally brings his 4e books instead of his 3e ones.
I resent this comment.
MaxiDuRaritry
2019-01-12, 09:45 PM
I resent this comment.Why? Whitetext
Foresight does tell you how to avoid danger.
It tells you general things to do to avoid danger. "Teleport out of the blast radius" is entirely within the line of those advice.
Also not all Wizards who are 18th level are Astral Projecting at all times, I mean some of them probably are, but assuming all of them are is probably a little bit out there.
Buufreak
2019-01-12, 11:47 PM
Why? Whitetext
Because I often use 4e material that doesn't self impose deus ex nonsense.
MaxiDuRaritry
2019-01-13, 12:09 AM
Because I often use 4e material that doesn't self impose deus ex nonsense.It's rather upsetting when you have a beloved character suddenly cease to exist when your DM decides it's time to quit playing the "outdated" edition and move to the new and "improved" one. Especially when it's because he brought the wrong books and decides that now is as good a time as any to swap editions. :smallfrown: :smallannoyed: :smallmad: :smallfurious:
Erloas
2019-01-13, 12:22 AM
A snarl in the fabric of the universe is unleashed and unmakes all of creation and all of the outer planes as well.
A chain reaction of events, so that the one contingency is used before the statue and spells for the next one can be gathered and cast.
Rare microscopic ivory eating bacteria that explode once they consume enough. They break/mess up the focus for the contingency spell (which must be keep on the wizard) but do it so from the inside so that it isn't obvious, then as they explode and kill the wizard they no longer have the contingency spell going.
Create as much ivory as possible so that it is greatly devalued, so that a statue worth 1500gp is impossibly big to carry around.
AvatarVecna
2019-01-13, 12:31 AM
The original thread put forth the idea of "is this scenario good enough that no wizard could realistically survive it" and the answer was of course "no, because depending on the wizard not only is everything you said about the circumstances maybe wrong, but their preparations and responses have a number of ways to render this obsolete". But if we're approaching this from the other angle, which is "can a wizard die by accident", then the answer, generally speaking, is "yes, if something happens he wasn't prepared for". When there's a specific wizard, with a specific loadout, in a more specific situation, whether they're prepared for what's about to happen is less debatable - we can argue whether a wizard would or wouldn't try to have all-day Shapechange pre-cast, or invest skill ranks in weird knowledge skills, but if we have a specific wizard build, we can't argue about what they do or don't have - they just don't have those ranks, or don't have that spell, and we can move on...that being said, the original scenario proposed in that thread could lead to an accident that's not only difficult to survive short of a particularly paranoid set-up, but difficult to fix afterwards even with outside help.
Let us suppose that a random wizard is working on magic research in an undersea cave lair, playing around with selective antimagic fields in a carefully-controlled environment, when an earthquake happens. It doesn't necessarily break the lair (fortified by force walls and whatnot), and the earthquake itself can't force a terrible Concentration DC, but it makes the wizard's Concentration on the antimagic experiment waver at just the wrong moment, and the area immediately around him is flooded with antimagic. The wizard gets this experiment under control shortly and checks his defenses quickly and verifies that the antimagic only temporarily suppressed his various spells/contingencies/items/etc. But in his haste, the wizard has forgotten to check on the defenses keeping nearby experiments secure, and one of the side experiments that had its containment damaged by the antimagic was an ongoing experiment with chronomancy. The next time the wizard goes to play around with time magic, the containment fails completely and damn near the whole cavern is thrown into a time warp. From the wizard's perspective, all their active defenses fail and any attempt to cast news ones fail...but that's because time is flowing much faster and even a day/level duration spell is over in a fraction of a second. Time Magic is extremely rare even in high-op, so even such a learned mage as this might not be well-versed in it enough to know that he has to get out now because it's aging him. By the time he realizes what's going on, he's hit his maximum age (he was probably already at least old, and going years or decades per second doesn't help), and the wizard dies of old age. Because of this, the wizard can't really be raised.
It's not a perfect scenario, but it's more plausible an end for the kind of person who reached 18th level IMO - they don't get taken down by a small pile of earth, they get taken down by a combination of antimagic and time magic experiments ****ing them over.
Crake
2019-01-13, 03:13 AM
A temporary magical blackout followed by a planar collapse at the wizard's location, disabling his contingencies, and effectively deleting him from the universe
TalonOfAnathrax
2019-01-13, 03:37 AM
Some kind of plague whose first effect is 4d6 Int damage and whose secondary inflicts heavy Con damage, caught from a summoned devil or something.
An isolated (hidden in his base) mage who suddenly loses all spellcasting (no Int) and is hit by a deadly disease is seriously ****ed, especially if the Int damage makes him act stupidly.
No such poison exists RAW, but my current high-level spellcaster certainly doesn't carry potions of neutralise poison or useable contingencies without allies on hand or ability to cast spells.
Maybe I should remedy that before the campaign's endgame...
Crake
2019-01-13, 04:44 AM
Some kind of plague whose first effect is 4d6 Int damage and whose secondary inflicts heavy Con damage, caught from a summoned devil or something.
An isolated (hidden in his base) mage who suddenly loses all spellcasting (no Int) and is hit by a deadly disease is seriously ****ed, especially if the Int damage makes him act stupidly.
No such poison exists RAW, but my current high-level spellcaster certainly doesn't carry potions of neutralise poison or useable contingencies without allies on hand or ability to cast spells.
Maybe I should remedy that before the campaign's endgame...
A wizard who isn't immune to disease by level 18 isn't trying hard enough
Troacctid
2019-01-13, 05:19 AM
He died in a tragic accident involving a giant drill. If the players ask for details, you can explain that there's no point in telling the whole story because it would just be boring.
Jon_Dahl
2019-01-13, 05:23 AM
Taking into consideration that my previous thread was locked, it may be a very bad idea for me to come here and say stuff, so for the sake of avoiding a warning from the moderators, I refuse to engage in any sort of discussion on the topic, since it seems that my discourse makes tempers flare very easily. I will, however, show the final result of the Story of an Accident that Killed an 18th-Level Wizard which is pieced together from information provided by a number of playgrounders in the previous thread:
The accident in this case is an earthquake. Many people pointed out the wizard's home would be a magnificent mansion, demiplane etc. These spell effects would lower the possibility of an accident a lot, basically down to zero. However, in this scenario, the wizard wants to receive messengers and random visitors and that is why he has chosen to live in a non-magical place for the time being. When the earthquake hits, he uses Foresight which tells: "Teleport out of the blast radius" He is certain that the building can stand against the earthquake and tries to walk out of the area of Dimensional Lock, but the ceiling crashes down. He didn't have Shapechange on at that moment, because he needed to have his own fingers to perform a very delicate sampling process and he had to be in own form. He takes a lot of damage from the cave-in. He tries to teleport twice under the rubble, but he fails his concentration check the first time and the second time he takes damage for trying to teleport to a place that was destroyed in the cave-in. He eventually dies and his contingency does not save him, because it was a teleportation effect and he never left the dimensionally locked area. His primary clone has been kidnapped and replaced by an identical inert body a long time ago by his main rival, who is happy to see the helpless clone to come alive. She tortures the clone until the clone reveals where the other clones are. She destroys all the inert clones first (which happens to be very easy) and puts the wizard out his misery. The end.
Ignimortis
2019-01-13, 05:33 AM
He died in a tragic accident involving a giant drill. If the players ask for details, you can explain that there's no point in telling the whole story because it would just be boring.
Oof, that pun.
But, well, we actually did have a story where a guy just drills through a godlike being. It took about 27 episodes, and didn't really have a happy ending, but hey, if anything can kill a high-level fullcaster, it's a drill. Presumably with IHS shenanigans.
Psychoalpha
2019-01-13, 07:55 AM
Oof, that pun.
But, well, we actually did have a story where a guy just drills through a godlike being. It took about 27 episodes, and didn't really have a happy ending, but hey, if anything can kill a high-level fullcaster, it's a drill. Presumably with IHS shenanigans.
https://image.myanimelist.net/ui/THP3d05SFhdRvLOKLs2gqUFz0THCvIe10gufubJGDV2XdWQOGj gCmk-Xv-oy3g6MmwSrDmBIcdupSSnKtdA46apvNmyiuEseKHW1s2VOuM6e LYLKY5CC6X2gGVwEM-h_YYi0wPJosJz8vl4gCQVi2Q
Quertus
2019-01-13, 08:45 AM
The original thread put forth the idea of "is this scenario good enough that no wizard could realistically survive it"
Um, I think that a much better interpretation of the original thread would be, "can *any* Wizard possibly die to this", not would *every* Wizard die to this.
Unfortunately, many people read the thread the way you just stated it.
Personally, I think that it is easy to build a Wizard to die to most anything. But I think that it strains credulity that someone who actually survived to level 18 in a realistic* way would be taken down by a trivial threat.
And the issue was that the previous thread's OP was concerned with incredulous players questioning the death (but, despite repeated prompting, never explained beyond that). Sigh.
For this thread... I suppose I'll snark that the Wizard did a dumb, and mined straight up into lava?
* Yeah, not the right word, I know
TalonOfAnathrax
2019-01-13, 11:11 AM
A wizard who isn't immune to disease by level 18 isn't trying hard enough
How often does disease actually come up in games though? I guess there's mummy rot and maybe lycanthropy...
It's usually a low, low priority for my characters. Is that stupid?
Anyway, here's another idea: the wizard got drunk and stepped on his own Trap The Soul magic trap. Being taken totally by surprise and not having uncanny dodge, he couldn't use an immediate action and his Contingency was triggered by damage and not failed saves. Nobody came for him, because he was an Orphan PCtm and he was estranged from his friends due to the weirdness of his experiments. That may have been why he was drinking, too!
Troacctid
2019-01-13, 11:21 AM
How often does disease actually come up in games though? I guess there's mummy rot and maybe lycanthropy...
It's usually a low, low priority for my characters. Is that stupid?
Diseases tend to be relatively low-impact, with low save DCs and only minor effects. They're not very scary for an adventurer, considering everything else you have to deal with and the resources you have available.
AvatarVecna
2019-01-13, 11:41 AM
Um, I think that a much better interpretation of the original thread would be, "can *any* Wizard possibly die to this", not would *every* Wizard die to this.
Unfortunately, many people read the thread the way you just stated it.
Personally, I think that it is easy to build a Wizard to die to most anything. But I think that it strains credulity that someone who actually survived to level 18 in a realistic* way would be taken down by a trivial threat.
And the issue was that the previous thread's OP was concerned with incredulous players questioning the death (but, despite repeated prompting, never explained beyond that). Sigh.
For this thread... I suppose I'll snark that the Wizard did a dumb, and mined straight up into lava?
* Yeah, not the right word, I know
When the first post is "build your own wizard to see if you can survive what I'm throwing your way" and then in the spoiler it's "ha hayou died to this thing, didn't you", and then the OP spends the rest of the thread invoking textbook examples of "moving the goalposts" and "no true scotsman" fallacies when it turned out that some people are a bit too paranoid to be automatically murdered by a cave-in when they have 9th level spells potentially on the table, it became pretty clear to me and others that the intention wasn't "is this a believable way for any wizard to die from their own hubris" as much as "there's no way an 18th level wizard could survive this, right? right? right." and then the OP getting flustered when people were like "not really? there's ways to survive it".
It's telling that when somebody made a big post about how things not mentioned in the original write-up could **** up the parts of the proposed escape plans that weren't mentioned (such as people teleporting to the ocean floor when they could literally teleport anywhere on the planet, gravel-filled mouths ****ing up command-word based contingencies despite the fact that most of the plans about contingencies were triggered not by command words but by being put in danger), when somebody made a big post about how whatever plans you think you have for dealing with problems in general, they wouldn't be sufficient for this problem in specific, and the OP almost verbatim responds with "this is exactly what I wanted to here", it speaks much more loudly to their intentions with making the thread in the first place.
If this had been about a specific wizard, they would've posted the stats for the wizard in their game, including their prepared defenses, posted the situation, and asked if their was a way out for him. But that thread wasn't about this one wizard, it was about any wizard, any kind of defenses the hivemind of the playground could muster. And he wanted to here "yes, there's no way out, and anything we think might work actually has a flaw somewhere in the plan".
EDIT: Case in point, one of the other people defending the OP in that thread made it out like spending half your wealth for all-day Shapechange could only solve a single problem, and that therefore if you had 3 problems of that magnitude to deal with, you'd be screwed, as if all-day Shapechange is an investment that can only solve one problem, and WBL limits are a thing wizards have to be concerned about.
Now, this thread is asking the kind of question you're talking about, asking whether a wizard can be brought down by a lack of foresight (not the spell, but...proper thinking ahead), asking whether a wizard can be brought down by arrogance or misplaced priorities. And the answer to that is something everybody can agree on: unless you're playing a wizard who's literally immune to everything, then yes they occasionally will not be prepared for a situation properly, or will not treat a threat with the caution it deserves, and suffer the consequences for it. And the less optimized you are, the more likely that is. It's just that at a certain point, the weakness in a wizard's defensive lines is so finicky and specific that's it's near impossible for such a scenario to arise by accident. If you're a wizard who's defenses are only "all-day Shapechange" (which is significant resource expenditure but hardly the cheesiest way to go about things, it's just using Core resources to get a 9th level buff active all day instead of just a few hours), then the DM needs to manufacture a reasonable chain of events where, entirely by accident, the wizard finds himself in a problematic situation that cannot be solved by being basically any monster. Do situations like that exist? Yes. I don't know what they are, but yes. Are they easily-explained accidents? It's difficult to say that none of them are easy to explain as accidents, but I'd at least wager that most situations that can't be solved by any monster would require careful planning rather than "oops turns out this is a way to kill every monster".
lord_khaine
2019-01-13, 11:58 AM
Well, since both shapechange and Foresight makes it absurdly harder for the accident to kill the wizard.
Then clearly we need to start by looking at ways to get those spells out of the way.
Like. The wizard does not think he need Shapechange running all the time, because he has not needed that the last 3 years while just working in his tower.
It uses far fewer resources to just cast it if and when he needs to leave it.
Or arrogance. The Wizard -does- not cast Shapechange because at all. Because he does not need it. He might be physically enferior to dragons or golems or demons. But that does not matter. Because he is a freaking wizard! just a single step beneath a god!
Reality alters itself to suit his whims. He does not alter himself! Ever!
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-13, 12:21 PM
It tells you general things to do to avoid danger. "Teleport out of the blast radius" is entirely within the line of those advice.
And a paranoid Wizard is not going to risk not teleporting far away enough.
Also not all Wizards who are 18th level are Astral Projecting at all times, I mean some of them probably are, but assuming all of them are is probably a little bit out there.
You cast the spell once and it lasts until you die. Why wouldn't every level 18 Wizard being using it?
And a paranoid Wizard is not going to risk not teleporting far away enough.
Right, but he may not know locations outside the solar system on his own plane, and if he doesn't know a location he can't really teleport to it without risking ending up in the cold void of space. Hell, in some settings there may not be any locations he can teleport to outside of his own solar system.
You cast the spell once and it lasts until you die. Why wouldn't every level 18 Wizard being using it?
Because sometimes touching stuff is nice. Maybe he wants to go meet a lady (or gentleman) friend and it just don't feel the same through astral projection. I mean there certainly are going to be wizards that would always be using that, but it's important to remember that we likely could create a wizard that could theoretically beat any encounter, but that's not necessarily going to be true of all of them. You could still have an intelligent wizard who makes a common sense error (Wisdom is a dump stat after all).
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-13, 01:05 PM
Right, but he may not know locations outside the solar system on his own plane, and if he doesn't know a location he can't really teleport to it
Why are we assuming the genius Wizard with access to scores of Divination spells wouldn't know about other planets? And Wish/Plane Shift makes this discussion moot.
without risking ending up in the cold void of space.
Hardly an issue for a paranoid Wizard. A Necklace of Adaption alone protects her from a vacuum.
Hell, in some settings there may not be any locations he can teleport to outside of his own solar system.
The default in 3.5 is that the universe is like ours, but infinite.
Because sometimes touching stuff is nice. Maybe he wants to go meet a lady (or gentleman) friend and it just don't feel the same through astral projection.
I'm sorry, but what? :smallconfused:
Nothing about Astral Projection implies that you're insubstantial, the opposite in fact:
The spell projects an astral copy of you and all you wear or carry onto the Astral Plane. Since the Astral Plane touches upon other planes, you can travel astrally to any of these other planes as you will. To enter one, you leave the Astral Plane, forming a new physical body (and equipment) on the plane of existence you have chosen to enter.
Emphasis mine.
I mean there certainly are going to be wizards that would always be using that, but it's important to remember that we likely could create a wizard that could theoretically beat any encounter, but that's not necessarily going to be true of all of them. You could still have an intelligent wizard who makes a common sense error (Wisdom is a dump stat after all).
If you had a get out of jail free card, why wouldn't you use it?
Why are we assuming the genius Wizard with access to scores of Divination spells wouldn't know about other planets? And Wish/Plane Shift makes this discussion moot.
A contingency wish is a lot more resource expenditure, and that would make that moot. But the Wizard definitely doesn't have infinite 9th level slots and burning one on that might not always seem like it's a good use of resources, and hell it might be a huge waste when the wizard can prep other spells as well. Plane shift (because it's so variable) is not as good a contingency spell to prep either.
And what if that wizard hasn't spent time researching other planets, they might just not care about that. They have infinite planes to explore why bother with mundane planets. You're creating a wizard who always has every advantage and that's as unrealistic as the other version which had a wizard with no contingencies prepped.
Hardly an issue for a paranoid Wizard. A Necklace of Adaption alone protects her from a vacuum.
What if she has a different item in her neck slot? That's certainly possible, there are many good neck slot items.
The default in 3.5 is that the universe is like ours, but infinite.
True, and if the wizard has spent time learning about other planets they could theoretically greater teleport to them, but they might not have done so.
I'm sorry, but what? :smallconfused:
Nothing about Astral Projection implies that you're insubstantial, the opposite in fact:
Nothing about Astral Projection implies that it feels identical to your original body in terms of your own experience either. You're reading things into the spells that are DEFINITELY not in the text. I didn't say insubstantial I said "just doesn't feel the same" It's the same as when you implied that foresight would give you specific information when the text does not say that. The text here does not say that the experience is qualitatively the same for you, I mean maybe you don't enjoy sex or eating or drugs as much with your astral body for some reason, that's reasonable to be the case.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-13, 01:33 PM
A contingency wish is a lot more resource expenditure, and that would make that moot. But the Wizard definitely doesn't have infinite 9th level slots and burning one on that might not always seem like it's a good use of resources, and hell it might be a huge waste when the wizard can prep other spells as well. Plane shift (because it's so variable) is not as good a contingency spell to prep either.
Several problems here:
1. Craft Contingent Spell lasts until its expended. It's one and done.
2. Wizards easily can have nigh infinite 9th level spells if they wish.
3. Greater Plane Shift is more precise than its lesser cousin.
And what if that wizard hasn't spent time researching other planets, they might just not care about that. They have infinite planes to explore why bother with mundane planets.
But one cannot dismiss the possibility out of hand.
You're creating a wizard who always has every advantage and that's as unrealistic as the other version which had a wizard with no contingencies prepped.
Hardly. These are common defenses for high level Wizards.
What if she has a different item in her neck slot? That's certainly possible, there are many good neck slot items.
Such as?
And our Wizard could easily be undead or a construct, perhaps via Shapechange or transforming into a Lich.
Nothing about Astral Projection implies that it feels identical to your original body in terms of your own experience either.
So, your argument is, "It doesn't say that your body doesn't feel different."?
You're reading things into the spells that are DEFINITELY not in the text.
No, I'm afraid that's what you are doing.
I didn't say insubstantial I said "just doesn't feel the same"
You implied that the Wizard couldn't touch things.
EDIT:
Because sometimes touching stuff is nice.
It's the same as when you implied that foresight would give you specific information when the text does not say that.
Except for the passage I quoted that gave rather specific examples of warnings?
The text here does not say that the experience is qualitatively the same for you, I mean maybe you don't enjoy sex or eating or drugs as much with your astral body for some reason, that's reasonable to be the case.
It is not reasonable in the least. Either quote some text to prove your point or concede that you simply made up this argument wholesale.
ericgrau
2019-01-13, 05:11 PM
I still think a loner rolling a 3 on a save against a random encounter is the simplest way. Unless it's a TO build he can't ward against everything. And we can at least semi-explain the loner thing with plot. But it might not be fully keeping with the natural disaster / not murdered theme. It's only kind of an accident, but not fully.
Maybe we could do something similar with a failed save but without a creature. Supernatural phenomenon perhaps?
Since this is for a campaign DM, we don't have to speculate too much on what the wizard might have prepared. Just say he didn't prepare that spell that day for whatever reason. As long as it's not a super popular spell like teleport it's reasonable enough for the plot. Say he was prepared, but he was prepared for something else.
Efrate
2019-01-13, 06:31 PM
On shapechange: it lets you be an elemental weird which gives a ton of divinations at will, and the spell lasts for a very long time. Divination is one of if not the the easiest way to gain whatever information you need. Its also quicker than pouring over a bunch of tomes for hours. There are also sizable benefits otherwise, and because of duration if you keep it up more or less constantly (not too hard) its works as a first line catch all defensive spell, giving you a pretty solid list of built in outs. Zodar form if nothing else can be huge. Even at just 4 9ths, one wish as a supreme I rewrite reality if needed, or get basically any other spell, and 3 shapechange is a fine loadout for whatever you need.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-13, 06:34 PM
On shapechange: it lets you be an elemental weird which gives a ton of divinations at will, and the spell lasts for a very long time. Divination is one of if not the the easiest way to gain whatever information you need. Its also quicker than pouring over a bunch of tomes for hours. There are also sizable benefits otherwise, and because of duration if you keep it up more or less constantly (not too hard) its works as a first line catch all defensive spell, giving you a pretty solid list of built in outs. Zodar form if nothing else can be huge. Even at just 4 9ths, one wish as a supreme I rewrite reality if needed, or get basically any other spell, and 3 shapechange is a fine loadout for whatever you need.
Yeah, Shapechange is such an amazing spell that if I could only have one spell in the entire game (9th level or otherwise) it'd be Shapechange.
Troacctid
2019-01-13, 07:38 PM
Okay, how about this, the wizard died in a freak accident involving an earthquake, a glue gun, a colony of squirrels, and a portal to Avernus. Tell the players the details are a bit shaky, but it was definitely a sticky situation to begin with, then everything went nuts, and it all went to hell from there.
Calthropstu
2019-01-14, 08:32 AM
Time travel to a period of time when your mother was pregnant with you as an entropomancer.
Bring with you a sphere of annihilation, a bag of holding and a portable hole.
Place the sphere inside the bag of holding then have your mom hold the portable hole. Place the bag in the hole and kill your mom and yourself as you do so.
Time will attempt to correct the paradox and will run into the sphere of annihilation freshly dumped in the time stream due to it being unable to be destroyed, but not being able to go anywhere.
Time itself gets destroyed, the universe stops and everything ceases to be.
Escape that mr wizard optimizers.
Braininthejar2
2019-01-14, 08:55 AM
* Spend centuries living in a castle in the astral, interacting with the world via astral travel. - get summoned to the material plane through players' shenanigans and instantly die of old age.
** walk an astral body into an antimagic field - glich out of existence until it is removed.
* choke on a cherry.
* die of old age - happens to everyone.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-14, 01:07 PM
Time travel to a period of time when your mother was pregnant with you as an entropomancer.
Bring with you a sphere of annihilation, a bag of holding and a portable hole.
Place the sphere inside the bag of holding then have your mom hold the portable hole. Place the bag in the hole and kill your mom and yourself as you do so.
Well, that would hardly qualify as an accident, that would be another character killing the Wizard.
Time will attempt to correct the paradox and will run into the sphere of annihilation freshly dumped in the time stream due to it being unable to be destroyed, but not being able to go anywhere.
Time itself gets destroyed, the universe stops and everything ceases to be.
Dubious that it would work that way since there are no rules for paradox.
Escape that mr wizard optimizers.
So, who wants to tell him about the Teleport Through Time Forced Dream combo? :smallbiggrin:
icefractal
2019-01-14, 09:41 PM
Almost all Wizards discussed around these parts are either Schrodinger's Wizards or use NI loops to have all precautions active at all times, which is why they're so impervious to harm. But that's not just people being Wizard fanboys, it's because making an optimized 18th level Wizard with finite resources is a lot of work! More than most people, including myself, are willing to do for a thought experiment.
Recently, I did make a 20th level Wizard, and while fun it was quite time consuming (even in PF, where the PFSRD makes things faster), and that wasn't even aiming for maximum paranoia.
Something I noticed in the process though, is that divinations and contingencies are not a magic bullet. You get a limited number (in a non-NI scenario), and if you actually specify them rather than hand-waving about high-Int (wouldn't it be high-Wis anyway?), then you find it's distinctly less than 100% coverage. Your foes might not know where those weak points are, but a random unlucky accident hitting one of them isn't by any means impossible.
I've actually gotten way more defensive utility out of just "buffs that give me good stats and immunities" than any kind of 4d chess contingency framework.
Rynjin
2019-01-14, 09:49 PM
Seems like the simplest example is "he goofed while doing some kind of research, created a Wild Magic zone, and his own Contingencies killed him".
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-14, 09:49 PM
Something I noticed in the process though, is that divinations and contingencies are not a magic bullet. You get a limited number (in a non-NI scenario), and if you actually specify them rather than hand-waving about high-Int (wouldn't it be high-Wis anyway?), then you find it's distinctly less than 100% coverage. Your foes might not know where those weak points are, but a random unlucky accident hitting one of them isn't by any means impossible.
I will note that Shapechanging into an Elemental Weird covers the divination department quite nicely.
As for Contingency? I like to tie them to spoken words and have them trigger Celerity.
Calthropstu
2019-01-15, 04:05 PM
1: be the DM
2: Say "rocks fall, the wizard dies."
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-15, 04:08 PM
1: be the DM
2: Say "rocks fall, the wizard dies."
DC 15 REF save to negate, per Heroes of Battle. Bring on the falling rocks. :smallwink:
Calthropstu
2019-01-15, 05:43 PM
DC 15 REF save to negate, per Heroes of Battle. Bring on the falling rocks. :smallwink:
There is a circumstance modifier of negative infinity on the save. Nat 20 or die. Each round.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-15, 05:44 PM
There is a circumstance modifier of negative infinity on the save. Nat 20 or die. Each round.
Not how the rules work.
Also, if the Wizard is incorporeal, no amount of rocks can harm her.
Calthropstu
2019-01-15, 05:46 PM
Not how the rules work.
Also, if the Wizard is incorporeal, no amount of rocks can harm her.
The rocks are incorporeal too.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-15, 05:47 PM
The rocks are incorporeal too.
Then I respond by bludgeoning the DM over head with the PHP, because clearly he sucks at his job.
Calthropstu
2019-01-15, 05:48 PM
Then I respond by bludgeoning the DM over head with the PHP, because clearly he sucks at his job.
The DM makes his save, and is immune to your PHP code.
ColorBlindNinja
2019-01-15, 05:49 PM
The DM makes his save, and is immune to your PHP code.
Player's Handbook. I wouldn't wish PHP on my worst enemy. :smallwink:
Calthropstu
2019-01-15, 05:54 PM
Player's Handbook. I wouldn't wish PHP on my worst enemy. :smallwink:
*tucks his php code books where you can't see them whistling innocently.*
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