Slaying the evil Wizard

[Dezea]

Hey !

I'm more used to lurking here without posting, but I would gladly get some help from my fellow pathfinder wizard-slayer enjoyer.

To give some context, I play in a level 20 party consisting of me, a Transmuter sorcerer (Mostly specialized in destintegrating people), a travel/trickery cleric, a two-handed warrior and a... roguish rogue ? Yeah, could hardly be more vanilla than that, and while this is also out of a desire to keep it low optimisation, it also come from us playing with only the pathfinder core rulebook.

Soooo, welcome in a world where Toughness can actually be a good feat choice. Feel free to sit comfortably in that 2007 chair.

Jokes aside, I find myself in an interesting spot. We need to storm into a high level wizard office. Litteraly an office, not an evil wizard tower full of magical protection. The wizard himself is likely lvl 17 or 18 - I'm at least sure he got 9 level slot. And we can expect some amount of magical protection, but It shouldn't be overly optimized. Some mooks should likely be also here, but shouldn't pose any threat.

The goal here is to go here unnoticed, find him without leaving him any way to escape, slay him, find a way to make sure ressurection is impossible and, if possible, leave some kind of red herring behind for his allies to try and get them to not suspect us.

Here are the constraint :

- Wish crystals are incredibly rare. To the point that if one was neeeded here, It would be a quest by itself to find one. (Sadly, that wizard could actually have some at the ready)
- We try to keep it under a gentlemen agreement in term of optimization. So, no crazy wizard shennanigans, on both side.
- I'm, honestly, not that good of a player in term of gameplay. This is the culmination of a one IRL year of investigation to locate that wizard, and I loved every part of it. The actual "Plot the killing of the evil wizard with all the might of a 20 level party" is kinda out of my league. I should also add that most of those high level character got their 4 to 5 last level without doing any kind of adventuring but mostly politics, except for some nice baleful polymorphing of political foes there and there.
- This is Pathfinder core rulebook only, without any kind of exception.

Thank you very much for your help. I'll admit it, it's a bit shameful to me to come ask help like that - and I'm afraid in a not that good english, It's not my native tongue - but I'm feeling myself quite scared of screwing up for my team, that do relies heavily on my sorcerer to come up with some magical way of doing it all.

[Rynjin]

In a low op scenario a basic Scry and Fry tactic will probably work just fine; it's unlikely you're dealing with a Batman Wizard who has daily Contact Other Plane sessions to determine plots on his life.

Since you know where the target is, the "Scry" part can basically be skipped. Teleport into his office while he's on the ****ter and merc him.

[Dezea]

Thanks for the reply !

I was afraid that this scenario would be too easy for him to dodge. I do expect him to at least be mind blanked, and to have at least some kind of contingency that could allow him to get out of such a straight confrontation.

...That being said, I could be wrong and stretching it too far, but that seems like something that wizard would at least have. Saying this, I do realize that I might be wrong about how low-optimization our game is. Let's say that I would at least expect a Mind Blank and a contingency.

[Rynjin]

What spells does your Sorc have known, and what are your Feats? That might help with planning. Something like a Quickened Dimensional Anchor on teleporting in would solve most Contingencies you'd have to worry about, but I don't know if you have that available to you.

Also how much money are you working with? Being able to source scrolls is a big boon. If the Rogue has UMD for instance he can Ready an action to cast from the scroll when you teleport in. If not, Anchor is on the Cleric list as well, and could be prepared in one of your Cleric's slots for the same effect.

Readied actions go off before anything else, keep that in mind.

If your Rogue can UMD a scroll, your Cleric could bonk him with a Greater Dispel first to maybe nuke the Contingency entirely.

[Kurald Galain]

Here's a good spell to use: Silence.

If you cast that spell on an ally and position him close to the wizard, then the wizard cannot cast. Boom, problem solved.

So how do you teleport in when silenced? Well, you either get a metamagic rod of Silent Spell, or you take the Silent Spell feat. Should be easy enough. You can also pull some shenanigans with a silenced item inside a bag, then ready an action to take it out of the bag when you teleport. HTH!

[Rynjin]

Here's a good spell to use: Silence.

If you cast that spell on an ally and position him close to the wizard, then the wizard cannot cast. Boom, problem solved.

So how do you teleport in when silenced? Well, you either get a metamagic rod of Silent Spell, or you take the Silent Spell feat. Should be easy enough. You can also pull some shenanigans with a silenced item inside a bag, then ready an action to take it out of the bag when you teleport. HTH!

I was just coming to edit the bigger, memier version of this: Antimagic Field.

Party teleports in. Cleric casts AMF off a Readied action.

Rogue holds the nerd's arms while the Fighter takes his lunch money.

[Dezea]

Yeah, both me and the cleric can cast a Quickened Dimensionnal Anchor. I'd say we are poor for a 20 level party, but we can at least work with 50k GP if needed.

For my spelllist, I would say that the relevant spell I spam the most when fighting wizards are :

- Disintegrate
- Polymorph Any Object
- Time Stop
- Feeblemind
- Mind Blank
- Spell Turning

I'm sorry, I don't have all of them here with me, but I could get the exact list tonight if needed.

Feat-wise, I have metamagics (Quicken, Empower, Maximize, Silent, still) out of being an Arcane Sorcerer, Spell / Greater spell focus (Transumation) / Spell penetration - Greater spell penetration / And iron will and great fortitude lines.

[Rynjin]

Yeah...you have MANY options. The AMF meme is probably the top level most effective here, and lets the entire party feel like they can contribute.

But you can't go wrong with eg. Dimensional Anchor from Cleric into Quickened Feeblemind, then Maximized Disintegrate on your next turn.

[Dezea]

Thanks for the tips with silence. Would it prevent a teleport contingencies going off ?

I'm also curious about ways to make sure that Wizard is not ressurected. It's not exactly good from an ethic standpoint, but what are your views on not killing him, feebleminding him, having him wear a ring of sustenance and necklace of adaptation, and... Litteraly trapping him into a wall in a room with a permanency nondetection ?

[Rynjin]

The...much more ethical solution would be to dispose of the body in a way that makes Resurrection effectively impossible. Take him to another (randomly chosen) Plane, Disintegrate the corpse, scatter the ashes across multiple different planes. Really blow those ashes around with like Gust of Wind and whatnot.

Good luck to anybody trying to gather a single grain of dust on an infinite plane just to bring this guy back.

[Kurald Galain]

what are your views on not killing him, feebleminding him, having him wear a ring of sustenance and necklace of adaptation, and... Litteraly trapping him into a wall in a room with a permanency nondetection ?

Very evil.

Just kill him and take the body with you. Even the Resurrection spell requires some part of the creature's body, so if you have all of that (in a bag of holding or whatever) then no Rez for him.

[Dezea]

Sadly, he would have access to ally with True ressurection, allowing them to get him back even with a fully destroyed body :(

[Dezea]

Also, I'm realizing that I'm actually playing a Magus in another campaign using your guide, so thank you very much for that :D

[Wintermoot]

Those are both expensive solutions that require a large amount of magical power to do so. In order to prevent raise dead/resurrection you just need to transform the body in such a way that it isn't the body anymore. So the obvious solution is the consume the dead wizard, letting the mundane processes of your own digestion turn him into a completely different form of matter. Just get some salt and ketchup and go to town. It will take a few weeks to work through the whole body, you may need some kind of mortar and pestle to grind up the hard bits into bread-like meal, but the end result doesn't require a single spell, dot of XP or consume any of your WBL. Might even save some on iron rations for the period of the feast.

[Rynjin]

Sadly, he would have access to ally with True ressurection, allowing them to get him back even with a fully destroyed body :(

True Res is a bit trickier. I think the most effective dodge to True Res is to raise him as an undead and then yeet the undead somewhere it won't be destroyed but nobody can find it? Like a random spot on the Negative Energy Plane.

The obvious solution though: kill his Cleric buddy too.

[Dezea]

Those are both expensive solutions that require a large amount of magical power to do so. In order to prevent raise dead/resurrection you just need to transform the body in such a way that it isn't the body anymore. So the obvious solution is the consume the dead wizard, letting the mundane processes of your own digestion turn him into a completely different form of matter. Just get some salt and ketchup and go to town. It will take a few weeks to work through the whole body, you may need some kind of mortar and pestle to grind up the hard bits into bread-like meal, but the end result doesn't require a single spell, dot of XP or consume any of your WBL.

So. I will not do this.

But I will keep it in mind to suggest it during the game, and try to record the horrified reaction of everyone around the table, then come back to you to debrief it.

Thanks for the laugh, tho :')

[Rynjin]

Those are both expensive solutions that require a large amount of magical power to do so. In order to prevent raise dead/resurrection you just need to transform the body in such a way that it isn't the body anymore. So the obvious solution is the consume the dead wizard, letting the mundane processes of your own digestion turn him into a completely different form of matter. Just get some salt and ketchup and go to town. It will take a few weeks to work through the whole body, you may need some kind of mortar and pestle to grind up the hard bits into bread-like meal, but the end result doesn't require a single spell, dot of XP or consume any of your WBL. Might even save some on iron rations for the period of the feast.

This works for Resurrection (though is less effective than just "Disintegrate"), but not True Res. They don't need a corpse for True Res, just to know the guy's name and when he was born OR when he died.

[Wintermoot]

This works for Resurrection (though is less effective than just "Disintegrate"), but not True Res. They don't need a corpse for True Res, just to know the guy's name and when he was born OR when he died.

My solution to that is to use a low level illusion spell to record the entire process of consuming the wizard, preferably while staring dead-eye into the "lens" of the illusion spell, then anonymously send that to the ally with access to true resurrection, perhaps with a small bottle of meat-tenderizer. I'll let him come to his own conclusions about casting the spell.

[Rynjin]

I understand this is a joke, but it is actually shockingly hard to record images and send messages to people over long distances in Pathfinder. Not just Core, mind you, long distance communication has remained a gap for the entire game's lifespan.

No Saw videos for you, Billy!

[Dezea]

"Sad noises in getting rich through inventing television in game"

[Khedrac]

A good start to make someone unable to be recovered by true resurrection is to cast reincarnate! This gets the target into a body that won't automatically be recognised (and if the DM will let you and you can afford to, you may be able to use a wish to determine what species the victim comes back as).
From here the next step is probably to baleful polymorph the target into an even worse species...

Consider - if you are the ally of the dead missing mage; you cast various powerful divinations and eventually manage to track down your friend as a slightly magical rabbit (probably in the middle of a field of magical rabbits). You immediately teleport away with your friend's body (assuming you believe your own divinations at this point) to your stronghold where you dispel the enchantment on your friend - only rather than turning back into the person you know, you suddenly find one of the sea-folk expiring on the altar through lack of water (and you didn't memorise air breathing - why would you need it?) Now you need to raise them from death (again) before coming up with another wish to get them back to their original body...

You can also take this further - take the rabbit form of the victim and use flesh to stone and then stone shape - you now have a magical brick that can be built into a major magical structure (preferably one with good guards). If you don't trust leaving them with guards, shrink item and carry it with you, but be warned they can now trace your location...

In short, generally speaking, save for specific planar locations it is usually impossible to completely prevent someone from being returned to life, but bargaining with the correct outsiders can often make it practically impossible.

Another tactic is to choose species with the shortest natural lifespan. If the DM will allow it - baleful polymorph into a mayfly and then let it die of old age.

Even true resurrection can’t restore to life a creature who has died of old age

[tyckspoon]

There's.. I think three main approaches to trying to make sure somebody can't be brought back.

1: Disable them without actually killing them. Flesh to Stone, Imprisonment, potentially Baleful Polymorph or Bestow Curse could be of use. Flesh To Stone is particularly interesting because it renders the subject into an object that can easily be further modified while specifying that the subject doesn't count as dead - you could Shrink Object the statue, reshape it to be part of something else, pitch it into the howling voids of Pandemonium and wish anybody else good luck in ever finding it, and no resurrection magic will get them back 'cause they're Not Dead. Bringing a god or multiple Wishes to the task of locating them/getting their body back into a usable state/remote killing them so you can proceed to resurrect them properly would likely be needed.

2: After killing them, tie up the soul somehow so it is not available to be resurrected. Soul Bind or turning them into some kind of undead are probably the most accessible, then you can take further steps to protect/hide/permanently lose the resulting gem or undead critter.

3: Try to destroy the soul. In 3.5 this was relatively easy, you'd just feed the corpse to a Barghest, but their feed ability doesn't seem to involve the soul any more in Pathfinder (and even in 3.5 most of the abilities that were similar still allowed a chance of reviving the victim with True Res or Wish.) If you can somehow get ahold of a Sphere of Annilihation that would do it - coming back from that requires an explicit divine intervention, and if that option is on the table for getting this dude back into the world there really isn't anything you can do that will stop it, mechanically speaking (you might be able to like Soul Bind him and then arrange for the resulting soul gem to pass into the guardianship of a friendly deity to safekeep or something that would reasonably prevent another god restoring him.)

[Dezea]

Hey,

Just wanted to give a head-up to everyone that helped in this thread.

Evil wizard is now a Feebleminded Baleful Polymorphed Dolphin, and is part of the newbuild fondation of my manor, cast into the cement.

He is the proud owner of a ring of regeneration, a ring of sustenance and a necklace of adaptation to ensure a peacful passing into death by old age.

GM is pretty sure I'm now evil, but I can rest assured I did it for the greater good.

Thanks everyone !

[Khedrac]

Hey,

Just wanted to give a head-up to everyone that helped in this thread.

Evil wizard is now a Feebleminded Baleful Polymorphed Dolphin, and is part of the newbuild fondation of my manor, cast into the cement.

He is the proud owner of a ring of regeneration, a ring of sustenance and a necklace of adaptation to ensure a peacful passing into death by old age.

GM is pretty sure I'm now evil, but I can rest assured I did it for the greater good.

Thanks everyone !

Nicely done - but I am surprised the DM let a dolphin have ring slots!

[Dezea]

He was still a Feebleminded wizard when he got the ring and the necklace on him, and baleful polymorph specifically specifies that ongoing magical effect from items keep going.

[Beni-Kujaku]

A dolphin has a tail, you could put a ring on it, or put a ring on the wizard's toe before polymorphing him. In fact, it will probably be even harder to take it off once polymorphed. Sea mammals also generally have human-like bone structures in the flippers (https://www.dolphins.org.za/dolphin-skeletons.html), so the ring could stay as a piercing after polymorphing.

[DrMartin]

if you want to hurry things along, time in the dreamlands flows must faster, to the tune of 1 hour = 1 day - assuming your game uses golarion´s cosmology.

or, since you are clearly going down that road already, engineer the violent death of someone with important unfinished business, ideally by means of dropping a feebleminded, regenrating dolphin on them, and then wait for the newly created ghost to age the wizard with its corrupting touch. It´s all for the greater good!

[Dezea]

Could be very interesting for the faery realms. Does that means that people age faster tho, or that time "just" flow faster here ?

[DrMartin]

away from the book at the moment, but if memory serves the only plane with faster time is the dreamlands. If you stay there 1 hour, you have aged 1 day - extrapolate accordingly for longer spans of time.

Many other planes have "erratic" time - it can be faster or slower, depending on plot/GM/random tables.

[Wintermoot]

Hey,

Just wanted to give a head-up to everyone that helped in this thread.

Evil wizard is now a Feebleminded Baleful Polymorphed Dolphin, and is part of the newbuild fondation of my manor, cast into the cement.

He is the proud owner of a ring of regeneration, a ring of sustenance and a necklace of adaptation to ensure a peacful passing into death by old age.

GM is pretty sure I'm now evil, but I can rest assured I did it for the greater good.

Thanks everyone !

Missed out on a fine meal.

[Dezea]

Missed out on a fine meal.

I should say that I jokingly offered this possibility out-loud, and everyone was absolutely horrified.

In fact, I think that the dolphin plan could have been approved out of it being just a tiny bit less evil than what you offered. (Fun fact : I do absolutely think myself that canibalism would be my choice as a victim, rather than the dolphin-in-a-wall-thingy.)

[DrMartin]

next time hedge your bets, and transform them into a tuna instead. much more palatable.

[Dezea]

This beg the question tho : does the tuna turn back to a human when slain.

And it could also open a fantastic world of gory prank while serving live "octopus" as a dish in D&D.

[Beni-Kujaku]

This beg the question tho : does the tuna turn back to a human when slain.

And it could also open a fantastic world of gory prank while serving live "octopus" as a dish in D&D.

Sadly (for all the cannibalistic people out there), "If slain, the subject reverts to its original form, though it remains dead. "

[Dezea]

...

Does that mean that you can kill someone by serving them a meal made with a little live insect inside, wich is in fact a polymorphed elephant, and watch "something happend" when the acid in your stomach disolve the bug ?

There is creativity to be had, here.

[Beni-Kujaku]

...

Does that mean that you can kill someone by serving them a meal made with a little live insect inside, wich is in fact a polymorphed elephant, and watch "something happend" when the acid in your stomach disolve the bug ?

There is creativity to be had, here.

.... Yes. Yes you can.

[Khedrac]

...

Does that mean that you can kill someone by serving them a meal made with a little live insect inside, wich is in fact a polymorphed elephant, and watch "something happend" when the acid in your stomach disolve the bug ?

There is creativity to be had, here.

Yes, but it is just as likely to be killed in the mouth when the food is bitten at which point the elephant will probably mainly reform outside the mouth... - still quite a startling experience and they may get squashed.

That said, there ought to be a way of using this with more reliability in the delivery method.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Yes, but it is just as likely to be killed in the mouth when the food is bitten at which point the elephant will probably mainly reform outside the mouth... - still quite a startling experience and they may get squashed.

That said, there ought to be a way of using this with more reliability in the delivery method.
The real problem is that with polymorph, the bug's hit points would still be that of an elephant and be accordingly hard to chew, while Baleful Polymorph doesn't explicitate that the creature reverts to its natural form upon death.