How to beat a warmage PC

[metalbear]

I am a relatively new gamer in D&D, and I have a problem. My problem is my DM has decided to allow one of my friend's level 17 warmage gnome, level 16 halfdragon fighter, and level 17 human assassin take my current gaming group. We are currently all around level 9 and ten, but we are being leveled up for this encounter.
The player we are to going up against is much more experienced than anyone else in my group (he has been playing for seven years now, compared to my seven months). He has a number of modifications on his characters that make this a very worrisome contest for my party. Firstly his warmage used a wish spell to cast teleport at will. He also has an obseenly high armor class, along with the the warmage's excellent will saves. I am completely lost as to how I should even begin to try attacking him.
The halfdragon fighter is also a cause of worry for my party. Apparently he has a strength score of 40, and he also is equipped with a ridiculous amount of magical items and weapons. As to the assassin, I am ignorant to what his capabilities are.

My party:
Half dragon cleric of Kord
Domains of strength and luck
has high wisdom and strength scores

Human fighter
Specializes in bastard swords and heavy armor
has improved mount feat
several score modifying items
high strength, charisma, dex, and const

Human Rogue
Has a large arsenal of powerful and evil items
has spiderclimb ability
high dex score, but that's about it

Four-armed orcish variant
has very high strength, but low int., cha., and dex
uses long spear four handed

Half orc barbarian
Really good ability scores
uses enchanted great axes
has some other decent magic items

any suggestions on how to overcome my arrogant friend would be great.

[Grimfist]

He used a wish to gain the ability to teleport at will?

This smells of cheese and lousy DMing.

I'm not familiar with the warmage class, but if he has low fort saves, smack him with something nasty that requires a fort save.

Edit: Although his obscene AC probably isn't armor based, so he'll likely have a high touch AC too.

Double edit: No, seriously. Kill the DM that allowed him to do that.

[SadisticFishing]

What!? Warmage's don't get Wish, and there is NO way a wish can be used for that.

To win the encounter, pull out a Player's Handbook and Complete Arcane and make his character cease to exist.

Otherwise, sneak up on him and poison his soup.

[VerdugoExplode]

It sounds like you're in a bad spot as the DM for those three characters pretty much said "Write whatever you want on your character sheets, its alright, I don't care, now lets send them against a legitimate party." I suggest you get your BAB as high as you can, the easiest method being erasing the current value and writing a higher number in its place. You can also add a 1 to either the front or the back of the current number for a quick boost. You can do the same for armor as well, its a universal strategy really. Finally get a +10 keen vorpal cheater bane falchion using the aforementioned method and go to town.

[JaxGaret]

Have your Cleric spam Fort save SoDs or SoSs at the Warmage until it loses.

Also, have your Cleric make sure that its Will and Fort saves are good enough to survive a couple of rounds of the same. The Luck domain is an excellent choice here - any other ways that the Cleric can get save rerolls is good.

Have all of your fighting types go to engage their fighting types ASAP. Hopefully they will crush them into the ground, and your Cleric can hopefully win the day against their Warmage.

[Guy_Whozevl]

For the Barbarian, go Leap Attacking Shock Trooper. That should instant kill anything that it hits (if you invested in Frenzied Berserker). In order to counteract the FB's drawback, take Righteous Wrath from Book of Exalted Deeds; you remain in control and can shaken enemies if you hit them when raging. With the Cleric, just use Miracle cheese to counteract the Warmage's stuff. Also, cast Death Ward/some Energy Resistance on the party, as the Warmage gets blasting junk and some SoDs. The human Fighter has it the easiest based on what mount you take; use Leadership to get a flying mount and make fly-by swipes at the enemy, as they seem to lack any way to fly. Your four-armed orc varient seems to be theoretically good at grappling, so just pin down the Warmage while the Cleric/Barbarian/Rogue nukes down the Half-dragon fighter. The human Assassin can be problematic (with Escape Artist and all), but one solid hit from a well-built melee build should rip him apart. SoDs against him are also effective, as they lack good Will or Fortitude saves as Assassins.
Honestly, the Warmage is the least of your troubles if you neutralize his abilities. Gnome size + four armed orc = doomed Gnome, Teleport or not. If the Assassin has Hide in Plain Sight and no one invests in a Listen or Move Silently (spells can't be used to see him), you all are going to be SAed into oblivion. The enemy Half-dragon fighter, despite the strenght, is a pushover due to bad saves.

[mabriss lethe]

Play like a DM.

1. Recruit an army, mercenaries, Goblins, zombie hordes, whatever. Throw enough disposable meat at the problem to grind away the enemy party's reserves of magic, fun toys, widgets and gimicks. You aren't trying to kill them, but if that happens that's a plus too. Every dent your army puts into the enemy's armor is one more weakness you can exploit.

2. Engage on your terms. Make the enemy come to you at a place of your choosing. You have to make them want to come to you, in a daring move have the thief steal something important to one of the enemy, leading them into an ambush. Traps, Dead Magic zones, Disjunctions, Dimensional Anchors (or whatever that spell is...), Symbols of Insanity in unconventional places (my favorite is a "poorly disguised" secret door that opens onto a blank wall with the symbol behind it) . Stuff like that could really slow a teleport hopping warmage and company down.

3. Fight dirty. Poisons, curses, whatever. turn it into a war of attrition. Make the enemy pay in spades for every step of dirt he takes to get to you.

4. Then follow everyone else's advice in this thread.

[ZeroNumerous]

Warmage: Pit him against a real wizard. Watch him cry.

Fighter: Maximized Reached Split Ray Shivering Touch. Using Easy Metamagic: Split Ray, Arcane Thesis: Shivering Touch, and Incantatrix to reduce the overall metamagic cost to +1.

Assassin: See Invisibility. Repeat Fighter strategy.

[JaxGaret]

Mabriss makes a good point. If their DM is going to allow completely broken, dirty, non-rules based cheese, to counter that, you can go with completely legal, by-the-book cheese.

A few simple ones off the top of my head are:

Everyone in your party takes the Leadership feat.

Multiclass into fast progression spellcasting PrCs (Ur-Priest, Divine Crusader, etc.).

Use cheesy core tactics like using Candles of Invocation to Gate in multiple powerful allies.

Etc.


I would personally prefer to win clean, without resorting to cheese, but it's your fight.

[Kioran]

Empowered or Twin Ray Enervation + Quickened Enervation - it rules. All the negative lvls cost that opposing PC spells, BAB and Saves. Start from flying position and let the warmage have it. He´ll be seriously weakened after the first round and down for the count by the second. In fact, you can continue enervating if you have spells left - it lowers saves by 1 per drained level, and makes the enemied easy targets.......
Seriously, it´s probably even worth using "Extra Spell" to get Enervation, the spell simply rocks as much....

Oh, and get a +7 Cheesebane toothpick or cheater-slaying. This can´t be normal......but with a warmage, you can at least count on him using light or medium armor, so it won´t all be Touch AC. How would I do this....Hmm.

+1 Size
+6 Dex (Natural 16 + 6 Glovesx of dex, which are a really good investment)
+9 Armor (Mithral Chain Shirt +5, so you have full dex bonus)
+5 Ring of Protection +5
+5 Amulet of natural armor

That puts us at 36 - and the rest could be a variety of things, from a Monk´s Belt to a shield. But I guess he´ll have a Touch AC somewhere in the twenties. That´s bad, but can be overcome.....especially if you punch the DM.

[Ted_Stryker]

What!? Warmage's don't get Wish, and there is NO way a wish can be used for that.

Yeah, not only that, but they don't even get 9th-level spells until 18th level.

I'm not really sure what the point of this exercise is, to be honest.

[Rad]

Since the DM seems to be lax, hire a wizard (or a Wish spell) to get greater anticipate teleport at will. You cast it once and now each time he uses his ability you get one more round (plus another,, since he used his standard action to cast teleport). This defeats one of the more blatant cases of bad DM; judgement I ever saw.
As for the rest... we'd need more details; however the only ways to counter cheese are a good DM and more cheese; if you lack the first you'll have to resort to the second.
Can you get a candle of invocation ?

On a more serious note, try not to spoil your characters too much; cheese is not that fun in the end when it is the only thing left of your character.
One more option is to refuse to play a confrontation where the rules are not clear; and the DM allowing things outside the usual D&D rules makes them very unclear in the beginning.

[Kantolin]

Four-armed orcish variant

I am intruiged and want to know more.

But either way, warmages focus on reflex saves more than either of the other two, so see if you can buy things to help improve that.

[Kizara]

REALLY easy answer to this:

1) Make a wizard 17 (there's better wizard builds, but it honestly doesnt matter), have the wizard prepare and cast Gate. Alternately, make a cleric. Same concept.

Use gate to summon in a Solar, have the Solar also cast Gate to summon in another Solar. Since these beings act the turn they arrive, you can quickly see where this is going.

Win with your arbitarily large number of solars.


2) If the encounter is reduced to your current 9 for some reason, use a Candle of Invocation to do strategy 1. It's even more cheap now because you are doing it at level 9.

3) Tell your DM that you are more than happy to follow the rules both as written and as intended, and not to do cheesy or abusive things. However, this doesn't seem to be his DMing style and that you just want an even playing field. Demand that his friend make his characters by the book only, with no special abilities or exceptions, or you will use the actual rules in unfair combos to make your point.

[Dode]

There's a term known for when situations likes these pop up. And that's known as "Divine Metamagic: Persistant Spell"

[Kizara]

I am a relatively new gamer in D&D, and I have a problem. My problem is my DM has decided to allow one of my friend's level 17 warmage gnome, level 16 halfdragon fighter, and level 17 human assassin take my current gaming group. We are currently all around level 9 and ten, but we are being leveled up for this encounter.
The player we are to going up against is much more experienced than anyone else in my group (he has been playing for seven years now, compared to my seven months). He has a number of modifications on his characters that make this a very worrisome contest for my party. Firstly his warmage used a wish spell to cast teleport at will. He also has an obseenly high armor class, along with the the warmage's excellent will saves. I am completely lost as to how I should even begin to try attacking him.
The halfdragon fighter is also a cause of worry for my party. Apparently he has a strength score of 40, and he also is equipped with a ridiculous amount of magical items and weapons. As to the assassin, I am ignorant to what his capabilities are.

My party:
Half dragon cleric of Kord
Domains of strength and luck
has high wisdom and strength scores

Human fighter
Specializes in bastard swords and heavy armor
has improved mount feat
several score modifying items
high strength, charisma, dex, and const

Human Rogue
Has a large arsenal of powerful and evil items
has spiderclimb ability
high dex score, but that's about it

Four-armed orcish variant
has very high strength, but low int., cha., and dex
uses long spear four handed

Half orc barbarian
Really good ability scores
uses enchanted great axes
has some other decent magic items

any suggestions on how to overcome my arrogant friend would be great.

Ok, actual strategy:

1) Demand that your characters have the same wealth ratings as his, per character.

2) Barbarians need to do this build:
barbarian 1 (lion totem variant in complete champion; gives you pounce instead of fast movement at lvl 1)/fighter 2/paladin of freedom 3/Frenzied Beserker 10

Use the Retraining rules in the PHB 2 or just demand to be able to do so if you need to change some things to do this.

Feats:
Power attack, cleave, destructive rage, intimidating rage, leap attack, improved bull rush, shock trooper, Righteous Wrath. The concept is that you take a -16 to your AC, add x5 that amount to your damage, and with raging, magical strength boosts on the like (especially if you have 4 arms!!) and frenzy strength, you will do an obscene amount of damage.
Its like 20 (half orc) +4 (level-based ability boosts) +6 magic (get a belt) +4 rage+ 10 frenzy = 44 strength, for +17 modifer x2.5 (4 arms, rule is in Savage Species) = 42; then add your power attack up 2H power attack (or try to get your DM to let you have a higher modifer for having 4 hands) with supreme power attack= 4 + leap attack = 5. 16x5=80.

So, you do 1d12+122 damage + whatever magical bonuses to damage you have.

Items:

Get a Belt of Battle (magic item compendium), for an extra full round attack. A belt of str +6, a +1, keen, binding (MIC, bars extradimensional travel) adamantium greataxe (imagine 1d12+123 x3 crits!!), a scout's headband (MIC, +2 to spot checks. Can grant dark vision, See Invis or True Seeing for good durations.), +1 leather armor of death ward and heavy fortification, a heartseaker amulet, and maybe a Scarab of Invulnerbility.

You attack, 5 times, for like +36/+36/+31/+26/+21 to hit on your charge, use belt of battle to double that, for 10 attacks (second 5 at same bonus) and you're doing like 1d12+123 damage (NON-CRIT) per hit! I'm sorry, but anything you hit with that is basically instantly dead. You will do well over 1000 damage almost certinally.

I don't really care what his items are, the half-dragon is DEAD up against that.

3) Cleric, take Quicken Spell, Divine Metamagic (Quicken Spell) (also a couple Extra Turnings and Reach Spell) and then spend your actions casting Gate until you run out of 9th level spells. Even if you don't use the loop cheese, gating in 2 solars/round is a gigantic advantage. Also, if your buddies get hit with negative spells, like enervation or ray of enfeeblement, etc, just Mass Heal them to wash it all.

4) Fighter: First off, bastard sword (probably with weapon spec) and shield is likely one of the wrost POSSIBLE fighter builds. If you MUST go straight fighter (which is fairly terrible) take feats that are actually useful:

Exotic Weapon Proficiency (spiked chain), Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Improved Disarm, Combat Reflexes, Power Attack, Improved Initiative, and the like. I haven't done a full fighter lock down build, but I know there's one floating around here somewhere.

[Hyozo]

Okay, you beat a cheesed up group like this the same way you beat a pirateninja. Or, if they don't allow that, you could logic them out of existance. Don't sink to the cheese side, that's what they want you to do.

[lord_khaine]

this is something i saw in another duel, but im sure it will help here as well.

the trick is there isnt any limit to how many templates you put on your gate-called minion, so if you call in a paragon version of something that has blasfemy, then it should instantly kill anything with less than 20HD, because of the caster level boost the paragon template gives.

[greenknight]

I think you're in a lot of trouble, and it's mainly because you and the rest of your group haven't really powergamed your characters. Here's your main mistakes:

Overall: Your party has no Wizard! If you've been reading these boards, you'll know just how useful Wizards can be. Instead, your group seems to be mostly melee focused, with your character being the only real spellcaster. That's a bad situation right there.

Your Cleric: That half-dragon template has a +3 LA. Unless your DM has house ruled it so that the LA no longer applies, this is very, very bad for a spellcaster. Full spellcasters like Clerics can be incredibly powerful at higher levels, but since their spells are what give them their power, you should try to avoid losing caster levels. I assume for this challenge your character will be ECL 16, with 13 Cleric levels.

For tactics, start by getting your hands on the following equipment:

Rod of Metamagic (Quicken Spell - up to 6th level spells)
Bead of Karma (from a Strand of Prayer Beads)
Ioun Stone (Orange)
Cloak of Charisma +6

You'll also want the Divine Spell Power feat (from Complete Divine).

On the first round (or preferably, right before battle) activate the Bead of Karma and cast Righteous Might. Then use the Rod of Metamagic to cast Dimensional Anchor on the Warmage, move up to the middle of the enemy group (hopefully they're within a single move range, and are fairly close to each other - the spell does have a 40' range, so you don't have to get right beside them) and then boost your caster level even higher with Divine Spell Power (use your Luck Domain re-roll if you need to) and cast Holy Word. Your caster level for Holy Word should be around 20, which should leave them all paralyzed, blinded, deafened for several rounds.

As for the rest of the crew, I suggest you have the Rogue UMD a scroll of Gate, to bring in a Pseudonatural Dragon of some kind (with as many HD as possible). Have it fight for your group, but don't worry about hitting it with your Holy Word, since you won't be able to get through it's SR.

The others should just stand in a defensive formation, protecting you and the Rogue.

[Darrin]

any suggestions on how to overcome my arrogant friend would be great.

Based on your description of the builds, it looks like all of these players are a bit too focused on direct damage... a decently-optimized Batman wizard with a little prep could probably hose them all at ECL 9. But more than likely that will just lead to game-ending arguments where they attempt to justify why non-damage spells shouldn't hurt as much as their pet direct damage combos.

If you have access to ToB, try this to make yourself immune to HP damage:

Race: Halfling, Kobold, Grippli, or anything suitably humiliating
Warblade 1/Cleric 1/Barbarian 1/Duskblade 1/Bloodline 3/SwordSage 1/Crusader 1

At ECL 9, you have an Initiator Level of 16.5. This allows you to take the Immortal Fortitude stance (Divine Spirit 8), which makes you unkillable from HP damage (although you'll want to pump your Fort save like crazy, so pick up Diamond Defense from Diamond Mind).

For offense, pick up Martial Stance: Aura of Chaos (Divine Spirit 6), a Gauntlet (1d2 damage), and the Imbued Healing: Luck feat (CompChamp). Now, assuming you can hit (Emerald Razor for a touch attack + True Strike might be good), you do an infinite amount of damage. So... let that half-dragon fighter charge in with Power Attack.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with the insta-porting Warmage, since he has an instant "get out of combat free" card. Although you could try asking the GM if you can buy a Candle of Invocation, summon an efreet or solar, and fight wish-cheese with wish-cheese.

[fendrin]

Either you and your party should get just as much cheese as the opponents, or this is a case of DM absuiveness.

If you get the same cheese, make sure to save the original character sheets, so the whole things can be hand-waved away as a bizarre dream sequence caused by accidentally cooking with hallucinogenic mushrooms. Then, use a combination of the best suggestions above to uber-cheese your way to victory. Raise an army, have them swarm, gate in an army of Solars, and everything else.

If you don't get the same level of cheese, there is really only one way to win: refuse to play. Yup, the only power greater than DM Fiat is Player Fiat. Get up and walk out.

I have had to do it once in the past, and yes the DM was furious, but he forgave us. In fact, I was later one of his groomsmen and another person who walked out was his best man (in fact, all of the people who walked were at the wedding...)

[Solo]

UMD is your friend. Spam Save or X spells.

[metalbear]

I just want to say thanks for all the help everyone. It look like I'll have to resort to cheese to win this one, but you gotta' fight fire with fire. I think I'll use the gate in solar tactic along with having the other characters trying to raise armies through leadership. Also, all the recomendations on how to make the characters themselves has been incredibly helpful. The tips on optimum equipment set ups has been particularly helpful as was the advise on feat optimization.

Now to clarify some of the questions:
The warmage gained teleport at will from a ring of wish
He also used one of the wishes to gain stone fist permanently
The four armed orc variant is a fan made race from a site we found a couple months back, but I can't quite recall what site it was though

But thanks again for all the advise, and any more suggestions would be greatly appreicated.

[Artanis]

I'm not familiar with the warmage class, but if he has low fort saves, smack him with something nasty that requires a fort save.

Since Warmage is one of the few classes I actually have played...

If you're familiar with the Beguiler, it's the same general concept, only nuking instead of messing with minds. If you aren't familiar with the Beguiler, take a Sorcerer, remove literally every single non-damage spell, give him knowledge of all spells on his list (a la Druid or Cleric), and add a Bard's ability to cast while in armor. Then you more or less have a Warmage.


Really, it's only an arcane caster in the most technical definitions of the term ("casts spells that are arcane"). It plays more like an archer with arrows that go boom.

[mostlyharmful]

Since Warmage is one of the few classes I actually have played...

If you're familiar with the Beguiler, it's the same general concept, only nuking instead of messing with minds. If you aren't familiar with the Beguiler, take a Sorcerer, remove literally every single non-damage spell, give him knowledge of all spells on his list (a la Druid or Cleric), and add a Bard's ability to cast while in armor. Then you more or less have a Warmage.


Really, it's only an arcane caster in the most technical definitions of the term ("casts spells that are arcane"). It plays more like an archer with arrows that go boom.

It's also about the weakest arcane caster class, with direct damage only and no versatility... and that includes Warlock.

[Fawsto]

Ok... Pehaps a little trouble here... Level 10... Pehaps at best 15... Against non-core cheese? Hmmm... I'd like to be playing with you... Even the cheese can be destroyed by what is being explained here, and I surely want to see that.

Ok, for advice, the Warmage is the current caster, right? That teleport glitch will suck, so dimensional anchor on him first round. You said strenght domain? Can you consider grappling the Warmage with Bigby's Grasping Hand? After that cast a few SoS/D on him till he drops it.

Have your team to get Standard Tower Shields. It will keep you alive for at least the round you need to pin the Warmage since they will need to destroy the Tower Shields to bypass complete cover (so no full attack from the Half Dragon in the first hit). The cleric should not use the shield, just destroy the Warmage from behind the shield wall. Get the Fighter and the 4armorc to carry those shields.

Have some sort of way to counter the Assassins invisibility and pin him down with some sort of thing that needs a high fort save to make it. If your Rogue has Use Magic Device (and he should have it maxed) give him any item he can pull a desintegrate or destruction out of it, it will probably kill the assassin in 1 blow.

To finish the fight, kill the Half Dragon with the Barbarian leap attack from hell cheese. Just that.

If you do it right, they will fall.

Don't argue with the DM (he can say, oh so you will use that? NO U CAN'T I AM THE DM, DUDE!) or you will leave the RPG group. Just use it.

[DivineBriliance]

Warmages dont have high ac from heavy armor its probably magic items, so just deal with those then he will be easier for your almost all melee group.

[Behold_the_Void]

Honestly, my advice here would be to just not play.

DM says you encounter that and you say "I don't want to, so I'm not going to."

[TheMeanDM]

Well, that warmage has at least 2 Persistent spells upon him (stone hand and teleport).

How about setting up an Initiatite of the Seven Fold Veil.

Kaleidescopic Doom would be wicked...

Most of the Veil saves are Reflex. Only 1 or 2 are Will, and the other(s) are Fort.

The Wards would help keep the opponent bruisers at bay too :)

Perhaps adapt a fighter into a Fighter/Mage Slayer (complete warrior).

[tainsouvra]

any suggestions on how to overcome my arrogant friend would be great.

I recommend physical violence. Normally that would be out of the question, but because the abuse of the rules that group is permitting is tantamount to an assault on gamers everywhere I think I'd let it slide.