Spellcasting battle: I lost Initiative.

[Yogibear41]

Epic level rocket tag, you lose initiative.......

Your opponent begins to cast his spell, you have super duper counterspell abilities that you know will work to counter the spell. What Feats/Spells/Abilities can you use to be able to counter the spell in time.

[martixy]

Battlemagic perception is the go-to here.
Contingency(celerity) is a classic.

[Eldariel]

Epic level rocket tag, you lose initiative.......

Your opponent begins to cast his spell, you have super duper counterspell abilities that you know will work to counter the spell. What Feats/Spells/Abilities can you use to be able to counter the spell in time.

Okay, Battlemagic Perception [Heroes of Battle] and Duelward [Complete Arcane] are the two spells that directly allow you to counter a spell. Foresight and Celerity [PHBII] obviously allows you to take the first action, as do Contingency, any Contingency-variants (Chain Contingency [Tome & Blood] is the biggest off the top of my head, but Instant Refuge [SC] & Spell Phylactery [Magic of Faerun] also allow immediate action if not counterspell), and Crafted Contingencies [Complete Arcane] that happen to be appropriate. Chronotyryn [Fiend Folio] Shapechange [PHB] can take two immediate actions. Divine Defiance [Fiendish Codex II] allows counterspelling as an immediate action. Epic Counterspell [PGtF], if we're talking actual Epic, is from a FR book and allows plain counterspelling everything for free action zero effort.

[emeraldstreak]

Mind you, an anti-flatfooted effect (Foresight, Shapechange) isn't optional - you need it for all the immediate actions.

[Zaq]

You can help prevent against losing initiative by being in the form of a dire tortoise before init is rolled, since dire tortoises have a poorly worded ability that lets them always act in a surprise round, even if there isn’t one. A clever use of Craft Contingent Spell can help with this.

Otherwise, yeah, celerity or some equivalent is the go-to option, ideally with some form of daze immunity to make sure that you get your own turn as well.

[Segev]

Let us consider, for a moment, what it means to "lose initiative" as a high-end caster.

If your foe is also a high-end caster, he will have access to most, if not all, of the same tricks you do. This means that, if he won that pesky initiative roll, and neither of you can be surprised due to foresight and similar effects, you will trigger an immediate action to instead go first, yourself. However, your foe still has his immediate action, which he can trigger in response to yours to go before yours goes off. So now, you've both spent your immediate actions, but he's still got effective priority in initiative order. This isn't good for you.

Fortunately, you have your Contingent Spells! If your go-to strategy is always to be dead-set on casting the perfect counterspell, then you're going to have your Contingent Spells be filled with celerity, keyed to go off if anybody is casting a spell faster than you have yet to react (and there are N or fewer Contingent celerity spells on you, where N is the number order in which this one was put up; use that Int score and K:Math or something to make sure you word it, IC, to work the way you want it to, and not in some way the DM tries to trick it into failing). So now, with his immediate action going to cast celerity to let him still cast a new spell faster than your immediate-action celerity can go off, your highest-N Contingent celerity triggers.

Here's where we get into the strategy question: does your opponent have his own Contingent spells set up to also cast celerity? If so, then this becomes an arms race of who has more Contingent celerity spells on their person. If you both have the same number, he wins (because he won initiative, and thus forced you to dip into this bag of tricks first). Ties aside, whoever has more of them wins, and actually gets to go first.

Even with Counterspell, you need to be going first, by the way; it specifically requires a readied action to Counterspell, so you need your celerity-granted action to ready for Counterspelling whatever of his spellcasting actions goes off first.

Notably, if you do manage to have at least one more Contingent celerity in place than he does, you've still already declared each of your standard actions to be readying to counterspell whatever he's doing, and he's declared spells in each of his earlier-cast but later-executing celerity-granted actions.

You'll have to have each spell he chose to cast readied properly to Counterspell, and he'll have to cast them in reverse order of his declaration as the "stack" resolves. If he runs out of spells he declared he was going to cast, the actions he spent on them are wasted (unless the DM always allows people to take different actions after they declare one and somebody's interrupt makes it impossible).

Generally, I think it's better to have your Contingent spells be set up as "get away to your sanctum" effects. If you're dipping into one-shot magic items, you don't want to leave that to guesswork that'll have you stuck in the trouble spot, expending more and more of them.

[Zaq]

Let us consider, for a moment, what it means to "lose initiative" as a high-end caster.

If your foe is also a high-end caster, he will have access to most, if not all, of the same tricks you do. This means that, if he won that pesky initiative roll, and neither of you can be surprised due to foresight and similar effects, you will trigger an immediate action to instead go first, yourself. However, your foe still has his immediate action, which he can trigger in response to yours to go before yours goes off. So now, you've both spent your immediate actions, but he's still got effective priority in initiative order. This isn't good for you.

Fortunately, you have your Contingent Spells! If your go-to strategy is always to be dead-set on casting the perfect counterspell, then you're going to have your Contingent Spells be filled with celerity, keyed to go off if anybody is casting a spell faster than you have yet to react (and there are N or fewer Contingent celerity spells on you, where N is the number order in which this one was put up; use that Int score and K:Math or something to make sure you word it, IC, to work the way you want it to, and not in some way the DM tries to trick it into failing). So now, with his immediate action going to cast celerity to let him still cast a new spell faster than your immediate-action celerity can go off, your highest-N Contingent celerity triggers.

Here's where we get into the strategy question: does your opponent have his own Contingent spells set up to also cast celerity? If so, then this becomes an arms race of who has more Contingent celerity spells on their person. If you both have the same number, he wins (because he won initiative, and thus forced you to dip into this bag of tricks first). Ties aside, whoever has more of them wins, and actually gets to go first.

Even with Counterspell, you need to be going first, by the way; it specifically requires a readied action to Counterspell, so you need your celerity-granted action to ready for Counterspelling whatever of his spellcasting actions goes off first.

Notably, if you do manage to have at least one more Contingent celerity in place than he does, you've still already declared each of your standard actions to be readying to counterspell whatever he's doing, and he's declared spells in each of his earlier-cast but later-executing celerity-granted actions.

You'll have to have each spell he chose to cast readied properly to Counterspell, and he'll have to cast them in reverse order of his declaration as the "stack" resolves. If he runs out of spells he declared he was going to cast, the actions he spent on them are wasted (unless the DM always allows people to take different actions after they declare one and somebody's interrupt makes it impossible).

Generally, I think it's better to have your Contingent spells be set up as "get away to your sanctum" effects. If you're dipping into one-shot magic items, you don't want to leave that to guesswork that'll have you stuck in the trouble spot, expending more and more of them.

This does come back to my firm belief about how hyper-optimized wizards (and equivalent casters) actually duel.

They meet somewhere pleasant, share a nice cup of tea, and just chat for a little while, at which point they exhaustively lay out their laundry lists of immunities and immunity-breakers and immunities to immunity-breakers and contingencies and counter-contingencies and counter-counter-contingencies and counter-counter-counter-contingencies and all of that. After they do that, the less exhaustively overprepared wizard admits defeat, they shake hands, and the two wizards go their separate ways, with the loser very carefully staying out of the victor’s way.

They’re both smart enough to know that the wizard with a contingency that the other one couldn’t counter is definitely going to win, so why bother acting out a foregone conclusion and waste all those costly defenses that need to be reloaded? And yes, the loser really does accept defeat. He or she didn’t reach god-tier level by picking unwinnable fights.

[Segev]

This does come back to my firm belief about how hyper-optimized wizards (and equivalent casters) actually duel.

They meet somewhere pleasant, share a nice cup of tea, and just chat for a little while, at which point they exhaustively lay out their laundry lists of immunities and immunity-breakers and immunities to immunity-breakers and contingencies and counter-contingencies and counter-counter-contingencies and counter-counter-counter-contingencies and all of that. After they do that, the less exhaustively overprepared wizard admits defeat, they shake hands, and the two wizards go their separate ways, with the loser very carefully staying out of the victor’s way.

They’re both smart enough to know that the wizard with a contingency that the other one couldn’t counter is definitely going to win, so why bother acting out a foregone conclusion and waste all those costly defenses that need to be reloaded? And yes, the loser really does accept defeat. He or she didn’t reach god-tier level by picking unwinnable fights.

This does assume that neither "wizard" is actually a high-level Bard with glibness and other effects to make his bluff shoot through the roof and render him immune to anti-lying measures, and is just making up new and more impressive defenses to guarantee that he wins the argument.

In other words, it might come down to the fight, anyway, just because you can't ever be sure the other guy was 100% honest: either exaggerating to "win" the duel and make you too scared to oppose him, despite you being actually better-prepared, or sandbagging to keep you overconfident so that he can backstab you later.

Plus, there's always the wizard who just wants you dead, and isn't going to refrain from attacking you if he "wins" the duel of described defenses; he'll attack immediately, believing himself to be guaranteed the win.

[Yogibear41]

There have been plenty of times throughout human history when one force or army knows its going to lose but fights anyway. Somethings really are worse than death.


No imagine the same situation in a universe/world where Resurrection magic exists, and your buddy down the street can bring you back to life.

[rferries]

There have been plenty of times throughout human history when one force or army knows its going to lose but fights anyway. Somethings really are worse than death.


No imagine the same situation in a universe/world where Resurrection magic exists, and your buddy down the street can bring you back to life.

And one of those dates worse than death is being barred from both the afterlife and from being raised, when your opponent casts soul bind on you after killing you. :*(

[CactusAir]

This does come back to my firm belief about how hyper-optimized wizards (and equivalent casters) actually duel.

They meet somewhere pleasant, share a nice cup of tea, and just chat for a little while, at which point they exhaustively lay out their laundry lists of immunities and immunity-breakers and immunities to immunity-breakers and contingencies and counter-contingencies and counter-counter-contingencies and counter-counter-counter-contingencies and all of that. After they do that, the less exhaustively overprepared wizard admits defeat, they shake hands, and the two wizards go their separate ways, with the loser very carefully staying out of the victor’s way.

They’re both smart enough to know that the wizard with a contingency that the other one couldn’t counter is definitely going to win, so why bother acting out a foregone conclusion and waste all those costly defenses that need to be reloaded? And yes, the loser really does accept defeat. He or she didn’t reach god-tier level by picking unwinnable fights.

Well that's a nicer setting than tippyverse, I guess. I do like this idea, it appeals to the artist in me. Kudos.




Who even allows celerity in games anymore? like, isn't that usually at the very top of banlists?

[Quertus]

This does come back to my firm belief about how hyper-optimized wizards (and equivalent casters) actually duel.

They meet somewhere pleasant, share a nice cup of tea, and just chat for a little while, at which point they exhaustively lay out their laundry lists of immunities and immunity-breakers and immunities to immunity-breakers and contingencies and counter-contingencies and counter-counter-contingencies and counter-counter-counter-contingencies and all of that. After they do that, the less exhaustively overprepared wizard admits defeat, they shake hands, and the two wizards go their separate ways, with the loser very carefully staying out of the victor’s way.

They’re both smart enough to know that the wizard with a contingency that the other one couldn’t counter is definitely going to win, so why bother acting out a foregone conclusion and waste all those costly defenses that need to be reloaded? And yes, the loser really does accept defeat. He or she didn’t reach god-tier level by picking unwinnable fights.

This is even cooler than the OOTS Cleric fight. I approve.


This does assume that neither "wizard" is actually a high-level Bard with glibness and other effects to make his bluff shoot through the roof and render him immune to anti-lying measures, and is just making up new and more impressive defenses to guarantee that he wins the argument.

In other words, it might come down to the fight, anyway, just because you can't ever be sure the other guy was 100% honest: either exaggerating to "win" the duel and make you too scared to oppose him, despite you being actually better-prepared, or sandbagging to keep you overconfident so that he can backstab you later.

If you don't have the Arcane Sight & Spellcraft to know that the Bard is lying, you've already lost.


Plus, there's always the wizard who just wants you dead, and isn't going to refrain from attacking you if he "wins" the duel of described defenses; he'll attack immediately, believing himself to be guaranteed the win.

That Wizard probably never made it to high levels. Just saying.

[ericgrau]

There's also the part where many actions involve rolling dice, sneaking up, or going after targets other than said wizard. The best way to win a conflict is often to not fight and go after something else instead. Or create a decoy. Send a simulacrum after one target for a bit while you go after the real target, for example. Victory usually isn't killing some random stranger for no reason. You usually both want things that conflict, and that's why you're fighting in the first place. So the question becomes, how do you get the thing you really want, which may or may not involve killing the person who wants something else.

[unseenmage]

Correct me if I'm wrong but if your mundane gear is actually dormant animated objects or intelligent magic items then cant they have Contingencies too?

Perhaps Contingencies that are set to teleport or plane shift that the creature could technically take you with them when they go off?

[maruahm]

There's also the part where many actions involve rolling dice, sneaking up, or going after targets other than said wizard. The best way to win a conflict is often to not fight and go after something else instead. Or create a decoy. Send a simulacrum after one target for a bit while you go after the real target, for example. Victory usually isn't killing some random stranger for no reason. You usually both want things that conflict, and that's why you're fighting in the first place. So the question becomes, how do you get the thing you really want, which may or may not involve killing the person who wants something else.

Foresight should deal with a lot of the problems which result from sneaking and so on.

But if we're going to talk about the pre-fight period, then as you say, the fight never starts. Each wizard is sending as many ice assassins as they can afford at one another, and spamming gate to send phanes against their rival.

And they're probably in shapechange in the form of a chronotyryn for that sweet Dual Action (Su) racial feature.

[ericgrau]

Now I feel like I'm/we're detracting even further from the OP's goal of ways to act when you lose initiative. Yeah it's definitely not everything to win, low op or high op, but I'm sure it's an option he'd like to have.

[Segev]

If you don't have the Arcane Sight & Spellcraft to know that the Bard is lying, you've already lost. Irrelevant when his Bluff is so high that he can convince you that you're misreading the clues, and that he's clearly just so well-prepared that you can't even get a read on what he really has. He's telling you the bare minimum of his extensive preparations to demonstrate that you've no chance, not giving you a blueprint of how to prepare in order to best him next time, after all.


That Wizard probably never made it to high levels. Just saying.Based on what? Nothing about "being willing to kill those who're unable to stop you, if you really want them dead" precludes your own survival to high levels.


Now I feel like I'm/we're detracting even further from the OP's goal of ways to act when you lose initiative. Yeah it's definitely not everything to win, low op or high op, but I'm sure it's an option he'd like to have.Is that his goal? He seemed to be asking a theorycrafting question about high-OP mage duels.

If he's looking for something not quite so TO, a bit more detail on what his scenario is would be helpful.

[Quertus]

Irrelevant when his Bluff is so high that he can convince you that you're misreading the clues, and that he's clearly just so well-prepared that you can't even get a read on what he really has. He's telling you the bare minimum of his extensive preparations to demonstrate that you've no chance, not giving you a blueprint of how to prepare in order to best him next time, after all.

Based on what? Nothing about "being willing to kill those who're unable to stop you, if you really want them dead" precludes your own survival to high levels.

Oh, I misread you on that last bit - I thought that you were saying that the Wizard would (try and fail to) kill you when when they knew it was impossible.

As to bluff... He (convincingly) says he has something that you know he doesn't, so you kill him, and bind his soul to whichever layer of hell liars go to. I'm not seeing this working out for the Bard of Glibness.

[Segev]

Oh, I misread you on that last bit - I thought that you were saying that the Wizard would (try and fail to) kill you when when they knew it was impossible.

As to bluff... He (convincingly) says he has something that you know he doesn't, so you kill him, and bind his soul to whichever layer of hell liars go to. I'm not seeing this working out for the Bard of Glibness.Ugh, you'd be unfun to play a Bluff-based character with, if you rule like that.

That's not how Bluff works. Bluff is about fooling people. You can't know, for sure, that he doesn't have what he says he does, and part of having Bluff that ludicrously high is that you can spin a convincing story that instills doubts on any facts which seem to contravene.

Let's put it this way: if the wizard kills the Bard for bluffing ("convincingly") with something the Bard doesn't have, he'll also die horribly to the much better-prepared wizard who really does have all that he claims to, but has artfully concealed it in ways the first wizard can't detect. Which means, in both cases, it comes down to actually fighting out the fight, not just having tea and discussing how they WOULD win, if they fought, but they won't really.

My point was that assuming they have tea like civilized magic-users and discuss their tactics until one concedes to the other that he cannot win, and then they peacefully part presences, is assuming a lot about their honesty, their trust in the other's honesty, and their purpose in the fight.

If the purpose is personal, then there may well be a murder when one wizard concedes and tries to leave peacefully and the other gleefully exploits his now sure victory. If either is a consummate abjurer who can keep his secrets, only leaving his own word as the sole evidence as to what he truly has prepared, the other might (wrongly) discern that the first is a liar, and attempt to beat him when he fails to concede...and die horribly because he picked a fight he actually couldn't win. (I'm reminded of the final fight between Aizen and Ichigo, in which the former scoffed that the latter had foolishly cast off all his might for pure physical strength in a fight between what amounted to mages, based on his assessment of Ichigo's abilities through his own senses.)

If either is a consummate liar, able to convince the other that he truly has preparations that are beyond the other's ability to detect, and further, that's proof of just how beyond said other the speaker is, and the other is the sort to do the "peaceably part" procedure, our Bard wins despite being no match for the exiting Wizard.

Which all comes back to my point being that, while there may well be some formal schools of wizard dueling that work in that precise fashion, it wouldn't be reasonable at all to assume that all - or even the majority - of battles between wizards would be resolved that way.

[Calthropstu]

Ugh, you'd be unfun to play a Bluff-based character with, if you rule like that.

That's not how Bluff works. Bluff is about fooling people. You can't know, for sure, that he doesn't have what he says he does, and part of having Bluff that ludicrously high is that you can spin a convincing story that instills doubts on any facts which seem to contravene.

Let's put it this way: if the wizard kills the Bard for bluffing ("convincingly") with something the Bard doesn't have, he'll also die horribly to the much better-prepared wizard who really does have all that he claims to, but has artfully concealed it in ways the first wizard can't detect. Which means, in both cases, it comes down to actually fighting out the fight, not just having tea and discussing how they WOULD win, if they fought, but they won't really.

My point was that assuming they have tea like civilized magic-users and discuss their tactics until one concedes to the other that he cannot win, and then they peacefully part presences, is assuming a lot about their honesty, their trust in the other's honesty, and their purpose in the fight.

If the purpose is personal, then there may well be a murder when one wizard concedes and tries to leave peacefully and the other gleefully exploits his now sure victory. If either is a consummate abjurer who can keep his secrets, only leaving his own word as the sole evidence as to what he truly has prepared, the other might (wrongly) discern that the first is a liar, and attempt to beat him when he fails to concede...and die horribly because he picked a fight he actually couldn't win. (I'm reminded of the final fight between Aizen and Ichigo, in which the former scoffed that the latter had foolishly cast off all his might for pure physical strength in a fight between what amounted to mages, based on his assessment of Ichigo's abilities through his own senses.)

If either is a consummate liar, able to convince the other that he truly has preparations that are beyond the other's ability to detect, and further, that's proof of just how beyond said other the speaker is, and the other is the sort to do the "peaceably part" procedure, our Bard wins despite being no match for the exiting Wizard.

Which all comes back to my point being that, while there may well be some formal schools of wizard dueling that work in that precise fashion, it wouldn't be reasonable at all to assume that all - or even the majority - of battles between wizards would be resolved that way.

See, this is where allies come into play. Sure, maybe wizard 2 can't win. But Wizard 1 will have to expend too many resources allowing wizard 3 to move in for the kill. Wizard 2 doesn't want to die, but neither does wizard 1. So they negotiate.

[Segev]

See, this is where allies come into play. Sure, maybe wizard 2 can't win. But Wizard 1 will have to expend too many resources allowing wizard 3 to move in for the kill. Wizard 2 doesn't want to die, but neither does wizard 1. So they negotiate.

And that brings us back to "Wizard 2" being a Bard who's megabluff skills mean everyone thinks he's way more powerful than they are.

[rferries]

And that brings us back to "Wizard 2" being a Bard who's megabluff skills mean everyone thinks he's way more powerful than they are.

I think that's very plausible, but given the high-level scenarios we're envisioning I suspect most wizards wouldn't actually meet in person (and therefore couldn't be Bluffed). They'd be scoping out a foe with contact other plane etc well in advance, and would quickly learn about the impostor's true nature. "Scry and die" tactics, rather than "meet over tea for debate", would be the order of the day.

[emeraldstreak]

I think that's very plausible, but given the high-level scenarios we're envisioning I suspect most wizards wouldn't actually meet in person (and therefore couldn't be Bluffed). They'd be scoping out a foe with contact other plane etc well in advance, and would quickly learn about the impostor's true nature. "Scry and die" tactics, rather than "meet over tea for debate", would be the order of the day.

On the other hand a low level Sorcerer convention has always been fun, with everyone having high Bluff and no one having Sense Motive.

[Promethean]

Ugh, you'd be unfun to play a Bluff-based character with, if you rule like that.

That's not how Bluff works. Bluff is about fooling people. You can't know, for sure, that he doesn't have what he says he does, and part of having Bluff that ludicrously high is that you can spin a convincing story that instills doubts on any facts which seem to contravene.

Let's put it this way: if the wizard kills the Bard for bluffing ("convincingly") with something the Bard doesn't have, he'll also die horribly to the much better-prepared wizard who really does have all that he claims to, but has artfully concealed it in ways the first wizard can't detect. Which means, in both cases, it comes down to actually fighting out the fight, not just having tea and discussing how they WOULD win, if they fought, but they won't really.

My point was that assuming they have tea like civilized magic-users and discuss their tactics until one concedes to the other that he cannot win, and then they peacefully part presences, is assuming a lot about their honesty, their trust in the other's honesty, and their purpose in the fight.

If the purpose is personal, then there may well be a murder when one wizard concedes and tries to leave peacefully and the other gleefully exploits his now sure victory. If either is a consummate abjurer who can keep his secrets, only leaving his own word as the sole evidence as to what he truly has prepared, the other might (wrongly) discern that the first is a liar, and attempt to beat him when he fails to concede...and die horribly because he picked a fight he actually couldn't win. (I'm reminded of the final fight between Aizen and Ichigo, in which the former scoffed that the latter had foolishly cast off all his might for pure physical strength in a fight between what amounted to mages, based on his assessment of Ichigo's abilities through his own senses.)

If either is a consummate liar, able to convince the other that he truly has preparations that are beyond the other's ability to detect, and further, that's proof of just how beyond said other the speaker is, and the other is the sort to do the "peaceably part" procedure, our Bard wins despite being no match for the exiting Wizard.

Which all comes back to my point being that, while there may well be some formal schools of wizard dueling that work in that precise fashion, it wouldn't be reasonable at all to assume that all - or even the majority - of battles between wizards would be resolved that way.


The problem I see with this is that a bard's lack of knowledge will bite them. If the Wizard is a High INT, High Arcane, and High Spellcraft supreme Know-it-all of magic, then the bluff DC is just going to be too high for even a 20th level bard to handle. You'd need to make a Hiher bluff check than the Wizard's knowledge of magic, the very thing a wizard Specializes in the same way your bard specializes in bluff, but His DC will be easier because he will actually know his stuff.


I think that's very plausible, but given the high-level scenarios we're envisioning I suspect most wizards wouldn't actually meet in person (and therefore couldn't be Bluffed). They'd be scoping out a foe with contact other plane etc well in advance, and would quickly learn about the impostor's true nature. "Scry and die" tactics, rather than "meet over tea for debate", would be the order of the day.

Between scry-and-die, Foresight(Divination in general really), Contingencies, Celerity, Multiple rival Wizards...... Okay I'm starting to see why wizards stay holed up in their (fortress)towers all day and Convincing local adventurers to go places for them, if any of these hopeless paranoids stepped outside it could be read as a hostile action that in turn sets off a chain of betrayal, attacks, and spells that level's the continent.

So High level spell casters are basically Living nuclear warheads under unwilling house arrest, Neat.

[JeenLeen]

The problem I see with this is that a bard's lack of knowledge will bite them. If the Wizard is a High INT, High Arcane, and High Spellcraft supreme Know-it-all of magic, then the bluff DC is just going to be too high for even a 20th level bard to handle. You'd need to make a Hiher bluff check than the Wizard's knowledge of magic, the very thing a wizard Specializes in the same way your bard specializes in bluff, but His DC will be easier because he will actually know his stuff.

Bards do get Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft as class skills. And I'd presume one that is going to try this bluff would be one that would put his skill points into those skills, as well as have a decent Int (or an item of +6 Int) available at that level. So it won't be as good as the wizard with +10 or more to their Int, but it'd still be good. Probably good enough that they can pass any skill checks needed for a decent bluff. And their ability to know and call upon trivia could be knowledge of other wizard battles.

I reckon that, if some sort of civilized wizard duel (that is, talking over tea) existed, there'd be some community of high-level wizards. Not allies or friends, but respected beings of similar power. You either join -- and are vetted as a true wizard -- or you die, if you are going around posing as an epic wizard. So the bard-wizards either can't afford to lie (since the whole college would kill them) or have to be insanely good liars (to pass the vetting process). Also, in 3.5, bards would probably be hard-pressed to cast enough spells to show they are a wizard.

[Promethean]

Bards do get Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft as class skills. And I'd presume one that is going to try this bluff would be one that would put his skill points into those skills, as well as have a decent Int (or an item of +6 Int) available at that level. So it won't be as good as the wizard with +10 or more to their Int, but it'd still be good. Probably good enough that they can pass any skill checks needed for a decent bluff. And their ability to know and call upon trivia could be knowledge of other wizard battles.

I reckon that, if some sort of civilized wizard duel (that is, talking over tea) existed, there'd be some community of high-level wizards. Not allies or friends, but respected beings of similar power. You either join -- and are vetted as a true wizard -- or you die, if you are going around posing as an epic wizard. So the bard-wizards either can't afford to lie (since the whole college would kill them) or have to be insanely good liars (to pass the vetting process). Also, in 3.5, bards would probably be hard-pressed to cast enough spells to show they are a wizard.

Don't forget though, A bard's main stat is charisma and their class abilities rely on it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't see any bard character doing this unless they were specifically built to con wizards. IC, I don't see a bard doing this unless his backstory was about him living near and making a profession specifically out of tricking wizards(a profession that wouldn't have a good life expectancy I might add, a single Nat 1 and he's extra crunchy).

[Segev]

Don't forget though, A bard's main stat is charisma and their class abilities rely on it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't see any bard character doing this unless they were specifically built to con wizards. IC, I don't see a bard doing this unless his backstory was about him living near and making a profession specifically out of tricking wizards(a profession that wouldn't have a good life expectancy I might add, a single Nat 1 and he's extra crunchy).

Given the assumptions of "there exist sufficiently high-powered/level wizards" and "they're high-op in build and behavior," any high-level character is going to optimize to play in their circles, or at least survive such play. Being in this "club" and thus never having to engage in violent combat with the terrifyingly powerful wizards who make it up, but instead having a civilized tea-drinking conversation where you brag about your preparations until one or the other concedes, bows out, and allows the other to have his way, is extremely optimal, even if you aren't, in fact, a wizard.

When you have the ability to lie about your prep such that you can make up whatever you need to to one-up and best the announced preparations of your opponent in this duel to the failure of planning, you can certainly always win, as long as your lie is believed.

Reasonable to maxed Spellcraft and K:Arcana would be useful, but unless you start modifying DCs somewhat arbitrarily, or have a very well-designed skill encounter where DCs are designed to be modified by other skill checks' successes, Bluff is the only one he'll really need. But in practice, a Bard is liable to have these skills, anyway, along with Perform, Bluff, and Sense Motive, and probably Diplomacy. That's only 6 skills to keep maxed for a social bard; not a hard bar to pass since you can do it with 10 int. If he's built at all for this, then he probably has a slightly higher Int, and thus room for some other Bard "round out the party" skills like Search or Pickpocketing or the like. (Or whatever the skills are in the version/edition of the game you're playing.)

Between his very high Charisma (at least as high as the wizards push their Int), max ranks in Bluff, glibness (which is just ridiculously powerful), and the like, a Bard on the same level as these wizards will be able to smash their Sense Motives and even overcome their various divinations that pierce lies to spin highly-improbable but somehow utterly believable tales as to why the opponent thinks he knows the Bard doesn't have sufficient preparation.

And even if he wasn't built towards this from chargen, the Bard at this level will bend part of his build towards it as needed when he reaches this level, simply because this is how you survive as a high-level character if you can at all do it: you get "in" and learn how to browbeat and bluff your way into getting other wizards to stand down from any possible confrontation with you.


The really funny thing would be the probable secret that a third to two thirds of the members of this collegium are actually bards bluffing their way through. Some may even realize it, but wouldn't want to call out the others for fear that the NOTION that it's possible would come back to bite them. But having this be true would also lend credence to the Bards' claims about why nobody can tell just how prepared they are: so many other wizards "known" to be unbeatable (thanks to these duels) have similar undetectable preparations, so it must be fairly common for wizard to do! (Add in that the real wizards would be pressed to find ways to hide their own preparations to fit in and to keep up, and now there really are ways to do it (if there weren't, before), and the real wizards ALSO are able to claim preparations and defenses that nobody knows about and can't be proven without testing them.)

[Promethean]

Given the assumptions of "there exist sufficiently high-powered/level wizards" and "they're high-op in build and behavior," any high-level character is going to optimize to play in their circles, or at least survive such play. Being in this "club" and thus never having to engage in violent combat with the terrifyingly powerful wizards who make it up, but instead having a civilized tea-drinking conversation where you brag about your preparations until one or the other concedes, bows out, and allows the other to have his way, is extremely optimal, even if you aren't, in fact, a wizard.

When you have the ability to lie about your prep such that you can make up whatever you need to to one-up and best the announced preparations of your opponent in this duel to the failure of planning, you can certainly always win, as long as your lie is believed.

Reasonable to maxed Spellcraft and K:Arcana would be useful, but unless you start modifying DCs somewhat arbitrarily, or have a very well-designed skill encounter where DCs are designed to be modified by other skill checks' successes, Bluff is the only one he'll really need. But in practice, a Bard is liable to have these skills, anyway, along with Perform, Bluff, and Sense Motive, and probably Diplomacy. That's only 6 skills to keep maxed for a social bard; not a hard bar to pass since you can do it with 10 int. If he's built at all for this, then he probably has a slightly higher Int, and thus room for some other Bard "round out the party" skills like Search or Pickpocketing or the like. (Or whatever the skills are in the version/edition of the game you're playing.)

Between his very high Charisma (at least as high as the wizards push their Int), max ranks in Bluff, glibness (which is just ridiculously powerful), and the like, a Bard on the same level as these wizards will be able to smash their Sense Motives and even overcome their various divinations that pierce lies to spin highly-improbable but somehow utterly believable tales as to why the opponent thinks he knows the Bard doesn't have sufficient preparation.

Except for glibness to ignore a wizard's divinations, The bard has too win a caster level check. Considering how High level wizards would be optimizing toward that to overcome things like dispell, anti-magic field and disjunction, You're bard won't so much "Smash Through" a wizards divinations so much as have a 50-50 shot at tricking them, at best. If the the wizard divine's that you're lying, your bluff checks aren't going to amount for much.


And even if he wasn't built towards this from chargen, the Bard at this level will bend part of his build towards it as needed when he reaches this level, simply because this is how you survive as a high-level character if you can at all do it: you get "in" and learn how to browbeat and bluff your way into getting other wizards to stand down from any possible confrontation with you.


The really funny thing would be the probable secret that a third to two thirds of the members of this collegium are actually bards bluffing their way through. Some may even realize it, but wouldn't want to call out the others for fear that the NOTION that it's possible would come back to bite them. But having this be true would also lend credence to the Bards' claims about why nobody can tell just how prepared they are: so many other wizards "known" to be unbeatable (thanks to these duels) have similar undetectable preparations, so it must be fairly common for wizard to do! (Add in that the real wizards would be pressed to find ways to hide their own preparations to fit in and to keep up, and now there really are ways to do it (if there weren't, before), and the real wizards ALSO are able to claim preparations and defenses that nobody knows about and can't be proven without testing them.)


Funny as the idea is, I don't see a third of a wizard's school being bards with no-one knowing.

I'm getting the impression that you're overestimating bluff and diplomacy. Personally I've always had it run it "regardless of your bluff check, you are Not convincing anyone the sky is yellow", in which case bluff just doesn't work if the opponent has easy access to anything that could prove you wrong(you may get them to question themselves enough to actually check, but you also run the risk of them coming back angry)

[Segev]

I'm getting the impression that you're overestimating bluff and diplomacy. Personally I've always had it run it "regardless of your bluff check, you are Not convincing anyone the sky is yellow", in which case bluff just doesn't work if the opponent has easy access to anything that could prove you wrong(you may get them to question themselves enough to actually check, but you also run the risk of them coming back angry)

Bluff and Diplomacy ARE powerful. The trick with "convincing someone the sky is yellow" isn't that you're making them see a yellow sky, it's that you're making them doubt their own eyes - or, alternativley, making them question whether something really HAS turned the sky yellow while they weren't looking, if they're out of line-of-sight to the sky. I'm pretty sure you could convince some people in a mall or office building to go check, expecting to see a wondrous and strange sight of a yellow sky, if you bluff well enough.

I wouldn't necessarily run it as being able to convince them to sell their souls and firstborn daughters to you for what you claim to have without verifying it, but you could probably convince them enough that they'll actually be a bit surprised and disappointed in a "I can't believe I even thought that might work" sort of way when they test your claims.

In the case of having them standing under a clearly blue sky that you're insisting is yellow, or even (to borrow a famous scene) in front of four lights when you insist there are five, the high level bluff convinces them to at least question whether they really are seeing the truth.

Consider the scenario where this stranger shows up before you and tells you that there is a powerful illusionist making this look like the world you're from, but you're really trapped in his demiplane and he's both keeping you prisoner and using you to gather information on you and your friends for nefarious purposes. Perhaps he tells you this after trying to point out to you that the sky is yellow, and you tell him he's full of it because you can clearly see that it's a perfectly ordinary shade of blue. In a world of magic and adventure, his story may be unusual and potentially sound like a wild fib, but it could theoretically be possible.

One of the more interesting problems in D&D is that, if this actually were true, there's no real skill roll to convince you of it. Either you roll Sense Motive and get "you can't detect any lying from him," letting him automatically succeed at being as convincing as it's possible for anybody to be, or there's no skill at all. If, on the other hand, he's lying, we have Bluff, which he rolls, and you oppose with Sense Motive. Again, ironically, if you're a powerful wizard and you're using all sorts of divinations to test his claims, but he's got a reason why each of those has failed due to the (supposed) planning of your captors, if he's telling the truth, there's no increase to the DC for his "truth-telling" check, and it still doesn't matter what you roll on Sense Motive, because you'll find that he's believable. If he's lying, on the other hand, sure, all your tests could make it so that he has to overcome a greater penalty, or has to make multiple Bluffs, giving you more opportunities to see through them.

Anyway. A super-high Bluff doesn't cover for impossibilities by itself. Some leeway is granted to players for not being as cunningly persuasive as their silver-tongued characters, but they still need to outline the strategy of the lie. As holes are poked, they need to at least provide the shape of the patch. Bluff rolls can cover for those patches sounding obviously made-up when the player says them, and even add some details that nobody on our side of the 4th wall hears, but they can't make up the lie whole cloth any more than a "combat roll" can tell you that you've won the fight without you having to specify what monsters you attack, how you position yourself, what spells you cast, etc.


All of this is a long way around to saying that there's nothing a Bard who has determined that htis collegial wizards' duelling society is the key to keeping himself from being bullied by powerful wizards couldn't do to raise his CL that the wizards could, to my knowledge. And no reason he wouldn't max this out, at the least before using glibness, for exactly these reasons. Especially given a Bard's high Charisma and access to UMD as a class skill. (That staff of nondetection will help a lot for keeping the scrying off of him. A nice veil spell or two that create false vulnerabilities he really has defenses covering will also ensure that his wizardly opponents have reason to doubt their own divinations.)

It isn't going to work all the time, and when it fails, you probably have a dead bard. But because it won't work all the time, some wizards will doubt that they really "lost" the duel at all: perhaps THIS one was also a Bard who just was better at lying! And then the wizard fight happens for real anyway.

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek when I said Bards win it every time. I was really poking holes in the notion thta this was a system that would work on a grand scale, rather than as a "gentlemen's club" thing where wizards who don't actually care all that much beyond their own pride will handle disputes that they'd let their pride run away with them on if they didn't have this outlet.

It wouldn't prevent even a plurality of wizard fights going to actual expenditure of resources. Just those which probably never needed to happen in the first place.

Honestly, it sounds like an interesting setting idea, and a great backdrop or even central conceit of an epic game setting, but all the problems I'm pointing out with it are why there'd be plot, intrigue, and adventure still to be had.

[Calthropstu]

Bluff and Diplomacy ARE powerful. The trick with "convincing someone the sky is yellow" isn't that you're making them see a yellow sky, it's that you're making them doubt their own eyes - or, alternativley, making them question whether something really HAS turned the sky yellow while they weren't looking, if they're out of line-of-sight to the sky. I'm pretty sure you could convince some people in a mall or office building to go check, expecting to see a wondrous and strange sight of a yellow sky, if you bluff well enough.

I wouldn't necessarily run it as being able to convince them to sell their souls and firstborn daughters to you for what you claim to have without verifying it, but you could probably convince them enough that they'll actually be a bit surprised and disappointed in a "I can't believe I even thought that might work" sort of way when they test your claims.

In the case of having them standing under a clearly blue sky that you're insisting is yellow, or even (to borrow a famous scene) in front of four lights when you insist there are five, the high level bluff convinces them to at least question whether they really are seeing the truth.

Consider the scenario where this stranger shows up before you and tells you that there is a powerful illusionist making this look like the world you're from, but you're really trapped in his demiplane and he's both keeping you prisoner and using you to gather information on you and your friends for nefarious purposes. Perhaps he tells you this after trying to point out to you that the sky is yellow, and you tell him he's full of it because you can clearly see that it's a perfectly ordinary shade of blue. In a world of magic and adventure, his story may be unusual and potentially sound like a wild fib, but it could theoretically be possible.

One of the more interesting problems in D&D is that, if this actually were true, there's no real skill roll to convince you of it. Either you roll Sense Motive and get "you can't detect any lying from him," letting him automatically succeed at being as convincing as it's possible for anybody to be, or there's no skill at all. If, on the other hand, he's lying, we have Bluff, which he rolls, and you oppose with Sense Motive. Again, ironically, if you're a powerful wizard and you're using all sorts of divinations to test his claims, but he's got a reason why each of those has failed due to the (supposed) planning of your captors, if he's telling the truth, there's no increase to the DC for his "truth-telling" check, and it still doesn't matter what you roll on Sense Motive, because you'll find that he's believable. If he's lying, on the other hand, sure, all your tests could make it so that he has to overcome a greater penalty, or has to make multiple Bluffs, giving you more opportunities to see through them.

Anyway. A super-high Bluff doesn't cover for impossibilities by itself. Some leeway is granted to players for not being as cunningly persuasive as their silver-tongued characters, but they still need to outline the strategy of the lie. As holes are poked, they need to at least provide the shape of the patch. Bluff rolls can cover for those patches sounding obviously made-up when the player says them, and even add some details that nobody on our side of the 4th wall hears, but they can't make up the lie whole cloth any more than a "combat roll" can tell you that you've won the fight without you having to specify what monsters you attack, how you position yourself, what spells you cast, etc.


All of this is a long way around to saying that there's nothing a Bard who has determined that htis collegial wizards' duelling society is the key to keeping himself from being bullied by powerful wizards couldn't do to raise his CL that the wizards could, to my knowledge. And no reason he wouldn't max this out, at the least before using glibness, for exactly these reasons. Especially given a Bard's high Charisma and access to UMD as a class skill. (That staff of nondetection will help a lot for keeping the scrying off of him. A nice veil spell or two that create false vulnerabilities he really has defenses covering will also ensure that his wizardly opponents have reason to doubt their own divinations.)

It isn't going to work all the time, and when it fails, you probably have a dead bard. But because it won't work all the time, some wizards will doubt that they really "lost" the duel at all: perhaps THIS one was also a Bard who just was better at lying! And then the wizard fight happens for real anyway.

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek when I said Bards win it every time. I was really poking holes in the notion thta this was a system that would work on a grand scale, rather than as a "gentlemen's club" thing where wizards who don't actually care all that much beyond their own pride will handle disputes that they'd let their pride run away with them on if they didn't have this outlet.

It wouldn't prevent even a plurality of wizard fights going to actual expenditure of resources. Just those which probably never needed to happen in the first place.

Honestly, it sounds like an interesting setting idea, and a great backdrop or even central conceit of an epic game setting, but all the problems I'm pointing out with it are why there'd be plot, intrigue, and adventure still to be had.

Actually, there is. It's called diplomacy. "I use diplomacy to convince him to believe me" is perfectly fine. In fact, you could roll a sense motive and get "you feel that this man truly believes what he is claiming is true." At that point, the person making these absurd claims needs to convince people he's not crazy. That is decidedly a diplomacy roll.

[Segev]

Actually, there is. It's called diplomacy. "I use diplomacy to convince him to believe me" is perfectly fine. In fact, you could roll a sense motive and get "you feel that this man truly believes what he is claiming is true." At that point, the person making these absurd claims needs to convince people he's not crazy. That is decidedly a diplomacy roll.

Hm. Would you have to get them to Friendly or Helpful to convince them you're not nuts? And would the fear you're nuts knock their initial attitude down the rankings a space or two?

[Calthropstu]

Hm. Would you have to get them to Friendly or Helpful to convince them you're not nuts? And would the fear you're nuts knock their initial attitude down the rankings a space or two?

Possibly, but then we're getting into "gm call" territory.
On a reverse note, someone trying to convince you he's nuts would almost assuredly have a bluff bonus due to the absurdity of his claims. ie:

Stranger:You are in a false reality created by an evil wizard for the purpose of discovering a secret you don't even know you know.
Man who put you in a false reality disguised as your friend: As if. That's like, 8 kinds of silly. You must be smoking some nice stuff though. Here, have a copper. A silver if you can tell me where you get your dope man.

[Segev]

Possibly, but then we're getting into "gm call" territory.
On a reverse note, someone trying to convince you he's nuts would almost assuredly have a bluff bonus due to the absurdity of his claims. ie:

Stranger:You are in a false reality created by an evil wizard for the purpose of discovering a secret you don't even know you know.
Man who put you in a false reality disguised as your friend: As if. That's like, 8 kinds of silly. You must be smoking some nice stuff though. Here, have a copper. A silver if you can tell me where you get your dope man.

Interestingly, Diplomacy calls for an opposed roll when two people are trying to convince another of something (presumably not really involving outright lying), yet there's nothing for using it to persuade somebody of something true when nobody is arguing against you.

[Promethean]

Interestingly, Diplomacy calls for an opposed roll when two people are trying to convince another of something (presumably not really involving outright lying), yet there's nothing for using it to persuade somebody of something true when nobody is arguing against you.

Then I guess it would be a set DC based on the Extent of the feat you're performing. If you say that "Convincing someone of something they know is blatantly false" is comparable to using Hide to "disappear on an open field with no cover", then somewhere around the DC 45 range. Doing the same to someone who has direct proof you're wrong would be like trying to hide in the same flat field with people looking directly at you from close range, a DC 65 if you will(unless you used the people themselves as cover, but let's just pretend they're invisible).

[magic9mushroom]

Epic level rocket tag, you lose initiative.......

Your opponent begins to cast his spell, you have super duper counterspell abilities that you know will work to counter the spell. What Feats/Spells/Abilities can you use to be able to counter the spell in time.

Epic levels?

Epic Counterspell is pretty broad-spectrum. You can now counterspell any spell you're aware of arbitrarily-many times per round without using actions even when flat-footed. Unfortunately, it's an epic feat from a Faerun book which requires five non-epic feats as prereqs, and three of those five are bad.

The other approach is to make an Epic spell with the Reflect or Ward seeds. Ward is DC 194 before mitigation; Reflect has to be made permanent to remove the "until expended", so it's DC 1135 before mitigation (but reflects their spells back on them). Either of these will work on SLAs, which Epic Counterspell won't. The DCs I quoted are for 10th-level, and therefore can be bypassed with Improved Spell Capacity + Improved Heighten Spell, although you can counter by making the DC higher.

Note that both of these do actually require you to be at least as powerful as the guy you're blocking, because there's an opposed caster level check to force Epic spells through Reflect/Ward and you'll have to use either a higher-level spell slot or a dispel effect (with the attendant caster level check) to Epic Counterspell.

If they're a 3.5 Dweomerkeeper, you're boned (outside of TO cheese such as gaining a Zodar's invulnerability). Dweomerkeeper be hax.

[Quertus]

Ugh, you'd be unfun to play a Bluff-based character with, if you rule like that.

That's not how Bluff works. Bluff is about fooling people. You can't know, for sure, that he doesn't have what he says he does, .


I'm getting the impression that you're overestimating bluff and diplomacy. Personally I've always had it run it "regardless of your bluff check, you are Not convincing anyone the sky is yellow", in which case bluff just doesn't work if the opponent has easy access to anything that could prove you wrong(you may get them to question themselves enough to actually check, but you also run the risk of them coming back angry)


Bluff and Diplomacy ARE powerful. The trick with "convincing someone the sky is yellow" isn't that you're making them see a yellow sky, it's that you're making them doubt their own eyes - or, alternativley, making them question whether something really HAS turned the sky yellow while they weren't looking, if they're out of line-of-sight to the sky. I'm pretty sure you could convince some people in a mall or office building to go check, expecting to see a wondrous and strange sight of a yellow sky, if you bluff well enough.

Bard: "I've got three heads with three mouths each, so I can cast 9 spells in the time you cast one, and I never mistakes a make."

Wizard: "um..."

It's the same thing with talking about defenses that Wizard Sight says no, you don't have that.

Sure, you can bluff that you believe something that the Wizard "knows" is impossible, that he cannot actually see or prove. And, depending on his personality, he may doubt himself, or kill you and use Speak with Dead to see if you're full of it.

But you cannot convince him of something he knows by currently seeing it, especially when you're ignorant of just what he sees.

The con fails when the conman is ignorant of the knowledge of the mark.

[magic9mushroom]

Bard: "I've got three heads with three mouths each, so I can cast 9 spells in the time you cast one, and I never mistakes a make."

Wizard: "um..."

It's the same thing with talking about defenses that Wizard Sight says no, you don't have that.

Sure, you can bluff that you believe something that the Wizard "knows" is impossible, that he cannot actually see or prove. And, depending on his personality, he may doubt himself, or kill you and use Speak with Dead to see if you're full of it.

But you cannot convince him of something he knows by currently seeing it, especially when you're ignorant of just what he sees.

The con fails when the conman is ignorant of the knowledge of the mark.

Don't underestimate epic skills. They let you do silly things. In this particular case there's a +50 to Sense Motive for "instill suggestion", with the example being "A dip in that pool of acid would be refreshing." So while you might not be able to convince someone that you have three heads, you can certainly try "Don't fight me". Mind Blank probably stops it, though, as while it doesn't outright say "mind-affecting", it references Suggestion which is and other epic social things (e.g. Fanatic) qualify as mind-affecting.

[Segev]

Bard: "I've got three heads with three mouths each, so I can cast 9 spells in the time you cast one, and I never mistakes a make."

Wizard: "um..."

It's the same thing with talking about defenses that Wizard Sight says no, you don't have that.

Sure, you can bluff that you believe something that the Wizard "knows" is impossible, that he cannot actually see or prove. And, depending on his personality, he may doubt himself, or kill you and use Speak with Dead to see if you're full of it.

But you cannot convince him of something he knows by currently seeing it, especially when you're ignorant of just what he sees.

The con fails when the conman is ignorant of the knowledge of the mark.

In addition to what magic9mushroom mentioned, "He'll just kill you and use speak with dead to find out if you're lying," presumes that he's confident enough to actually initiate a fight to the death with you.

I mean, let's be honest, here, the lie wouldn't be that Music Meister - who is totally not a bard and is absolutely a powerful wizard, just ask him - visibly has three heads, and never makes a mistake (while clearly mistaking a make in the bluff check, since, uh, he's scoring ludicrously high on said check)...unless he's arranged to obviously have three heads right then and there. (Which is plausible.) He might instead say that his true combat form has that, and he assumes it before hostilities begin no matter how tricky you are in trying to get the drop on him. (Or he might have them, and thus this is actually apparently plausible right then and there.)

And if Music Meister really IS a powerful wizard and has a bluff score and diplomacy score both of "abysmally low," to the point that his wizardly foes in these duels tend to think their inability to tell that he's lying means he's just using really good lying magic to fool them, and they decide to "just kill him and use speak with dead to find out the truth," they're in for a nasty shock when they wind up dead because they initiated the very wizardly combat that this genteel tea party was meant to circumvent.

In other words, the moment your argument is, "He'll just kill you and...," you've already demonstrated that this tea party approach breaks down and isn't how wizards actually handle things.

[Quertus]

In addition to what magic9mushroom mentioned, "He'll just kill you and use speak with dead to find out if you're lying," presumes that he's confident enough to actually initiate a fight to the death with you.

I mean, let's be honest, here, the lie wouldn't be that Music Meister - who is totally not a bard and is absolutely a powerful wizard, just ask him - visibly has three heads, and never makes a mistake (while clearly mistaking a make in the bluff check, since, uh, he's scoring ludicrously high on said check)...unless he's arranged to obviously have three heads right then and there. (Which is plausible.) He might instead say that his true combat form has that, and he assumes it before hostilities begin no matter how tricky you are in trying to get the drop on him. (Or he might have them, and thus this is actually apparently plausible right then and there.)

And if Music Meister really IS a powerful wizard and has a bluff score and diplomacy score both of "abysmally low," to the point that his wizardly foes in these duels tend to think their inability to tell that he's lying means he's just using really good lying magic to fool them, and they decide to "just kill him and use speak with dead to find out the truth," they're in for a nasty shock when they wind up dead because they initiated the very wizardly combat that this genteel tea party was meant to circumvent.

In other words, the moment your argument is, "He'll just kill you and...," you've already demonstrated that this tea party approach breaks down and isn't how wizards actually handle things.

Again, you're missing the fact that a) Wizard Sight, True Seeing, etc, will produce "uh, no you're not" moments; b) the "kill you and cast Speak with Dead" was my mistake, being a bit misplaced in the conversation, and not necessarily related to the duel itself, but to other non-related lies the Bard may have told to (that or) other Wizards.

So, my point is, Bards who lie like this to those in the know die before they get to the duel in the first place. You won't see the lying Bard in the duel, because they're long dead*.

* if they've ever lied about something other than their power to someone who can see that they're lying (or even just strongly believes that that could be a lie, such as the yellow sky), and is as opposed to liars as I'm inferring/extrapolating/positing should be common in the "tea party" setting.

[Segev]

Again, you're missing the fact that a) Wizard Sight, True Seeing, etc, will produce "uh, no you're not" moments; b) the "kill you and cast Speak with Dead" was my mistake, being a bit misplaced in the conversation, and not necessarily related to the duel itself, but to other non-related lies the Bard may have told to (that or) other Wizards.

So, my point is, Bards who lie like this to those in the know die before they get to the duel in the first place. You won't see the lying Bard in the duel, because they're long dead*.

* if they've ever lied about something other than their power to someone who can see that they're lying (or even just strongly believes that that could be a lie, such as the yellow sky), and is as opposed to liars as I'm inferring/extrapolating/positing should be common in the "tea party" setting.

Eh, this has largely gone off-topic. My point was that this "Tea party" solution is quaint, and could create fun plot for the sub-culture of wizards who engaged in it, but is not fool-proof, and that anything that destabilizes the trust in what the "wizard" is claiming leads to it failing more often than you'd think. It works to a degree, it just isn't going to be preventing fights between wizards who are serious about it, nor is it immune to manipulation. Just like anything short of actual violence (which is why actual violence is eventually resorted to when people care enough about their desire/cause/whatever).

In terms of losing initiative, though, the usual result will be the loser of initiative retreating expeditiously, possibly before he even knows what has happened, because most mages probably have "get me out of here before I die" somewhere in their contingency chain.

[Quertus]

In terms of losing initiative, though, the usual result will be the loser of initiative retreating expeditiously, possibly before he even knows what has happened, because most mages probably have "get me out of here before I die" somewhere in their contingency chain.

IIRC, "Continent Teleport" is a contingency that cannot be used for much of anything else. So, yes, the Wizard who does not have an "expeditious retreat" is clearly under prepared.