Making fun of Paranoid Wizards via Children's Parables? Spellcaster Cautionary Tales?

[Gavinfoxx]

So I came up with an interesting idea for a game I'm running.

A century before the start of the game, a stereotypical high int, low wis/cha wizard type made some enemies, and due to this wizard being both high optimization and completely paranoid, none of his enemies could touch him. So one of the enemies got creative, and published a children's book of parables turning him into a caricature, always prone to excessive uses of magic to solve the tiniest problems, and constantly driving away all of his friends and making a right fool of himself via his shenanigans.

So, a century later, everyone in the setting knows all of those high optimization 'paranoid wizard' type tricks, and considers them all stupid and major social faux pas to actually use them. And of course, the first set of stories stays particularly in the realm of a single particular type of mid-level wizard build, but the later stories added later (by other writers) could have more obscure or niche builds or sorcerer-specific tricks and other ways of doing the same thing.


So, my question to you all is...

...What are some caster optimization good tricks that a cautionary trail could be built around?

and

...Do you have any particular ideas for how such stories might go?

[daremetoidareyo]

There once was a Wizard who who stayed shapechanged into a dire tortoise all day everyday. He was boring, no one liked him, and he died alone, scared, having never lived up to his potential.

[Xervous]

Contingent forcecage and poor wording of “threat” or “danger” meets bard with a good bluff check.

Alternately contingency tied to featherfall and the consequences of needing to actually cast the latter for its intended use.

Shrink item lead cone hat being AMF reverted in midair causing wizard to plummet to his death... forcing a casting of featherfall which triggers the solid box version of forcecage on himself. As the contingency is worded to trigger before featherfall resolves the wizard ends up impacting the inside of his own forcecage.

Alternately make it a bar version of forcecage, he takes considerable damage to the charisma in his pants which leads to losing the benefits of faerie mysteries initiate and he dies sad and alone.

[daremetoidareyo]

There once was an astral projection of a wizard maintained for so long the wizard soiled himself. Mightyest power in the world, can't use a latrine. Shameful.

[Gruftzwerg]

So, my question to you all is...

...What are some caster optimization good tricks that a cautionary trail could be built around?
BoBaFeat: (link see signature)
once he hits lvl20 he get pun-pun-like powers. Give yourself all feats and infinite stats and ranks (over 9000! ^^). All spells as SLA and infinite clones that can do almost everything you can do (no spells, but all SLAs).



...Do you have any particular ideas for how such stories might go?
If said caster would be a dragon, the "Nameless" (dragon 313? iirc) psychosis would be fitting here. If a dragon gets this psychosis, he will try to destroy any evidence of his name and existence.
Due to the children-book incidence the dragon got mad and later insane. Now he tries to kill everyone who dares to speak his name or posses anything with his name on/in it.
Further the psychosis causes him to loose his magic abilities. This turns him from an "impossible to beat" enemy, into a more sane encounter. And last, the players have the option to either fight him to death or cure him from his psychosis and make peace with him.

[Quertus]

@Xervous - awesome way to combine multiple tricks into one story - kudos!


There once was a Wizard who who stayed shapechanged into a dire tortoise all day everyday. He was boring, no one liked him, and he died alone, scared, having never lived up to his potential.

I had planned to suggest "my time taking tea as a tortoise", by Timur Tumbleweed. (And, if Emperor Tippy agrees, adding his name as the one annoyed with his impolite guest, because "Emperor" and "T theme"; otherwise, invent a "King Tophat" or something).


There once was an astral projection of a wizard maintained for so long the wizard soiled himself. Mightyest power in the world, can't use a latrine. Shameful.

-----

Perhaps a tale of Khan and his Taint? Mighty was his wrath, but poor were his choices (include any "but even a 7-year-old wouldn't fall for that" "traps" that Khan falls for in every "episodic" story, only to wrathfully burn everything to the ground). Moves to a new city each story. Sounds fun for the audience, Khan wouldn't get that they were ridiculing him.

[TheCount]

Many times, people sought the secret of immortality and many times, they did found it.... With strings attached, that were enough to hang themselves with.

Some, without empathy, turned to undead or constructs, closed up in Thier studies in the better cases, preying on other people in the worsts. Slowly going mad by the loss of Thier sense of touch, taste and the lack of sleep in most cases.

Some become outsiders and elementals, in the hope to break free of Thier mortal restraints, only to find themselves in a whole new world, with new rules to bind them and even more severe punishments.

Some tried to stop Thier time, either by pacts with outsiders, boons from gods or fiends,or worse things from the far away places of the world, or binding themselves to items of wondrous powers.
Only to find themselves outsmarted, given new purpose in thier service or betrayed and confined to a fate worse than death, otherwise simply losing whatever protection they had against the passage of time....


Some tried to transform into other, longer lived races, hoping they can enjoy the finer things in life, many and many times, alas, everything that lives, need to die once.

Some tried to live on plains with slower flowing or standing time, only to exit in a world too alien for them.

[King of Nowhere]

There once was a wizard who built a lair underground protected by the most powerful spells, impervious to all magic.
A team of sappers dug through it with nonmagical equipment and robbed him silly.

[Mnemius]

Inspired from Blazing Saddles...

The wizard so paranoid, so reactionary, he once heard a "boom" and away he zoomed. As the kid next door hit the pot and pan together again.

The wizard did isolate himself, after nearly slaying a child, all for pointing his finger at him and saying ZAP.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

There once was a wizard who thought that not storing his body in his own personal demiplane and astral projecting out was stupid, even though everyone made fun of him for it. Of course, then they all died in the next tarrasque attack, including the wizard himself. But shortly thereafter, he awoke in his demiplane, safe and sound.

They laughed at him, but he got the last laugh in the end.*





*Who cares if people think that stupid is smart and smart is stupid? It's not 1984.

[Cirrylius]

There once was a greedy, obnoxious Archivist, who made it his life's work to find the lowest level version of every spell. He spent years bartering, pestering, wheedling, and stealing scrolls from just about every class, then loudly guffawing about his advantage to every primary caster he met.

He eventually died in a dungeon crawl, due to a woefully misbalanced party, as no wizard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, paladin, ranger, bard, Wu Jen, et al, would consent to help him.

The kicker? What killed him was a Symbol spell written on a decoy scroll that he jealously refused anyone to examine before him.

[AvatarVecna]

Nitpickery: if the wizard is optimizing to "untouchable" levels, they probably have some means of cycling in and out of the Vecna-Blooded template to erase all knowledge/records of themselves. This doesn't mean that the whole thread is pointless, it just means that it needs to be removed enough from any particular paranoid wizard that it wouldn't count as "knowledge of that particular wizard" and thus get erased. A caricature bearing his name or likeness would get erased, but if it were framed using a generic unnamed wizard bearing no particular resemblance beyond their actions, it would probably be untouched by such template-cycling.

[AvatarVecna]

There once was an obnoxious mage
Whose social skills left all a-rage
So he's always stop time
To consider his next line
Unaware that he'd visibly aged

[icefractal]

Do these have to be things that would necessarily be true, or do we have some poetic license?

Because "Wizard who Astral Projected for so long, he forgot where his physical body was, and he'd warded it so heavily that none of his divinations could find it," seems like it has potential, but by the rules he could just end the spell at any time.

Here's one that is possible, though:
A mage, of a rather paranoid disposition, decided that his secrets wouldn't be safe if anyone knew them, even he himself. So he set up an elaborate system of contingent effects that would remove and restore his memory as appropriate. Virtually all the time, he'd appear to be a simple earl with a hobby for beekeeping, doing nothing out of the ordinary. Every so often, in response to some prepared trigger, his full consciousness would snap back into control, stop time, deal with the situation, and go back into hiding. Unless someone happened to be watching him closely during the less than six seconds of visible action, he could continue running his interplanar machinations with nobody, not even the gods, the wiser.

This worked excellently for years, until he made the fatal mistake - an error in the wording of his contingencies that caused all of them to be missed, none available to wake him from his false persona. So now in a sleepy part of a minor kingdom, lives an unremarkable earl who is secretly one of the greatest mages the multiverse has seen, but will never remember that fact.