[3.5] Optimized NPC Duo (Clr 9 & Wiz 9)

[Thurbane]

OK, I made this same thread many years ago, but my system knowledge has evolved a fair bit since then.

I want to build two NPCs (brothers), to showcase to my group how strong a well built full caster can be.

One will be a Cleric 9, the other a Wizard 9 (or specialist 9 - Conjuror may be a decent choice).

Here's the restrictions: core only. And that means PHB, DMG and MM only. No expanded material from the SRD, no web articles, nothing from other books. Those 3 books only. Period.

Race is set as Human. Base classes are set as Cleric (not Druid), and Wizard/or Specialist. DMG prestige classes are allowed, with the exception of Red Wizard.

No minionmancy, although the Wizard is allowed a familiar (or Improved Familiar) but from core sources only. No Leadership. I don't want them turning up with hoards of rebuked/animated undead, planar allies or similar. In combat summoning is allowed.

Stats will be elite array only (15,14,13,12,10,8), plus the increases rom 4th and 8th level. "WBL" (i.e. gear/magic item allowance) is 12,000gp each. Magic items and gear from PHB and DMG only.

The NPCs can be assumed to have up any buffs of 10 minutes/level or longer. So it's fine for the Wizard to have Mage Armor, the Cleric to have Magic Circle Against Good etc. Shorter term buffs can only be applied in combat.

No NI loops or extreme cheese please: I want this to be an exercise in practical optimization as much as possible. As usual, please try to stick to the spirit of my challenge, rather than looking for loopholes.

Since this always bears repeating: PHB1, DMG1 and MM1 sources only. Nothing from the SRD that doesn't appear in those books.

TL;DR - build a core only Cleric 9 and Wizard 9 duo to challenge a party of four ECL9 characters.

Cheers - T

[Particle_Man]

Amusingly you could make them both Loremasters. :smallcool:

I guess Gray Elf for the Wizard for the Int boost, and the cleric could be Gray elf or half-elf (or a Human or Dwarf adopted brother, I suppose)?

I would imagine the wizard and cleric could prepare spells that the other does not have much access too?

And if the Wizard went for illusion magic, that would possibly buy time for the Cleric to get off some kewl short-term buffs like Divine Power while the party is wondering about the illusionary miniature castle or creature or what have you. Or would that violate the spirit of the exercise?

[AvatarVecna]

"Challenge" or "decimate"? My recollection is that core-only scdy-n-die could wreck shop pretty hard.

[RaiKirah]

I'm likely not saying anything you don't already know, but here's my (pseudo-solicited) off-the-cuff two cents

An Enchantment Specialist can make things very difficult for a party, particularly since you still have access to Mind Fog and Dominate Person. The 4th level Thaumaturgist ability would allow you to Contingency in a Summon Monster V at the beginning of combat, and of course scrolls of Contingency are only 1650GP (total 3150 with the focus) to help with action economy for short duration buffs. Get Dominate Person off then sit back and Counterspell everything (take the Improved Counterspell feat) and let your pre-buffed Divine Power/Righteous Might Cleric, the Summoned Bearded Devil, and your new friend get to work. If you're feeling metagame-y or have an in-world reason to know about the party's habits, Spell Immunity could really throw a wrench in their game plan. Heck, have both be Thaumaturgists, get summons out for a round (4x Summon V, or some Animate Dead), then have them both sit back and Dispel Magic and counterspell.

If you're not averse to showing off the benefits of prep work, not just in the moment system mastery, there's quite a lot you could do, such as: An Unhallow tied to your alignment (assuming that's a differentiating factor from the party) with either Freedom of Movement or Dimensional Anchor could be really nice, though would take some of your WBL. Having Desecrate up and planting useful skeletons around the area pre-battle (and taking Augment Summoning, or getting it from Thaumaturgist) could be a nice action economy to WBL investment in some animals for slaughtering and having on hand for Animate Dead. With Desecrate up and both casting, that's 72HD of undead in one round.

[Maat Mons]

So the Cleric doesn't enter the fight with any undead minions? Well, that eliminates the only good use for Turn/Rebuke Undead that exists within core.

Magic is one of the best domains. It would let the Cleric activate Wands crafted by the Wizard. In core, the War domain, for a martial weapon proficiency and the Weapon Focus feat is an old standby. Or there's Luck for that reroll, even better for an NPC who only needs to appear in one fight. Getting Freedom of Movement from the Travel domain is normally really nice, but if your players aren't using stuff that impairs movement, it'd be a waste.

The Wizard's familiar could be a Raven, but it would only have a 25% chance of activating a Wand. Or there's Rat for +2 on Fortitude saves. But if your players aren't using save or die/suck effects, that doesn't matter. Maybe go all-in with an Imp familiar? Invisibility, flight, poison, a 45% chance to successfully activate a wand, what's not to like?

[AvatarVecna]

Human Cleric 9

Attributes: 13/12/14/8/17/10

Skills:
Concentration 12 (+14)
Knowledge/Religion 12 (+11)

Feats:
HD 1: Improved Initiative
Human: Toughness
HD 3: Toughness
HD 6: Toughness
HD 9: Toughness


Domains:
Healing
Travel

Spells Per Day: 6/5+1/5+1/4+1/3+1/1+1

Notable Items: Wis +2 periapt, Bag Of Holding Type I, 250 lbs of firewood cut into 250 1-lb chunks

Human Wizard 9 (Evoker)

Attributes: 13/12/14/17/10/8

Skills:
Concentration 12 (+13)
Knowledge/Arcana 12 (+15)
Knowledge/Nature 12 (+15)
Knowledge/Religion 12 (+15)
Knowledge/The Planes 12 (+15)
Spellcraft 12 (+17)


Feats:
HD 1: Improved Initiative
Human 1: Spell Focus (Evocation)
Wizard 1: Scribe Scroll
HD 3: Greater Spell Focus (Evocation)
Wizard 5: Empower Spell
HD 6: Spell Penetration
HD 9: Greater Spell Penetration


Familiar: Toad (+3 HP)

Banned Schools: Enchantment, Necromancy

Spells Per Day: 4/6/6/5/4/2

Spells In Spellbook:
1st: Feather Fall, Magic Missile, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?
2nd: Protection From Arrows, ?, ?, ?
3rd: Fireball, Fly, ?, ?
4th: Evard's Black Tentacles, Greater Invisibility, Scrying, ?
5th: Cloudkill, Overland Flight


Notable Items: Int +2 headband, (1) scroll of Overland Flight, Bag Of Holding Type I, 250 lbs of firewood cut into 250 1-lb chunks

Preparation: Cleric has Protection From Elements on the both of them (resisting fire damage). Cleric has Shield Other on Wizard . Wizard has used scroll of Overland Flight on himself. Wizard casts Protection From Arrows on both of them.

Surprise Round: If wizard wins init, he readies an action to cast Empowered Fireball once they've teleported. If Cleric wins init, he teleports both of them to a point 700 ft above the party. Wizard uses immediate to Feather Fall the cleric, uses standard (or readied standard) to cast Empowered Fireball on the party. Party takes 14d6 fire damage (DC 18 Ref for half). This is ~49 damage on a fail, 24 on a save (depending on evasion). Party is fully aware of where they are, there will be no hide and seek.

Party mage should have 49 HP at most (9d4+27 = 22.5+27 = 49), and probably has a Reflex save of (base 3 + dex 2 + item 2) +7 at most. I guess they could have +11 with feat and familiar boosting it, but they probably don't. So let's call that a 50/50 chance the mage is still up going into the first round.

1st Round: Every member of the party somehow beats them on initiative, and they scatter so they can't all get fireballed at once again.

Fireball and arrows are the only real offense the party can have that will operate at this range. The cleric/wizard are ignoring fire damage for the moment, so fireball won't be any help against the two of them. Assuming cleric rogue and fighter are all more melee-focused (because that's the default and also just practical for dungeon-delving...but not so much for traveling) with ranged options for backup, we're looking at 2 attacks each (6 attacks total) with -12 distance penalty on attack rolls, dealing avg 1d8+1 (so 6d8+6 assuming no confirmed crits)...which still isn't enough to take out the wizard. They either need really good luck on attack rolls (to get a crit), or really good luck on attacks rolls (to have all attacks hit and have them all deal really good damage). Otherwise, the wizard survives. Oh yeah, and they need to be magic backup bows, otherwise the DR kills their chances even with good luck on to-hit, damage, and crit confirm.

Realistically, even the fighter is probably looking at no more than +1 on his best attack, so even AC 12 is a 50/50 shot for the one attack in six most likely to hit. Realistically, the wizard is fine - a bit bruised, but fine.

Cleric casts Cure [X] Wounds on the Wizard, undoing all damage progress. Wizard casts Empowered Fireball on Party (14d6, DC 18), focused on party mage if they're still up, and healer if the mage isn't up. Even if the mage made both saves, they're probably unconscious now. Most likely, they're just straight-up dead.

Round 2-6/10: Party shoots wizard, but still can't really get anywhere. Party's cleric gets blasted with Fireball twice. At this point, three successful saves would still be ~56 damage of the cleric's (probably) 58 or 67 HP. Luck damage rolls or even a single failure in there is a dying cleric, and they probably failed two of them. Fighter gets to eat the next three fireballs, taking at least ~47 damage on top of the at least 24 from earlier. That's at least 71 damage, leaving the fighter in single digit territory. Once more, across 4 fireballs, slightly above average damage or a single failed save will see the fighter dying (and he probably failed a couple times).

Cleric heals wizard as necessary, but with the party's firepower decreasing, there's not really much they can do to keep up. If the cleric stops shooting to heal themselves or the others, you've got up to four more fireballs you can shove down their throats to overcome the healing. What's more, the only way for the cleric to heal somebody without getting two people close enough to both be fireballed is to use Mass Cure Light Wounds at it's greatest range, and to only heal a single person for 1d8+9 damage. Probably better to eat the fireball and get a Cure Critical off on the fighter, but still it won't really help.

Rounds 7-10: Cleric "Dimension Doors" both of them closer to Rogue - not into SA range, but into Magic Missile range (190 ft). Cleric flies between rogue and wizard to give the wizard cover against possible arrows. Wizard casts Magic Missile on rogue, dealing 5d4+5 damage (avg 17). Rogue is maybe Con 14 at most, so looking at maybe 49 HP and untouched by the fireball of course. It takes three rounds of magic missile on average for the rogue to be dying, but let's assume it takes 4 (bad damage rolls). Cleric heals as necessary, and dimension doors them again if rogue tries to run.

Round 11: Cleric teleports them both back to base.

Conclusion: Within a minute of first contact, the buffed up cleric and wizard eliminated the lvl 9 party with basically no chance of resistance, even if they all got better init than the cleric and wizard. Their only chance was to teleport out themselves, and the mage was probably dead before he realized what was happening. This cost the wizard a large number of his slots, the cleric a moderate to large number of his slots, and about 1k in scrolls of their total 24k gear.

The cleric is getting on the wizard's case for preparing 11 fireballs again. "You always do this", he says, "what if they know we're coming and got fire protection", he says. Fine. The wizard prepared Polymorph and that's it.

Preparation: Cleric casts Shield Other and Shield of Faith on Wizard and Familiar (+3 deflection to AC, half damage gets transferred to cleric). Wizard casts Protection From Arrows on all of them.

Surprise: Cleric teleports them in, this time in melee range with the party. Wizard casts Polymorph on himself (which is shared with his toad familiar) to turn into a pair of 9-headed cyrohydra.

Round 1: Party members try to focus down one hydra and kill it dead. They'd probably succeed if it weren't for those two buff spells, but as it is the hydra in question will survive (barely, probably). And now it's the wizard's turn.

Injured hydra heals 19 HP. There are 4 party members and 18 breath weapons, each probably catching just two party members in it, so let's call that each party member getting hit by 9 breath weapons (3d6 cold damage, Ref DC 19 for half). He and familiar move back slightly, so that the fighter and rogue have to approach to engage in melee again.

Mage, cleric, and fighter are probably Ref +7 at most, so 45% chance of success. Let's call that 4 successes and 5 fails. That's 10 damage 5 times and 5 damage 4 times, for a total of 70 damage. Fighter is in single digits, mage is dead, cleric is dead or dying depending on how lucky he is.

Rogue is probably Ref +12 at most, so 70% chance of success, and successes are no damage (evasion yay). Let's call that 2 failures, taking 20 damage. Cleric pops a cure critical on themselves for 4d8+10 healing.

Round 2: Rogue and fighter focus fire and get that hydra really low again, but can't finish the job because they're core-only and don't have access to some really serious damage/mobility options (CR 10 with two good defense buffs is tricky, and this is already a really good defensive form). Each of them eats 9 attacks at +13 dealing 1d10+5 damage, and they die.

Conclusion: lol polymorph circlejerk real original.

This time the cleric challenges the wizard to kill the party without casting a single spell after they arrive.

Preparation: Wizard waits for night to fall. Wizard casts Overland Flight on himself.

Surprise Round: Cleric Teleports them in, ~1700 ft above where the party is making camp. Wizard immediate actions Feather Fall on the cleric, and uses a standard action to open up the haversack and whirl it around, scattering all the firewood chunks in a rough area over the campsite. They begin to fall, going 500 ft down.

Round 1: Party lookout (fighter, probably (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0014.html)) sees the problem and warns the others to prepare for a fight, but between the distance and darkness even special senses can't tell him how ****ed he is.

On the wizard's turn, the firewood falls 1200 ft and makes impact. Because this is core, there is no saving throw to avoid it or attack roll to dodge. At least not by default - maybe the DM can invent one. A bit of firewood impacts every square in a not-quite-full 16x16 grid. Because moving had to include getting out of tents and standing up, they can't really move far enough to escape. Every single one of them takes 20d6 damage (avg 70). This kills all but the fighter, do no pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. Fighter is in single digit health if he tried to tank it, or is fine if he tried to run.

Round 2-6?: Wizard gets the cleric's bag of holding and flies down towards the fighter, this time upending the bag directly above the fighter's head once he's about 150 ft above him. This gives no time to move to a different square, and all 250 pieces bean the fighter in the head (2d6 each). Minimum damage is 500, so Fighter needs 490+ HP to not immediately die. That's 54 per HD. He is not that tough.

(all a lil tongue in cheek, I'm sure there's something that could be done to give the mages trouble in these three scenarios but it seems pretty heavily weighted in their favor. It's late, so I'm not detailing it, but you could also take out a sleeping party really embarrassingly with Surprise Round "Black Tentacles", followed up with Cloudkill (that doesn't move away because you cast it from directly above), and then surround them in a hemisphere of ice. That should keep them trapped long enough that they die without much chance of fighting back at all.)

[Fizban]

Surprise Round: If wizard wins init, he readies an action to cast Empowered Fireball once they've teleported. If Cleric wins init, he teleports both of them to a point 700 ft above the party. Wizard uses immediate to Feather Fall the cleric, uses standard (or readied standard) to cast Empowered Fireball on the party. Party takes 14d6 fire damage (DC 18 Ref for half). This is ~49 damage on a fail, 24 on a save (depending on evasion). Party is fully aware of where they are, there will be no hide and seek.
That's not how initiative or surprise rounds work, or at the very least you're leaving out some important steps.

You can't ready actions outside of initiative. You don't roll initiative until at least one "side" is aware of the other (and implicitly, is taking an action that is going to make the other side aware). The scrier can claim that they are aware of the target, but this means that their "surprise round" action is casting the teleport. If both of them are scrying the target and count off, then they can both claim to be making a surprise attack and roll initiative, delay/ready their actions, and get the non-teleporter to deliver the surprise action.

Except Scrying allows a save (and an Int check for all nearby creatures) and people are always aware of saving throws unless the effect explicitly says they aren't, so the target is in fact aware of something, which means no surprise round. Ruling that after X minutes the target is no longer on guard enough to prevent a surprise round is a DM call to support their own scry and die against the PCs.

Also:

If Cleric wins init, he teleports both of them to a point 700 ft above the party
How? Even assuming the Cleric is also scrying the target, that's a 10' radius. No vision of the area 700' above the target (or rather, of what the ground looks like from the intended destination, which is the only possible way to "target" a location in empty air), in fact it's barely any of their surroundings at all. Even if the DM rules in favor of their own scry and die once again and says no actually it totally works, it's still a 24% failure chance on the whole operation, at which point the party has made spontaneous will saves and possibly noticed scrying sensors two days in a row (they could also make the scrying save of course).


1st Round: Every member of the party somehow beats them on initiative, and they scatter so they can't all get fireballed at once again.
Or they cast their own Resist/Protection from Energy spells. Granted, the point here is apparently that the players don't know how to run casters so they probably wouldn't, but still.


Fireball and arrows are the only real offense the party can have that will operate at this range. The cleric/wizard are ignoring fire damage for the moment, so fireball won't be any help against the two of them. Assuming cleric rogue and fighter are all more melee-focused (because that's the default and also just practical for dungeon-delving...but not so much for traveling) with ranged options for backup, we're looking at 2 attacks each (6 attacks total) with -12 distance penalty on attack rolls, dealing avg 1d8+1 (so 6d8+6 assuming no confirmed crits)...which still isn't enough to take out the wizard. They either need really good luck on attack rolls (to get a crit), or really good luck on attacks rolls (to have all attacks hit and have them all deal really good damage). Otherwise, the wizard survives. Oh yeah, and they need to be magic backup bows, otherwise the DR kills their chances even with good luck on to-hit, damage, and crit confirm.
And what if the party does have a ranged character?


Round 11: Cleric teleports them both back to base.
How? One domain slot per level per day, and you've already used both Teleport and Dimension Door. You'll need to add those scrolls to their list.


Conclusion: Within a minute of first contact, the buffed up cleric and wizard eliminated the lvl 9 party with basically no chance of resistance, even if they all got better init than the cleric and wizard. Their only chance was to teleport out themselves, and the mage was probably dead before he realized what was happening. This cost the wizard a large number of his slots, the cleric a moderate to large number of his slots, and about 1k in scrolls of their total 24k gear.
I think this is a bit disingenuous. The duo relied on a rather dubious Teleport ruling, the encounter could go very differently if the party had their own resist/protect spells, and of course they used an entire day's worth of spells in a very specific situation to defeat a very specific encounter. If that's what the players needs to learn then maybe it will teach them something, but it's not practicable to normal PC operations. Unless you want them to be playing like this.

And if you reversed the roles- a party of 4 PCs taking on 8 creatures of "equal CR" simultaneously is an EL 6 above their level, something they should be running from and only beat with superior tactics and the expenditure of all their resources, and doing so unscathed is the sort of thing the DM is supposed to take into consideration for whether the encounter was actually worth "full" xp. Because if they did so without risk, it clearly wasn't.

So really, I don't expect any players to be surprised or enlightened by this. Yeah, if the DM has a pair of spellcasters suddenly appear in midair pre-buffed and rain an entire day's worth of spells on them, starting with boosted damage even, no duh the party is going to die. No single encounter survives the unopposed application of four encounters worth of the limited use artillery character. No one would expect anything otherwise. All this does is make it look like Fireball is OP and that everyone in the party should have their own Protection from Energy available in case of ambush- a good lesson to learn, but hardly a demonstration of "how strong a caster can actually be."


Wizard casts Polymorph on himself (which is shared with his toad familiar) to turn into a pair of 9-headed cyrohydra.

Round 1: Party members try to focus down one hydra and kill it dead. They'd probably succeed if it weren't for those two buff spells, but as it is the hydra in question will survive (barely, probably). And now it's the wizard's turn.

Injured hydra heals 19 HP. There are 4 party members and 18 breath weapons, each probably catching just two party members in it, so let's call that each party member getting hit by 9 breath weapons (3d6 cold damage, Ref DC 19 for half). He and familiar move back slightly, so that the fighter and rogue have to approach to engage in melee again.
That's. . . not how Polymorph works. Like, this is the most basic of things that Polymorph specifically does not do. You don't get supernatural abilities. You don't get special qualities. No breath weapon, no fast healing. Just. . . what?

I would also put familiar leveraging as fairly cheesy myself- normal players are supposed to be very averse to putting their familiar anywhere near combat, because they cost xp and cannot be replaced if killed (unless you spend a year in "downtime"). If the caster is winning because of familiar leverage that doesn't show that casters are good, it shows that NPCs who don't care about their familiar dying are OP.

Rocks Fall
Did you read that Black Dragon thread waaaaay back? I've detailed this whole tactic before myself- as part of an argument for why if the DM is actually using the rules to their maximum, they win.


you could also take out a sleeping party really embarrassingly with Surprise Round "Black Tentacles", followed up with Cloudkill (that doesn't move away because you cast it from directly above), and then surround them in a hemisphere of ice. That should keep them trapped long enough that they die without much chance of fighting back at all.)
Cloudkill moves away from you across the ground, nothing says that if it hits a "wall" it stops moving. And since that's the ground you just cast it towards, it moves across the ground. And this of course assumes that the party is sleeping uncovered in the middle of a field.


To be clear, I don't think the goal of the thread is possible, because it's working from the wrong angle. The "power of a well built caster" is not in pulling some perfect cheese tactic, nor is it in being able to kill the classed-humanoid PCs. With core-only, bombarding them with a pile of basic metamagic blasting in a scry and die ambush really is the most they can do that can't be laid on X spell being obviously broken or Y quickened/buddy spell combo which also requires surprise advantage.

The "power" of the prepared caster is in the players being able to respond to things that they couldn't deal with yesterday. In order to showcase this you first have to have these NPCs fight the PCs without being properly prepared, and escape, and then they come back the next day perfectly prepared.

[Dragonsworn]

I might be wrong here (been ages since I read the CR rules), but theoretically a Wizard and a Cleric of 9th level both are an appropriate encounter for a level 11 party and not a level 9 one!

Again, assuming I am right and remember correctly (which I very much might not be), any creature with class levels has a CR equal to its previous CR +1 for every class level. For standard races with no source of RHD/LA that means each of your casters is a CR 9 encounter on its own (unless it only works like that for monsters and not other creatures, but I am pretty sure this is the general rule). Furhtermore, if two same CR encounters are put together the resulting encounter has a CR equal to the original one +2 - hence CR 11

Granted the CR system is pretty inconsistent, but what I am trying to say is that *maybe* you are throwing to your party an encounter that they by definition cannot handle (or at least are going to suffer a few deaths)

[AvatarVecna]

That's not how initiative or surprise rounds work, or at the very least you're leaving out some important steps.

Primary step that was left out was scrying, you're correct. What I did the last time this thread happened was scry familiars and animal companions. Of course, that also featured them always sneaking up on the group in the middle of the night so a lot of the extra stuff about surprise was also a lil bit unnecessary - why attack when they're ready for battle?


You can't ready actions outside of initiative. You don't roll initiative until at least one "side" is aware of the other (and implicitly, is taking an action that is going to make the other side aware). The scrier can claim that they are aware of the target, but this means that their "surprise round" action is casting the teleport. If both of them are scrying the target and count off, then they can both claim to be making a surprise attack and roll initiative, delay/ready their actions, and get the non-teleporter to deliver the surprise action.

If the cleric teleporting them into line of sight isn't "taking an action that is going to make the other side aware", I'm not sure what is, in your opinion.


Except Scrying allows a save (and an Int check for all nearby creatures) and people are always aware of saving throws unless the effect explicitly says they aren't, so the target is in fact aware of something, which means no surprise round. Ruling that after X minutes the target is no longer on guard enough to prevent a surprise round is a DM call to support their own scry and die against the PCs.

"I had to make a saving throw. That means I'm ready to shoot anything that moves within my line of sight."

No. That's not what that means. Moreover, no scry was mentioned in this setup, but even if you were looking at the previous setup and assuming I was scrying the same way I did last time, the scrying sensors were on many occasions over a series of days to gather information on the party - another one showing up would be concerning, but not an immediate "prepare for battle" warning like you're imagining, regardless of the circumstances.


How? Even assuming the Cleric is also scrying the target, that's a 10' radius. No vision of the area 700' above the target (or rather, of what the ground looks like from the intended destination, which is the only possible way to "target" a location in empty air), in fact it's barely any of their surroundings at all. Even if the DM rules in favor of their own scry and die once again and says no actually it totally works, it's still a 24% failure chance on the whole operation, at which point the party has made spontaneous will saves and possibly noticed scrying sensors two days in a row (they could also make the scrying save of course).

If you prefer, it can instead start with "the spot they were camping in an hour ago when we scried", and then the flight starts towards where the party is, probably using cover and concealment and (once they're much closer) greater invisibility to get into position. It's all just nitpicking the technical process of how the situation was reached and pretending that reaching it some other way is similarly disproven.


Or they cast their own Resist/Protection from Energy spells. Granted, the point here is apparently that the players don't know how to run casters so they probably wouldn't, but still.

They could, provided they prepared them for a jaunt through the wilderness. I doubt they did, but it's possible.


And what if the party does have a ranged character?

Presuming that the character in question has a +1 distance composite longbow and the far shot feat (which...this is a core ranged person, they probably have those things), they still have a -4 penalty from distance. I guess we could get persnickety back and point out no mention was made of potential wind penalties but that's honest not necessary: an additional +8 (effectively) has them hitting on a 3 on their first attack and 8 on their second, but only for that particular character. They maybe have another couple points of damage per attack, but the damage die has not changed, and they still aren't likely to get a crit (Improved Critical and increased accuracy help in that regard, but crits are still fairly rare). We're talking...what, maybe 1d8+4 on a hit instead of 1d8+1 like I was calculating before? That's an extra 6 DPR, and the DPR from before was assuming that all 6 attacks from the party hit (even though only the fighter's first iterative had a 50/50 shot at hitting).

Most likely what happens is: the rogue and cleric still have basically no chance of hitting a wizard 750 ft in the air, and even if they managed to hit, and the fighter's DPR at this level isn't outpacing the heals enough without the other party member's managing to land a hit. The 6d8 figure in the previous post was a pipe dream to point how, even if they hit all their shots, which they wouldn't, they still wouldn't kill the wizard without getting exceptionally lucky. A slight increase to accuracy, damage, and crit threat range for one of the three archers doesn't change that.


How? One domain slot per level per day, and you've already used both Teleport and Dimension Door. You'll need to add those scrolls to their list.

This is a fair point. I'm not quite sure what I was thinking there. Nonetheless, all immediate threats are dead, so the ability to immediately teleport back to base isn't strictly necessary.


I think this is a bit disingenuous. The duo relied on a rather dubious Teleport ruling, the encounter could go very differently if the party had their own resist/protect spells, and of course they used an entire day's worth of spells in a very specific situation to defeat a very specific encounter. If that's what the players needs to learn then maybe it will teach them something, but it's not practicable to normal PC operations. Unless you want them to be playing like this.

And if you reversed the roles- a party of 4 PCs taking on 8 creatures of "equal CR" simultaneously is an EL 6 above their level, something they should be running from and only beat with superior tactics and the expenditure of all their resources, and doing so unscathed is the sort of thing the DM is supposed to take into consideration for whether the encounter was actually worth "full" xp. Because if they did so without risk, it clearly wasn't.

So really, I don't expect any players to be surprised or enlightened by this. Yeah, if the DM has a pair of spellcasters suddenly appear in midair pre-buffed and rain an entire day's worth of spells on them, starting with boosted damage even, no duh the party is going to die. No single encounter survives the unopposed application of four encounters worth of the limited use artillery character. No one would expect anything otherwise. All this does is make it look like Fireball is OP and that everyone in the party should have their own Protection from Energy available in case of ambush- a good lesson to learn, but hardly a demonstration of "how strong a caster can actually be."



That's. . . not how Polymorph works. Like, this is the most basic of things that Polymorph specifically does not do. You don't get supernatural abilities. You don't get special qualities. No breath weapon, no fast healing. Just. . . what?

...it seems you're correct, but then it's really weird that basically everything I've seen online for about the past decade is people talking like you get both. Or rather...you're correct about fast healing - it's unambiguously a special quality and thus not a thing Polymorph can give. To learn how this would change the outcome of the fight I'd really have to sit down and hammer out the fighter and rogue builds, though. It probably makes a difference?

The breath weapon you're...I think incorrect about. You are correct that supernatural abilities are not something polymorph gives you, and you are correct that dragon breath weapons are supernatural, but the pyrohydra and cyrohydra information does not mark them as Su or even Ex. They should probably be ruled as Su, and maybe errata has fixed this particular typo-by-omission, but it's not there, so polymorphing into a cyrohydra gets you the breath weapons.


I would also put familiar leveraging as fairly cheesy myself- normal players are supposed to be very averse to putting their familiar anywhere near combat, because they cost xp and cannot be replaced if killed (unless you spend a year in "downtime"). If the caster is winning because of familiar leverage that doesn't show that casters are good, it shows that NPCs who don't care about their familiar dying are OP.

XP is a river. Also, for most situations familiars are mildly useful but not critical - sacrificing one isn't that big a deal. What's more, they're assets, class features. They mean a good deal more than that in-game, sure. But also, saying "the caster didnt win because they're a caster, they won because they're willing to put their familiar in the line of fire" I guess you bitch and moan about animal companions too? It's not my fault the devs built lvl 1 leadership into the game for casters, and it's not cheating to "show off the power of casters" by utilizing the unique mechanics that leadership-esque ability.


Did you read that Black Dragon thread waaaaay back? I've detailed this whole tactic before myself- as part of an argument for why if the DM is actually using the rules to their maximum, they win.

Doesn't even have to be maximum. Nobody's even mentioned kobolds I bet. And yeah, if the DM wants you dead, then you're dead. Even the rolling of dice is more for the sound they make, they don't actually have to put in effort to succeed. Of course, this is also skipping around something unspoken because it's the point of the thread, but I'll address that later.


Cloudkill moves away from you across the ground, nothing says that if it hits a "wall" it stops moving. And since that's the ground you just cast it towards, it moves across the ground. And this of course assumes that the party is sleeping uncovered in the middle of a field.

Once again we're "this is a technical reason you're wrong and I'm going to pretend that means an extra line of text couldn't solve that issue." You're being persnickety.

The cloud moves away from you along the ground, but you're above it. There is no one direction that is more "away" from you than any other. At best the spread would be in a random direction at a time, and you could move very slightly up in the air to now make "away from you" be going right back to where it started. The downside to taking that particular action is that it runs into a place where DM interpretation is required, because the spell specifies two things that do not mean the same thing:


the cloudkill moves away from you at 10 feet per round

This says its direction of travel is relative to its direction to you.


Figure out the cloud’s new spread each round based on its new point of origin, which is 10 feet farther away from the point of origin where you cast the spell.

This says it travels consistently away from the point of origin. It moves 10 ft/round and it moves 10 ft farther away from the origin point every round.

They're not mutually compatible, and there's an argument to be made for either. The second makes sense physically speaking - the cloud is cast in a particular "direction" and it continues moving in that direction. The way the spell reads though, the second feels like an assumed consequence of how you cast the spell, moreso than the first.

What happens when it hits a wall isn't specified. The fact that the wall in this case is horizontal doesn't change that it's weird to say it doesn't stop. If somebody casts Cloudkill normally, and it hits a wall in your game, does it start climbing the wall because that's further away from the point of origin?

(Honestly, with all the nitpicking, I'm surprised the third strategy didn't get a similar treatment, because that was kinda the dumbest.)


To be clear, I don't think the goal of the thread is possible, because it's working from the wrong angle. The "power of a well built caster" is not in pulling some perfect cheese tactic, nor is it in being able to kill the classed-humanoid PCs. With core-only, bombarding them with a pile of basic metamagic blasting in a scry and die ambush really is the most they can do that can't be laid on X spell being obviously broken or Y quickened/buddy spell combo which also requires surprise advantage.

The "power" of the prepared caster is in the players being able to respond to things that they couldn't deal with yesterday. In order to showcase this you first have to have these NPCs fight the PCs without being properly prepared, and escape, and then they come back the next day perfectly prepared.

There are many aspects of power in prepared casters, both in general and specific. The ability to prepare for a specific situation, such that you couldn't win yesterday but can today, is one of them. It's arguably the most important, but it's also one that PCs are less able to get into, because (at least in my experience) parties tend to be getting rushed through a plot and don't necessarily have a week to sit down and scry/divination/commune their way into knowing what needs doing and how.

This is probably one of the more important balancing factors in physical-table games: most tables where you're taking 4 hours or whatever out of your week to play, you don't wanna spend them playing 20 Thousand Questions with the DM to perfectly solve the plot even if that would make it easier, because this is your free time and you're here to enjoy a story rather than perfectly solve the puzzle of "how do I maximize gains and minimize risks". This is also because it's usually not every player whose able to participate in that game fully, so it's majorly taking the spotlight away from your friends. You also tend to be getting rushed through a story, where a number of important things are happening and the clock is ticking and you don't really have time to have your wizard rest even two hours and prepare all divination spells just to blow them all immediately and rest another two hours - firstly because that's cheating the rules of spell recovery, and secondly because you just wasted 6 hours and now the princess has been kidnapped across the sea.

In PbP games and theoretical exercises, plots move at the speed of the players or they don't happen at all, and because even a highly-active game could have an hour or two between posts from different players, it's easy for one player to sit there for a day typing up divination questions and send it to the DM, only for the DM to take a day answering it while still getting posts up. The format and culture of play-by-post games encourages scry-happy playstyles. The medium is the message.

But there are other aspects to that power. One aspect is the 15 minute adventuring day, where a caster can bring all their power to bear, and a fighter can't. In a game eventually taken over by rocket tag, casters can rocket tag earlier, and even when fighter is catching up casters tend to rocket tag harder and faster.

And that...kinda touches on the actual point: this question can't even be asked about the noncasters. Core only noncasters? What are two barbarians going to do to a typical party? Two fighters? Two monks? Maybe two rogues stand a chance. the cleric and wizard could manage a surprise round because they were teleporting in from the next continent, but sneaking close physically is gonna involve some immediate rolls (and unlike the scry-over-time plan, the party can't really be conditioned to ignore the rolls occurring in the same way - if they succeed against the scry, there's no fight, but if they succeed against the rogues, surprise is lost. But if the rogues can sneak up, they can probably cut the throats of the wizard and cleric, and now its rogue+fighter vs rogue+rogue, and my money is probably on the pair of rogues in that engagement. The rules of engagement favor the party not necessarily because of their size, but their composition, which is why the wizard and cleric have to be tricky about engaging. It's essentially "wizard and cleric" vs "wizard and cleric and fighter and rogue". It's an inherent objective disadvantage. But if this were an all fighter party?

Preparation is Shield Other on wizard/Shield Of Faith on both, cleric teleports them in, wizard uses empowered fireball on the party of fighters. Assuming all four fighters beat them on initiative (possible, but not probable), they're getting 8 attacks, 4 of which are just as likely to miss as threaten a critical, and 4 of which are 25% more likely to miss than the first four. They probably get a crit, a miss, and 6 hits, for 9d8+36 damage (avg 76). With the cleric and wizard at 70 and 43 HP respectively, they each take 38, and either the wizard with teleport via purchase in his book 'ports them away or either of them does it via a scroll. The wizard and cleric heal up with spell slots and get a full rest to recharge spells, while the fighters get to experience the glorious magic of the Heal skill, if they're lucky. And if the attack occurred at night, any of them that were sleeping might well have had their unattended bows catch fire, but that's neither here nor there? In any case, the casters could keep repeating that "port in, fireball, port out" plan, whittling the fighters down 49 HP at a time, leaving them to heal up to 18 overnight.

All rogue is harder because fireball probably doesn't work out even if you catch all four of them in all 11 fireballs. Well I mean, that would probably work? They succeed ~75% of the time, but two fails should be enough to kill them, so getting targeted 11 times would probably end them. But also they're not gonna just politely stay bunched up for 11 rounds while the wizard fireballs them from extreme range. There's a reason I assumed the fireball was only hitting a single target per round after the surprise round in my previous post.

All cleric is...I'd honestly have to roll it out, I think. I don't think they really have a chance of killing me unless they've hard specced into ranged combat, but they can't all have the Travel domain to get Fly, and frankly I suspect they might have more healing than I have fireball/magic missile damage. I don't know that for sure, but it's one of those things where I'd have to really build the characters out to see how things go down. I suspect they'd succeed even though an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

All wizard is the kinda thing you keep a league away from even if you've got a few levels on them. I know I said above that most parties are just gonna be wandering from fight to fight and managing as best they can for the things that surprise them, but an all-wizard party is probably the exception. A group of super-squishy prepared casters is not just wandering the wilderness going "hurr durr i wonder what's going on over here". They don't have enough hit points to take needless risks. Additionally, the cost of scribing new spells is 1/3 magic ink and 2/3 stingy wizards not wanting to let others borrow their spellbook. That 2/3 of the cost goes away when you're in a party with trustworthy friends, and they're able to coordinate level-up spells with each other. They've effectively quadrupled their spells in spellbook for free just by partying up this way, so their bag of tricks is bigger per wizard than normal (and it means that scrolls have quadruple the value for such a party). They might well have scry detection/prevention measures, and they've certainly got other divinatiosn they can put to use ensuring their safety. They're probably also not traversing the countryside when they could just teleport, so I'll have to engage them from much closer. And now they have a definite spell slot advantage. That's a very bad fight to pick.

This thread may not highlight one particular strength of caster supremacy, but it's still showing off caster strength.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Regarding the cryohydra question, the text of Alter Self lays out what you get, including movement modes, natural weapons, and so on, and is very explicit that you get nothing else. Polymorph inherits+modifies this text by saying you get [Ex] special attacks, and then re-iterates some stuff you still don't get. The cryo (pyro) breath weapon is listed neither as a natural weapon nor as an [Ex] special attack, so you don't get it. You could move away from overly literal RAW and say "A reasonable GM would rule the breath weapon is a special attack," except breath weapons are usually (Su), so a reasonable GM doesn't help much.

That said, the particular kill method seems to matter less than the fact that the caster bros get the jump on the party, which itself is reasonable given the optimization difference. Even if it isn't pure scry & die, which I would vote against simply because it feels cheap, it could involve divinations to determine the party's location and then teleporting nearby. In core the next step would be Invisibility to sneak up within encounter-range and then jump the group - either from afar or using Dimension Door.

This reminds me - regarding the "can only cast short-term buffs in combat" restriction, was the intent to rule out pre-buffing if you have the jump on someone? Because that's a pretty big part of winning fights in core. Or was the intent to say that you can only cast short-term buffs during the encounter, even if that occurs before initiative is rolled? Because the obvious answer to the hydra question is that a regular-old-hydra could bite 9 times in the surprise round if normal pre-buffing is allowed.

Or perhaps the intent is that the caster bros are unaware of the heroes prior to the encounter and meet them on relatively even ground. COP spam is probably above Thurbane's practical op threshold after all. That said, if the bros are risk averse, they might just retreat at first glance, divination to hell and back, and gank the party at their leisure at a later date.

[Thurbane]

I might be wrong here (been ages since I read the CR rules), but theoretically a Wizard and a Cleric of 9th level both are an appropriate encounter for a level 11 party and not a level 9 one!

Again, assuming I am right and remember correctly (which I very much might not be), any creature with class levels has a CR equal to its previous CR +1 for every class level. For standard races with no source of RHD/LA that means each of your casters is a CR 9 encounter on its own (unless it only works like that for monsters and not other creatures, but I am pretty sure this is the general rule). Furhtermore, if two same CR encounters are put together the resulting encounter has a CR equal to the original one +2 - hence CR 11

Granted the CR system is pretty inconsistent, but what I am trying to say is that *maybe* you are throwing to your party an encounter that they by definition cannot handle (or at least are going to suffer a few deaths)

An encounter with a CEL 2 above the party's ECL is "very difficult". Essentially, it's a boss fight, which is pretty much exactly what I plan for this to be.

Heaven forbid a party ever come across a Mirror of Opposition! :smallbiggrin:

At my table, POlymorph would 100% not give breath weapons, unless they were specifically tagged as Ex.

Also, would prefer for this not to be a scry-and-die encounter. While that might be the most optimal way to run a full caster attack, I feel that would not really showcase the power of a full caster, the players would most likely chalk it up to the NPCs getting them drop on them, and/or the DM "cheating" by having the NPCs fully prepared and with foreknowledge of the party.

[MeimuHakurei]

Do we have a frame of reference for what kind of group we're dealing with? I assume that if they don't know how good casters are that they are one healbot + 3 martials.

For a very simple strategy you can just soften the party by having the Wizard use Enlarged Fireballs from ~1500 feet away. For reference, the maximum range of a Longbow is 1000 feet by base and even with Far Shot you're still taking -14 to hit as a range penalty. The time it takes for the party to close in should be plenty for the Wizard to prepare some battlefield control and for the Cleric to set up a buff stack. Greater Invisibility is also fun to be buffed by.

Addendum: Combat strategy/tactics are the crux for running a well-built caster. So there'll always be a bit of an element of it feeling unfair because casters want to ensure not to get into engagement range of martials. After all, the tactical versatility of a caster is a far more important advantage over martials than raw numbers.

[Thurbane]

This will be modified to what the party composition is at the time (may not be used for this particular group), but current party is Ranger (non-casting variant) 9 (archery focused), Paladin (non-casting variant) 9, Warmage 7/Sand Shaper 2, and Favored Soul 9 (NPC, primarily buffing and healing focused). Like I said, though, good chance this will be modified (level-wise) and used for a different party, since that party is currently on hiatus.

The encounter may take place in a dungeon complex or similar, the lair of the two NPCs.

A couple of the players in my group think that core is not at all broken (brokenness only occurs once you start adding splats), and that casters are not overpowered compared to mundanes.

I don't want to screw over the party too badly, and if at all possible, the party would be captured on a defeat, rather than killed (if the party do get killed, they have high-level connections would would offer Resurrections in return for a future service; also, if they all get killed, I will 100% give them opportunity to retrieve their gear).

This isn't meant to be a punishment, but rather as an eye opening lesson. I'm not a jerk DM, and my primary goal is for the players to have fun - but moving forward, I would like a palpable illustration of what core-only full casters are capable of. Druid might be better on the divine side, but due to fluff reasons, I will be using a Cleric.

[Doctor Despair]

I saw folks mentioning how they think the manner in which the two NPCs win showcases the strength of prepared full casters instead of just being cheese. That being said, maybe we should establish what full casters excel at that mundanes or limited casters struggle with?

For example, one example often given is how a whole campaign can revolve around delivering X McGuffin to Y location, but a prepared full caster could get a good night's sleep and portal over there in the morning with enough time left over to stop at the corner bodega on the way home. Maybe their base is super remote and difficult to penetrate, but by the time they would naturally be able to reach the boss room, the NPCs teleported to a base on the other side of the continent? Or worse: to the party's home town to take hostages?

Edit: For good measure, leave a note telling the party where they've gone, too.

On the note of a dungeon taking a long time to go through, that could also give lots of time for the prepared casters to get the perfect defensive/offensive spells to go against the party (or else force them to expend all their resources just getting to the room and not have the opportunity to rest).

[Maat Mons]

Okay, so the player characters are archery, melee, and blasting. That is to say, damage, damage, and more damage. Maybe, more than teaching them the value of casting, you should just generally be teaching them the value of utility?

[Fizban]

I might be wrong here (been ages since I read the CR rules), but theoretically a Wizard and a Cleric of 9th level both are an appropriate encounter for a level 11 party and not a level 9 one!
Indeed. But many people like to ignore the part where the DMG notes that any amount above the party level dramatically increases lethality, because it is indeed quite common for modules to throw over-leveled encounters (and some amount above level is recommended by the DMG, if for no other reason than verisimilitude, but crucially it also never says that the PCs must win such encounters at all). Most people do seem to be aware by now that "appropriate" is not "even/fair," that CR or EL= party level means the party wins with little risk and modest resource expenditure (barring bad luck or foolishness): an appropriate combat for a game.


Again, assuming I am right and remember correctly (which I very much might not be), any creature with class levels has a CR equal to its previous CR +1 for every class level.
Not quite- the MM has guidelines of "nonassociated classes" for monsters which the DM can use to optimize monsters to a crushing degree (giants get wizard levels at half cost, magicy-monsters get combat levels at half cost, etc), which is why you always re-evluate the actual strength of something rather than relying on a "formula" (same as magic items). And of course the CR=level for classed humanoid NPCs is a shortcut hack to begin with, their actual challenge varying wildly compared to the monsters that the game is supposed to use most of the time.


Granted the CR system is pretty inconsistent,
The CR system is more consistent than people give it credit for, if for no other reason than it's actually a set of definitions completely independent of whatever stats are on the board. There's the rules for how encounters and CRs work, then the stats of published monsters that are assigned CRs, and it's not until you mix in the chaos of character creation/monster modification that things get any messier than "wow, this book's monsters are waaaay more powerful than before."



If the cleric teleporting them into line of sight isn't "taking an action that is going to make the other side aware", I'm not sure what is, in your opinion.
That wasn't a disagreement, just a definition, we're on the same page there.


Primary step that was left out was scrying, you're correct. What I did the last time this thread happened was scry familiars and animal companions. Of course, that also featured them always sneaking up on the group in the middle of the night so a lot of the extra stuff about surprise was also a lil bit unnecessary - why attack when they're ready for battle?
. . . Moreover, no scry was mentioned in this setup, but even if you were looking at the previous setup and assuming I was scrying the same way I did last time, the scrying sensors were on many occasions over a series of days to gather information on the party - another one showing up would be concerning, but not an immediate "prepare for battle" warning like you're imagining, regardless of the circumstances.
Well if you're assuming a bunch of other scouting and scrying without mentioning it, sure.:smallconfused:


"I had to make a saving throw. That means I'm ready to shoot anything that moves within my line of sight."

No. That's not what that means.
Then what does it mean? Pretty sure there's no actual definition. Which means it's up to either the DM to make a ruling (to again support their desire to scry and die the party), or for the players to dictate their response. If left up to the players, I expect the standard response would be "Yeah, if I just made a will save for no reason my character is hyper alert/paranoid/shooting on sight for the next hour/day/until the end of time."

The character made a save, therefore they are aware of something that forced a save, a hostile effect, a foe. By all rights they should be rolling initiative immediately and staying on initiative until they decide not to be. The only thing forcing them to stop is whatever limit the DM decides is appropriate for people to unwillingly lapse back into a sense of security. Which if they rule to just so happens to be less than the 1 min/level the DM needs for their scry and die to work. . .


If you prefer, it can instead start with "the spot they were camping in an hour ago when we scried", and then the flight starts towards where the party is, probably using cover and concealment and (once they're much closer) greater invisibility to get into position. It's all just nitpicking the technical process of how the situation was reached and pretending that reaching it some other way is similarly disproven.
Dramatically changing the assumed terrain, engagement distance, and having to expend more resources to begin the attack, are not nitpicking. That's what makes the difference between "lol magic winz" and "oh huh guess it doesn't always."


They could, provided they prepared them for a jaunt through the wilderness. I doubt they did, but it's possible.
What else would they prepare? Resist/Protection from Energy are the 2nd and 3rd level critical survival buffs. They should be prepared at all times, for this very reason- or rather, in case of sudden marauding dragon, or digester, or some other energy based monsters, which appear at all levels of play. I don't think this is a situational line to draw- it's just a How to Play Cleric question.




Presuming that the character in question has a +1 distance composite longbow and the far shot feat (which...this is a core ranged person, they probably have those things), they still have a -4 penalty from distance. I guess we could get persnickety back and point out no mention was made of potential wind penalties but that's honest not necessary: an additional +8 (effectively) has them hitting on a 3 on their first attack and 8 on their second, but only for that particular character. They maybe have another couple points of damage per attack, but the damage die has not changed, and they still aren't likely to get a crit (Improved Critical and increased accuracy help in that regard, but crits are still fairly rare). We're talking...what, maybe 1d8+4 on a hit instead of 1d8+1 like I was calculating before? That's an extra 6 DPR, and the DPR from before was assuming that all 6 attacks from the party hit (even though only the fighter's first iterative had a 50/50 shot at hitting).

Most likely what happens is: the rogue and cleric still have basically no chance of hitting a wizard 750 ft in the air, and even if they managed to hit, and the fighter's DPR at this level isn't outpacing the heals enough without the other party member's managing to land a hit. The 6d8 figure in the previous post was a pipe dream to point how, even if they hit all their shots, which they wouldn't, they still wouldn't kill the wizard without getting exceptionally lucky. A slight increase to accuracy, damage, and crit threat range for one of the three archers doesn't change that.
A ranged character at 9th level has only 1d8+4 damage? No wonder no one does range. A Fighter would have Weapon Spec, and with how little core support there is for rangers, a Fighter being able to reach Greater Weapon Spec is a lot more valuable and versatile than a Ranger (less able to dump Dex for Str since they need to meet the prerequisites, but still). And if they hit on a 3 on their first attack, why aren't they Rapid Shot-ing? But yes, a dedicated chain-healing cleric can outpace basic attacks (which is why healing in combat is not actually useless).

Now what happens if they ready an action to interrupt spellcasting? DC for Fireball will be 13+damage, you've given them a +13 modifier, which means the bomber needs to roll 1d8+4 (or 1d8+6, or 1d8+6+1d6) on their d20 to succeed. And anyone else who hits and deals damage adds another chance to low roll and fail the spell. How many spells are wasted?


XP is a river. Also, for most situations familiars are mildly useful but not critical - sacrificing one isn't that big a deal. What's more, they're assets, class features. They mean a good deal more than that in-game, sure. But also, saying "the caster didnt win because they're a caster, they won because they're willing to put their familiar in the line of fire" I guess you bitch and moan about animal companions too? It's not my fault the devs built lvl 1 leadership into the game for casters, and it's not cheating to "show off the power of casters" by utilizing the unique mechanics that leadership-esque ability.
The xp is the shock factor, with the vast majority of players not wanting to lose xp. The enlightened "xp is a river" mentality comes from reading the DM side of the rules and deliberately deciding not to care because you know that the system will rubber band you most (but not all) of the way back. The bigger penalty even if you don't care about the xp, the the one-year waiting period if lost, which in an actual game that doesn't just let the PCs sit around doing nothing (as you acknowledge is quite normal below), is an effectively permanent or until raised loss, mechanically just as bad as a character.

And yes actually, I do complain about animal companions. Scaling uber companions are bogus, the original 3.0 Animal Friendship spell had a tighter control against abuse and effectively didn't scale to usefulness at high levels due to the available animals. All the buffs to them over the years are, just like with the other casters, reactions to someone wanting X to be better so they just made it better, for everyone, at no cost to anything else, because magic. If the Druid playtester never used Wild Shape for more than scouting, why should I assume they actually tested Druid animal companions either? Regardless, animal companions have only a 24 hour replacement period, so they don't compare to familiars at all. A familiar is essentially a once per character thing that you need to keep alive or pay to raise, and that means most people say it's conveniently stuffed in a backpack whenever it's not explicitly being risked. An animal companion is a no-loss expendable asset that is usually never hidden and indeed rushed into combat. They're completely different things. And neither proves the power of spells.

Familiars are only necessary if you're. . . making them necessary. You're the one relying on the not-so-expendable asset for a bunch of scouting, and then suggesting a plan where they're also risked in direct combat.




Once again we're "this is a technical reason you're wrong and I'm going to pretend that means an extra line of text couldn't solve that issue." You're being persnickety.
And the players won't be persnickety if you suddenly drop a teleporting gank squad on them while they're asleep?


The cloud moves away from you along the ground, but you're above it. There is no one direction that is more "away" from you than any other. At best the spread would be in a random direction at a time, and you could move very slightly up in the air to now make "away from you" be going right back to where it started. The downside to taking that particular action is that it runs into a place where DM interpretation is required, because the spell specifies two things that do not mean the same thing:
This says its direction of travel is relative to its direction to you.
This says it travels consistently away from the point of origin. It moves 10 ft/round and it moves 10 ft farther away from the origin point every round.
Sure there's a direction that's more away from you: where exactly are you in your square when you cast it? The spell moves across the ground, which means I (or the player that's trying to avoid being ganked) can say that it must move across the ground. If the caster is nearly vertical and they don't choose the direction they want it to go, then make it random.


What happens when it hits a wall isn't specified. The fact that the wall in this case is horizontal doesn't change that it's weird to say it doesn't stop. If somebody casts Cloudkill normally, and it hits a wall in your game, does it start climbing the wall because that's further away from the point of origin?
If it hits a wall, maybe it stops at the wall. Or maybe I decide the spell is strong enough and it flattens out against the wall and dissipates as the origin attempts to move within a solid object. But you're not casting at a wall: you're casting at the ground and claiming it's a "wall" because that would let you ignore an inconvenient part of the spell. But doing so means your spell isn't moving across the ground.

Better would be to simply declare that you've researched a non-moving Cloudkill (for this NPC gank squad), which at first glance should be roughly equal in power since moving is a useful thing, but this very example shows why the movement is actually a restriction and stationary Cloudkill might need reduced power or a level increase.


(Honestly, with all the nitpicking, I'm surprised the third strategy didn't get a similar treatment, because that was kinda the dumbest.)
I did say I'd presented the same tactic myself before, in detail, to the same purpose of showing how to gank the party any why it doesn't prove anything.




This is probably one of the more important balancing factors in physical-table games: most tables where you're taking 4 hours or whatever out of your week to play, you don't wanna spend them playing 20 Thousand Questions with the DM to perfectly solve the plot even if that would make it easier, because this is your free time and you're here to enjoy a story rather than perfectly solve the puzzle of "how do I maximize gains and minimize risks". This is also because it's usually not every player whose able to participate in that game fully, so it's majorly taking the spotlight away from your friends. You also tend to be getting rushed through a story, where a number of important things are happening and the clock is ticking and you don't really have time to have your wizard rest even two hours and prepare all divination spells just to blow them all immediately and rest another two hours - firstly because that's cheating the rules of spell recovery, and secondly because you just wasted 6 hours and now the princess has been kidnapped across the sea.

In PbP games and theoretical exercises, plots move at the speed of the players or they don't happen at all, and because even a highly-active game could have an hour or two between posts from different players, it's easy for one player to sit there for a day typing up divination questions and send it to the DM, only for the DM to take a day answering it while still getting posts up. The format and culture of play-by-post games encourages scry-happy playstyles. The medium is the message.

But there are other aspects to that power. One aspect is the 15 minute adventuring day, where a caster can bring all their power to bear, and a fighter can't. In a game eventually taken over by rocket tag, casters can rocket tag earlier, and even when fighter is catching up casters tend to rocket tag harder and faster.
The spoilered part ought to not be spoilered: you've just said that in a normal game, rather than a PbP game or theoretical exercise, the players are encouraged not to play this way. Adventures sometimes add time constraints, visible or hidden, to explicitly discourage the "15 minute day." So how is demonstrating something anyone can plainly guess but isn't supposed to really do, demonstrating "the power of spellcasting?" It's demonstrating the power of abandoning normal standards of play.


And that...kinda touches on the actual point: this question can't even be asked about the noncasters.
Your point, but I'm pretty sure this is not Thurbane's point?

But if this were an all fighter party?
An all fighter party should have at least two ranged specialists. Your numbers are just barely holding up already, thanks to Shield Other, and running away to rest for 8 hours, after delivering a single spell. Against a party that the game all but explicitly tells you not to do. If that doesn't prove the lack of magic's ability to insta-win everything, what ever will?

I would also like to take this moment to mention that you're relying massively on the Travel domain to make any of this work at all. You need the Wizard to be acting during the surprise round to guarantee that one free hit, which means they can't cast the surprise teleport. Clerics don't normally have teleport. Now, Thurbane is calling for an optimized pair of NPCs, and since they're long-time partners it does make sense that they would work together, but the selection of domains comes miles before the ability to scry and teleport and die, and Teleport is normally not a Cleric spell at all.

I just don't find the demonstration of a particular pair of characters with a tactic they can only execute as a team, because they started building for it 8 levels ago, very convincing. It may not be the letter, but I still feel I have the spirit of the challenge here. The problem is that you can't demonstrate the overwhelming power of magic on a fair field against the party. If you constrain yourself to a fair, core-only field, there really aren't that many ridiculous things you can do. Magic isn't nearly as busted as people claim it is, not on a fair field, not without even more power creeping splat spells.

Really the best I think can be done here is just hitting them with every overpowered spell in the PHB. Which still just proves that those spells are nuts, but at least if you hit them with Glitterdust, Web, Stinking Cloud, Black Tentacles, etc, etc, until they can't do anything and just die, that will hammer home the point that magic can just wreck you and it's not just one spell doing it. (Of course if one already acknowledges those spells are busted, they should be fixing it rather than complaining).


All rogue is harder because fireball probably doesn't work out even if you catch all four of them in all 11 fireballs.
You pelt Rogues with Ice Storm. Which incidentally, is also a potential long-range answer to Fireball. Since the effect lasts for a full round it sure sounds to me like it should count for a concentration check for continuous damage as well 1/2 of 5d6 ~18+spell level for Concentration. The bomber wizard should actually be using this in their 4th level slots for Long range.




That said, the particular kill method seems to matter less than the fact that the caster bros get the jump on the party, which itself is reasonable given the optimization difference. Even if it isn't pure scry & die, which I would vote against simply because it feels cheap, it could involve divinations to determine the party's location and then teleporting nearby. In core the next step would be Invisibility to sneak up within encounter-range and then jump the group - either from afar or using Dimension Door.
Amusingly, Dimension Door prohibits the caster from taking further actions that round, but fails to make such a prohibition on other characters. But I agree that Invisibility or Invisibility Sphere and then Long or Medium range spells is the way to go. Note that See Invisibility is a Personal range spell, though 3.5 lets it work to any range, and the duration means the target will have to waste a round casting it instead of retaliating. Using Greater Invisibility means that they don't appear, so the party gets even less ability to respond than with the teleport gank and learns even less from the "lesson." Without specific non-core abilities it's impossible to keep See Invis on at all time, so attacking at arbitrarily long range while invisible is just as bogus as scry and die, assuming you ever go outside (and tends to rely on a certain amount of scrying anyway).


This reminds me - regarding the "can only cast short-term buffs in combat" restriction, was the intent to rule out pre-buffing if you have the jump on someone? Because that's a pretty big part of winning fights in core. Or was the intent to say that you can only cast short-term buffs during the encounter, even if that occurs before initiative is rolled? Because the obvious answer to the hydra question is that a regular-old-hydra could bite 9 times in the surprise round if normal pre-buffing is allowed.

Back to the Hydra- they're also too Huge for Polymorph unless you're a Large creature or the DM lets Enlarge Person get you there. Effectiveness on the familiar via share spell is, maybe? Regardless, the wizard and familiar would be making those attacks at wizard BAB, +5 Str, -2 size, so base +7 for 1d10+5. That's going to be a lot of misses whoever they target unless they use more buffs.




Heaven forbid a party ever come across a Mirror of Opposition! :smallbiggrin:
Indeed, it's a gimmick artifact/DM fiat encounter someone put a price tag on. But also possibly the most effective way to directly school the players in how they aren't as good at running their characters as you are, if that's the goal.


Also, would prefer for this not to be a scry-and-die encounter. While that might be the most optimal way to run a full caster attack, I feel that would not really showcase the power of a full caster, the players would most likely chalk it up to the NPCs getting them drop on them, and/or the DM "cheating" by having the NPCs fully prepared and with foreknowledge of the party.
As I expected.


A couple of the players in my group think that core is not at all broken (brokenness only occurs once you start adding splats), and that casters are not overpowered compared to mundanes.
Under the constraints you've giving, yeah they're increasingly not. A fair fight is fair, and the only thing I see left, as I said, is just hammering a bunch of OP spells. Which if you know they're so OP, you shouldn't be using- and it suggests you haven't been using them before now. If you have a game where "caster/martial disparity" isn't a problem, why would you want to "prove" that it is?

Their precise conclusion (splats are the problem) is wrong, but their response (keep everything restricted to a small set of game elements that aren't causing them problems) is correct.

[Anthrowhale]

In terms of tricks, is two shields (mithril for the wizard) one with a Symbol of Pain and one with a Symbol of Sleep "unfair"?

In the context of a dungeon, having the wizard cast Solid Fog to entrap the party and the cleric cast Wall of Stone to entrap the party in the solid fog may be pretty effective.

[Particle_Man]

This isn't meant to be a punishment, but rather as an eye opening lesson. I'm not a jerk DM, and my primary goal is for the players to have fun - but moving forward, I would like a palpable illustration of what core-only full casters are capable of. Druid might be better on the divine side, but due to fluff reasons, I will be using a Cleric.

Be careful what you wish for. Some players may not react well to finding out that their favourite character is a tier 4 glorified sidekick in a tier 1 universe. It can be hard to put the genie back in the bottle once they have had that revelation.

[Emperor Tippy]

How optimized?

I mean a core only Wizard's optimization is basically down to spell selection. For a level 9 core only human wizard, Improved Initiative is pretty much the only solidly "good" feat. Metamagic isn't really worth the cost at that point.

Flight + Greater Invisibility + Wand of Maximize Magic Missile at CL 7 (remember, per RAW metamagic on Wands is free :D ) can kill a party that isn't prepared.

The biggest issue for the NPC duo is actually doing damage.

Flight + Greater Invisibility + all your remaining spell slots on Fireball is also a possibility.

Or you do the smart thing, the Wizard teleports away to a secure spot, spends some time using Planar Binding to get a few dozen Hound Archons, and then just has them Greater Teleport onto the party.

[MeimuHakurei]

How optimized?

I mean a core only Wizard's optimization is basically down to spell selection. For a level 9 core only human wizard, Improved Initiative is pretty much the only solidly "good" feat. Metamagic isn't really worth the cost at that point.

Flight + Greater Invisibility + Wand of Maximize Magic Missile at CL 7 (remember, per RAW metamagic on Wands is free :D ) can kill a party that isn't prepared.

The biggest issue for the NPC duo is actually doing damage.

Flight + Greater Invisibility + all your remaining spell slots on Fireball is also a possibility.

Or you do the smart thing, the Wizard teleports away to a secure spot, spends some time using Planar Binding to get a few dozen Hound Archons, and then just has them Greater Teleport onto the party.

With a lack of power feats, I'd consider more middle of the road options like the save booster feats or maybe Skill Focus (Use Magic Device) so high level scrolls and such are easier to use.

The Wizard could also be an elf and use Rapid Shot and Weapon Focus to pick off the party with a magic bow once he's invisible. Or does so while riding the Cleric polymorphed into a Polar Bear (He can't cast in that form, but Divine Power + Righteous Might stay active while he's polymorphed). The Wizard with that strategy could also polymorph into a Pixie for Sleep Arrows (This is an Ex Special Attack!) to be even more effective.

Metamagic is usually not worth it, but Extend Spell could be crucial in establishing these buff stacks early before the party is in engagement range (Greater Invis is not a spell you want to cast out of combat). Furthermore, dropping a few mediocre summons and fireballs could lead to the party spending time using the wrong defenses against the strategy above.

[Kaleph]

It seems easier as you may think.

First, go first. A couple of correctly placed alarms should plausibly provide for a surprise round. They would even have the time to cast a silent image, so that they would start the fight behind an illusory wall.

After that, improved initiative/luck domain could help (go first, then act again).

Then, black tentacles and something that makes damage over a time (wall of fire?). I like the idea of a contingency scroll, you may cast both spells in the surprise round.

The cleric casts greater command.

This will not kill them, but will for sure provoke panic. And it's only the first round!

Edit: you should also think about defenses, like, stoneskin, see invisibility...

[Fizban]

Ambushing from behind an illusory wall after they trip an alarm spell is still an ambush- but you've given me an idea.

How do you ambush without it being an ambush? By being fully visible and mobile. This duo knows that, being only two people, they need action and surprise advantage. So they move about while concentrating on a Silent Image, which conveniently has no limit on duration. A moving wall/crate/etc will just immediately prove itself to not be real, you say? Ah, but they're not using an image of a wall, they are in fact using an image of a creature that completely fills its 10' space: A Gelatinous Cube! This is a single creature that will cover their legs without any suspicion, aside from the sound of armored footsteps and lack of squishing noises.

From there the Wizard (ceasing concentration and dropping the illusion) opens up with a pair of spells thanks to Quicken, because we're looking for Optimized Caster Supremacy. Black Tentacles is the OP DoT de'jour, and accompanying it with something to reduce escape such as Grease is obvious, though Open/Close or Hold Portal would be maximum style (sadly Hold Portal does not say it closes the door, just holds it shut). The Cleric can show off the power of Stone Shape by sealing a door or passage- or by instantly creating walls both low and with arrowslits, turning their side of the room into a fortress and greatly reducing the chance of spell-interrupting arrows.

After that it's a matter of taste, and how well they're doing escaping the OP tentacles. For offensive Cleric, Water or Fire domain will provide Ice Storm or Wall of Fire. From the Wizard, an Extended Ice Storm is 10d6 damage, no save. Either way, you want some continuous damage on their casters to prevent easy casting. A couple more copies of Stone Shape can be used to raise barriers around the targets without preventing them from continuing their attack like a Wall of Ice would, or defend themselves further- the versatility of that spell in a dungeon where it works is huge. Each 2 cubic feet is approximately one 5 foot square (1 inch thick), so you've got 5+1/2 levels= 9 panels at this level, which even if fragile (hp 15/hard 8) can be arranged to force multiple attacks to breach them. Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, Sleet Storm, or Solid Fog can all further impair the party, but the latter all mean you have to take it on faith that the enemy is still within, while the former allows a save.

Web is its own special can of worms. It provides cover, but doesn't actually fully obscure sight, and halts movement better than even Solid Fog, and lasts for lolduration, but any amount of fire makes it go away. This does take a round though, so you'd have time to throw another spell in if they manage to do it.

And the big spoiler comes down to. . . their caster. Specifically their divine caster. For which the example you've given is a Favored Soul NPC that you built for them. Because if the party has someone important under Freedom of Movement (as I'm about to say the duo's Wizard should be), then the biggest baddest mass BfCs have no effect on them. Which comes down to whether or not you gave them the spell, and if you have them cast it regularly as a preemptive buff.



Note that due to NPC gear, these NPCs can't afford +4 stat items (a PC might or might not), and thus have no bonus 5ths, making them demonstrably weaker than PCs of equivalent level.

Cleric: Earth/Water
1st: Shield of Faith x2, Comprehend Languages (active), Command x2, Obscuring Mist D
2nd: Resist Energy (active on self), Resist Energy x1, Shield Other (active), Spiritual Weapon x2, Fog Cloud D
3rd: Magic Circle (active), Blindness x1, Stone Shape x2, Stone Shape D
4th: Freedom of Movement (active on Wizard), Divination (expended) or Freedom of Movement (on Cleric), Restoration, Spike Stones or Stone Shape D
5th: Greater Command x1, Ice Storm D
-Scrolls of Remove Fear, Blindness/Deafness, Paralysis, Disease, and Curse would be appropriate (any adventuring Cleric should carry these), and a useful counter if the PCs land a crippling effect from the list. Throw in a Plane Shift so they both have escape spells, some Obscuring Mist 'cause they're cheap, and a Wand of Cure Light for obvious reasons. Fill the rest with flat gear

A Divination can excuse the Wizards prepared spells, if they're deemed too specialized vs classed humanoids, I suppose, but really if you want them to be resilient you give them both FoM. Spike Stones would be hilarious if you managed to bait the PCs into walking over it (and it's a domain spell), even better if you then Dim Door'd and made them do it again (otherwise just more Stone Shape). I'd like to fit Giant Vermin in somehow, but even Large vermin at cl 10 are speedbumps to a 9th level character, better off with more Stone Shape at that point. Greater Command is as good as Mass Hold Person if you're relying on spell damage.

Freedom of Movement on Wizard is of course to prevent them from being grappled themselves, such as by a Fighter or Black Tentacles, so they can Teleport out in an emergency. This is also a reasonably sound idea even against a dungeon since sudden grappling monsters are a thing. Blindness is if an enemy arcanist or rogue is looking uppity and needs to be neutralized without preventing the duo's wizard from continuing the attack, though by allowing a save it of course allows failure- but it also gives an opportunity for them to go "so when does it wear off?" and you say "it doesn't." Only the one copy of Ice Storm and potentially Spike Stones are even special domain-access spells. If the terrain allows, they could both be under FoM because they were also under Water Breathing and walk up out of/flee into/reposition via some water feature, though that makes it feel more like they just so happened to be perfectly prepared, rather than just having FoM up because Caster Power.

The main hiccup in (ab)using Stone Shape is that it's touch range, which means that yes, even I have to make use of vague spell definitions. Unless the spell can't do anything other than reshape an already discrete object, it must be assumed that whatever "shape" you're making can extend beyond your touch as long as it's continuous. I wouldn't go so far as to claim the "there's a one inch ridge from my square to over there which makes it okay to raise a wall on the other side of the room," I would say that raising a series of wall panels which are all connected and begin adjacent to your square, should be within the target data. You could try to get a similar effect via summoning meatshields (Giant Vermin! It lasts longer!), and Spike Stones halves movement. And of course Earth domain and Cleric have Wall of Stone itself at 5th, which absolutely does a much larger area at range, but costs you either Ice Storm or Greater Command or burning consumables on offense (which says they won through consumables, not personal power, of course).


Wizard: Evoker or Conjurer
1st: Mage Armor (active), Shield x1, Magic Missile x4
2nd: Resist Energy (active on self), Resist Energy x1, Flaming Sphere x1, Web x1, Glitterdust x1
3rd: Stinking Cloud x1, Fireball x2, Extended Acid Arrow x2
4th: Black Tentacles x1, Dimension Door x1, Ice Storm x1
5th: Quickened Grease, Extended Ice Storm x1
-Scroll of Teleport, Scrolls of Silent Image, appropriate flat gear. Not even using an extend rod. Add some scroll creation materials to make it clear where the scrolls came from.

Once they're slowed and hopefully stuck by Back Tentacles and Grease, the Ice Storms are worth ~52 no-save damage, while fouling spellcasting. The Extended Acid Arrows last 8 rounds for a total of ~40 damage each, while fouling spellcasting. The Web, Glitterdust, and Stinking Cloud may be deployed as neccessary (along with the Cleric's Greater Command), with Magic Missiles and Flaming Sphere for mop-up- they can conflict with each other, but have different uses. If the party wins sufficient initiative to make positioning too awkward, Dim Door somewhere else.

Alternatively, you might consider a Feeblemind for a nice permanent ranged crippling. The -4 save penalty coupled with arcanists often neglecting their wisdom (because "high" will save) means I would expect a base save of +8, reduced to +4, vs a base DC of 19. Kick that up to 21 with Spell Focus+Greater and that's only a 15% successful save (down to 10% with Fox's Cunning), though even that may be too much for what is supposed to be a lesson (itself becoming a lesson in caster-not-so-superiority). And as a compulsion it's negated by Magic Circle, which means it is once again completely spoiled or not based on your own NPC divine caster.


This set of spells and plans can hit a giant pile of Caster Supremacy bits. Multiple spells with "make up whatever you want" uses (Silent Image, Stone Shape), surprise already active continuous immunity buffs (Resist Energy [probably fire], Magic Circle, Freedom of Movement), incoming damage control with Shield Other, impossible to follow mobility if you add a Water Breathing and water hazard, pinning the target directly with BFC and save-or-lose including a Quickened Spell Combo, then ruining them with no-save damage in multiple damage types while they can't cast back, and of course teleportation across the battlefield or simply away. And maybe a hair of bogus only removable by a specific spell permanent crippling if you land a Blindness and they survive.

Though speaking of Resist Energy (probably fire)- if the PCs get a Warmage, with their spontaneous casting of spells of all energy types and none, that rather does put a crimp in the core-only restrictions of their foes. Casters get a lot less supreme when instead of a specific list of blasting spells of known ranges and energy types that allows the "you literally can't hurt me" setup, their enemy could throw anything they want at any time. If the party has a Warmage, then they can throw this entire tactic right back at the duo (or at any other classed humanoid shmucks), spontaneously, because Warmages have Black Tentacles, Ice Storm, Wall of Fire, Stinking Cloud, Sleet Storm, and Acid Arrow themselves, and three party members to make up for the lack of physical walls. Which makes the pre-activated Freedom of Movement a crucial meta-play, and yes, means "rocket tag" is right now, since you're pitting the PCs against PC classed humanoids. The Warmage is hilarious for actually being Schrodenger's Wizard when it comes to core attack spells.

Black Tentacles didn't used to be so nuts btw- it randomly conjured actual physical tentacles which took up space and could be attacked (and ignored anyone smaller than Medium!), the lack of prohibition on them ganging up was fearsome, but if the only one within range of you is occupied you're fine, and with only 1hp/level the meatshield would quickly clear a safe space.

Edit: Regarding the winning of initiative, assuming they don't get a surprise round, readied actions to shoot the Wizard are still quite killer. They should naturally stand behind the Cleric for soft cover, but also just delay until the Cleric can make a fortress or drop some cloud cover so they can re-position.

[Anthrowhale]

It looks like the party lacks easy access to see invisibility?

If the cleric/wizard can buff via Polymorph[Annis Hag]+Greater Invisibility and Divine Power+Righteous Might, the cleric could make an invisible attack with a strength of 35 using a huge longspear+23/+18 doing 3d6+18(str)+2(greater magic weapon) with an AC of about 30 using heavy armor. Target the warmage first, the favored soul second, and then mop up the rest of the party.

The wizard could have permanency[Reduce Person] and ride the cleric to counterspell/dispel/disrupt/fireball.

[Dragonsworn]

An encounter with a CEL 2 above the party's ECL is "very difficult". Essentially, it's a boss fight, which is pretty much exactly what I plan for this to be.

Heaven forbid a party ever come across a Mirror of Opposition! :smallbiggrin:

At my table, POlymorph would 100% not give breath weapons, unless they were specifically tagged as Ex.

Also, would prefer for this not to be a scry-and-die encounter. While that might be the most optimal way to run a full caster attack, I feel that would not really showcase the power of a full caster, the players would most likely chalk it up to the NPCs getting them drop on them, and/or the DM "cheating" by having the NPCs fully prepared and with foreknowledge of the party.

Oh, so you do want to kill them :smalltongue: My apologies for asuming otherwise :smallbiggrin:

Just so we are clear on the subject, do I remember correctly? These are the rules for CR, this is what the CR of those two casters would be and how it is calculated and this is how CR is added up, right?

[Thurbane]

Oh, so you do want to kill them :smalltongue: My apologies for asuming otherwise :smallbiggrin:

Just so we are clear on the subject, do I remember correctly? These are the rules for CR, this is what the CR of those two casters would be and how it is calculated and this is how CR is added up, right?

Well, I usually use an EL calculator tool, but I'm getting two CR 9 creatures coming out as EL 11, yes.

[Gorthawar]

Also, would prefer for this not to be a scry-and-die encounter. While that might be the most optimal way to run a full caster attack, I feel that would not really showcase the power of a full caster, the players would most likely chalk it up to the NPCs getting them drop on them, and/or the DM "cheating" by having the NPCs fully prepared and with foreknowledge of the party.

To show optimized caster superiority you'd want a reasonably fair set up. Let's say both the heroes and villains are teleported into an arena at fairly close distance from each other (30-60ft) and a ceiling that is limited in height to a similar degree. As you stated before only minute/lvl buff and longer are allowed. I'd also stay away from polymorph but that's just my personal preference.

To me the biggest issue for the brothers is getting their first spells cast. Ideally they can act first due to improved initiative + high dex and perhaps the luck domain. If that's not the case they'd at least want to start the battle invisible. Otherwise readying an action to shoot an arrow or some warmage spell are too likely to disrupt.

Dimension door for the wizard to escape a grapple and the travel domain ability for the cleric should be helpful as mentioned before. Shield other, false life and the various armor buffs are obviously good as well.

Once they actually get to cast there are almost too many options. Against a core only party I'd probably go with a solid fog cast by the Wizard5/Loremaster4 combined with his Imp familiar using a wand of silence (12 ranks +4 Cha with eagles splendor will give a good chance of success). This should keep the party busy for a couple rounds (with no save and no communication) to throw some AOE damage or further disables like glitterdust and let the cleric buff up to defeat the remainder of the party toe to toe.

[Eurus]

I agree that surviving long enough to actually get a turn is the main obstacle here, since most of the really egregious stuff that would make you untouchable is either higher level than that or outside of core. If you actually get a turn, there's a lot of options. I agree with Gorthawar, Solid Fog would be my default choice as well, that or a Wall of (something) depending on the arena setup.

Hmm, what are the most busted things available in core at that level... Planar allies is a big one, but you've pre-emptively banned that. You can do lots of absurd things with Contingency, but since you'd need a scroll for it that's more showing off the power of money rather than caster classes. Information-gathering divination spells are totally online by this level, so it would be reasonably justified to have the casters know specifically what the party is capable of, and if you're feeling really mean you could use it to justify some kind of Shrodinger's spell immunity buff on the assumption that the casters do, in fact, know what spells the party is going to try to cast on them. It also might justify preparing the arena ahead of time, but at that point it's basically impossible to lose.

As far as buffs with a 10 min/level duration or higher... Air walk, phantom steed, and overland flight are available, which means you can basically laugh at anyone who didn't think to pack flight of their own. Alter self in core is pretty limited but +6 AC is still nice. Actually, AC may not be the best defense, but if you come in with alter self+barkskin+mage armor on, having 30ish AC is a nasty surprise that doesn't actually cost you any actions. Darkness on your staff or something for 20% miss chance, freedom of movement if the party has battlefield control spells of their own, stoneskin because why not... it's not a terrible suite of buffs, especially if you go the spell immunity route, so you might legitimately be able to tank an opening salvo if the players aren't really canny about what they fire at you, but there's always a chance that the dice just don't go your way.

[Anthrowhale]

Riffing on Gorthawar,

Preparation:
Wizard casts Permanency Reduce Person on themselves.
Wizard has a high dexterity + Improved Initiative
Cleric has full plate
Cleric has an exotic military saddle which the wizard rides in and combat reflexes.

Precast:
Mage armor on wizard
see invisibility on wizard and cleric
heorism on cleric
Magic Vestment on cleric
Magic Weapon on cleric's longspear

On sighting:
Wizard casts Invisibility Sphere
Cleric casts Divine Power and moves
Round 2:
Wizard casts Polymorph[Annis Hag] on the Cleric
Cleric casts Righteous Might and moves
Round 3:
Wizard casts Greater Invisibility on Cleric
Cleric chops twice each round with a huge longspear, or more if combat reflexes triggers. Each chop does ~30 damage.
Round 4-9
Wizard casts summons, buffs (fly, resist energy, cat's grace, rage, haste, stoneskin, etc...), some careful crowd control spells (e.g. wall of stone, wall of ice) that avoid triggering the attack clause, or hides in the cleric's backpack and casts Mind Jar.
Cleric chops twice + combat reflexes each round.

[Eurus]

Cleric has an exotic military saddle which the wizard rides in and combat reflexes.

...I was dubious at first, but honestly, if you have the wizard come in riding a cleric as a mount the players are going to be laughing too hard to play, so you'll probably win by default!

[Gorthawar]

I agree with Gorthawar, Solid Fog would be my default choice as well, that or a Wall of (something) depending on the arena setup

Mind you that without the silence the solid fog will be of very short nature as warmages have gust of wind on their list to disperse the fog. I suppose you can wait till the silence is cast by the Imp and then either choose solid fog or black tentacles.