You are a high elven wizard of non-evil alignment: You want to kill Lolth.

[MonkeySage]

You are a high elven wizard of non-evil alignment, and you've been tricked into signing a contract with Lolth against your will. She wants you as her champion, and will even transform you into a drow... But you aren't evil. There are probably a few different ways out of the contract. But you want the most extreme solution: Deicide. Starting at level 5, in a setting that has epic levels, you begin plotting. Lolth is probably aware of what you're doing, and probably thinks the effort cute at best, and annoying at worst.
You have interacted with her directly on at least a couple occasions.

Explanation: This is an old wound for me, with by far the worst DM I've ever had. He liked to railroad us, wouldn't even hide the rails. He forced all of us into faustian contracts on day one, and liked to single out my character because he was the one who most resented this. Every single day, my character plotted and plotted, hoping to one day kill the goddess. He never got the chance, because the DM was the worst and got sick of my going against his plans as a player. So he killed my character in the most BS way imaginable (Dimension Door Mishap. 3.5 Dem Door cannot mishap. You cannot Dem Door into a wagon wheel.)

[StevenC21]

I hit level 21, take Epic Spellcasting, break WBL by selling the product of Walls of Iron, pay 100+ wizards to donate 9th level slots, and cast my Kill Lolth epic spell.

All from my personal demiplane of course. With mindblank and any other necessary spells.

[MonkeySage]

I can just imagine the spellcraft dc on such a spell.... But I suppose if you can find 100+ wizards, all capable of casting 9th level spells, they could all chip in on it.

[Mike Miller]

Wouldn't Lolth already have killed you upon reaching level 17? Or is that only drow

[MonkeySage]

She apparently wants you as her champion...

[AvatarVecna]

>Reach 17th lvl with (somehow) a +59 diplomacy (useful for many things)
>Go to meet your goddess who absolutely does not trust you and is treated as Hostile towards you
>Do a one-round diplomacy on her with a +49 bonus
>#DiplomacyImmunityIsBasicallyImpossibleToGet
>#DiplomacyIsn'tMindAffectingUnlessItMakesThemFanat ic
>Hostile to Helpful in 6 seconds flat
>Request a favor of your goddess, that she let you cast one harmless spell on her
>She agrees cuz why not
>Cast "Teleport Through Time" on the willing creature to send her 1 year into the past
>Tfw portfolio sense only gives you warnings about things happening within 20 weeks, so neither present!Lolth nor past!Lolth realized what's about to happen
>Present!Lolth appears in her own throne room
>Guess who's also in Lolth's throneroom? Past!Lolth
>Cast "Summon Popcorn" as your problem solves itself

EDIT: Almost forgot, you need to travel back in time with her so that it's you+Present!Lolth vs Past!Lolth. Present!Lolth dying still means Lolth dies, but once Past!Lolth murders Present!Lolth she'll know she has 20+ weeks to figure out who was trying to assassinate her and why, and will probably have a pretty good guess as to who.

[DarkSoul]

>Reach 17th lvl with (somehow) a +59 diplomacy (useful for many things)
>Go to meet your goddess who absolutely does not trust you and is treated as Hostile towards you
>Do a one-round diplomacy on her with a +49 bonus
>#DiplomacyImmunityIsBasicallyImpossibleToGet
>#DiplomacyIsn'tMindAffectingUnlessItMakesThemFanat ic
>Hostile to Helpful in 6 seconds flat
>Request a favor of your goddess, that she let you cast one harmless spell on her
>She agrees cuz why not
>Cast "Teleport Through Time" on the willing creature to send her 1 year into the past
>Tfw portfolio sense only gives you warnings about things happening within 20 weeks, so neither present!Lolth nor past!Lolth realized what's about to happen
>Present!Lolth appears in her own throne room
>Guess who's also in Lolth's throneroom? Past!Lolth
>Cast "Summon Popcorn" as your problem solves itself

EDIT: Almost forgot, you need to travel back in time with her so that it's you+Present!Lolth vs Past!Lolth. Present!Lolth dying still means Lolth dies, but once Past!Lolth murders Present!Lolth she'll know she has 20+ weeks to figure out who was trying to assassinate her and why, and will probably have a pretty good guess as to who.Nice try, but doesn't work because material components are a thing.

[AvatarVecna]

Nice try, but doesn't work because material components are a thing.

There are three material components, two of which are valueless and can be RAW assumed to be in your pouch, or can be ignored with Eschew Materials.

Edit: Or you can get creative with what counts as a flower/untouched soil.

[MonkeySage]

After killing Lolth, ask Corellon if he can put in a good word with Ao now that there's a vacancy. ^_^

[Malroth]

Explanation: This is an old wound for me, with by far the worst DM I've ever had.

Most likely Bad DM will not let you weasel out of his pre arranged scenario. Walk out of the room. Find a new group. And invite any decent fellows among the players to a new game somewhere else.

[Malroth]

Most likely Bad DM will not let you weasel out of his pre arranged scenario. Walk out of the room. Find a new group. And invite any decent fellows among the players to a new game somewhere else.


Edit:
OHHHH you meant in a water under the bridge thereputic sort of way.
Yeah get to 17, Teleport thorough time to more than 20 weeks before you became the champion of loloth, Teleport your past self to some other universe and have him drink a thought bottle with your current XP total then mindrape him back to his old level with the contigency that his memories and XP will return on this given date immediately after traveling back in time. Repeat as necessary untill you are an army of epic time clones.

[NichG]

Hail of stones is a 1st level spell that deals 5d4 untyped damage with no save, attack roll, or SR. Load up enough metamagic on that and you've got a serious bypass to most defenses outside of outright damage immunity. If this is a Deities and Demigods style Lolth, that puts you in spitting distance of a plausible alpha strike though you might need a friend or two and a few metamagic rods.

If it's Dicefreaks or a re-optimized Lv40 Cleric/Wizard/deity type deal, it's basically you and DM write down your contingencies ahead of time, seal in an envelope, and see who came up with something the other forgot.

[AvatarVecna]

Hail of stones is a 1st level spell that deals 5d4 untyped damage with no save, attack roll, or SR. Load up enough metamagic on that and you've got a serious bypass to most defenses outside of outright damage immunity. If this is a Deities and Demigods style Lolth, that puts you in spitting distance of a plausible alpha strike though you might need a friend or two and a few metamagic rods.

If it's Dicefreaks or a re-optimized Lv40 Cleric/Wizard/deity type deal, it's basically you and DM write down your contingencies ahead of time, seal in an envelope, and see who came up with something the other forgot.

One of the cheap things with deities is they get to be aware of certain things weeks in advance. It's probably not going to be hard for the DM to weasel out by demanding to see your envelopes first for utterly valid RAW reasons. I mean it's not a guarantee, and that's certainly a good description of how two highly-optimized casters would go against each other, but deity abilities aren't a joke.

[NichG]

One of the cheap things with deities is they get to be aware of certain things weeks in advance. It's probably not going to be hard for the DM to weasel out by demanding to see your envelopes first for utterly valid RAW reasons. I mean it's not a guarantee, and that's certainly a good description of how two highly-optimized casters would go against each other, but deity abilities aren't a joke.

If Wishing to be Vecna-blooded or doing everything in the vicinity of a Pandorym shard or the like isn't part of your prep...

[AvatarVecna]

If Wishing to be Vecna-blooded or doing everything in the vicinity of a Pandorym shard or the like isn't part of your prep...


"A Vecna-Blooded creature gains immunity to all divination spells cast against it or cast to learn information about it."

Even if we wanted to argue over the semantics involved with whether "manifesting a seer power" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/hypercognition.htm) counts as "casting a divination spell", Remote Sensing and Portfolio Senses aren't part of any casting sub-system and Vecna-Blooded doesn't protect against divination effects in general, just spells; I could maybe see an argument for that to include manifesting, particularly in a game with explicit magic-psionics transparency, and maybe supernatural abilities that directly ape spells/powers, but these don't do that. Remote Sensing has area measuring in miles and can be centered anywhere relevant to the deity - places of worship, holy symbols, people saying their name, or events relating to their portfolio (like "deity involved with {portfolio} gets murdered"). It also explicitly "penetrates any barrier except a divine shield", although intended interpretation for that is probably "any physical barrier", and it penetrates divination-blocking spells that might apply. And "Portfolio Senses" doesn't even need to be activated, it's just always-on and alert the deity to stuff going on nearby (in a temporal sense) that is relevant to their portfolio, which includes things like "deity involved with {portfolio} gets murdered".

But let's be extremely generous and say that it blocks Remote Sensing, since that's an ability that needs to be activated, and Vecna-Blooded blocks "activated divination-ish effects" if you get blackout drunk and squint at it. Her Portfolio Sense is still gonna go off when she feels herself getting murder 15ish weeks from now or whatever, tries to Remote Viewing it (an explicit option when she senses an event related to her portfolio sense, with no limitation given for deities that can PS into the future), finds she can't actually see anybody attacking her, and can conclude it's one of like two things in the universe that can foil Remote Sensing and resolves to make her domain a dead magic zone/antimagic field that affects everybody but her. Her Remote Sensing now works because her Supernatural ability isn't blocked by the antimagic but your Su divination-blocking ability is, and now she can Remote Sense you as she pleases, and from there, NI knowledge and perception skills will tell her what she needs to know to start planning. None of this is even touching on whether she'd take on a champion who is Vecna-Blooded without stripping the template away with Alter Reality BS, or would share her toys with Vecna if you attempted to gain it afterwards.

Pandorym Shards are similarly flawed. They at least explicitly mention effects in general rather than spells in particular, but the only outright foil such effects that contact an extraplanar being and don't block anything even remotely like Remote Sensing+knowledge/perception skills...heck it doesn't even block scrying and divination. But all of this is beside the point I was attempting to make and didn't really take the time to make properly: the proposed scenario of sealed contingencies in envelopes to see who forgot something first is useful for characters who aren't actually or effectively infinitely-intelligent/experienced demigods of magic, but for beings that much smarter and more experienced with that world than we are, it's kinda like trying to figure out which character wins a high-stakes poker game not with skill checks like Bluff, Sleight Of Hand, Sense Motive, or Profession (Gambler), but by taking out a deck of cards and actually playing poker against your DM. It doesn't prove anything about the characters.

If you're just trying to beat a version of Lolth that's as smart as your DM? Yeah sure, you can probably out-optimize the DM. I mean it probably depends on the DM. But that kinda contingency swapping could be a fun way to sharpen your skills, like playing Poker instead of D&D can be fun. But it doesn't prove anything about the characters, just about the players. That's why I'm saying it'd be a better reflection if the DM got to see your moves ahead of time...because the deity would. For every counter there's a counter-piercer, and for every counter-piercer there's a counter-piercer-blocker...even if it means turning to epic magic and deific abilities. If the idea is to face off your optimized PC against an equally-optimized deity to see if you can beat them...the answer is no. Because you can assume both are smart and experienced enough to understand how to take advantage of the world they exist in, and both will put in whatever effort is appropriate to their level of optimization. But at the end of the day, you both got the same resources and options to work with...except you started as an elf, and she started as a god. You can sit there rolling Int checks to see if your d20+NI beat her d20+NI until it's not a tie...except she gets all nat 20s and you don't.

[NichG]

Even if we wanted to argue over the semantics involved with whether "manifesting a seer power" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/hypercognition.htm) counts as "casting a divination spell", Remote Sensing and Portfolio Senses aren't part of any casting sub-system and Vecna-Blooded doesn't protect against divination effects in general, just spells; I could maybe see an argument for that to include manifesting, particularly in a game with explicit magic-psionics transparency, and maybe supernatural abilities that directly ape spells/powers, but these don't do that. Remote Sensing has area measuring in miles and can be centered anywhere relevant to the deity - places of worship, holy symbols, people saying their name, or events relating to their portfolio (like "deity involved with {portfolio} gets murdered"). It also explicitly "penetrates any barrier except a divine shield", although intended interpretation for that is probably "any physical barrier", and it penetrates divination-blocking spells that might apply. And "Portfolio Senses" doesn't even need to be activated, it's just always-on and alert the deity to stuff going on nearby (in a temporal sense) that is relevant to their portfolio, which includes things like "deity involved with {portfolio} gets murdered".

But let's be extremely generous and say that it blocks Remote Sensing, since that's an ability that needs to be activated, and Vecna-Blooded blocks "activated divination-ish effects" if you get blackout drunk and squint at it. Her Portfolio Sense is still gonna go off when she feels herself getting murder 15ish weeks from now or whatever, tries to Remote Viewing it (an explicit option when she senses an event related to her portfolio sense, with no limitation given for deities that can PS into the future), finds she can't actually see anybody attacking her, and can conclude it's one of like two things in the universe that can foil Remote Sensing and resolves to make her domain a dead magic zone/antimagic field that affects everybody but her. Her Remote Sensing now works because her Supernatural ability isn't blocked by the antimagic but your Su divination-blocking ability is, and now she can Remote Sense you as she pleases, and from there, NI knowledge and perception skills will tell her what she needs to know to start planning. None of this is even touching on whether she'd take on a champion who is Vecna-Blooded without stripping the template away with Alter Reality BS, or would share her toys with Vecna if you attempted to gain it afterwards.

Pandorym Shards are similarly flawed. They at least explicitly mention effects in general rather than spells in particular, but the only outright foil such effects that contact an extraplanar being and don't block anything even remotely like Remote Sensing+knowledge/perception skills...heck it doesn't even block scrying and divination. But all of this is beside the point I was attempting to make and didn't really take the time to make properly: the proposed scenario of sealed contingencies in envelopes to see who forgot something first is useful for characters who aren't actually or effectively infinitely-intelligent/experienced demigods of magic, but for beings that much smarter and more experienced with that world than we are, it's kinda like trying to figure out which character wins a high-stakes poker game not with skill checks like Bluff, Sleight Of Hand, Sense Motive, or Profession (Gambler), but by taking out a deck of cards and actually playing poker against your DM. It doesn't prove anything about the characters.

If you're just trying to beat a version of Lolth that's as smart as your DM? Yeah sure, you can probably out-optimize the DM. I mean it probably depends on the DM. But that kinda contingency swapping could be a fun way to sharpen your skills, like playing Poker instead of D&D can be fun. But it doesn't prove anything about the characters, just about the players. That's why I'm saying it'd be a better reflection if the DM got to see your moves ahead of time...because the deity would. For every counter there's a counter-piercer, and for every counter-piercer there's a counter-piercer-blocker...even if it means turning to epic magic and deific abilities. If the idea is to face off your optimized PC against an equally-optimized deity to see if you can beat them...the answer is no. Because you can assume both are smart and experienced enough to understand how to take advantage of the world they exist in, and both will put in whatever effort is appropriate to their level of optimization. But at the end of the day, you both got the same resources and options to work with...except you started as an elf, and she started as a god. You can sit there rolling Int checks to see if your d20+NI beat her d20+NI until it's not a tie...except she gets all nat 20s and you don't.

Ultimately, theory-crafting aside, if we're talking about something that's happening at an actual table and in actual play, all of the 'I could have' or 'they could have' don't matter - each side has to commit to a sequence of actions, which they can update in response to new information. Mechanically, things like Int scores don't explicitly let you obtain better plans or anticipate what other characters would do or anything like that - it's a conceit that some particular arbitrary Int number should imply a certain kind of perfected behavior, but there's no such rule and you don't need to roll a d20+Int modifier to make a good (or bad) plan.

The important question is never 'what could you do?' since the answer in D&D is always 'well, basically anything'. In a TO/RAW/permissive ruling world, every Lv1 character could just be Pun-Pun if that's what the player decides that it takes. The important question is instead 'what do you do?', and the envelope method forces a concreteness that is missing in the theorycraft style of debate that actually allows particular cases to be concluded.

In this case, perhaps the wizard puts 'Wish to be god-blooded of Vecna and go hang out with Pandorym' in the envelope, and as you read both out then this rules point comes up. Sure, maybe they could have said 'drat, if I had just possessed an ice assassin of Ragnorra instead, it would have worked, since Ragnorra is explicitly immune to effects from deities' but this time they didn't do that, and the situation resolves. Similarly, maybe Lolth makes the mistake of only responding to certain kinds of threats to her portfolio (or makes the mistake of actually responding to something that in turn causes her downfall because the fact she would respond was anticipated). And maybe the envelope specifies that the wizard is in fact using Astral Projection for added safety, so Lolth ends up smiting the wrong version of them, and then there's an actual justification to go to round 2 with both sides being a bit more wary of their mistakes. But if you argue 'I'm smart, so I would have used Astral Projection' then it never ends.

There's no answer to 'who would in theory win' - it's either and neither. The only way to resolve it is to actually commit to courses of action and play it out.

[magic9mushroom]

I hit level 21, take Epic Spellcasting, break WBL by selling the product of Walls of Iron, pay 100+ wizards to donate 9th level slots, and cast my Kill Lolth epic spell.

All from my personal demiplane of course. With mindblank and any other necessary spells.
Epic spells require DM approval.

As a side note, the two best attack seeds (Destroy and Slay) don't work on gods, and your spell will have to have cross-planar range for its damage because deities are immune to being called or summoned against their will. Obviously, if mitigation cheese is fully allowed these can be overcome, but they're worth noting.

Wouldn't Lolth already have killed you upon reaching level 17? Or is that only drow
No, that's githyanki (who get their souls eaten by the lich-queen).

Drow (at least, Lolth-worshipping drow) get Tests of Lolth. The final Test of Lolth (at 19th or 20th level) does involve fighting off a demigod, but they never have to face Lolth Herself.

Similarly, maybe Lolth makes the mistake of only responding to certain kinds of threats to her portfolio (or makes the mistake of actually responding to something that in turn causes her downfall because the fact she would respond was anticipated). And maybe the envelope specifies that the wizard is in fact using Astral Projection for added safety, so Lolth ends up smiting the wrong version of them, and then there's an actual justification to go to round 2 with both sides being a bit more wary of their mistakes. But if you argue 'I'm smart, so I would have used Astral Projection' then it never ends.

There's no answer to 'who would in theory win' - it's either and neither. The only way to resolve it is to actually commit to courses of action and play it out.

This is all well and good for normal cases, but with Greater Deities the earlier events can literally be caused by later events. It results in a time paradox for a Greater Deity to have forgotten something resulting in their death, because the very result of their death would alert them to what they had forgotten. Retroactive preparation is literally what is going on.

Of course, Lolth isn't a Greater Deity in 3e, so this particular snarl doesn't manifest because Intermediate Deities don't have precognitive Portfolio Sense.

[NichG]

This is all well and good for normal cases, but with Greater Deities the earlier events can literally be caused by later events. It results in a time paradox for a Greater Deity to have forgotten something resulting in their death, because the very result of their death would alert them to what they had forgotten. Retroactive preparation is literally what is going on.

Of course, Lolth isn't a Greater Deity in 3e, so this particular snarl doesn't manifest because Intermediate Deities don't have precognitive Portfolio Sense.

Even then, I would say it's not a paradox. Perhaps it requires taking the perspective of, if you had a player who was playing a Greater Deity with this power set, and you were the DM, how might you run it? If there were something that would be a credible threat to that PC in the future, you might say 'you have this premonition that if you behave in exactly the same way as you were going to before receiving this premonition, in 2 weeks at a saloon in Waterdeep, you will meet your final end'. Perhaps the character could poll that premonition periodically as they make changes to see if they've impacted their future, or would get periodic updates when something shifts. But it's a far cry between that and having a perfect playout of what events will happen and why exactly they will lead to the character's death, and being able to try an infinite number of permutations in order to figure out how exactly they would need to act to prevent it.

A player with that power set would often avoid death or defeat, certainly more than someone without it. But it's entirely plausible to me that they could pass points of no return or commit to actions that end up getting them cornered. Or, alternately, that in order to directly and entirely nullify the possibility of their death, they would have to accept severe losses in other areas, such that they accepted the risk (and potentially found that this time, the risk got the better of them).

Now, you could run it such that the future vision is really absolute, in that it not only warns the deity about possible outcomes, it specifically tells them 'this outcome will in fact happen' - all dice rolls and so on pre-rolled. But if you're running it that way, it starts to sound pretty dangerous to the deity as well. After all, there's not much of a line between them looking forward and someone with their DR+1 looking forward, but in that sort of setup, only the best oracle who looks actually has any freedom to change the future. So you get issues like e.g. Lolth looking forward, but since Ao also happened to look forward, Lolth ends up being unable to change her own fate to die unless Ao decides to bail her out. Which kind of makes the future vision a non-power.

[Biggus]

I can just imagine the spellcraft dc on such a spell.... But I suppose if you can find 100+ wizards, all capable of casting 9th level spells, they could all chip in on it.

Probably easier to find 300 Wizards who can chip in 3rd-levels spells...