Anti-caster build ideas 2: Building the caster

[juton]

How does a mundane character tangle with a Wizard and live? That's a question some of the minds of Min/Max have been trying to solve here. Part of the problem is we don't know exactly what a wizard can do, or what it's likely to do, so this thread will help design a yardstick to test our builds against.

The caster is a Wizard, we're going to go straight Wizard as that's powerful enough. All WotC sources are available, but this character should be able to handle himself equally well in a campaign as in a thought exercise.

PhaedrusXY also has build on page 3 of this thread which is more optimized. The following build should be a good metric of a moderately optimized Wizard in play.

The Build:

Grey Elf Wizard 20

Specialist Diviner, Banning Enchantment
Spontaneous Diviner
Humming Bird, then Imp Familiar

[spoiler=Feats:]
1st level : Spell Mastery
Wizard 1 : Scribe Scroll
3rd level : Improved Initiative
6th level : Insightful Divination
9th level : Uncanny Forethought
12th level: Improved Familiar (Imp)
15th level: Quicken Spell
18th level: Quick Recovery
[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Spells Prepared:"]
The standard spells prepared:
1: Nerveskitter
2: Invisibility, Glitterdust
3: Wind Wall
4: Celerity x2, Greater Invisibility, Ray Deflection, Stone Skin
5: Overland Flight
6: Energy Immunity x 4, Greater Dispel Magic, Greater Anticipate Teleport
7: Greater Teleport x2, Plane Shift, Limited Wish, Iron Guard
8: Superior Invisibility, Mindblank, Protection from Spells
9: Timestop, Gate, Mordekain's Disjunction, Shapechange

Divinations used frequently:
1: Truestrike
2: Detect Thoughts
3: Tounges, Clairavoyance
4: Detect Scrying
5: Prying Eyes
6: True Seeing
7: Greater Scry
8: Moment of Prescience
9: Foresight

Once a week: Contact other plane
[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Special Items:"]
I'm not going to use any wealth exploits, our Wizard starts with the same wealth by level as any one else.

Iron Cone with Shrink Item to make it a Hat
   (8 tons without Shrink Item, made with Wall of Iron)
+5 Tome of Intelligence                       137,500
+1 Weapon with Eager, Warning and Initiative   28,000
Rainbow falls magical location                  2,000
Orange Ioun Stone                              30,000
Hand of Glory                                   8,000
Ring of Arcane Might                           20,000
Ring of Nine Lives                             45,000
Ring of Greater Counterspells                  16,000
    with Mordenkainen's disjunction
Cloak of Resistance +5 with                    43,000
    Mantle of Second Chances                       
Belt of Constitution +6 with                   54,000
    Belt of Battle                                 
Bracers of Armour +8                           64,000
Mithral Buckler +1 of Soulfire, Heavy Fort    100,000
Headband of Intellect +6                       36,000
Gloves of Dexterity +4 and Strength +2         22,000
Greater Metamagic Rod of Sculpting             24,500
Greater Metamagic Rod of Silence               24,500
Greater Metamagic Rod of Extend                24,500
Rod of Absorption                              50,000
Boccob's Blessed Book x2                       25,000
Handy Haversack                                 2,000

Running Total                                 756,000     

[/spoiler]

[juton]

The Scenario:

Our Wizard will occasionally leave his demi-plane for some human(oid) interaction. He travels to a pub in his old home town to relive his halcyon days with his adventuring companions. Do to his respect for the proprietor he doesn't use magic in the pub (unless in self defense), he'll travel 100 feet away then gate home. He'll stay a few hours, have a few drinks and leave but he never gets drunk. The pub is in a generic city, he usually arrives a bit before sunset and leaves at last call.

The Bad News:

• The Wizard has cast Contact other plane and knows an attack is coming.
• The Wizard has all his buffs up, but travels in his true form.
• The Wizard has traded spells with other high level Wizards, he is considered to know every Wizard spell in the PHB. He also knows every divination spell in the SpC and all the completes. He also has Uncanny Forethought, which he can use 13 times in a day and spontaneous divination.

The Good News:

• The Wizard doesn't know the exact nature of the threat assailing him.

His stats are (25pb):
STR: 8 (8 -2 elf +2 item)
DEX: 14 (8+2 elf +4 item)
CON: 18 (14-2 elf + 6 item)
INT: 36 (18 +2 elf +5 tome +5 levels + 6 item)
WIS: 8
CHA: 11

FRT:+18 (+4 +6 class  +8 resistance)
REF:+16 (+2 +6 class  +8 resistance)
WIL:+18 (-1 +12 class +8 resistance)


HP: 132

[spoiler="Spells Cast:"]
Shapechange (extended, Rainbow Falls), Foresight (extended), Moment of Prescience, Protection from Spells, Plane Shift + Greater Teleport, Detect Scrying, Greater Anticipate Teleport, Energy Immunity for all energy types, Overland Flight

Spell slots available:
1: 8+1
2: 8+1
3: 7+1
4: 7+1 1 used, 7 remaining
5: 7+1 1 used, 6+1 remaining
6: 7+1 5 used, 2+1 remaining
7: 6+1 2 used, 4+1 remaining
8: 6+1 2 used, 5 remaining
9: 6+1 2 used, 5 remaining

The Wizard also has a Contingency on him self to planeshift back to his demiplane if he is unable to act. His familiar has a Contingency that planeshifts him back to his master's plane if his master's Contingency triggers.
[/spoiler]

[jameswilliamogle]

• With Contact other plane On a failed save can the Int/Cha decrease be prevented or cured?

More importantly, can they get past the "Can't cast arcane spells for the stated duration"?  I think a Wish might do it, but I'm not sure about anything else...  Is it even "an affliction"? 

[Anklebite]

according to RAW, you can take 10 on the check.

also, isn't foresight a 24 hour duration spell? cast it once/day, and you're done.

[juton]

according to RAW, you can take 10 on the check.

also, isn't foresight a 24 hour duration spell? cast it once/day, and you're done.

Good catch with the check, I was thinking it was a will save. I remember an argument regarding whether or not you could take 10 on the check because you where concentrating at the time, I think it's pointless because I'm sure there is someway to get +15 to the check so you never fail it regardless.

Foresight is 10 minutes/level, so you'd need about 8 castings to cover a 24 hour period.

[Bozwevial]

Uncanny Forethought.

[Anklebite]

maybe have in your "contact other plane" queries, one of the questions is: "which one of these times would be best to cast foresight? and for monday? and tuesday?" ect

[Tshern]

Random ideas:
-A legacy weapon for Cunning and Mind blank abilities so that you won't ever be flat-footed or divined upon.
-Greater anticipate teleport.
-Superior invisibility.
-As Bozwevial said: Uncanny forethought.

[jameswilliamogle]

according to RAW, you can take 10 on the check.

also, isn't foresight a 24 hour duration spell? cast it once/day, and you're done.

Mindblank is the 24h duration one.  I'm not sure if you can take 10 on that; there's a major repercussion if it fails...  I dunno...

I guess I agree w/ it.

[Tshern]

Also, Rainbow falls magical location helps the caster to keep Shapechange up all day long.

Base caster level 20+1 from ioun stone+1 from ring means 220 minutes, extend that with a rod for 440 and triple that for 1320 minutes of Shapechange ownage a day.

[juton]

Thanks Tshern and Bozwevial

We seem to be racking up more transmutation spells that I thought, should he be a focused transmuter instead? I like the rod idea to help keep up Foresight and I forgot all about shapechange!

[The_Mad_Linguist]

according to RAW, you can take 10 on the check.

also, isn't foresight a 24 hour duration spell? cast it once/day, and you're done.

Mindblank is the 24h duration one.  I'm not sure if you can take 10 on that; there's a major repercussion if it fails...  I dunno...

I guess I agree w/ it.

It's take 20 that you can't take if there's a major repercussion.

Take 10 is only forbidden on Use Magic Device, or if you're concentrating on something else, if I recall correctly.

[mans0011]

I don't know if banning evocation is a good idea. Radiant Assault is absolutely delicious. I really think this should be an elven generalist wizardry (racial sub level 1 from Races of the Wild) and also take the level 3 racial sub for doubling the hummingbird familiar's bonus to init. Also, as per the Unearthed Arcana wizard variant, drop scribe scroll for improved initiative so we can spend the first level feat on something else. Or maybe even be a diviner and ban enchantment because we're not going to be using Irresistible dance. Oh, sike. I see that we are going Wizard 20, so we don't want to use the UA variant because we would rather have MM feats than fighter feats. Lame. Whatever! We should totally move in to Loremaster and Archmage. That would totally rock. No one wants to say they got schooled by a loremaster, I mean come on! At any rate, Radiant assault. Delicious. Enervation. Delicious. Ray of stupidity. Delicious. Why would we want to ban these things with our focused Transmuter? Being a Diviner opens up insightful divination from Complete Mage which allows us to get a +10 to our init and our next save when we cast our 9th level divinations. And it lasts for hour/level. It's a great little feat. Are we using celerity or not? I really think we can beat a martial character without using the cheesiness of Timestop+Gate+Shapechange.

Also, keep in mind that you'll want at least two rods of Absorption and Cancellation. You'll probably want that throat item that allows you to put another ring on it. So that gives us ring of arcane might, the ring that lets you store a spell and counters the spell that's in it and... I dunno, another good ring. >.> We can get +6 con worked into that necklace thing, +6 dex onto our gloves and +6 Int into our hat. Oooer. We should totally Polymorph Any Object ourselves into a Pit Fiend. That would be sick.

Also, we should be casting the magic tattoo spell and extending it for +1 caster level every couple of days. We'll have +1 from ring, Ioun stone and this tattoo. That's not bad.

[jameswilliamogle]

I'm personally against making custom items (even if the rules are clear about them), though I don't mind the Wizard going into PrCs.

[juton]

Prestige classes are great, everbody loves them, they're able to make a Wizard that much more powerful. The reasons I don't want to use them for this build are that people talk about facing a Wizard 20 not an Incantrix/Loremaster/Whatever. If we let PrCs in which one to use, or would we have multiple builds to cover all the bases. They'd all use Contact other plane and Foresight + Celerity, just some of them will have extra metamagic goodness sprinkled on top.

Customizing some items are fine, like making a +2 Icy/Flaming/Cunning Lighmace. Making custom magic items that for instance give you command word teleport is a lot more dicey. There's a clause in the magic item creation rules that these prices are just guidelines, and it's up to the DM's discretion. So Min/Max is pure RAW I'd like to stay away from anything requiring a DM's discretion.

The Elven substitution level is OK, but it only gives you an extra spell at your highest known, it doesn't seem as good as regular specialization or focused specialization.

[Eldariel]

If we give the Wizard Craft Contingent Spell, the whole discussion is useless as a character without the same feat & Celerity is waste of space, and the rules prevent us from using Celerity. So lose CCS if we want anything of relevance out of this.

Foresight is 10 min/level or 3 hours 40 mins at CL22, which we're probably looking at with Ioun Stone and Ring of Arcane Might. Greater Metamagic Rod of Extend makes it 7 hours 20 mins meaning 3 castings last 22 hours.

[jameswilliamogle]

Customizing some items are fine, like making a +2 Icy/Flaming/Cunning Lighmace. Making custom magic items that for instance give you command word teleport is a lot more dicey. There's a clause in the magic item creation rules that these prices are just guidelines, and it's up to the DM's discretion. So Min/Max is pure RAW I'd like to stay away from anything requiring a DM's discretion

I was talking about the latter case (though custom staffs are OK).

[juton]

If we give the Wizard Craft Contingent Spell, the whole discussion is useless as a character without the same feat & Celerity is waste of space, and the rules prevent us from using Celerity. So lose CCS if we want anything of relevance out of this.

I'm unclear how the rules prevent us from using Celerity. You have a point about CCS, it is powerful, but worse than that it is too open to interpretation about what the triggering conditions are. Is 'IF I'm about to put in an AMF THEN' a valid criteria or is 'IF I'm 5ft away from an AMF THEN' a valid criteria? I've never seen a (definitive) ruling on this.

[PhaedrusXY]

I agree that this should be a generalist wizard, and there is no reason not to be an elven generalist if you're doing that. If you ban Evocation, you give up Contingency (I know about Greater Shadow Evocation) and a Forcecage that can function in an AMF. Also, necromancy has some amazing spells that I'd hate to give up. With Shapechange up 24/7, you can take care of most trivial things with Su abilities from that (just turning into a beholder will be enough for most things ). Also, I've never seen a high level wizard run out of spells in 20+ years of gaming. The rest of the party is long dead before that happens. 

If we have the Cunning ability, or something else that prevents us from ever being flat-footed, we might consider keying our Contingency to go off whenever we activate some cheap immediate action spell or magic item. For example, in Tshern's game, my character has a legacy item with Cunning and a Contingency tied to go off whenever he activates a heartening shield (MiC, ~1000 gp). That way, he can choose when to make his Contingency go off, instead of having to worry about what trigger conditions to use. Of course, banning custom magic items probably gets rid of this option, but I think this is worse for challengers than it is for the wizard. The wizard can just walk around all day shapechanged into a minotaur or dire tortoise.

I think banning Craft Contingent Spell is fine. It would probably benefit the wizard more than the opposition, and it would greatly complicate everything.

Oh, and Superior Invisibility is a 9th level spell, not 4th (that's Greater Invis).

[Eldariel]

I'm unclear how the rules prevent us from using Celerity.

The non-caster side hardly has reasonable means of acquiring Celerity without becoming spellcaster is my point. The caster therefore has a bunch of Celerity-contingencies and wins regardless of what happens.

You have a point about CCS, it is powerful, but worse than that it is too open to interpretation about what the triggering conditions are. Is 'IF I'm about to put in an AMF THEN' a valid criteria or is 'IF I'm 5ft away from an AMF THEN' a valid criteria? I've never seen a (definitive) ruling on this.

"If I'm 5' from AMF" seems pretty much unarguably to be a legal wording. I don't think the temporal aspects of the spells function in a way that would enable "If I'm about to be put into AMF..."-wording, but that shouldn't be necessary either. It's really sort of DM-dependant as the rules leave the specific limitations open, but basics such as "when a magical or a physical effect attacks me"-like triggers should work just fine.