Caster killers

[Tyndmyr]

Aright...here's the basic concept. Four man teams that exist and are trained specifically to hunt down and kill casters. In this world, they're NPCs...but they should be something to be feared. They have a belief system in which magic is evil, and thus, while they may be willing to use a slight amount of it towards the end goal of the destruction of magic, they avoid doing so whenever possible.

Mechanically, I want four specific party roles. I don't know exactly what, but I want each of them to be quite distinct, making the tactics against them more interesting. Somewhere around CR10-14, depending on just how much caster hatred can be fit in there.

Some method of preventing teleportation will be necessary. If a mundane option comparable to dimension lock is out there, that'd rock. Physically trapping a caster can probably be acheived by a chain fighter with stand still, mage slayer, and the appropriate AoO feats. Edit: Hmm, could add a few levels of knight to prevent even 5ft adjusts.

A ranged team member seems handy. Cragtop archer, perhaps. Magic arrows may be necessary since non-magical arrows are just too easy to avoid.

Some semi-decent way of locating casters is also necessary. Bardic Knowledge and/or a great gather information check is probably ideal here.

Any thoughts?

[Lucas Pitta]

The best way to kill a spellcaster, anti magic field (sadly a spell), spell resistance, and getting a hard hitter to full attack a wizard, usually brings him down rather quickly, can`t help much with the finding him part though

[Quirp]

I would go with a kind of ranger (party role: sneak, acrobatics, tracker, perhaps ranged support). You could give him the ACFs favored enemy (arcanist) and the one from cityscape (urban tracker). He than could find and spy on your wizards without (much) magic.
The Mage Slayer Line of feats (as mentioned) and a (refluffed to non-exalted) Nemesis (BoED) would be good, too.

[Optimystik]

Dominant Ideal Ardent gish, Swordsage/Soulknife/Soulbow, Psychic Rogue, and StP Erudite (to pull the best spells from the heads of their victims.)

Magic is evil? No problem, they don't use any.

(I'm only being partially facetious; a caster-killing party like this would fit in quite well in Dark Sun.)

[magic9mushroom]

Dominant Ideal Ardent gish, Swordsage/Soulknife/Soulbow, Psychic Rogue, and StP Erudite (to pull the best spells from the heads of their victims.)

Magic is evil? No problem, they don't use any.

(I'm only being partially facetious; a caster-killing party like this would fit in quite well in Dark Sun.)

Spell to Power Erudites still manifest "spells" as opposed to "powers", so they're not all that clearly non-magical.

Also, where's the Psychic Warrior?

[Lysander]

A big question is what level their quarry is? If the highest rogue wizards out there are level 10 or so then they maybe have a shot without magic. With level 20 wizards, how can they even find the guy?

[Quirp]

If our wizard doesn´t stop adventuring and is a "real " wizard and not schroedinger`s wizard bardic knowledge and gather information will suffice to find (but not necessarily kill) him. If he hides in a cave and does nothing it might be a bit more complicated (but I don`t know if he is "huntworthy" any more than).

[Optimystik]

Also, where's the Psychic Warrior?

Ardents make better gishes. Same BAB, same armor proficiencies, same powers (with the right mantles) - better ones, in fact. Just grab MWP, perhaps with a Psywar dip, and you're good to go.

In addition, By RAW they can lose a bunch of ML and still get 9th-level powers, due to how their powers known work (though you still lose PP.) You want to lose 4 at the absolute most, but can lose up to 7 before giving up 9ths if I calculate correctly.

A big question is what level their quarry is? If the highest rogue wizards out there are level 10 or so then they maybe have a shot without magic. With level 20 wizards, how can they even find the guy?

The psionic party above has Vision, Metafaculty and Hypercognition. He's not hiding for long.

[Sinfire Titan]

The best way to kill a spellcaster, anti magic field (sadly a spell), spell resistance, and getting a hard hitter to full attack a wizard, usually brings him down rather quickly, can`t help much with the finding him part though

No, AMF and SR are not the keys to beating a caster. Any Full Caster with a brain will know how to avoid the first like the plague and will be able to overcome the second easily.

Dominant Ideal Ardent gish, Swordsage/Soulknife/Soulbow, Psychic Rogue, and StP Erudite (to pull the best spells from the heads of their victims.)

Magic is evil? No problem, they don't use any.

(I'm only being partially facetious; a caster-killing party like this would fit in quite well in Dark Sun.)

The Ardent and Erudite I'll give you, the Swordsage/Soulbow not so much. The Psychic Rogue? Maybe, but they'd need a lot of optimization to do so. All of this depends on knowing ahead of time what spells the caster in question has prepared/learned




Really, the best way to kill a caster is to be one. Very few classes have the sheer number of options that a full caster does.

[Optimystik]

The Ardent and Erudite I'll give you, the Swordsage/Soulbow not so much. The Psychic Rogue? Maybe, but they'd need a lot of optimization to do so. All of this depends on knowing ahead of time what spells the caster in question has prepared/learned.

Really, the best way to kill a caster is to be one. Very few classes have the sheer number of options that a full caster does.

I wanted a melee and an archer in there per the OP's wishes. 4 full manifesters would of course be ideal (drop the Soulbow for an Educated Wilder and the PR for a Psion), but they wouldn't exactly be "quite distinct."

I also wanted a trapsmith - it's less problematic at high levels, but there's always a chance you might want to disable a symbol or something else nasty that you need Trapfinding to deal with.

The Soulbow build isn't bad - Wis to everything and can shoot in an AMF fairly regularly.

[Calimehter]

Though Druids and their ilk are the best and most traditional way to achieve this, you can also get decent beastmaster types (or even Beastmasters themselves) without a lot of magic, just a lot of ranks in Handle Animal. Trained critters with Scent and other detection abilities are a great way for muggle-types to get around popular low level "avoidance" spells like Invisibility and Disguise Self. Trained flyers (and flying mounts) help out a lot, too. I would be sure to include someone like this in there.

As others have said, part of the success of this type of party is going to depend on how high level and optimized their quarry is. Not only is a Level 20 batman-style Wizard going to be impossible to catch, he may make it his business to Scry and Die each and every hunting team out there if they start getting too successful. Unless he's the secret head of the cult and is using their zeal to eliminate the future competition, which would be a pretty sweet plot twist for some PCs or other to find out about.

[Tyndmyr]

Making one of the four an ubercharger w pierce magical concealment, pierce magical...armor was it? Anyway...that should put out enough damage to drop a caster. Im not overly worried about dropping them once trapped.

Finding a wizard magically has already been beaten to death in one topic. Of course...it's much easier to find any old wizard than it is to find a specific wizard. So, you could have quite successful hunters via a willingness to hunt any casters and using non-magical tracking means.

I wonder...any way to get void sense on a non caster?

[Tyndmyr]

A big question is what level their quarry is? If the highest rogue wizards out there are level 10 or so then they maybe have a shot without magic. With level 20 wizards, how can they even find the guy?

In this setting, while psionics are relatively rare...all RAW legal stuff does exist. This includes epic casters of a variety of flavors. One of the NPCs happens to be a dragonwrought kobold loredrake with the draconic rites.

Yeah, not all wizards are equally easy to kill, but when you have enough resources, you can find a way. Team antimagic is something of a giant crusade, and while it has near limitless foot soldiers....attrition via grunts is highly unlikely to be effective against most casters. When they get low on spells, they just leave. Thus, they need specialist teams to hunt them down.

Yes, mindraped wizards will likely be called upon eventually, when they end up pitted against the few too powerful to be killed or imprisoned without magic, but Id prefer to avoid jumping right to that. Doesn't make as good of a story.

[kentma57]

I would suggest two psions designed for battlefield control, they teleport the party in and neutralize the enemy casters magic. Then the fast attack meele units move in(I suggest something like rouge/ninja spy/Iaijutsu master) to try and drop them in one round.

[awa]

the trick to killing wizards is do it early. wizards need years of training before they even get one level of wizard just have mid level rouges walking around using gather info to find people buying spell books/ material components and then kill the commoner before hes learned to caste any spells just look at the starting ages it takes a long time for a wizard to be even able to caste first level spells let alone break the world spells. and even then if arcane casting is illegal he will have a much harder time finding components/ scrolls, and attempting to find those will result in him being found out and hunted down while hes still relatively low level.

Also regularly people don't get to look at the books to decide winch are the most powerful spells/ feat/skill so an npc wizard might very well ban conjuration so as to focus on evocation even though it's a very sub par move for a pc.

Now once you get the level 20 wizard theirs not much you can do but those guy should be rare/ or nonexistent for all the reasons i just mentioned.

Note this is just for wizards

[Deth Muncher]

They should be barbarians, as a throwback to the old fluff.

[Sinfire Titan]

They should be barbarians, as a throwback to the old fluff.

Except that a Barbarian in 3.5 can't kill Wizards above 3rd level.

[Deth Muncher]

Except that a Barbarian in 3.5 can't kill Wizards above 3rd level.

...

*opens mouth, closes it.*

Balls.

[Sinfire Titan]

...

*opens mouth, closes it.*

Balls.

I love it when this happens.

[awa]

now be fair if the barbarian goes first the wizard is toast.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

At ECL 10 the barbarian *should* never go before a wizard. ie unless the wizard made a big mistake and therfore deserves to die. anyway. . .

If Psionics is fairgame as not-a-caster then I'd say whatever three manifesters you like best and a Swordsage with the diamond mind huge saves manuevers and the shadow hand dimension door manuevers for a tank with evasion from a ring a mettle from a dip.

Oh and dip Warblade for Iron Heart Surge.

[Thurbane]

Dragonfire Adept?

Invocations: Devour Magic, Chilling Fog, Draconic Flight, Voidsense, Magic Insight, Deafening Roar
Breath Effects: Sickening Breath, Acid Breath, Thunder Breath, Enduring Breath
Skills: Knowledge (Arcana), Listen, Spellcraft, Use Magic Device
Feats: Quicken Breath, Entangling Exhalation, Travel Devotion, Trickery Devotion
Gear: scrolls of AMF, Mindbank etc.

...I'm sure someone could tweak this far better than I could, especially the feat selection.

[arguskos]

You know, a party involving the Horizon Tripper might be worth considering. The Horizon Tripper, a Warblade lockdown build, a Seer for finding and piercing the caster's defenses, and maybe a Ranger archer with FE(arcanist). Two martialists, one who can ignore anything and the other who can close the distance really well, an archer who can put the hurt on, and a guy who can play the caster game back at them. Might be an alright team.

[Jayngfet]

I'm thinking elves and other light sleepers here. Without sleep you can hit them at the crack of dawn and before, when they're prepping spells.

As well, melee range. Have fun fireballing when it hits you too. Most arcane casters have crap hitpoints, so it's easy to simply run a sword through them with massive damage alchemical weapon capsuled bastard swords and not worry about critical hits.

As well, dogs are your friend. At 25gp a pop they'd explain what they'r'e doing with loot. A dozen hounds hunting an unathletic wizard without need for sight and not stopping when one is hit with a spell is great. If one is charmed, you have eleven more to deal with.

Caltrops and traps are also amazing. When hunting make sure the simple act of running is damaging, cutting limited hp down bit by bit as they flee.

[Sophismata]

No, AMF and SR are not the keys to beating a caster. Any Full Caster with a brain will know how to avoid the first like the plague and will be able to overcome the second easily.

Agree with you on SR, but in actual games I've found AMF is more a DM-call.

[faceroll]

Shadowpouncing and the ability to trace teleports means you don't need any dimensional locks. Just pop up next to a caster and make a full attack.

[Tyndmyr]

Agree with you on SR, but in actual games I've found AMF is more a DM-call.

Yeah...some dont actually read the spell before using. Kinda problematic. Not really an issue here.

I like the idea of a horizon tripper as one, a DFA as another, a ranger as archer/tracker, and some sort of seer/social type.

I'll probably try to get IHS on at least one of them, Dogs are quite appropriate for tracking and combat as need be. Anything to tie the casters up and prevent them from escaping easily. Hmm, looks like it's time to get into the builds, then optimize from there.

[Optimystik]

Finding a wizard magically has already been beaten to death in one topic.

That topic was core only, which limited the options considerably. A psionic party has no problem finding a high-level wizard, particularly one that is also capable of casting spells (or faking them via UMD.)

Except that a Barbarian in 3.5 can't kill Wizards above 3rd level.

Even below that the wizard can still get lucky vs. their will save.

Agree with you on SR, but in actual games I've found AMF is more a DM-call.

Not sure what you mean by that. The things that get around AMF are right in the spell description, and given that it turns off all of the user's magic first, makes it hard to keep up with someone that can teleport, fly, walk through walls, turn invisible etc.

A dragon can get around many of those limitations, but not a humanoid.

[potatocubed]

The easiest way to hunt anything is to make it come to you. Grab something the wizard wants, coat it in sixteen kinds of contact poison, stick it on top of a terrible deathtrap for good measure, then wait for him to come and get it. You don't even need to be in the same room.

I'm wondering also if there's a way to tie an arrow to a huge boulder, so that when the arrow's stuck in the wizard it breaks his weight limit for teleporting. I think RAW that won't work, though, since the bringing along of objects is optional.

[Jayngfet]

You're all forgetting this is a "real" wizard, not something a random player made up. He picks the most convenient spells for use at first level.

For example, shocking grasp is a dream for when barfights get ugly, and charm person has a million and one uses.

As he levels he doesn't pick new spells according to build but according to need or want.

To continue, he goes "Ah, flaming sphere! That would be good for light shows and impress the chicks I don't wanna charm since I'm not chaotic evil.

By the time he's ninth level has a bunch of spells he has for various reasons and odds are doesn't bother wasting the time to prepare on a day he doesn't think he's going to need them for.

Contrast a Tippy wizard, who spawns at epic level fully made with spells contoured exactly to his current job and is hardworking enough to make a gazillion traps dispite it being boring repetitive and lame work, as opposed to impressing women and making sorcerers.