Thoughts on the win button.

[jjpickar]

Time Stop+disintegrate+Cloud Kill+Force Cage=win. We all know what it means (Celerity is non-CORE as it is in the PHBII and therefore optional) but does it really work on everything?

Vampires are immune to poison and therefore immune to cloudkill. As they appear human and can use various means to disguise their undead nature fairly well (enough to fool a player who assumes it is human which is not implausible). What is to prevent the vampire from using gaseous form to disguise itself as the lingering after effects of cloud kill and escape after the wizard is sure that he has perished from the poisonous gas and has dispelled the force cage in order to loot the body. Obviously, a cleric might use deathwatch to determine the status of the creature's life but for this we assume it is just the wizard. Also this place must be in an area where the sun will never shine in case the wizard waits an inordinate amount of time just to be on the safe side.

Now comes the fun part. As the gaseous form of the vampire wafts to the ceiling, the wizard goes to inspect his victim's body. Inside the hole there will be a body, a disguised human that was pulled out of the vampire's portable hole with magic loot on it to interest the wizard. While the wizard is looting the body, the vampire will sneak up on the unsuspecting wizard ( this is the tricky bit of the plan as there is no protection against foresight in RAW though a non-detection spell like item may work. Hopefully the wizard's will have worn off, unlikely, or it was not even cast, even less likely.) However if the surprise round is gained then the vampire (who has plenty of character levels, probably rogue) won't have much trouble grappling the wizard. Freedom of movement is the only protection against this but since it is not on the wizard spell list in the PHB we will assume that the absence of a cleric and scrolls of FoM are not on the wizard's person. During the grapple the vampire can drain levels and constitution with no saves and in a few rounds kill the wizard.

This demonstrates the extreme difficulty in even surviving an encounter with win button tactics and even then it relies on RAW and other circumstances, especially protection from foresight. There are probably other holes in this plan but I assert that it is possible at least.

Thoughts, insights musings? All are appreciated.

[Indon]

Just a quick bit of definition nazism (before someone else does it): Celerity is non-core and non-SRD, but the RAW is much more extensive than them, encompassing all WotC materials.

On the idea: Would Deathwatch even work on an undead?

You could also have had Dispel Magic cast upon the PC's party at one point, to strip them of a bit of their magical prebuffs. This can stop an extended self-buff spell cold, for instance.

[jjpickar]

Death Watch will tell you that its undead.

I always thought RAW meant Core only. I meant core only.

[Indon]

RAW stands for "Rules as Written". WotC has written a lot of rules.

And anyway, Deathwatch is an evil act to cast, isn't it? I'd think Detect Evil would be more a threat, since all undead have an evil aura.

[jjpickar]

Detect evil is less likely since your checking whether or not the human is dead. Remember, this plan depends on the Wizard assuming the vampire is human.

[Green Bean]

I think the problem is that it takes a specially designed monster and an overcomplicated, non-foolproof plan to have a chance to attack the wizard at high levels. I mean, it isn't like there are high level vampire rogues with corpses stashed in portable holes wandering around the countryside.

(plus, you know, it's a bit metagamey to have the one creature able to stand against a single specific tactic the wizard uses just happen to be the one attacking.)

[jjpickar]

I think the problem is that it takes a specially designed monster and an overcomplicated, non-foolproof plan to have a chance to attack the wizard at high levels. I mean, it isn't like there are high level vampire rogues with corpses stashed in portable holes wandering around the countryside.

(plus, you know, it's a bit metagamey to have the one creature able to stand against a single specific tactic the wizard uses just happen to be the one attacking.)

Actually this was the point of the thread, to demonstrate how hard it is to come up with an even barely plausible way to fight the win button. Besides this is quite obviously from a DM's perspective. Who else would grapple with the problem of an instant win more than a DM? DMs are allowed to metagame. How else does one design a challenging encounter?

[Diggorian]

DMs are allowed to metagame. How else does one design a challenging encounter?

Very true.

The "Win Button" is a theory with lots of support but it can be countered by a DM (the only player with a true win ability).

A level 20 assassin with a Circlet of Intellect under greater invisibility can stalk a Wizard for 3 rounds then Death Attack + sneak Attack + Con poisoned keen wounding weapon + any other cheese can down a Wizard.

Sure, the mage could have any number of effects going to prevent this, but if you prepare for these and they dont see it coming the DM will Disable Device the Win Button.

[PirateMonk]

The trouble with at the very least the first plan is that if there are no clerics nearby and this guy is using the win button, it's quite possible that this is the hypothetical wizard that gets tossed around a lot, the one who lives in MMMs and casts Contact Other Plane several times each morning. Oh, and has an Int of 40+. Not just how does the vampire get the body in his portable hole, how does he get a body that looks exactly like him in there?

[Green Bean]

Actually this was the point of the thread, to demonstrate how hard it is to come up with an even barely plausible way to fight the win button. Besides this is quite obviously from a DM's perspective. Who else would grapple with the problem of an instant win more than a DM? DMs are allowed to metagame. How else does one design a challenging encounter?

Oops. Guess I misread your intent. Apologies.

Very true.

The "Win Button" is a theory with lots of support but it can be countered by a DM (the only player with a true win ability).

A level 20 assassin with a Circlet of Intellect under greater invisibility can stalk a Wizard for 3 rounds then Death Attack + sneak Attack + Con poisoned keen wounding weapon + any other cheese can down a Wizard.

Sure, the mage could have any number of effects going to prevent this, but if you prepare for these and they dont see it coming the DM will Disable Device the Win Button.

The thing is, that's basically creating a very hostile environment for the player. The DM is basically telling the wizard owner that if he makes a single mistake, then his character will die. That seems to be the problem with the wizard class; not the power level, but the way it can turn DM against player.

[Dausuul]

Time Stop+disintegrate+Cloud Kill+Force Cage=win. We all know what it means (Celerity is non-CORE as it is in the PHBII and therefore optional) but does it really work on everything?

Not at all. Demons, for instance, are immune to poison. Lock up a demon in the forcecage, and you end up with a demon sitting in a box getting madder and madder for roughly 40 hours.

There isn't really a single "win button" tactic to beat all opponents. However, there is usually a "win button" tactic versus any specific opponent, and the great advantage of wizards is that they can almost always come up with some way to apply it.

[Green Bean]

Not at all. Demons, for instance, are immune to poison. Lock up a demon in the forcecage, and you end up with a demon sitting in a box getting madder and madder for roughly 40 hours.

There isn't really a single "win button" tactic to beat all opponents. However, there is usually a "win button" tactic versus any specific opponent, and the great advantage of wizards is that they can almost always come up with some way to apply it.

Can't demons teleport at will? But you are right, there isn't a single win button against everything. The problem is there is a win button for anything, and a wizard has access to it nine times out of ten.

[Emperor Tippy]

To the OP: Why do you have Disintegrate in that combo? It can't even affect the target while the caster is under the affects of Timestop.

Second, that combo is really only effective against standard fighter types and dumb, physical monsters. It fails against almost any reasonably powerful caster (1 disintegrate and the forcecage is gone). And if the fighter type doesn't have a necklace of adaption and a Rod of Cancellation at those levels then he isn't being played even half way competently.

The real wizard win buttons are other things, especially if you get out of core. I just made this one popular because we had a bunch of Wizard v Fighter threads and I got tired of the fighter people saying that they could beat the wizard, so the new minimum criteria for being effective became you have to beat the Forcecage combo.

The real win button is gate. With it you can kill every single thing on the material plane and actually physically disintegrate the entire planet within 1 minute.

Just use the infinite Titans trick. Come to think of it, you could depopulate pretty much any plane with that trick.

Shapechange is another win button. You can turn into an adult red dragon and decimate an entire army with it.

[Dausuul]

Can't demons teleport at will?

Well, you usually toss in a dimensional lock before you seal the forcecage. Of course, that assumes the demon doesn't also have greater dispel magic at will.

[jjpickar]

Not just how does the vampire get the body in his portable hole, how does he get a body that looks exactly like him in there?

This is actually quite simple. Portable holes can carry huge amounts of stuff (like a bag of holding except with a much bigger opening) a body is simple to place in there. As for the body itself, well, your a vampire you need to drink blood and bodies are sorta a by product of your habit. Disguise is a class skill for a rogue and spot which detects disguises is not a wizard class skill. true seeing costs 250 gp to cast and does not help in detecting mundane disguises making it fairly conceivable that this portion of the plan could work.

Also for those ninjas that replied while I was answering this question. This plan involves getting the wizard to use this strategy by means of disguise and such. Making a wizard assume your a fighter with bluff and disguise is fairly easy. Also Disintegrate is targeted at the ground below the target not the target itself.

[Indon]

The thing is, that's basically creating a very hostile environment for the player. The DM is basically telling the wizard owner that if he makes a single mistake, then his character will die. That seems to be the problem with the wizard class; not the power level, but the way it can turn DM against player.

I would argue that the wizard who builds his character around being able to solve everything himself is inviting the use of tactics beyond his reckoning, leading to such an escalation.

[Saph]

I would argue that the wizard who builds his character around being able to solve everything himself is inviting the use of tactics beyond his reckoning, leading to such an escalation.

I'd agree, and, in response to the Forcecage Cloudkill thing, reply to it with another question:

Is this spell combo actually causing a problem in your game? Not in the future, or in someone else's game, but in your game right now?

If not, don't worry about it. Yes, some D&D spells are overpowered. We all know this (Forcecage and Cloudkill, by the way, aren't really among them - practically nothing you fight at Level 20 will be killed by that combo). That doesn't mean you have to spend ages trying to think up counters to abusive spell combination X.

If you play D&D in the suggested way, starting at low levels and working your way up to high levels, then by the time you reach high levels, you should have worked out solutions to all the obviously overpowered stuff already. That's a much better way of doing things than saying "I'm going to make this rules-heavy game munchkin proof!" Trying to munchkin-proof a game is like trying to idiot-proof a system; someone will just make a better idiot.

- Saph

[Diggorian]

Yeah, I myself pretty much avoid this type of issue by not running beyond level 10 or so. Eight levels of gaming when ya dont do the four encounters per day makes a nice length campaign for the central story to resolve.

The thing is, that's basically creating a very hostile environment for the player. The DM is basically telling the wizard owner that if he makes a single mistake, then his character will die. That seems to be the problem with the wizard class; not the power level, but the way it can turn DM against player.

I think only the inexperienced player and DM would let it get out of character. Every encounter shouldnt feature Master assassin Killy McMagebane, makes for a corny story. How I run, the Wizard's player does whatever he can against his enemies, so his enemies retaliate in kind. There's nothing personal about it ... unless the BBEG actually says "And this time, its PERSONAL!"

[belboz]

Just use the infinite Titans trick. Come to think of it, you could depopulate pretty much any plane with that trick.

Wait...aren't summoned monsters themselves forbidden from summoning for some reasonable length of time? Or does casting Gate not count as summoning? (In which case the obvious plug is to house-rule it as summoning.) Or is this a totally different trick?

[deadseashoals]

Wait...aren't summoned monsters themselves forbidden from summoning for some reasonable length of time? Or does casting Gate not count as summoning? (In which case the obvious plug is to house-rule it as summoning.) Or is this a totally different trick?

They are prevented from using their summon abilities. But gate isn't a summon ability, it's a spell-like ability. A summon ability would be something like summon 2d10 lemures at a 65% chance.

This whole win button meme is getting a bit old. As people pointed out, there's a number of counters, such that at high level, a good chunk of the opponents you fight are not going to be autokilled by this combo. Being huge or larger, having greater dispel magic at least a few times per day in conjunction with any sort of teleporting ability, getting rid of the forcecage, being immune to poison, being immune to ability damage, not having to breathe, high spell resistance and teleportation, greater spell immunity, etc. etc. The confluence of factors you have to have go your way just to make this combo work, combined with the fact that it's pretty damn resource intensive, make it not really worth doing at level 17.

[Quietus]

Gate is Calling, and thus monsters are quite capable of using their summoning abilities.

[Emperor Tippy]

As has been said. Gate doesn't summon, it calls. And it takes a standard action. Titans have gate as an SLA. Each one can call one and order it to call another and so on. Since it is on the random encounter table of an infinite plane their are an infinite number of titans.

[Epiphanis]

The thing is, that's basically creating a very hostile environment for the player. The DM is basically telling the wizard owner that if he makes a single mistake, then his character will die. That seems to be the problem with the wizard class; not the power level, but the way it can turn DM against player.

I don't see that as a problem. A DM is obliged to make an encounter survivable (though not necessarily winnable) by a balanced party, but not for any particular member of the party. Its perfectly acceptable to set up an encounter designed specifically to hose one member of the party as long as you make it possible for another member to save his bacon. This is almost inherent in the game: golems are designed to hose arcanists, oozes to nail rogues, etc.

In endgame play, where players have more varied and powerful options for complex stratagems, it stands to reason that their opposition should also.

[Justin_Bacon]

Time Stop+disintegrate+Cloud Kill+Force Cage=win. We all know what it means (Celerity is non-CORE as it is in the PHBII and therefore optional) but does it really work on everything?

I'm not familiar with this, actually, and I'm struggling to figure out what you're trying to accomplish here.

The disintegrate can't target you victim (since you can't target a creature with spells during a time stop). Is it being used to create a pit for the creature to fall into? Then you cast cloud kill into the pit, so it sits on top of the creature round after round after round?

But isn't that completely obviated by forcecage? Just cast cloud kill and then enclose them (and the cloud kill) inside the windowless version of the forcecage.

As for avoiding this "win button": Anything immune to poison spends their time in prison buffing up and planning your destruction. Anything with more than 6 HD and an ability to get rid of your forcecage (through their own disintegrate or a disjunction) or teleport out of it will, at worst, suffer 1d4 points of Constitution damage (and they get a save for half of that).

And even if you can't dispel the forcecage, you can always dispel the cloudkill, so that's another way to avoid more than 1d4 points of Con damage.

As "win buttons" go, this one is pretty weak.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

[Jasdoif]

The disintegrate can't target you victim (since you can't target a creature with spells during a time stop). Is it being used to create a pit for the creature to fall into? Then you cast cloud kill into the pit, so it sits on top of the creature round after round after round?

But isn't that completely obviated by forcecage? Just cast cloud kill and then enclose them (and the cloud kill) inside the windowless version of the forcecage

Cloudkill's text says the cloud "moves away from you at 10 feet per round, rolling along the surface of the ground," making it not as easy to focus in one area as many other spells. It's certainly possible that the forcecage will trap the vapors in, but making the cloudkill go into a pit is even more likely to work, since the vapors are heavier then air and thus couldn't escape from a pit.

[Saph]

Okay, just for fun, I pulled up the D20 SRD and spent five minutes scanning through the CR 20 monsters.

Balor - CR 20. Immune to poison. Greater dispel magic as a SLA. Greater teleport as a SLA.

Pit Fiend - CR 20. Immune to poison. Greater dispel magic as a SLA. Greater teleport as a SLA.

Tarrasque - CR 20. Immune to poison, and it's too big to fit in a forcecage anyway.

What about the slightly lower-level ones?

Nightcrawler - CR 18. Immune to poison, spends most of its time burrowing, and has greater dispel magic as a SLA.

Formian Queen - CR 17. Is a 17th level sorcerer, has an army of formians around her at all times, and is, you guessed it, immune to poison.

Marilith - CR 17. Has Greater Teleport as a SLA, and is - can you guess this one by now? - immune to poison.

Note that these are all core monsters, straight out of the SRD. We're not even taking into account templates, equipment, and class levels.

Conclusion?

The Timestop/Forcecage/Cloudkill 'win button' isn't a win button. It isn't even close to being a win button. Sure, it'll kill an ordinary person with no magical abilities - which isn't what you're going to be fighting at that level! At 20th-level you'll be going up against horrendously powerful creatures whose stats probably aren't even in the Monster Manual in the first place.

So, seriously, quit with this 'win button' stuff.

- Saph

[Cyborg Pirate]

So, seriously, quit with this 'win button' stuff.

- Saph

For chrissakes will you people get it into your heads that this was never a win-button in the first place?! It was the counter for the masses of "my-straight-lvl20-fighter-can-kill-wizards" threads and posts that popped up everywhere. It was never meant as a "defeat the game" combo.

[Saph]

For chrissakes will you people get it into your heads that this was never a win-button in the first place?! It was the counter for the masses of "my-straight-lvl20-fighter-can-kill-wizards" threads and posts that popped up everywhere. It was never meant as a "defeat the game" combo.

Unfortunately, by successfully convincing people that the 'my-fighter-can-kill-wizards' thing is wrong, you've replaced that meme with the 'a-wizard-can-beat-everything-with-Forcecage' one. So now we get a new thread every day about how powerful Wizards are with their 'win button'.

In other words, it's your fault. :P

- Saph

[Cyborg Pirate]

In other words, it's your fault. :P

- Saph

*goes into a corner and cries*

[Talya]

Well, you usually toss in a dimensional lock before you seal the forcecage. Of course, that assumes the demon doesn't also have greater dispel magic at will.

Dimensional lock is subject to SR.