In what worlds wouldn't you bet on a D&D Wizard 20?

[Quertus]

What worlds could threaten a 20th level D&D Wizard? Where wouldn't you feel comfortable even with the power of a D&D Wizard 20*? And, as an added wrinkle, answer as if the Wizard wasn't expecting to visit this world, or, in the case of you with those powers, that you had to go in with all of your memories of this setting removed.

For example, the world of Harry Potter, with its "no save just die" at will ranged touch attacks? There's probably a few defenses, like being undead or Astral Projection (assuming appropriate planes, which is highly dubious), but the plain vanilla Wizard 20 who chose incorrectly when playing (or not playing) 5d Wizard Chess just dies to that. And the Wands just encourage you to underestimate the HP Wizards and Witches on your first and potentially last encounter.

But I imagine there's plenty of worlds that are far more dangerous out there. If you had to bet your life on surviving a random world with the powers of a 20th level D&D Wizard, but no knowledge of that world, what world(s) would you be hoping not to be sent to?

* I'm generally guessing that means "3e" D&D Wizard 20 to most people on this site, but feel free to respond based on other editions, too, if that's what you're more familiar with, or what you find more interesting, or whatever.

[Ignimortis]

For example, the world of Harry Potter, with its "no save just die" at will ranged touch attacks? There's probably a few defenses, like being undead or Astral Projection (assuming appropriate planes, which is highly dubious), but the plain vanilla Wizard 20 who chose incorrectly when playing (or not playing) 5d Wizard Chess just dies to that. And the Wands just encourage you to underestimate the HP Wizards and Witches on your first and potentially last encounter.

Hide Life is a better Horcrux. Get smacked with instakill spells, shrug them off, drop a Weird on them. Since that body part is on your personal metaplane, rather than hidden in historically significant objects all conveniently located within southern parts of Britain, they will never find it.

Re: thread topic, I'd probably bet on Sidereals if the wizard got dropped into Creation (Exalted) and made enough trouble to attract attention. All magic considered, they're still a mortal, and Exalted rules aren't very kind to mortals last I checked.

As for media other than TTRPGs, I'm really not sure. Maybe some of Roger Zelazny's works' worlds could deal with that, Creatures of Light and Darkness' Set has time manipulation and semi-invulnerability on his side, and for Amber, endgame Merlin (with a spikard) could possibly conjure up enough spells and counterspells to win a sorcerous duel.

[Tanarii]

Hickman & Weis's Deathgate Cycle, specifically if they landed in the Labrynth.

For RPGs, they'd probably do okay in the default setting of Godbound if they counted as a Heroic Mortal. But there are definitely things in the setting that would crush them flat without too much problem.

[NichG]

I mean, it depends on the wizard's ambition. Just studying magic and living an ordinary life? Well, any world that has normal people, a Wizard 20 should be able to do that if they don't go over the top and catch something's attention. There can be massively powerful things and, well, if you don't ever have to fight them, so what? Most settings do have some form of normal people going about their lives even if there's exciting stuff happening to the protagonist, so...

But if, say, they want to conquer the setting? Or if its a setting with canonical extinction events that normal people can't just duck their head and dodge? Or if the wizard ends up taking the place of the designated protagonists and they have to deal with whatever big threats there are in their stead? Well, yeah, that can get difficult.

Lets start with the obvious one: Nobilis. The problem here is that there's a strict hierarchy of power, and if you don't have miraculous power (not divine magic, but the equivalent of freeform salient divine abilities) then all of the things with miraculous power can just walk over you. To the extent of stuff like rewriting your entire magic system out of under you to make all of your spells summon Lipton Cup Noodle instead of what they should normally do. And those aren't even the big powers of the setting, those are like starter PCs.

Beyond that, there are sort of weird narrow paths that D&D characters have power because of the premise of individual level skirmishes. So within those paths you have a lot of things that refer to each-other and you can play 5d chess or whatever, but outside of those paths the system doesn't really expect you to have to be able to deal with things.

So: any setting with significant time travel and time war stuff, a Wizard 20 can maybe participate and fire a shot or two with Teleport Through Time, but something like 'immune to paradox' or 'immune to having your past altered' doesn't exist in the set of D&D keyword immunities, so they could just get sniped. High end superhero settings have this issue - without the protection of the various dramatic conventions of the setting (e.g. heroes mostly facing things they can in principle overcome, even when someone who could just stomp them lives right nextdoor), there's enough exotic junk that the Wizard can't just waltz through. Even something like Dr. Who could pose problems of this form. Really deeply psychedelic/metaphysical settings could also post a similar issue, on the basis of 'the stuff that matters involves keywords D&D doesn't have' - something where the actual events of import occur across your life in a thousand parallel universes (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once; Amber; The One; etc) and surviving or dying in a single universe just doesn't matter, well, the Wizard thinks they're winning but they're not even playing. Or on the other side of things, settings where the events which matter occur in very constrained and particular spaces in which power wouldn't transfer - something like Sword Art Online for example - the Wizard at best might just succeed on a save to dodge the plot without even realizing its there.

Another problem from D&D's skirmish focus is scaling up - settings that play out over an entire galaxy for example. The Wizard might be able to be immune to pretty much any direct attempt against them personally, but that doesn't mean they could actually hold power on a scale that matters to the setting via their spells. Heck, maybe they can set off a wightpocalypse and wipe out a planetary population but, on the scale of Warhammer 40k that's like a Tuesday. And similarly, even if the Wizard can survive orbital bombardment personally or horrible plagues or whatever, they probably can't ward an entire kingdom against it.

Funnily enough, this means that a wizard is like triply in trouble in something like Star Trek. They don't have the scale - sure maybe they're personally a *really* long ranged transporter, but good luck scanning the universe for places to go with spells that generally have ranges measured in hundreds of miles at most. There's time travel and parallel universes and other weird stuff that changes the landscape under you and which D&D doesn't quite give you the keywords for. And after all of that there's also the Q if you really try to reach too high, which comes down to 'Do the writers think it would be funny for you to get messed with? You get messed with.' Meanwhile baseline humans will go and resolve all this stuff and make a wizard who relies on their spellbook look incompetent by comparison (heck, this is even the plot of multiple episodes over the various series...)

Outside of that, as far as just outright power scale stuff... I wouldn't bet on the Wizard in most xianxia/cultivator settings. Cultivation stories tend to have characters in higher stages be able to just nope the abilities of characters from lower stages, regardless of what the abilities specifically do. And they tend towards the really esoteric stuff - attacking karma, the soul, time, the laws of physics, fate, what-have-you. Funnily enough, I have read a 'D&D style caster in a xianxia setting' fic where its not -so- bad for them, but 1. they basically keep their head down and don't just poke the high end, 2. they also learn cultivation stuff in parallel to augment their casting and it stacks well, and 3. the story hasn't really escalated beyond the starting stages of cultivation anyhow.

Edit: I'd bet on the wizard in Deathgate Labyrinth start. I don't recall any reason why Plane Shift or Gate wouldn't just get them out?

[Tanarii]

Edit: I'd bet on the wizard in Deathgate Labyrinth start. I don't recall any reason why Plane Shift or Gate wouldn't just get them out?

It's been a while, but I'm fairly sure you could only go back to the start of the Labyrinth that way. Not get out.

Edit: Okay got interest and reviewed some stuff. Teleport to the exit to the Labyrinth would probably work if they'd ever been there before, I'd forgotten that Xar does that with the wounded Haplo Book 6. Or possibly without having been there depending on the D&D edition and specific version of Teleport spell.
Plane Shift would be an unknown, it'd depend if you defined the different 'worlds' as planes. Which isn't unreasonable IMO.

[Rynjin]

Agreed with NichG as he took a lot of my examples. One of the more obvious ones overlooked is ones where the POWER scaling (not just economies of scale like WH40k) are so out of control that a level 20 Wizard just operates on a mostly-irrelevant axis, at least in a plot sense. Things like Dragon Ball come to mind, where a Wizard 20 would be a great support character in the same way Bulma and Kami or Dende are, getting our heroes from place to place, crafting items, coming up with a plan, etc. but if they even LOOK at a battlefield wrong they get pasted.

Several characters would canonically be able to act in a Time Stop, among other things.

Arguably also settings with "The Magic Is Gone" might also propose an issue, depending on whether they count as Dead Magic zones or not.

[icefractal]

Depends on several factors about the interaction -

1) What condition does the Wizard arrive in? You mentioned they don't know about the setting in advance, but are they showing up in "generically prepared" condition (buffs up, fully geared, potentially bringing minions in smoky confinement or such), or do they appear naked and without anything cast? (Or where in-between?)

2) How does HP / damage translate to the setting? For example, D&D has stats for guns, which do a fairly small amount, enough for Stoneskin to be a meaningful defense. But it also has stats for wall durability, and if you instead calculate the gun damage based on what they can shoot through (or what bombs can destroy), then modern heavy weaponry smashes through anything short of "immunity" like it was paper.

3) What set of planes does the setting have? If there's no Astral plane, then Wizards lose one of their biggest defenses and their easiest way to go NI. If there's no Ethereal plane then a lot of otherwise very useful utility is unavailable. Planar Binding / Gate is also getting shut down unless the setting has other planes with creatures that would be useful to call.

4) How does Polymorph / Shapechange work? Can the Wizard use it to assume forms that they're familiar with from back in D&D-land, but that don't exist in the new setting?

5) How does magic item crafting work? Does the new setting have materials that will work for it, and if so then how available are they?

6) How does people from the setting learning Wizardry work? If the setting has AIs capable of accelerated time simulation could they undertake a century of Wizard training in a few minutes and suddenly have lots of Wiz20s of their own once they observe you and realize it's possible? If the setting has "forks", like Eclipse Phase, is an alpha fork (exact copy) made from your mind still able to cast spells?

[Mastikator]

Of the top of my head:

The Star Trek universe has a large number of individuals, entities and civilizations that far exceed anything a wizard can do, even a simulacrum cheesing wizard.
The One Punch Man world has a number of monsters that would not be killable by a wizard, and of course there is Saitama who wins in a single punch.
The Narutoverse and Dragonballz-verse would probably give a level 20 wizard a run for their money.

[Telok]

One big question will be what the wizard starts out doing. A wiz who pops in at the corner of 5th & L street is going to have vastly different experiences if they say "this is new and weird, I will learn how things work before mucking with stuff" versus them going all egomaniac and trying to speed run a world conquest.

The next is their goals. A quiet life of luxury and effective immortality while perfecting their magic? Probably not an issue in many settings. Rule the universe/world with an iron fist? Big fish from a little pond is probably gonna have some nasty surprises from finding its rather smaller than the big fish in the ocean. Heck, even without leaving D&D the Lady in Sigil is 'no stats to fight, you lose' for anyone who happens to be annoying enough.

Last question is how stuff translates over. In say, Call of Cthulhu, basically no form or amount of spellcasting is free from sanity drain and just increasing your level of 'knowing things that mortals aren't meant to know' will lower your maximum possible sanity. If you decide that 'ranks/bonus in arcana' convert into Mythos Lore, then your wiz 20 could pop into the setting and immedately become a jibbering loon trying to prismatic spray their own left kneecap because the color red told them to.

[Rynjin]

Naruto's 'verse is actually pretty comparable to high level D&D overall. A Wizard 20 would be a Kage level threat, matched and/or bested only by the most powerful beings in the setting like end-of-series Naruto and Sasuke themselves, or the moon people.

They have powers comparable to powerhouse characters like Itachi (I'd liken Tsukuyomi to a modified at-will Maze SLA), pre-Ten Tails Jinchuriki Madara (he straight up casts a modified version of Meteor Swarm at one point), and Orochimaru (he even has a Clone-equivalent), and really only lose to massive hax like the Ten Tails Jinchuriki "I am Immune to everything except pure physical force, and even then I'm highly resistant" buff.

A Wizard 20 would by no means be able to dominate the Naruto universe, but they could very much occupy a very high place in its power hierarchy.

Another random setting type I'd see a Wizard 20 struggling in are some LitRPG settings. They tend to have powers that are just that much more abstract and flexible that while they wouldn't by any means be worthless, they'd occupy a weird spot.

Eg. in The Wandering Inn's "Innverse" a Wizard 20 would be equivalent to a powerful character like Teriarch, who has a lot of spells and spell knowledge, but no Skills to augment them. But they would NOT have Teriarch's main advantage that keeps him alive: being a giant fire breathing Great Wyrm Bronze Dragon with scales made of literal metal.

And some types of Skills with more metaphysical properties have been shown to trump even the high level spell equivalents of the setting. Niers Astoragon's [No Magic, No Luck, No Skills, Only Strategy] ability comes to mind, which would essentially be GG on the spot for the Wizard 20. A battlefield-wide Antimagic Field that bypasses any previously set spells as well (in case the Wizard was paranoid enough to pre-cast something like Aroden's Spellbane) kinda cooks their goose, as does one unnamed character's ability to just cut...anything. Magic, space, people, metaphysical concepts, all can be severed.

So while theoretically a Wizard 20 occupying a world where Tier 7 spells (explicitly equivalent to D&D's level 7 spells in most regards, with Fireball being a Tier 3, etc.) are beyond the world's greatest mortal casters (people have SCROLLS of Tier 7 and 8 spells, but very few are able to cast them normally, arguably nobody casts Tier 8 in the series, with 7 as the peak) and Tier 9 is considered theoretical at best would be like a kid in a candy shop, there are individuals who could just summarily...snuff them out, no contest, and preparing for all of them would be essentially impossible.

[Satinavian]

What worlds could threaten a 20th level D&D Wizard? Where wouldn't you feel comfortable even with the power of a D&D Wizard 20*? And, as an added wrinkle, answer as if the Wizard wasn't expecting to visit this world, or, in the case of you with those powers, that you had to go in with all of your memories of this setting removed.

It is like the third time you ask a similar question, but honestly that question is hard to answer.

The "Power of a 20th level D&D Wizard" is horribly ill defined. That is 20 levels of choices and potentially weird powers and combinations and prestige class effects and whatever. It is hundreds of spells that character could have or not. Which might be prepared or not. Or might be used with contingency or permanency. It allows for all kinds of templates. Oh, and wealth, with 20th levels a lot of strange stuff is potentially on the table. And then the spells themself are often horribly ill defined. 20th level has Wish, which might do basically whatever - or not. And that is all without actually trying to exploit or break stuff - TO lv. 20 wizards can be utterly rediculous, tapping into arbitrary powers.

And all of those options have now to be evaluated against creatures, cosmology, powers, rules of a completely different system or setting ? Alone how, if that other system has something similar to magic, its antimagic does work on the D&D wizard is basically impossible to answer. WE also don't know how any defenses are mapped between systems. Saves ? Might not exist. Does that mean the wizard gets a save if a similar effect would get allow one in D&D or does he not ? Does he autofail stuff a normal inhabitant of the setting could resist because he doesn't have the stats ? DO immunities even work ? You mention undead having immunity to instadeath in your opening post - but in many systems undead don't have that nor are instakill effects called death effects.

And that is all if you have a system/setting with well defined rules. But most settings, particularly from literature are extremely vague in how they work. And even in roleplay systems, well, you could just be in one that only works with narrative rules (so the wizard loses if something thinks that is a good story) or are rules light and don't actually care at all what the wizard has on his sheet (an attack is resolved via coin toss : wizard loses 50% of the time)



So in nearly all cases the answer is a resounding "maybe" depending on hundreds of details.

[Mechalich]

2) How does HP / damage translate to the setting? For example, D&D has stats for guns, which do a fairly small amount, enough for Stoneskin to be a meaningful defense. But it also has stats for wall durability, and if you instead calculate the gun damage based on what they can shoot through (or what bombs can destroy), then modern heavy weaponry smashes through anything short of "immunity" like it was paper.

Not just damage translation, to really make any sort of serious comparison its necessary to go further and establish a shared baseline between settings so we can at least try to compare capabilities while operating on some point of commonality. One useful way to do that is to try and use ordinary Homo sapiens as the baseline, mostly since these tend to occur in almost every setting. So for example, it's possible to compare what happens if a 3.5e D&D 20th level wizard, Captain America, and a 7th layer of Body Strengthening Cultivator all punch Joe Average in the face and then try to qualitatively measure other capabilities working from that. If you slot your characters into actual systems, such as by using a Marvel RPG with stats, this can even be done in a limited quantitative way (limited because, as mentioned, the math in TTRPGs doesn't really work properly and often outputs results that make no sense or are outright contradictory).

An extension of this is that the setting must have sufficient internal consistency to establish a baseline against itself in order to be used for comparison with anything else and - and this is important! - many settings fail this test, badly. This includes pretty much every superhero and shounen manga setting ever created.

[Unoriginal]

A lvl 20 Wizard from which edition?

"Lvl 20 Wizard" is a fairly different power level if you're talking about 3e, 5e, or the TSR's first D&D booklets, for example.

[Vahnavoi]

I wouldn't bet them on Earth. Based on D&D own rules, some worlds have different laws of physics, including different degrees of magic. Earth is one of those places: a D&D Wizard stumbling on Earth without knowing anything about Earth means they are stranded in an unknown world with most or all of their magic not working. They might remarkable for other character traits beyond just magic - for example, their magic items, even if dysfunctional, might be worth a fortune - yet at the same time, they know nothing of society nor geography and have a scientific understanding of approximately a mid-renaissance alchemist. If they get lucky and end up in or near a populated area, they might be able to work it out, use their intelligence to build a new career, so on and so forth. If they get unlucky and end up somewhere uninhabited, well, now I'd like to know how much has this wizard devoted time to being decent at non-magical outdoor survival. They'll have much better odds in a temperate forest region during summer, than, say middle of Sahara during dry season or middle of Antarctic.

That last part points at the fundamental flaw in this sort of thought exercise: "D&D Wizard 20" is a pretty nebulous concept, covering a huge number of possible characters with different ability score spreads, different skill point spreads, different races, different magic items, different spell lists, etc.. It is not in fact safe to assume that any Wizard 20 will be interchangeable with any other Wizard 20.

As for purely fictional settings, the setting of Praedor can go either way depending on which side of Jaconia-Borvaria border a D&D Wizard ends up in. If they end up in Jaconia, they might have an easy time - the world of mortals is a fairly familiar pseudo-renaissance, feudal society. The problem is the remnants of the previously ruling wizard caste. Individually, a D&D Wizard 20 can likely outmatch any of them. As a collective, however, they have some serious mojo and tools in their disposal, as well as a massive information advantage. Wizardry, in Praedor, explicitly deals with gateways and visitors from other worlds, and the setting's equivalent of anti-magic effectively says "no" to foreign natural laws creeping into their world. If the D&D Wizard causes problems, they can end up pursued by Jaconia's Demon Knights, a set of immortal wizards who gave up magic to wear armor that is near-impenetrable to magic, and who run the wizard caste's special operations to deal with uncontrolled magic and extradimensional threats within Jaconia's domain. The D&D Wizard's best bet is to play by Jaconia's wizard caste's rules and get inducted into their ranks.

Borvaria is another thing. Borvaria is a massive scale version of those post-apocalyptic ruins left by failed magical civilizations you might see in D&D. Superficially, a D&D Wizard who has adventuring experience, might feel right at home. It's just a mega-dungeon crawl, what could go wrong?

Well. First, Borvaria is isolated from Jaconia, and hence anything resembling human civilization, by an extremely strong anti-magic barrier. If the D&D Wizard is counted as one of Borvaria's extradimensional inhabitants, and in context, they should be, their chances of making it into Jaconia on their own are slim. The absolute best case scenario for them is that all their magic stops working for the time they try to cross over. If they are otherwise an ordinary human, they just might make it. If they are not, they might be physically unable to cross, either because the barrier robs them of the ability to move or because it will outright incinerate them. This is one of the reasons why Borvaria is a no-go zone for Jaconia's native wizards - the immortality elixir they all consume interacts badly with barriers such as this.

Secondly, Borvaria has rampant wild magic. In context, this means natural laws from multiple worlds overlap and encroach on one another. This is another reason why Jaconia's native wizards stay the Hell away. Their magic doesn't work correctly nor predictably there. The same will reasonably apply to a D&D Wizard.

Thirdly, biological barriers in Borvaria are harsh and unfavorable. Nothing in there is safe to eat or drink for a human. Excursion from Jaconia into Borvaria are strongly limited by how much food and water the titular Praedors of the setting can carry with them. In combination with the earlier points, a D&D wizard might find themselves acting on very limited supplies, very soon.

Fourthly, Borvaria's main residents - nameless beasts - are extremely varied. There are no real species among them. Two creatures that look the same can have entirely different abilities or obey different natural laws. Imagine the ugliest mix-and-match critters from D&D. Then imagine every critter encountered also has randomized special abilities.

The one thing a D&D Wizard has over a human Praedor trying to explore Borvaria, is that the Wizard's magic items continue to work. (Recovering magic items or, more specifically in context, extra planar artefacts is one the reasons why anyone would bother going to Borvaria.) So the right set of items could either allow the Wizard to survive there for an extended period, or help them escape via a functioning dimensional gate. But I'm not betting on them - I'm not betting on anyone who lands in an environment as hostile as Borvaria without knowing what it is, to survive very long.

[Tanarii]

A lvl 20 Wizard from which edition?

"Lvl 20 Wizard" is a fairly different power level if you're talking about 3e, 5e, or the TSR's first D&D booklets, for example.

Well he said Wizard, so that means 3e or later.

[SimonMoon6]

How about: any world in which magic does not work?

Or: superhero worlds in the right circumstances, where the wizard doesn't know how much of a threat anything is. Like, suppose Wizard20 shows up next to Nemesis Kid (of the Legion of Supervillains). Wizard guy had no idea what Nemesis Kid can or can't do, so probably treats him like a simple threat, using various spells against him. But Nemesis Kid has the power to defeat any one opponent, so the Kid gets immunity to magic or an anti-magic field or similar abilities... whatever is necessary to defeat the wizard. Now, the wizard *could* win easily if he knew how the Kid's power works. Using even just Summon Monster I would flummox Nemesis Kid since he's good against *one* opponent at a time.

Or: a world where the wizard doesn't know the genre rules. Like, if he pops up into a DC comics universe from the 1990's onward, there is a genre rule that Batman beats anybody. Doesn't matter who or how. Batman just wins. That's his stupid superpower. There's a reason they call him the "Batgod". It's just incredibly stupid. But it's the rule. So, if Wizard20 shows up next to Batman, Batman just wins. How? It doesn't matter. He's Batman. He was "prepared". Because Batman is just "prepared". He somehow just knew Wizard20 was going to show up and had the instant countermeasures to shop him. Because he's Batman.

Now, 1980s or earlier Batman would not be such a threat. But how is Wizard20 supposed to know the difference?

And there are lots of characters who can instantly gain the abilities of their enemies. If he fights Amazo or the SuperAdaptoid, he's now fighting someone who has all the abilities and equipment of the Wizard20 (making it a 50/50 on who would win.. except Amazo and SuperAdaptoid will also have the abilities of the various superheroes of their own world (which probably includes a superspeedster, which means the villains probably get to go first)). And that's not even including the villain Paragon whose power is "anything you can do, I can do better". So, now the Wizard20 is fighting a Wizard21... who probably also has absorbed other superpowers too.

Or maybe Wizard20 shows up in the Red Dwarf universe inside a Justice Field, where anything he tries to do to someone else happens to him instead? If he knew about the Justice Field, he could circumvent it. But he doesn't, so when he Meteor Swarms his enemies (I know, sub-optimal tactic), it happens to him instead.

[Quertus]

Wow, you guys came up with a lot of cool ideas! Sadly, I doubt I'll get to post much for a few days, so I don't think I'll get to address the individual settings just yet, but I wanted to at least clarify a few things (if you asked me a direct question and I missed it, please assume I'm feverish and missed it, and ask it again. Sorry.):

1) What condition does the Wizard arrive in? You mentioned they don't know about the setting in advance, but are they showing up in "generically prepared" condition (buffs up, fully geared, potentially bringing minions in smoky confinement or such), or do they appear naked and without anything cast? (Or where in-between?)

2) How does HP / damage translate to the setting? For example, D&D has stats for guns, which do a fairly small amount, enough for Stoneskin to be a meaningful defense. But it also has stats for wall durability, and if you instead calculate the gun damage based on what they can shoot through (or what bombs can destroy), then modern heavy weaponry smashes through anything short of "immunity" like it was paper.

3) What set of planes does the setting have? If there's no Astral plane, then Wizards lose one of their biggest defenses and their easiest way to go NI. If there's no Ethereal plane then a lot of otherwise very useful utility is unavailable. Planar Binding / Gate is also getting shut down unless the setting has other planes with creatures that would be useful to call.

4) How does Polymorph / Shapechange work? Can the Wizard use it to assume forms that they're familiar with from back in D&D-land, but that don't exist in the new setting?

5) How does magic item crafting work? Does the new setting have materials that will work for it, and if so then how available are they?

6) How does people from the setting learning Wizardry work? If the setting has AIs capable of accelerated time simulation could they undertake a century of Wizard training in a few minutes and suddenly have lots of Wiz20s of their own once they observe you and realize it's possible? If the setting has "forks", like Eclipse Phase, is an alpha fork (exact copy) made from your mind still able to cast spells?

1) If the Wizard has "daily" buffs that last all day, assume they have them. If "you, with the power of a Wizard 20", assume you had time to prepare similar "daily" buffs.

2) Um... more later, but I *personally* never noticed pistols and rifles (the only modern guns I remember being statted) blowing huge holes in solid stone walls, so... "HP work, but how damage is converted may be a condition you mention wrt how well the Wizard would survive, especially if you feel the official damage is nonsensical." Still, 4' of steel through one's head tends to not only prevent casting, but invoke the "Dead" condition, yet swords only deal, like, d8 of the Wizard's 19d4+4+(20*ConBonus) HP, so I doubt I'll consider most other official damages any less "action hero worthy".

3) Yeah, definitely something *I* consider - I don't just assume D&D planar geography in non-D&D worlds. Feel free to rule either way (or both ways, and include what difference it makes), as I did say "the powers of..." as my subtle nod to, "fine, if you want to have the same effective power, even in a world where the D&D implementation wouldn't work, since that's the way most people think about such things, go ahead.".

4) Polymorph absolutely works fine! Wizard can become forms from their reality, and learn forms from the new one, too. (Unless there's some explicit rule in the other setting preventing it; that said, I know of no such rules in any settings).

5) Feel free to rule item crafting any way you desire; Milo can grind magic items from Salt. I personally don't go that route, so I share your concerns... except that I'm quite adaptive on finding something to make items out of.

6) I hadn't considered applying Eclipse Phase tech to the Wizard. Definitely perform Divinations first, as getting the hard drive installed may well hamper or kill your ability to cast spells by itself (most settings I'm familiar with that actually address such things, cyberware reduces or kills magic / casting ability). Still, I'm going with "rule whichever way you want'; personally, I'd probably assume the "forks" have as much casting ability as the post-implant Wizard did.

1) It is like the third time you ask a similar question, but honestly that question is hard to answer.

2) prestige class effects

3) You mention undead having immunity to instadeath in your opening post - but in many systems undead don't have that nor are instakill effects called death effects.

4) And that is all if you have a system/setting with well defined rules. But most settings, particularly from literature are extremely vague in how they work. And even in roleplay systems, well, you could just be in one that only works with narrative rules (so the wizard loses if something thinks that is a good story) or are rules light and don't actually care at all what the wizard has on his sheet (an attack is resolved via coin toss : wizard loses 50% of the time)

Numbered for convenience.

1) That sounds like me. My senile mind doesn't remember, but I believe you.

2) No prestige classes, just Vanilla Wizard 20. Wanted to make that part easy, at least.

3) How undead in the other setting work is irrelevant to the mechanics of the Wizard's undeath. If they have a dog, and call it a "cat", that doesn't change the Wizard's cat into a dog. Still, yes, the mechanics of their instakill effect matters. I'm no HP loremaster, but the unofficial HP RPGs I've played all made it pretty clearly something I wouldn't expect to work on a D&D undead, IIRC. But, yes, could go either way for any number of insufficiently defined worlds / effects.

4) Narrative systems are, indeed, problematic for the Wizard 20. Feel free to list any you think are especially vexing to the poor Wizard.

One useful way to do that is to try and use ordinary Homo sapiens as the baseline, mostly since these tend to occur in almost every setting.

Yup!

A lvl 20 Wizard from which edition?

"Lvl 20 Wizard" is a fairly different power level if you're talking about 3e, 5e, or the TSR's first D&D booklets, for example.

I'd swear I answered this in the OP:

Ah, it was in a note down at the bottom:

* I'm generally guessing that means "3e" D&D Wizard 20 to most people on this site, but feel free to respond based on other editions, too, if that's what you're more familiar with, or what you find more interesting, or whatever.

Well he said Wizard, so that means 3e or later.

Ahahah, you'd like to think that, wouldn't you? You've beaten my... no, wait, wrong quote. Let me try again: You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.

In earlier editions (well, at least 2e; I haven't checked earlier earlier editions lately, "Mage" was a... "subclass" of the "Wizard" superclass. So arguably, someone could argue for a specialist Wizard from 2e (and earlier?) being a "Wizard". I had intended to allow the vanilla "Mage" from earlier editions, but my RAW writing was sloppy.

And... I'm gonna go lie down. Thanks for all the cool ideas so far!

[Telok]

An extension of this is that the setting must have sufficient internal consistency to establish a baseline against itself in order to be used for comparison with anything else and - and this is important! - many settings fail this test, badly. This includes pretty much every superhero and shounen manga setting ever created.

I regularly convert between/from OD&D, AD&D, D&D 3.x, BRP/CoC, WHFRP, WH40k, Gurps, Hero/Champions, d6 Star Wars, and several video game franchises, in order to gin up monsters & vehices for my game. They all have "sufficient internal consistency" and work fine on ragular human scale stuff. There's a bit of fudge factor required with constitution bonuses and inflated hit points from D&D 3.x, but not much else. If you look for it a whole heck of a lot of stuff has been converted to Gurps & Hero systems because they're functional generic multi-genre systems.

Just because you can't do a Battletech Atlas vs a D&D Tarrasque throwing Panzer IIIs at each other in D&D doesn't mean its not done, or even particularly difficult.

[Bohandas]

Heaven Piercing Gurren Lagann comes to mind. I haven't seen the whole series but my understanding is that in the last fight the entire universe is destroyed and that doesn't even end the fight

[Rynjin]

Heaven Piercing Gurren Lagann comes to mind. I haven't seen the whole series but my understanding is that in the last fight the entire universe is destroyed and that doesn't even end the fight

At one point in the movie a character starts throwing actual, literal galaxies like shuriken. Just picks them up and starts chuckin' 'em as a basic attack.

That's the guy who LOSES the fight.

[Mechalich]

I regularly convert between/from OD&D, AD&D, D&D 3.x, BRP/CoC, WHFRP, WH40k, Gurps, Hero/Champions, d6 Star Wars, and several video game franchises, in order to gin up monsters & vehices for my game. They all have "sufficient internal consistency" and work fine on ragular human scale stuff. There's a bit of fudge factor required with constitution bonuses and inflated hit points from D&D 3.x, but not much else. If you look for it a whole heck of a lot of stuff has been converted to Gurps & Hero systems because they're functional generic multi-genre systems.

Just because you can't do a Battletech Atlas vs a D&D Tarrasque throwing Panzer IIIs at each other in D&D doesn't mean its not done, or even particularly difficult.

It's easy to convert between games, because everything has already been quantified and you're just balancing different sets of numbers against each other. The problem I was noting is that many settings aren't capable of being converted into something as quantitative as a game without smashing the setting into little bits. To use a character already mentioned: turning Batman into stats inevitably makes him something far, far less than Batman (mostly, it makes him dead).

So yes, the ideal way to do cross setting power comparisons is to imagine every character as if they were input into a suitably universal system - Gurps being a decent option in this regard - but the hard part is doing so in a way that people will agree. This is basically the fundamental problem Death Battle! faced: the people behind it were able to reasonably throw the various characters against each other based on the capabilities they had assigned to said characters and produced outcomes that made sense in context. The disputes lay almost entirely on the ability assigned side of the house.

The problem is that many settings, especially superhero and shounen manga settings, offer up variable outcomes to the exact same effect. Characters in such settings take exactly as much damage from various attacks as the plot demands, often to the point of getting hit with the exact same attack at different times and suffering completely different levels of damage each time.

For example, the hard part of comparing a 3.5e 20th level wizard against something like the Narutoverse is all about deciding how to represent the powers of the characters on the Naruto side, because if you ask 100 different people to try and quantify the abilities of even some of the more straightforward Naruto characters you'll get 100 different answers.

[Bohandas]

Also in general, anything that's science-fantasy rather than just fantasy. Star Wars, Warhammer 40000, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Dr.Who, maybe Power Rangers. (Not Dune though. A lv 20 wizard would mop the floor with Paul Atreides).

[Jay R]

Any world with another Wizard 20 (or higher).

[Telok]

The problem is that many settings, especially superhero and shounen manga settings, offer up variable outcomes to the exact same effect. Characters in such settings take exactly as much damage from various attacks as the plot demands, often to the point of getting hit with the exact same attack at different times and suffering completely different levels of damage each time.

Which is exactly what D&D disentegrate, phantasmal killer, and a bunch of other stuff in D&D and other games does. No, there's no issue in conversions or assigning stats. Only in trying to go with design-by-committee and insisting on 100% agreement by 50+ folks. That doesn't even work for "pick a color to paint your house", much less anything else.

[Vahnavoi]

I'm with Telok here. It isn't particularly hard to eyeball how various fictional series would translate to D&D, especially since for many of them there is a precedent for how to translate them to D&D. (Also, as far as variability of damage goes, that's exactly as true as D&D. On the level of game rules, an attack with the same sword against the same opponent, succeeding on the attack roll with the same amount, has variable effect not just on its own due to damage rolls being (mostly) independent, the overall effect will also vary depending on context of the attack such as how many hitpoints the opponent has left, how much non-lethal damage they have acrued, saving throws, etc.. Only after the fact narration by a dungeon master can explain or make sense of it, and frequently doesn't.)

To take the specific example of Naruto, that is dead easy. We see a person spitting fireballs. That's good enough match for D&D fireball. We see a person alter their outside appearance to arbitrary degree. That's good enough match for D&D alter self. We see a person call lightning and incinerate a building with it. That's good enough match for D&D call lightning, propably high level and maximized. We see a person summon colossal monsters. Ooh, what spell could that be? So on and so forth. Mapping the narrative effects to game rules is much easier than trying to map either to real physics.

[Leon]

Any world not running on a D&D legacy because outside of that legacy a wizard is nothing and most would be in for a surprise when converting to that systems own "magic" system or lack of similar.

[KorvinStarmast]

Well he said Wizard, so that means 3e or later.

Strictly speaking, once a Magic User got to 11th level, Wizard, name level, (OD&D and AD&D 1e) you end up with Wizard (since there are no new names after level 11) of X level if they survive to 20.
In comparison, the Monks had a level cap and their last few levels had specific names since there was only 1 in the world ... (A&D 1e).

That doesn't even work for "pick a color to paint your house", much less anything else.

Don't get me started. My wife with just me and her sister as sounding boards took forever to choose a color of paint.

As to the modern world:
Wizard 20, if their magic doesn't work, would probably get by due to their native intelligence. They would adapt.

If their magic did work and they began to get dangerous, a single shot from Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle (with a scope, obviously, and a good marksman) from about 500-600 yards ends the wizard.

[Aliess]

World of Darkness could be quite painful.
You'd probably be able to cast all your daily buffs and whatnot in relative safety, but as you try and throw a fireball/call lightning/turn someone into turtle then reality is going to slap you with a big Nope. If you don't realise what is going on and try to counter it with more magic then things are going to spiral quickly.

[Cluedrew]

There seem to be a few general types of answers.

Out Powered: As crazy powerful as D&D casters can be, there are even higher powered settings out there. Dragon Ball probably is the best general example, pretty well known and there are people who can punch planets apart.

Out Scaled: There are some settings where even if the wizard is the strongest single character in setting... so what? Let's say that a D&D wizard can take a whole planet in the Warhammer 40K setting (and also resist chaos and all that stuff), who cares. Hopefully no one else, otherwise an endless army will come for the wizard and they will lose eventually.

Different Axioms: If there is someone who can never loose a fight, or true anti-magic even, the wizard cannot overcome that problem with raw power. Depending on what the incompatible axiom is, they might be able to work around it, but only "might".

Different Axis: This is going to be a shock and you might want to sit down for this. Being an individually powerful being good at fighting is not the only way to get along in life. This is a softer version of the above, and actually because these settings aren't so much about danger and the wizards spell list is so hilariously stupid over the top, I would "bet" on there survival, maybe even comfort. But they probably wouldn't "win" the setting or anything.

It is like the third time you ask a similar question, but honestly that question is hard to answer.

That sounds like me. My senile mind doesn't remember, but I believe you.

Speaking of which, it might be time for me to roll out another caster/martial disparity thread. I actually have no plans to do this.

But I do remember at least two other comparing power levels against settings threads, nothing about wizards in particular, but definitely similar.

[Mechalich]

Out Scaled: There are some settings where even if the wizard is the strongest single character in setting... so what? Let's say that a D&D wizard can take a whole planet in the Warhammer 40K setting (and also resist chaos and all that stuff), who cares. Hopefully no one else, otherwise an endless army will come for the wizard and they will lose eventually.

I think this is less limiting than it initially appears. If a 20th level wizard is the most powerful individual in a setting (or just most powerful mortal, assuming some kind of divide between the operational parameters of mortals and deities) then they have some pretty powerful tools to overcome the limitations of scale. For example, an expansive reading of the capabilities of minionomancy - ex. chain-gating solars or infinite ice assassins and so forth - means that that the wizard produce their own functionally endless army. Additionally, assuming the setting already has some kind of pre-existing power structure that allows bridging the limitations of scale, like some kind of galactic government, mind control allows the wizard to make it their own. Dominate Monster can accomplish a lot (for example, in a pre-Paul Dune, the wizard just dominates the Emperor and now they've taken control of the universe with a single spell, the spacing guild might realize it had happened, but would they really care?).

Now, it's true that scale remains limiting to a wizard if scale remains limiting to even the most powerful extant actors in a given setting. For example, in the Culture universe Minds embedded in the larger classes of ships like GSVs are phenomenally powerful, but even though they can at least in theory produce a limitless horde of AI warships capable of laying waste to whole star clusters (as the Sleeper Service does in fact do in Excession) they can only really exercise control over a bubble a few light years in radius centered on themselves at any given time. however, it follows from this that no one can properly exercise control over the entirety of such a setting, so this isn't really a limit on the wizard so much as a trait of the setting itself (notably this is a trait the real world, with the light speed limit, appears to possess).

Different Axis: This is going to be a shock and you might want to sit down for this. Being an individually powerful being good at fighting is not the only way to get along in life. This is a softer version of the above, and actually because these settings aren't so much about danger and the wizards spell list is so hilariously stupid over the top, I would "bet" on there survival, maybe even comfort. But they probably wouldn't "win" the setting or anything.

This is a bit tricky because, by even a fairly restrictive reading of the 3.5e rules, a 20th level wizard is fully capable of either traveling to (via plane shift and a suitably curated list of idealized destinations) or creating ex nihilo (via Genesis of a demiplane) their personal ideal of paradise and then spending as much time as they wish, up to and including 'forever,' therein, and unless you restrict access to extraplanar resources, which is already nerfing the wizard massively they would retain this anywhere in the multiverse they might happen to go. In many ways a 20th level wizard has long since crossed a personal power threshold where they need to fight at all.