Breaking the Bat: WHO RULES THE NIGHT?!?

[CycloneJoker]

When I was reading the thread about taking over kingdoms and crap, I got to thinking, and so I am proposing a couple of thought experiments:

How you, as someone in power, would protect both a democracy and a monarchy from a caster (any), without being a tier one caster.

How you, as a warrior of some sort, would either defend from a wizard, or take over yourself, without Leadership

How you would kill a wizard, or make him no longer able to wizard things, without full casting, preferably without magic. This wizard is at least level 17, bonus points for epic, and not the tired "I sneak up to his bed with a knife" or ambush sneak/death attack, though assassination is allowed, just not in a way he could prepare for with divination or anything.

Be creative!

EDIT: Should clarify no using UMD to bypass lack of awesome casting. Obviously, no Artificers.

[BobVosh]

Absolutely no magic means you instantly lose to wind wall + fly.

So I'm assuming no magic stuff like wands and casting. Then your problem becomes how to deal with every single spell he might have prepared that can prevent you from getting him. Such as teleports, walls, SoD, SoL, and contingency. This becomes impossible in any real sense as it is so much to guard vs.

So I spent more time to say "you can't." There is a reason sneak + knife in sleep is popular.

That said Haberdash the masked has enough tricks that he can possibly succeed.

[CycloneJoker]

Absolutely no magic means you instantly lose to wind wall + fly.

So I'm assuming no magic stuff like wands and casting. Then your problem becomes how to deal with every single spell he might have prepared that can prevent you from getting him. Such as teleports, walls, SoD, SoL, and contingency. This becomes impossible in any real sense as it is so much to guard vs.

So I spent more time to say "you can't." There is a reason sneak + knife in sleep is popular.

That said Haberdash the masked has enough tricks that he can possibly succeed.

Must have misworded it. Magic Items are okay, trying to imitate a mage with UMD defeats the point. The only way I could think to trash a mage involves Rune-Scarred berserker, and that's kinda iffy. Are any of the others doable, even if the direct killing isn't?

[umbrapolaris]

How you would kill a wizard, or make him no longer able to wizard things, without full casting, preferably without magic. This wizard is at least level 17

impossible. a lv17 wizard is experienced enough to make many contingent and warding spells to protect him from case of assassination. and even u find a very lucky way to kill him, he will be resurrected by a friend cleric/wizard.

assassinate a wizard of that level, his a quest itself, where magic must be involved.

i play a spellcaster, if i recognize i potentially lethal enemy (like magic-baning creatures, i summons some monsters then i retreat behind my melee companion, throw blasting/killing spells to distract him and asking the rogue to watch my back if possible. and if all those are not enough to stop my enemy, i just teleport away !

[CycloneJoker]

impossible. a lv17 wizard is experienced enough to make many contingent and warding spells to protect him from case of assassination. and even u find a very lucky way to kill him, he will be resurrected by a friend cleric/wizard.

assassinate a wizard of that level, his a quest itself, where magic must be involved.

i play a spellcaster, if i recognize i potentially lethal enemy (like magic-baning creatures, i summons some monsters then i retreat behind my melee companion, throw blasting/killing spells and asking the rogue to watch my back if possible. and if all those are not enough to stop my enemy, i just teleport away !

My favorite way is to assassinate with a monk. Meet, shake hands, Quivering Palm on the shake, and kill later. As in power handshake, not punching.

Ignoring that particular one, any ideas on the others?

[JeminiZero]

How you, as someone in power, would protect both a democracy and a monarchy from a caster (any), without being a tier one caster.

Obviously, you build your republic/kingdom in a dead magic zone.

[umbrapolaris]

My favorite way is to assassinate with a monk. Meet, shake hands, Quivering Palm on the shake, and kill later.

i forgot this case ^^

it is why divination spells exist , to avoid this kind of trap, and then you just find that the wizard you just killed was a clone, the true one was behind you invisible ready to blast you ^^

honestly a kingdom without many wizards hired is a poorly ruled kingdom ^^

[CycloneJoker]

Obviously, you build your republic/kingdom in a dead magic zone.

Disjunction makes your kingdom its *****.

i forgot this case ^^

it is why divination spells exist , to avoid this kind of trap, and then you just find that the wizard you just killed was a clone, the true one was behind you invisible ready to blast you ^^

honestly a kingdom without many wizards hired is a poorly ruled kingdom ^^

Ah, but I can kill him a good 2 weeks after the handshake, and I don't think they'd be paranoid enough, but it still does have those flaws.

And agreed, that's the point of these ideas.

[umbrapolaris]

I don't think they'd be paranoid enough

i am ^^ more you have power more you want to keep it ^^

[CycloneJoker]

i am ^^ more you have power more you want to keep it ^^

You'd scry over two weeks ahead? I thought I was the only one that paranoid.

No ideas about the other challenges?

[JeminiZero]

Disjunction makes your kingdom its *****.

Disjunction might break Anti-Magic Fields, but not Dead Magic Zones. Yes, the 2 are different: One is the effect of a spell by another caster, the other is a landscape feature.

[Jack_Simth]

Absolutely no magic means you instantly lose to wind wall + fly.

That's not strictly true. See, the lowly sling stone only has a 30% miss chance when fired through a Wind Wall. You're still rather likely to lose, but it's not strictly true.

[Lurkmoar]

I think you're kind of overlooking an important factor: motivation. Why would you want to kill a powerful wizard unless he has wronged you in some manner? Or is it the old green eyed monster about the fact that this person can bend the laws of reality... and you cannot?

Is killing the wizard the end game goal or freeing the country from his tyrannical grasp (or you're taking over the joint and Gandolf is in your way?)

It also depends on how (properly) paranoid the target wizard is. Casts Mindblank, has a Forbiddance zone set up in his lair, Succor on demand along with Contingency Teleport at 15 hp and below? How many friends (or flunkies) does the wizard have? Most wizards don't get all powerful without some help starting off...

Though, in all seriousness, you'd need a lot of planning in a Scryproof area, means to negate magical defenses and traps, and a small (read VAST) amount of luck. And body disposal. Don't want to waste all that work and have some jerk rez the guy now do you?

[umbrapolaris]

You'd scry over two weeks ahead? I thought I was the only one that paranoid.No ideas about the other challenges?

+1 with Lurkmoar

i scry for 1 month ahead, have dozen of contingency spells, one of them allow to create clones who get memory updates from the original regularly (like the Norton Ghost softwares ^^) beside being a special kind of lich ^^

for the other ones it is the same, no magic, you fail ^^

1- make your kingdom in the very center of the plane of Concordant Opposition (the Outland, true neutral plane where more u reach the center more magic is disabled even god powers; at the center, magic dont exist) ^^

[Lurkmoar]

As long as the target wizard wasn't Chaotic Evil(Neutral) or Neutral Evil, you could probably cut some sort of deal. Wizards are supposed to be smart; if you make a compelling case for an alliance that didn't screw them over and got them some benefits for a worthwhile cost...

Or find out what kind of enemies the wizard has. If he's that powerful, certainly he's angered a lot folks in the past.

But if you absolutely, must kill a wizard, go epic, become a god and then smite the wizard. That will show that bad wizard what for!

Might take a while if you take the latter route...

[Jack_Simth]

When I was reading the thread about taking over kingdoms and crap, I got to thinking, and so I am proposing a couple of thought experiments:

Well, a Tier-2 caster (Sorcerer, Favored Soul) can pull off any small set of tricks to which a Tier-1 has access. Meaning any specific plan of a tier-1 is available to *some* tier-2 character.

However, there are a couple of questions:
How much cheese is in use? After all, you probably don't want an answer of "become Pun-Pun and smite the Wizard and all his clones" which, while technically a valid answer to what you've said so far, is kinda pointless. So it also stands to reason that there's some limits to how much rules abuse the Wizard is permitted (difficult to stop chain-gating Solars, just to pull an example out of a hat).

So *first*, you need a specific Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Artificer/Whatever build - including spells known, sources used, habits, feats, items, and a few lists of prepared spells. Without this, you'll have Schrodinger's Wizard: Someone will suggest a plan, and someone else will say "well, he has the perfect spell for that", but not specify exactly how he goes about knowing he needs that perfect spell in the first place (what questions on the Contact Other Plane spell, how often he casts said Contact Other Planes, and so on).

Additionally, there's fuzzy spots in the rules. For instance, Contact Other Planes is a Divination that's used to gather information. Does Mind Blank stop it from gathering information about the mind blanked subject? Most Wizard-proponents will say "No", but there's a rather lot of room in the rules for it to do so. And you can get Mind Blank as a noncaster (Third Eye Conceal, Expanded Psionics Handbook). You'll need a ruling on those, first, as well.

Edit:
Of course, there's also the potential of simply overloading the Wizard's intelligence-gathering resources. If you can arrange for there to be a few orders of magnitude more plots against the guy's life, without actually being linkable as the source of said plots, you can get him to stay on his private demiplane for the rest of eternity....

[umbrapolaris]

As long as the target wizard wasn't Chaotic Evil(Neutral) or Neutral Evil, you could probably cut some sort of deal. Wizards are supposed to be smart; if you make a compelling case for an alliance that didn't screw them over and got them some benefits for a worthwhile cost...

Or find out what kind of enemies the wizard has. If he's that powerful, certainly he's angered a lot folks in the past.

But if you absolutely, must kill a wizard, go epic, become a god and then smite the wizard. That will show that bad wizard what for!

Might take a while if you take the latter route...

hahaha sure, the second deal is the best, an high level wizard dont want to loose time to crush rats, he will prefer researching spells or planning his ascension to lichdom or other kind of immortality.

do his dirty jobs you may even gains benefits ^^

[CycloneJoker]

Well, a Tier-2 caster (Sorcerer, Favored Soul) can pull off any small set of tricks to which a Tier-1 has access. Meaning any specific plan of a tier-1 is available to *some* tier-2 character.
I thought about that, but forgot. I should specify against full casters like them.
However, there are a couple of questions:
How much cheese is in use? After all, you probably don't want an answer of "become Pun-Pun and smite the Wizard and all his clones" which, while technically a valid answer to what you've said so far, is kinda pointless. So it also stands to reason that there's some limits to how much rules abuse the Wizard is permitted (difficult to stop chain-gating Solars, just to pull an example out of a hat).
This was supposed to be amusing to all, a game of sorts, so what you think a DM would allow, with the rules given.
So *first*, you need a specific Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Artificer/Whatever build - including spells known, sources used, habits, feats, items, and a few lists of prepared spells. Without this, you'll have Schrodinger's Wizard: Someone will suggest a plan, and someone else will say "well, he has the perfect spell for that", but not specify exactly how he goes about knowing he needs that perfect spell in the first place (what questions on the Contact Other Plane spell, how often he casts said Contact Other Planes, and so on).
Kinda busy tonight, and suck at wizards. I'll get to this later.
Additionally, there's fuzzy spots in the rules. For instance, Contact Other Planes is a Divination that's used to gather information. Does Mind Blank stop it from gathering information about the mind blanked subject? Most Wizard-proponents will say "No", but there's a rather lot of room in the rules for it to do so. And you can get Mind Blank as a noncaster (Third Eye Conceal, Expanded Psionics Handbook). You'll need a ruling on those, first, as well.
Doesn't stop it.
Edit:
Of course, there's also the potential of simply overloading the Wizard's intelligence-gathering resources. If you can arrange for there to be a few orders of magnitude more plots against the guy's life, without actually being linkable as the source of said plots, you can get him to stay on his private demiplane for the rest of eternity....

Nice. There are the other ideas, how you would handle them assuming an unknown wizard.

hahaha sure, the second deal is the best, an high level wizard dont want to loose time to crush rats, he will prefer researching spells or planning his ascension to lichdom or other kind of immortality.

do his dirty jobs you may even gains benefits ^^

I prefer the diplomance approach. Convince him to work for you, choke on his own shoelaces and die, or summon a million+ strong angry mob. He'll run out of spells eventually, and then he's a commoner.

Also, throw a housecat at him.

[Lurkmoar]

Also, throw a housecat at him.

Seeing their stats makes me understand why the old Egyptians venerated them.

Oh, I would say if you're using the million mob approach, make sure you have some way to lock them down from teleporting.

[CycloneJoker]

Seeing their stats makes me understand why the old Egyptians venerated them.

Oh, I would say if you're using the million mob approach, make sure you have some way to lock them down from teleporting.

No, with those millions of people, I believe I can get a divine rank or two, and then I find out where he goes, and kill him.

[2xMachina]

If you've divine ranks, you're pretty much MAGIC yourself. You even give Clerics their spells, so...

Deities are worse than wizards to kill.

[CycloneJoker]

If you've divine ranks, you're pretty much MAGIC yourself. You even give Clerics their spells, so...

Deities are worse than wizards to kill.

That's the point.

[Yukitsu]

By the ruling that mere worship is enough to ascend, it's not too hard for all wizards above 17 to be gods, and requires only a little effort for lower level ones.

[Waker]

I posted this in another thread, but since you asked.

Monk 2/Rogue 4/Fortune's Friend 5/Gatecrasher 4/Occult Slayer 5

Class variants would be Spell Reflection and Spell Sense (CM) to counter any ray spells used by the mage. The character would try to crank their touch AC as high as possible with Dex/Wis but if the mage still managed to hit them with their maximized orb spell, use Advantageous Avoidance to force the reroll. Dampening Field from Gatecrasher prevents reinforcements from being called in. For the Occult Slayer's signature weapon, I choose a dagger. Toss Force and Returning on it for fun. Find an item or potion with See Invisibility on it, so even if they jump ethereal you can still hit them. A wand or scroll of Dimensional Anchor would be needed to keep the mage from running. And the Mage Slayer feat chain wouldn't hurt.

[Toliudar]

My apologies if someone above has already covered this, but Moment of Prescience takes care of quivering palm.

[Morquard]

Well one advantage of being a king/ruler is that you can delegate things. You are not alone.
So to battle a powerhungry mage you hire three mages, not quite as powerhungry. Probably make sure they're jealous enough of each other that none of them could move against you without the others stopping him.

In the end you build some sort of secret police with all kinds of classes, different factions watching the others too etc, hopefully catching every threat to you before it actually comes too close.

To say "high/epic level wizard, but stop him without magic of any kind" seems sort of unfair and stupid.

[CycloneJoker]

Well one advantage of being a king/ruler is that you can delegate things. You are not alone.
So to battle a powerhungry mage you hire three mages, not quite as powerhungry. Probably make sure they're jealous enough of each other that none of them could move against you without the others stopping him.

In the end you build some sort of secret police with all kinds of classes, different factions watching the others too etc, hopefully catching every threat to you before it actually comes too close.

To say "high/epic level wizard, but stop him without magic of any kind" seems sort of unfair and stupid.

I wanted to challenge people, and see if it was done. And, for the record, no full casters with the ability to not die in one hit. Hence, my idea of Rune-Scarred Berserker and their access to AMF.

[Crow]

Unfortunately is clashes with the rules of the challenge, but the King defends himself from these casters like he would from another King.

Instead of standing toe to toe with the enemy King and all of his vassals by himself, he has his own vassals who have sworn fealty to him to help defend the kingdom.

Instead of charging into the wizard's tower himself to take care of the enemy caster, he has his own wizards who have sworn fealty to him to help protect him. Just because a person is a wizard doesn't mean they are instantly out to rule the world. There are many reasons a wizard might place himself into the service of a monarch.

Casters are like the nuclear weapons of DnD. Every kingdom worth it's salt is going to try to get some. Think about it, Control Weather is enough to send all but the most Tippyverse of kingdoms into ruin.

...and having people worship you to make you a god only works if your DM allows you to gain divine rank that way. In fact, every RAW method of ascension is under the purview of the DM, so that's right out.

[Crossblade]

I find it ironic that this was brought up on the OOTS forum so soon after Tarquin's divulging of his plans to rule.

How does the King keep his power? Status quo.

He doesn't need to kill the wizard. If the wizard does kill the king and take his power, there will bound to be copy cats, which will eventually out number the wizard, either causing his death, or to have him run away... which is equivalent to the wizard giving up the thrown, and thus losing. On the desert continent, one person keeps killing the current ruler and then gets killed themselves. On the original continent, no one killed the ruler, there was no circle of violence.
(Ok, yes Kubota tried to kill Hinjo, but never tried against Shojo).

A smart wizard (aka not insane) would realize this and not bother to try to assassinate the king in the first place. The opposite kind would have to deal with Crow's stated set ups and then deal with mine.

[Gralamin]

...and having people worship you to make you a god only works if your DM allows you to gain divine rank that way. In fact, every RAW method of ascension is under the purview of the DM, so that's right out.

With the exception of Ice Assassinating Deities into giving you their divine ranks. That one definitely works by RAW.