What would you do as an evil guild leader?

[Max Caysey]

So I realized I went about this whole bodyguard business the wrong way. Therefore I'm starting a new thread, where the question is what threats might a high level paladin incur? How they would manifest and what would you do as a guild leader in a epic level game???

The target is still the level 32 LG Paladin. A lord with a high noble status. He commands an army of about 10.000 men that ranges in level between 4-20. His bulk infantry and cavalry is level 12, special forces (rogue/scouts) level 16 and elite cavalry are level 20 griffon knights.

His campaign is revolving around politics, both domestic and foreign, and war is natural on the table. This means that his enemies are the nations/ organizations/ religions that might suffer from him pushing his LG agenda and him trying to subvert their evil or predatory ways. He "hunts" these different organization where ever he finds them and runs a fairly large spy network to not only root out these evil networks but also to run counter-espionage mission withing his own dukedom, mainly to catch would-be terrorists or assassins. He therefore has a long list of enemies, who might or might not want to work together to destroy their mutual enemy this LG paladin.

Some of his enemies are:

The Arcane Brotherhood
The Red Wizards of Thay
The Church of Bane, Cyric and Shar - as well as their affiliate organizations and guilds
The Drow
The Pirate Lords of Luskan
The Zentarim
The Shadow Thieves
The Iron Thrown

Basically, all kinds who prosper through crime and suffering of others...

Now, since the paladin doesn't go on adventuring anymore, you will 99% of the time find him in the company of his soldiers or guards somehow. Either in his own estate or in some military camp. However, sometimes he does travel for political meetings, state visits or formal banquettes as well as hold court.

The way I see it, the threats he's facing comes from some of the above mentioned groups. Possible multiple groups working together. So, instead of asking how to build a bodyguard, I'm going to ask what credible threats you see some of these groups posing? Imagine you are the guild leader, what would to do to try and threaten/kill the paladin?

Cheers!

[AvatarVecna]

So I realized I went about this whole bodyguard business the wrong way. Therefore I'm starting a new thread, where the question is what threats might a high level paladin incur? How they would manifest and what would you do as a guild leader in a epic level game???

The target is still the level 32 LG Paladin. A lord with a high noble status. He commands an army of about 10.000 men that ranges in level between 4-20. His bulk infantry and cavalry is level 12, special forces (rogue/scouts) level 16 and elite cavalry are level 20 griffon knights.

His campaign is revolving around politics, both domestic and foreign, and war is natural on the table. This means that his enemies are the nations/ organizations/ religions that might suffer from him pushing his LG agenda and him trying to subvert their evil or predatory ways. He "hunts" these different organization where ever he finds them and runs a fairly large spy network to not only root out these evil networks but also to run counter-espionage mission withing his own dukedom, mainly to catch would-be terrorists or assassins. He therefore has a long list of enemies, who might or might not want to work together to destroy their mutual enemy this LG paladin.

Some of his enemies are:

The Arcane Brotherhood
The Red Wizards of Thay
The Church of Bane, Cyric and Shar - as well as their affiliate organizations and guilds
The Drow
The Pirate Lords of Luskan
The Zentarim
The Shadow Thieves
The Iron Thrown

Basically, all kinds who prosper through crime and suffering of others...

Now, since the paladin doesn't go on adventuring anymore, you will 99% of the time find him in the company of his soldiers or guards somehow. Either in his own estate or in some military camp. However, sometimes he does travel for political meetings, state visits or formal banquettes as well as hold court.

The way I see it, the threats he's facing comes from some of the above mentioned groups. Possible multiple groups working together. So, instead of asking how to build a bodyguard, I'm going to ask what credible threats you see some of these groups posing? Imagine you are the guild leader, what would to do to try and threaten/kill the paladin?

Cheers!

You either need to be better at defending yourself than they are at killing you, or you need to be better at attacking them than they are at defending themselves. Defense is generally harder than offense in D&D - rocket tag occurs pretty easily at all levels. You either need to have magical defenses superior to the magic offenses your enemies can muster (almost impossible, given that it's one faction vs many), or you need to make it Mutually Assured Destruction: however bad letting you live and continue your crusade is for them, if you die something even worse needs to happen to them. That way they don't want to kill you and will in fact use some of their resources to protect you from external threats. One way might be politics - if you're too tied up politically and economically with them, killing you damages their bottom line. Alternatively, you could make a magic nuke.

EDIT: And like...if things get high-op, politicking is about your only real option. If you dead is better for them than you alive, you're going to be pitting your one organization against their eight. And a lot of them have big magic on their side. I don't wanna just resort to one of the worst options available but like...one of the tools theoretically in the toolbox is the Teleport Through Time spell, where they can travel to any point in the past and alter history. Such as killing your dad. Or his dad. Or his dad. And so on. Your paladin is the lastest in a long line of people, and if any one of them gets murdered by a time traveler, the paladin ceases to exist. You can't protect the whole timeline from time travelers on your own. It's just not feasible. If things are going that hard, you're going to have to compromise a little bit.

The only way to avoid compromise is if you are, in fact, more powerful than all of them put together. And a Paladin 32 is very much not that.

[Zanos]

Many of the organizations you listed contain multiple epic level wizards or clerics. Unless the bodyguard himself as an epic fullcaster, your paladin is kind of doomed barring severe plot armor or villain balling.

You could maybe stay alive if your bodyguard was an epic artificer or epic spellcaster that provided you with enough warding that the various unscrupulous epic spellcasters cannot instantly obliterate you with epic magic, but good luck.

[Buufreak]

Ditto to all that said above. But as an example, off the top of my head:

Scry. Find the bugger in question.
Teleport without Error. Get to the bugger.
Gate. Yank him to some plane.
Gate 2, electric boogaloo. Take him from said plane and drop him in the middle of the sun.

And that is just a lazy assassination attempt. Knowing a bit of stats might help narrow down how to kill him, but my thoughts are yes, as a paly he can get some decent saves, but as an epic caster, they mean close to nothing.

[Analytica]

I would try to engineer a situation where the paladin is forced to choose between two equally or almost equally morally questionable actions, perhaps such that someone who he has sworn oaths to respect or aid turns out to be evil. The more severe and consequential the unavoidable effects of the least bad choice, the better. This aims to make the paladin doubt himself (i.e. fall), at least long enough to destroy him or hurt his popular support enough that he cannot recover it. This works within rules to some degree both as written and likely intended, and would make an iconic story.

[Buufreak]

I would try to engineer a situation where the paladin is forced to choose between two equally or almost equally morally questionable actions, perhaps such that someone who he has sworn oaths to respect or aid turns out to be evil. The more severe and consequential the unavoidable effects of the least bad choice, the better. This aims to make the paladin doubt himself (i.e. fall), at least long enough to destroy him or hurt his popular support enough that he cannot recover it. This works within rules to some degree both as written and likely intended, and would make an iconic story.

I would hope that by level 32 he is wise and seasoned enough to have "dumb-dumb armor" which is this cool thing that prevents a paladin from getting doped into DM railroading nonsense because they decided a thing that should probably be more for flavor is an abusable mechanic to punish people for choosing the "wrong class™."

[Gruftzwerg]

Two thing I wanna mention:

1: as others said, if the campaign lvl is around ~32ish a "normal" paladin build will drown in the presence of full casters. Maybe a "full" optimized paladin build, but I haven't seen any so far that much optimized. So there is that. Maybe consider to play a melee oriented cleric (gish) that is still a "paladin" (title) ingame? Ruby Knight Vindicator could be an option for the right cheese to survive epic lvl content.

2: imho the real question here is "why epic"? 3.5 is already a poorly balanced game and EPIC just gets worse. Either you rely on constant DM FIAT or nobody knows what he is doing and capable of (including the DM).
Note that what is called epic fantasy in other media (e.g. LotR) is in 3.5 something between lvl 5-10. So the question is why to play at that high lvl if you lack the knowledge to do so? (no offense here)
Imho over 90% of plots can be handled within 5-10 lvls. I would only encourage to play at higher lvls if you want to learn from failures to get used to higher lvls. Because it will lead to more rule discussions and will lengthen the time PCs need to decide their turn.
Starting at the high lvl without enough system mastery is like driving a F1 car without actual driving experience at all.

You are making it more difficult for your table then it needs to be imho. A soft/hard max lvl cap for a campaign is nothing bad. This is not D2 where your goal is to get to lvl 99 ;)

If you are struck with the 32lvl campaign, I suggest to go for a full caster gish character and pretend to b a paladin ingame.
____________

Final Joker: If Leadership (feat) is allowed on your table, this changes things. You could get a powerful caster as cohort to compensate for your own lack of magic as paladin. No matter how you look at it, at epic lvl you wanna be a full caster or have some other special uberbuild to keep up with the full-casters. I mean, just look at the 9th lvl spells and think what you paladin can do against them if he has to face em. You need some kind of magical backup/defense.

[icefractal]

It depends on a couple factors:
1) How do the foes' levels compare to the Paladin? Do they have anyone Epic-level of their own? If they have more and better champions than the Paladin does, then they probably win without too much trouble, but there's a big difference in viable plans if the agents they're sending are like 5th-10th level vs 15th-25th level.
2) What's the level of optimization? Even assuming an equal amount on both sides, it changes things. For example, if both sides are mid-op, then the Paladin's defenses are going to be very high and spamming / using no-save stuff is probably the way to go. Low-op, that's not necessarily the case.

By the fact that these organizations all still exist, haven't conquered the world, and still care about stuff like "profits" and "controlling public opinion", we can say at least that we're not in NI territory - none of them have mages cascading armies of Ice Assassins or the like.

[Max Caysey]

...one of the tools theoretically in the toolbox is the Teleport Through Time spell, where they can travel to any point in the past and alter history. Such as killing your dad. Or his dad. Or his dad. And so on. Your paladin is the lastest in a long line of people, and if any one of them gets murdered by a time traveler, the paladin ceases to exist. You can't protect the whole timeline from time travelers on your own. It's just not feasible. If things are going that hard, you're going to have to compromise a little bit.

The only way to avoid compromise is if you are, in fact, more powerful than all of them put together. And a Paladin 32 is very much not that.

I don't think teleport through time is something he'll run into. I assume that if the spell excist its only a very select handful of über powerful individuals like Larloch, Iolaum, the Srinshee who has that kind of spell, and I would assume they would be guarding its secret alot. But, just for fun, how would one protect against an evil wizard wanting to travel back in time and kill your parents?


Many of the organizations you listed contain multiple epic level wizards or clerics. Unless the bodyguard himself as an epic fullcaster, your paladin is kind of doomed barring severe plot armor or villain balling.

You could maybe stay alive if your bodyguard was an epic artificer or epic spellcaster that provided you with enough warding that the various unscrupulous epic spellcasters cannot instantly obliterate you with epic magic, but good luck.

That was why the build I thought of initially was a level 25 swiftblade arcane gish... that way the bodyguard would have access to level 9 spells.


Ditto to all that said above. But as an example, off the top of my head:

Scry. Find the bugger in question.
Teleport without Error. Get to the bugger.
Gate. Yank him to some plane.
Gate 2, electric boogaloo. Take him from said plane and drop him in the middle of the sun.

And that is just a lazy assassination attempt. Knowing a bit of stats might help narrow down how to kill him, but my thoughts are yes, as a paly he can get some decent saves, but as an epic caster, they mean close to nothing.

So, we need the bodyguard to have anticipate teleportation running at all times... check!


I would try to engineer a situation where the paladin is forced to choose between two equally or almost equally morally questionable actions, perhaps such that someone who he has sworn oaths to respect or aid turns out to be evil. The more severe and consequential the unavoidable effects of the least bad choice, the better. This aims to make the paladin doubt himself (i.e. fall), at least long enough to destroy him or hurt his popular support enough that he cannot recover it. This works within rules to some degree both as written and likely intended, and would make an iconic story.

This a real cool idea!


Two thing I wanna mention:

1: as others said, if the campaign lvl is around ~32ish a "normal" paladin build will drown in the presence of full casters. Maybe a "full" optimized paladin build, but I haven't seen any so far that much optimized. So there is that. Maybe consider to play a melee oriented cleric (gish) that is still a "paladin" (title) ingame? Ruby Knight Vindicator could be an option for the right cheese to survive epic lvl content.

2: imho the real question here is "why epic"? 3.5 is already a poorly balanced game and EPIC just gets worse. Either you rely on constant DM FIAT or nobody knows what he is doing and capable of (including the DM).
Note that what is called epic fantasy in other media (e.g. LotR) is in 3.5 something between lvl 5-10. So the question is why to play at that high lvl if you lack the knowledge to do so? (no offense here)
Imho over 90% of plots can be handled within 5-10 lvls. I would only encourage to play at higher lvls if you want to learn from failures to get used to higher lvls. Because it will lead to more rule discussions and will lengthen the time PCs need to decide their turn.
Starting at the high lvl without enough system mastery is like driving a F1 car without actual driving experience at all.

You are making it more difficult for your table then it needs to be imho. A soft/hard max lvl cap for a campaign is nothing bad. This is not D2 where your goal is to get to lvl 99 ;)

If you are struck with the 32lvl campaign, I suggest to go for a full caster gish character and pretend to b a paladin ingame.
____________

Final Joker: If Leadership (feat) is allowed on your table, this changes things. You could get a powerful caster as cohort to compensate for your own lack of magic as paladin. No matter how you look at it, at epic lvl you wanna be a full caster or have some other special uberbuild to keep up with the full-casters. I mean, just look at the 9th lvl spells and think what you paladin can do against them if he has to face em. You need some kind of magical backup/defense.

Well the game has been running on and off for the better part of a decade. We started at level 1 and has played our way to level 32, so therefore level 32. Leadership is indeed how he has tens of thousands of soldiers under his command. Since its an already ongoing game, your ideas of something other than paladin is unfortunatly not a valid strategy in this case. We need to work with what we have. Being an unoptimized paladin is however precicely the reason I wanted to create a bodyguard for the PC... We both have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the rules, so we are ok with the epic level wonkiness...


It depends on a couple factors:
1) How do the foes' levels compare to the Paladin? Do they have anyone Epic-level of their own? If they have more and better champions than the Paladin does, then they probably win without too much trouble, but there's a big difference in viable plans if the agents they're sending are like 5th-10th level vs 15th-25th level.
2) What's the level of optimization? Even assuming an equal amount on both sides, it changes things. For example, if both sides are mid-op, then the Paladin's defenses are going to be very high and spamming / using no-save stuff is probably the way to go. Low-op, that's not necessarily the case.

By the fact that these organizations all still exist, haven't conquered the world, and still care about stuff like "profits" and "controlling public opinion", we can say at least that we're not in NI territory - none of them have mages cascading armies of Ice Assassins or the like.

The enemies are expected to have about the same level available to them as the PC... so somewhere between level 20-35... sure not every member of those organizations will be epic, but their leadership will probably be about level 30. They are also expected to be optimized to about the same level as the paladin, which is not that high. "Practical optimization" as it were fits the optimization level I think... however vague that is. The game world had not turned into Tippyverse, its not completely post scarcity... and armies still have a function... so no armies of ice assassins. Armies of Shadesteel golems... probably within posibility, but not something we have encountered yet...

[AvatarVecna]

I don't think teleport through time is something he'll run into. I assume that if the spell excist its only a very select handful of über powerful individuals like Larloch, Iolaum, the Srinshee who has that kind of spell, and I would assume they would be guarding its secret alot.

It honestly depends on how optimized the enemies are. That kind of secrecy is only really necessary in a mid-op game, where 9th lvl spells are easy, but defending against TTT is basically impossible. In low-op games (default WotC), nobody is bothering to protect knowledge of the spell because basically nobody is capable of casting it, and nobody who is capable of casting it is going to be whipping it out to deal with small problems. In high-op games, the defenses against it actually become viable. But honestly, if you've got multiple groups of powerful evil wizards, it's probably one of their nuclear options - an "in case of apocalypse break glass" kinda thing. The sole upside is that if they have it at all, they're almost certainly more concerned about other people who have access to it. However inconvenient the paladin might be


But, just for fun, how would one protect against an evil wizard wanting to travel back in time and kill your parents?

That underlined section up there? Yeah, this is what that's about. Defending against TTT is basically impossible.

Killing anybody in your family line would cause you to cease to exist. But they don't need the paladin to be un-alived, they just need him not up in their business. Imagine if, when he was level 6, a level 18 wizard showed up and wrecked his ****. Imagine if he was lured to the dark side before he ever became a paladin. Imagine if he had all his stats permanently drained down a handful of points each, so that he could never hope to be a successful adventurer. Maybe at lvl 32 he is completely and utterly invincible, but there's an awful lot of his life when he wasn't invincible, and those infinite moments from birth til now are an opportunity to send him down a different path, or just kill him outright. Screw with the dice so that he rolls a nat 1 on the wrong save, or an enemy rolls a nat 20 on the right attack roll.

And this applies not just to him. It applies to his family, going back every single generation for all of history. Kill the right dude 10000 years ago, and the paladin's entire lineage disappears. Influence the person who trained him to be a paladin, and maybe he gets lackluster training, or just gets disillusioned with the paladins. Murder an adventuring buddy during the low levels, and suddenly his team is missing a key component during a critical fight. Kidnap and mind rape the party cleric so that they'll inflict instead of cure the one time he was close to death.

Murder his family. Murder his party. Murder his mentors. Murder his whole order if you want. Or murder anybody in their family lines, so that they cease to exist, accomplishing the same thing. The exact action taken barely matters. The paladin being this powerful and this dedicated to ruining them is just one of the infinite results of all of history going exactly the way that it's gone. Make him evil, or make him dead, or make him weaker, or make him lazy, or make him focused elsewhere (like leading a crusade through hell instead of the Material). There's infinite options, and all it takes is
the right little push at any point in the last infinite years.

You'd need something like an infinite army of infinitely-capable entities protecting literally all of history from being screwed with, constantly - and they need to be there to prevent history from being altered, but they also need to not be detectable, so that they don't alter history themselves by accident. This is the kind of high-op crap you need to be pulling for TTT protection. The other easier way is to make sure that nobody else but you has the spell at all, which...eliminating all other wizard 17+s in the world is also some pretty high-op crap.

If you're running the game, and your players aren't already engaging in high-op shenanigans, throwing enemies with time travel at them is kinda unfair. Just leave the spell out. I more brought it up as an example of the kind of things mages could bring to the table that are difficult to counter. There's lots more, but TTT is just really obvious in how difficult it is to protect yourself against.

If I were giving advice on what kind of bodyguard to make, I'd say a Wizard/Cleric theurge (using a better theurge progression than the epic MT >.>). Generalist wizard + cleric will have double 9ths and access to all the best future-telling spells. They can figure out what threats are coming, and prepare the best defenses. Even better: between being a theurge and being a cohort, their CL won't be great for direct spell combat (too low to beat SR, can't really win a CL check for countering/dispelling the people the paladin fights), but their deep spell pool, huge spell access, and precognitive abilities will allow them to stack up a bunch of buffs on the paladin. Craft Contingency is also very useful - it'll let you build a bunch of different defenses into the paladin, that will only go off if they end up being needed (this is best for those where the duration is short, but the effect is vital for survival).

[Max Caysey]

It honestly depends on how optimized the enemies are. That kind of secrecy is only really necessary in a mid-op game, where 9th lvl spells are easy, but defending against TTT is basically impossible. In low-op games (default WotC), nobody is bothering to protect knowledge of the spell because basically nobody is capable of casting it, and nobody who is capable of casting it is going to be whipping it out to deal with small problems. In high-op games, the defenses against it actually become viable. But honestly, if you've got multiple groups of powerful evil wizards, it's probably one of their nuclear options - an "in case of apocalypse break glass" kinda thing. The sole upside is that if they have it at all, they're almost certainly more concerned about other people who have access to it. However inconvenient the paladin might be



That underlined section up there? Yeah, this is what that's about. Defending against TTT is basically impossible.

Killing anybody in your family line would cause you to cease to exist. But they don't need the paladin to be un-alived, they just need him not up in their business. Imagine if, when he was level 6, a level 18 wizard showed up and wrecked his ****. Imagine if he was lured to the dark side before he ever became a paladin. Imagine if he had all his stats permanently drained down a handful of points each, so that he could never hope to be a successful adventurer. Maybe at lvl 32 he is completely and utterly invincible, but there's an awful lot of his life when he wasn't invincible, and those infinite moments from birth til now are an opportunity to send him down a different path, or just kill him outright. Screw with the dice so that he rolls a nat 1 on the wrong save, or an enemy rolls a nat 20 on the right attack roll.

And this applies not just to him. It applies to his family, going back every single generation for all of history. Kill the right dude 10000 years ago, and the paladin's entire lineage disappears. Influence the person who trained him to be a paladin, and maybe he gets lackluster training, or just gets disillusioned with the paladins. Murder an adventuring buddy during the low levels, and suddenly his team is missing a key component during a critical fight. Kidnap and mind rape the party cleric so that they'll inflict instead of cure the one time he was close to death.

Murder his family. Murder his party. Murder his mentors. Murder his whole order if you want. Or murder anybody in their family lines, so that they cease to exist, accomplishing the same thing. The exact action taken barely matters. The paladin being this powerful and this dedicated to ruining them is just one of the infinite results of all of history going exactly the way that it's gone. Make him evil, or make him dead, or make him weaker, or make him lazy, or make him focused elsewhere (like leading a crusade through hell instead of the Material). There's infinite options, and all it takes is
the right little push at any point in the last infinite years.

You'd need something like an infinite army of infinitely-capable entities protecting literally all of history from being screwed with, constantly - and they need to be there to prevent history from being altered, but they also need to not be detectable, so that they don't alter history themselves by accident. This is the kind of high-op crap you need to be pulling for TTT protection. The other easier way is to make sure that nobody else but you has the spell at all, which...eliminating all other wizard 17+s in the world is also some pretty high-op crap.

If you're running the game, and your players aren't already engaging in high-op shenanigans, throwing enemies with time travel at them is kinda unfair. Just leave the spell out. I more brought it up as an example of the kind of things mages could bring to the table that are difficult to counter. There's lots more, but TTT is just really obvious in how difficult it is to protect yourself against.

If I were giving advice on what kind of bodyguard to make, I'd say a Wizard/Cleric theurge (using a better theurge progression than the epic MT >.>). Generalist wizard + cleric will have double 9ths and access to all the best future-telling spells. They can figure out what threats are coming, and prepare the best defenses. Even better: between being a theurge and being a cohort, their CL won't be great for direct spell combat (too low to beat SR, can't really win a CL check for countering/dispelling the people the paladin fights), but their deep spell pool, huge spell access, and precognitive abilities will allow them to stack up a bunch of buffs on the paladin. Craft Contingency is also very useful - it'll let you build a bunch of different defenses into the paladin, that will only go off if they end up being needed (this is best for those where the duration is short, but the effect is vital for survival).

Since cataclysmic events hasn't been retconned as in stopped or prevented by time travelers officially - like stopping Karsus' Folly, the Time of Troubles or the Sundering, my guess is that TTT simply shouldn't exist. We know there are quite a few official casters in 3.5 that were more than high enough level. Iouluam being the highest official at level 41, second most powerful being Qysar Shoon VII at level 36. So since thigns arent constantly being altered by time travelers I assume there simply arent enough spellcaster that know the spell or that the ones who actually know the spell simply doesnt use it.

We haven't experience anything in our game, and even though one could argue that we wouldn't know if thing had been altered we only know the outcome, I think its safe to say that TTT either does not exist or is only known by a handful of the oldest mosts powerful beings in FR... And they haven't or wont use it unless its absolutly critical. And a level 32 human paladin is probably not a problem for the beings who actually have acccess to such spells.

If I were to DM a game with this spell, I would increase its level to 10. Making it almost impossible to ever cast. Level 10 true dweomers is actually not impossible to cast its just very difficult, IIRC.

[Silly Name]

Teleport Through Time is a non-issue, since the material component is extremely specific and not something you can have easy access to, unless you're so paranoid/precognisant as to carefully prepare them. Extensive usage of TTT as a reliable tactic is only usable if your DM would permit using Eschew Materials to circumvent the material component, which is unlikely to happen in my experience.

I would second the idea of some sort of Cleric/Wizard theurge (maybe substitute Cleric for Archivist if you want to stay SAD?), focusing on Divination and Abjuration to set up defenses and prepare for attacks. The idea of a wise, masterful caster of the same religious inclinations as the Paladin's makes sense character-wise, too.

[Max Caysey]

Teleport Through Time is a non-issue, since the material component is extremely specific and not something you can have easy access to, unless you're so paranoid/precognisant as to carefully prepare them. Extensive usage of TTT as a reliable tactic is only usable if your DM would permit using Eschew Materials to circumvent the material component, which is unlikely to happen in my experience.

I would second the idea of some sort of Cleric/Wizard theurge (maybe substitute Cleric for Archivist if you want to stay SAD?), focusing on Divination and Abjuration to set up defenses and prepare for attacks. The idea of a wise, masterful caster of the same religious inclinations as the Paladin's makes sense character-wise, too.

Indeed... I have been playing 3.x since it came out, and I have yet to experience any player or DM ever bringing the TTT spell up... So I would be extremely surprised if this spell was ever employed against a PC by any of my DMs. That's not to say one of them couldn't get annoyed or petty and use it, but setting a precedent by using that kind of magic would immediately open Pandora's box... So I wouldn't think that particular spell would be a realistic threat.

[Gruftzwerg]

Teleport Through Time is a non-issue, since the material component is extremely specific and not something you can have easy access to, unless you're so paranoid/precognisant as to carefully prepare them. Extensive usage of TTT as a reliable tactic is only usable if your DM would permit using Eschew Materials to circumvent the material component, which is unlikely to happen in my experience.



Craftlock *couch*
When a warlock with "Imbue Item" scribes scrolls, he fakes the spell being "cast" (!) with an UMD roll. Thus any components normally required for the spell (V,S,M, F, XP, whatsoever..) also get faked as part of the faked spell.
With enough cheese warlocks are T0 (read: tier zero) ^^

[Max Caysey]

Craftlock *couch*
When a warlock with "Imbue Item" scribes scrolls, he fakes the spell being "cast" (!) with an UMD roll. Thus any components normally required for the spell (V,S,M, F, XP, whatsoever..) also get faked as part of the faked spell.
With enough cheese warlocks are T0 (read: tier zero) ^^

Are there any such builds lying around, so one could se a full build?

[Gruftzwerg]

Are there any such builds lying around, so one could se a full build?


A)
The base craftlock build is warlock 12 / chameleon 2
Warlock gives Deceive Item (take 10 on UMD) and Imbue Item (roll UMD for spells when crafting).
Chameleon gives you a Floating Feat, which you can change every day. This can be used for any crafting feat. I don't have any practical builds to offer here, sorry (dunno, maybe try to google it). The sole craftlock builds I've made so far are Orochimaru & Itachi, which are both high TO (theoretical optimization) and gamebreaking (not recommended for play).
If you want to have a creepy unkillable villain, Orochimaru can accomplish that..
Or maybe you wanna use a totally overpowered but suicidal character as temporary plot device? Itachi may fit this role..^^


B)
Alternatively for the purpose of a villain, maybe you want to exchange chameleon with Blood Magus 2.
BM gives you Scarification which is basically scribe scrolls on your skin. This is handy as NPC villain, since these can't be looted after the fight compared to (TTT) scrolls. You don't want to hand any TTT scrolls to your party.
The question is what to do after that? Maybe go for Effigy Master and create an army of Effigies. Warlocks can also be used to create undead. Maybe mix the two?

Craft Contingent Spell (feat) is another option to deny any loot and still let the villain use TTT.
Further, this can be abused for your permanent minions (undead, effigy) to give em some combat buff spells.


I think the Blood Magus is the safer option here (less potential to break the game).

[Maat Mons]

Honestly, if I ran an Evil organization, and there was a champion of Good around, I'd try to manipulate him into attacking other Evil organizations that were in competition with me.

[aglondier]

Honestly, if I ran an Evil organization, and there was a champion of Good around, I'd try to manipulate him into attacking other Evil organizations that were in competition with me.

This is perfection.

My own thought was for the Red Wizards to introduce Capitalism(tm) to the Realms. Take control of the gold and issue credit cards. The card shows how much gold you own, and can 'absorb' any new gold you gain (it is teleported back to the nearest enclave bank vault). You can transfer 'gold' between cards. And...you can borrow gold from the Thayan enclave bank...for a modest interest rate...

In conjunction with that, they set up Livebet, and make gambling insanely easy to participate in through use of their cards...


...six months later they literally own the Realms...


...including your Paladin's army...and pretty much any asset they own...